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Sponge Biscuits
Break four fresh eggs, and put the yolks and whites into separate bowls. Take out the specks, beat the yolks thoroughly, and add gradually, beating the mixture briskly, half a pound of powdered and sifted sugar, a dessert-spoonful of orange-flower water, a quarter of a pound of flour, and, lastly, the whites of the eggs whisked to a froth. Make some biscuit tins hot. Grease them with butter, and while hot sift powdered sugar over them. Three-parts fill them with the batter, and sprinkle sugar over the biscuits before putting them into the oven, which must be very brisk. When done turn them out of the tins, and lay them on a sieve. Time to bake, fifteen to twenty minutes.
A plain sponge batter with no chemical leavening — everything depends on the air beaten into the eggs and on getting the batter into a very hot oven before it falls. Read the whole method before starting, because the tins must be greased, sugared and hot at the moment the whites go in.
- The hinge: fold, don't stirThe whisked whites are the only lift in the biscuit. Fold them into the heavy yolk-and-sugar base in two or three additions with a light hand; beating them in, as the earlier steps invite you to do, will knock out the air and give flat, leathery biscuits.
- Weights in cupsHalf a pound of sugar is about 1 1/8 cups; a quarter pound of flour is a scant cup (4 oz). Weighing is far more reliable here, as the flour-to-egg ratio is what keeps the batter fluid enough to pour.
- "Powdered and sifted sugar"This means granulated sugar ground fine — what is now sold as caster or superfine sugar. It is not modern confectioners' sugar, which contains cornstarch and will dull the crumb. For the dusting over the tins and tops, caster sugar is likewise what gives the crisp, crackled shell.
- Dessert-spoonfulTwo teaspoons. Orange-flower water is still sold in Middle Eastern groceries and the baking aisle; it is potent.
- "A very brisk oven"Roughly 425-450F on the usual modern equivalences. Modern ovens hold heat more steadily than a coal range, and at 450F these will likely colour in well under fifteen minutes; 425F with checking from 8-10 minutes suits shallow finger tins, while the recipe's stated 15-20 minutes fits deeper moulds better.
- The tinsPeriod biscuit tins were small shaped moulds — fingers, boats, shallow ovals. Heating, buttering and sugaring them creates the sugar crust that lets the biscuits release. Silicone will not give that crust; use metal, and turn them out onto a rack (the "sieve") at once so steam does not soften the bases.
- SpecksThe chalazae and any blood spots. Removing them was standard care with fresh farm eggs; with graded supermarket eggs it is optional, though the cords do resist whisking.
- YieldAbout 20-24 finger-sized biscuits. They keep a few days in a tin and dry out usefully — this is the same family of biscuit that gets soaked in wine or coffee for trifles and puddings.
These are the English form of what Italians call savoiardi and the French biscuits \ 0 la cuiller — a sugar-and-egg sponge stiff enough to hold a shape, from the era before chemical leaveners, when beaten eggs did all the work: four eggs, sugar, flour, no butter in the batter and nothing else to raise it. Distilled floral waters such as orange-flower water were a common flavouring in English confectionery before vanilla extract became cheap and general, and they persisted in biscuits of this kind. Biscuits like these were kept in the store cupboard as much for building other dishes — charlottes, trifles, puddings lined with sponge — as for eating with tea.