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Tea-Cakes, Royal
Take the weight of a large egg in fresh butter. Beat it to a cream, and mix with it four ounces of pounded and sifted loaf sugar, four ounces of best flour, a small pinch of salt, and the grated peel of half a lemon. Beat the egg with a little orange-flower or rose-water, and with this knead the mixture to smooth paste. Roll it out, cut it into small rounds, and bake these upon floured tins in a well-heated oven. Time to bake, fifteen to thirty minutes, according to the size of the cakes. Probable cost, about 6d. for this quantity. Sufficient for one or two persons.
A short, rich shortbread-style biscuit built on the old proportional method: butter measured against the weight of the egg. Weigh rather than guess and it comes together in minutes.
- The weight of a large eggA large egg out of the shell is roughly 1¾–2 oz (50–55 g), so use about 2 oz (55 g) butter. The whole recipe then reads 2 oz butter, 4 oz sugar, 4 oz flour, 1 egg.
- Loaf sugarSugar came as a hard cone that had to be broken and pounded; the sifting step was to remove lumps. Caster sugar does the job with no pounding, and gives a finer crumb than granulated.
- Best flourPlain white flour, not self-raising. There is no leavening in this dough at all — the cakes are meant to be dense and short, closer to a shortbread round than a scone.
- Flower watersOrange-flower and rose water were the standard sweet flavourings before vanilla extract became cheap. Both are potent: ½ to 1 teaspoon in this quantity, no more, or the cakes taste of soap.
- A well-heated ovenThe book gives no temperature. For a short, sugary dough a moderately hot oven, in the region of 350–375F (180–190C), is a reasonable modern reading: hot enough to set the edges without colouring the dough before the centre cooks.
- The timing is far too longThe timing -- fifteen to thirty minutes covers a range of sizes, as the recipe says. Thin rounds in a modern oven will be done well before the lower end of that range, at roughly 10–14 minutes, when the edges are pale gold and the centres still look matte. Left in longer they harden at the rim.
- Floured tinsA dusting of flour on bare tin was the period's non-stick. Parchment on a heavy baking sheet is better, since the high sugar content makes these prone to catching underneath.
- YieldThe book's "sufficient for one or two persons" sits oddly with the quantity of dough. From this mixture expect roughly 16–20 rounds cut at 2 inches from dough rolled a scant ¼ inch thick.
Cassell's places this among a long run of "tea-cakes," a category that in late-Victorian Britain covered everything from yeasted currant buns to plain biscuits, united only by being eaten at the afternoon tea table rather than at a meal. The "Royal" tag appears often on period recipes and seems to mark a richer or more delicate version of a plain thing rather than any actual royal connection, though the usage is not documented as a formal convention. The flavouring points the same way: orange-flower and rose water were long-established aromatics in English baking, and gave ground as vanilla and commercial essences became cheaper in the nineteenth century. The proportional instruction — butter to the weight of an egg — belongs to that older tradition of measuring against something to hand, though the recipe itself gives its other quantities in ounces.