Home › The Principles of Cookery › Seed Biscuits
Seed Biscuits
No. 1.--Beat four ounces of fresh butter to cream, add a pinch of salt, four ounces of powdered and sifted loaf sugar, one pound of flour, and a tea-spoonful of caraway-seeds. Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly, and stir into them three well-beaten eggs. Roll out the pastry, cut it into fancy biscuits of any shape, prick these with a fork, and bake in a well-heated oven. If liked, one egg, a little milk, and a tea-spoonful of baking-powder may be used. No. 2.--Rub half a pound of butter into a pound of flour, add two table-spoonfuls of sugar, a tea-spoonful of caraway-seeds, and a dessert-spoonful of saleratus dissolved in a little milk. Knead the dough till it forms a light smooth paste, roll it out, stamp it into shapes, and bake in a well-heated oven. No. 3.--Rub one pound of butter into three pounds of flour, add a pinch of salt, an ounce of caraway-seeds, and three-quarters of a pound of powdered sugar. Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly, work into them three-quarters of a pint of boiling milk, and knead the dough till it is smooth. Roll it out, cut it into rounds or squares, prick with a fork, and bake in a gentle oven. Time to bake, ten to fifteen minutes.
Three versions of the same plain caraway biscuit, ranging from a rich egg dough to a hot-milk shortbread. None is difficult, but the flour-to-liquid ratios are unforgiving and the sugar and raising agents need translating.
- Loaf sugar, powdered and siftedLoaf sugar was refined sugar sold as a hard cone and broken up as needed; crushed and sieved it gives something between caster and icing sugar. Caster sugar is the closest modern match — not powdered/icing sugar, which contains cornflour.
- SaleratusThe name covered potassium bicarbonate earlier in the century and sodium bicarbonate later; for practical purposes treat it as bicarbonate of soda. A dessert-spoonful (about 2 teaspoons) to a pound of flour is a heavy hand by modern taste and there is no acid in the dough to neutralise it; expect a soapy note unless you cut it back or use buttermilk instead of plain milk.
- Oven temperaturesThese terms are approximate. A "well-heated oven" is usually read as somewhere around 400-425F (200-220C), and the "gentle oven" for No. 3 as around 325F (160C), which suits its high butter content. The stated ten to fifteen minutes applies to thin biscuits; take them out when the edges just colour.
- Spoon sizesA Victorian dessert-spoon is about 2 teaspoons and a table-spoon about 3. British measures of the period were not standardised, so treat these as approximate and err small with the soda.
- No. 1 will feel dryA pound of flour with three eggs and no liquid gives a very stiff paste — that is intended, and it is why the alternative of one egg, milk and baking powder is offered. Work it firmly rather than adding water; overwetting makes the biscuits tough.
- Boiling milk in No. 3The milk goes in hot, which partly melts the rubbed-in butter and is generally held to help give a short, sandy, shortbread-like crumb. Add it at once and knead quickly while the dough is warm.
- CarawayAn ounce of seed to three pounds of flour (No. 3) is roughly four tablespoons, which is a strong, distinctly nineteenth-century level of flavour. Toasting the seeds briefly in a dry pan improves them; substituting anise or fennel changes the biscuit but not the method.
- PrickingDocking with a fork keeps the biscuits flat by letting steam escape. Skip it and the richer doughs will dome and crack.
- YieldNo. 1 or No. 2 makes roughly three to four dozen biscuits at 2 in. across. No. 3, built on three pounds of flour, is a household-scale batch of well over a hundred and is easily quartered.
Caraway seed biscuits and seed cake were staples of the British tea table for most of the nineteenth century, cheap to make and long-keeping in a tin. Caraway had been a fixture of English baking since at least the Tudor period, when comfits of sugar-coated seed were eaten after dinner as a digestive, and the loose seed in cakes and biscuits is generally traced to that habit. The three numbered variants show one way a Victorian dictionary of cookery worked: rather than a single authoritative formula, the rich version, the economical soda version and the large-batch version are set out side by side. Saleratus is a period marker in itself etter chemical raising agents settled into the bicarbonate and baking powder familiar today, the older name lingered in print.