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Tea-Cakes, Yorkshire, Excellent
Rub six ounces of butter into two pounds of fine flour; add a pinch of salt, two eggs well beaten, a pint of milk, and an ounce of German yeast. Knead the mixture well, put it into a bowl, cover with a cloth, and set on the hearth to rise. When it is quite light, and the surface has cracked, divide it into ten cakes, and roll these out lightly to the size of a saucer. Let them rise before the fire a few minutes, and bake in a quick oven. They must not be turned over in the oven. Time to bake, about twenty minutes. Probable cost, 2d. each. Sufficient for six or seven persons.
A plain enriched yeast dough, shaped into flat round cakes rather than a loaf. The quantities are large by modern standards and the yeast is the one ingredient that needs translating.
- German yeastThis is fresh compressed baker's yeast, sold in blocks. An ounce is about 28 g fresh; the equivalent is roughly 2 1/4 to 3 teaspoons of instant dried yeast, or about 1/2 oz (14 g) of active dry. Crumble fresh yeast into the warmed milk rather than adding it to the flour.
- Scale and yieldTwo pounds of flour is about 7 cups, and a pint of milk in an English book of this date is the imperial pint, 20 fl oz or 2 1/2 cups. The dough is large; halve it if you want five cakes rather than ten.
- Milk temperatureThe milk should be warmed to blood heat before the yeast goes in, and the butter rubbed into cold flour as directed. Milk straight from the refrigerator will stall the rise for hours.
- Setting on the hearthA hearthside meant a spot warmer than most kitchens today, though the temperature would have varied. Any draught-free warm spot works; the dough is ready when doubled, domed and visibly cracked across the surface, as the recipe describes.
- ShapingA saucer is roughly 5 inches across. Roll lightly and do not press the dough thin -- these should finish soft, not crisp.
- A quick ovenThe book gives no temperatures; the term is generally taken as somewhere around 400-450F. The recipe's twenty minutes is likely the outside limit for a cake of this size; start checking earlier, when the tops are pale gold and the bases sound hollow.
- Do not turn themThe instruction may be there to distinguish these from griddle teacakes, which are cooked on both sides on a bakestone.
- ServingSplit horizontally, toast the cut faces and butter them. They stale within a day and are much better on the second day toasted than eaten cold.
Yorkshire teacakes are the flat, soft, yeast-raised buns of the northern English tea table, and the name covers a range from plain to heavily curranted; this version is the plain one, made rich only by butter, eggs and milk. The book's costing -- twopence each, enough for six or seven people -- is consistent with a late Victorian household. The specification of German yeast is a mark of the period: compressed yeast imported from continental breweries and distilleries became widely available in Britain during the second half of the nineteenth century and increasingly displaced the barm skimmed from home or local brewing, which was unpredictable and often bitter. The instruction not to turn the cakes over suggests that some readers would have known teacakes chiefly as something cooked on a griddle.