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Spanish Buns
Rub half a pound of fresh butter into a pound of flour. Add a pinch of salt, a little grated nutmeg and powdered cinnamon, and also six table-spoonfuls of powdered sugar. Mix these ingredients thoroughly, and work them into a paste with four well-beaten eggs. Drop the mixture in knobs upon a floured tin, and bake these until done enough. When half-baked, brush the surface with milk. If liked, half a pound of currants may be added to the buns, and then an additional egg or a little milk will be required. Time to bake the buns, about twenty minutes.
A rubbed-in enriched dough, closer to a rock cake than to a modern yeasted bun. The quantities are workable as written; the oven temperature and the absence of any raising agent are what need attention.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives none. Small rich knobs of this kind want a moderately hot oven, 375-400F, for the twenty minutes stated. Lower and they spread and dry out; hotter and the sugar and butter on the surface colour before the centres set.
- No leaveningThere is no yeast, baking powder or saleratus here, only four beaten eggs. Beat the eggs well before working them in, and stop as soon as the paste comes together. Expect a close, short crumb, not an airy one.
- Weights and volumesA pound of flour is about 450g (roughly 3 1/2 cups), half a pound of butter 225g. Six tablespoons of powdered sugar is about 75g; "powdered" in this period means finely ground granulated, not modern confectioners' sugar with its cornflour, so caster or granulated is the closer match.
- Flour strengthVictorian household flour was often softer than modern all-purpose, though it varied. If your dough feels tight, hold back a little of the flour rather than adding liquid, and stop mixing as soon as it comes together.
- CurrantsThese are dried Zante currants, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. Half a pound is 225g, and the extra egg or splash of milk the recipe mentions is genuinely needed once they go in.
- The milk washThe recipe has you brush at the halfway point rather than before baking; whatever the reason, do it quickly and close the oven.
- "Until done enough"Judge by colour and firmness, not time alone. The buns should be evenly golden and spring back when pressed at the centre; around twenty minutes for knobs the size of a walnut.
- YieldA pound of flour makes a good number of buns; expect rather more than 20 if you keep them to walnut size. They are best the day they are baked.
"Spanish bun" was a loose nineteenth-century label rather than a dish with a fixed pedigree; in English and American books of the period it usually meant a rich spiced bun scented with nutmeg and cinnamon, sometimes yeast-raised and baked in a sheet to be cut in squares, sometimes, as here, dropped in knobs. The origin of the name is unclear. The vagueness of "until done enough" reflects a period in which a cook learned a coal range by hand and eye, and a printed temperature would have meant little.