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SPICE, MIXED, FOR WHITE SAUCE. (See KITCHEN MIXED SPICE, ETC.)
SPICE NUTS. Take four eggs and beat them up; stir in a pound of sifted sugar, half an ounce of powdered cinnamon, a quarter of an ounce of powdered cloves, and the peel of a lemon cut very fine. Stir these ingredients together for a quarter of an hour, then add by degrees a pound of flour and two ounces of candied peel. When this is well mixed, drop the preparation on buttered tins in small lumps. Bake in a moderate oven.
A stiff, eggy spice biscuit with no leavening at all — the quarter-hour of beating is the whole method, not a suggestion.
- Beat the eggs and sugar properlyFifteen minutes of stirring is what makes these rise: air whipped into the egg and sugar is the only lift in the recipe. A stand mixer on medium-high for 8-10 minutes, until the mixture is pale and falls in ribbons, does the same work.
- Fold the flour, do not beat itThe flour goes in "by degrees" for good reason. Add it in three or four additions and fold gently, or the aerated base collapses and the biscuits bake flat and hard.
- Moderate oven350F/175C. Small drops need only 10-14 minutes, until set and just colouring at the edges; they firm considerably as they cool.
- Weights, in cupsA pound of sifted sugar is about 2 1/4 cups; a pound of flour about 3 1/2 cups. Half an ounce of cinnamon is roughly 2 tablespoons and a quarter-ounce of cloves about 1 tablespoon — assertively spiced by modern standards, and worth halving the cloves if you are unsure.
- Candied peel and lemonChop the two ounces of candied peel to rice-sized pieces or it will tear the stiff batter. The fresh lemon peel should be zest only, pared very fine — no white pith.
- Buttered tinsParchment on the sheet is more reliable than butter alone, since a sugar-heavy dough this stiff sticks and scorches on the base.
- Yield and keepingTeaspoon-sized drops give a large batch, likely upwards of a hundred small biscuits from two pounds of dry ingredients. They start crisp and soften over a few days in a tin.
"Nut" here appears to mean size rather than ingredient: a nut was a small nugget-shaped cake or biscuit, and comparable names survive in the German Pfeffernüsse and Dutch pepernoten, similarly spiced small biscuits. Cassell's belongs to the late-Victorian run of encyclopaedic household dictionaries, and its baking pages catch a moment when chemical leaveners were available but plenty of recipes still relied on nothing but sustained beating. The generous cinnamon and cloves, together with candied peel, suit a keeping biscuit, though the recipe itself says nothing about the season in which it was made.