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Delicious Hot Rusk
One-half cup of butter, one cup of milk, two eggs, two teaspoons of baking powder, one-half cup of sugar, a pinch of salt and three cups of flour. Bake in a quick oven.
— Mrs. John A. Johnson
A baking-powder shortcut on an older twice-baked bread, written for a cook who already knew what rusk should look like. The proportions are sound; almost everything else has been left out, so the notes below fill the gaps.
- What the dough should beHalf a cup of butter, one cup of milk and two eggs against three cups of flour gives a soft, rich drop-to-shape dough, closer to a sweet biscuit than a bread. Cream the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs, then add the flour, baking powder and salt alternately with the milk. Mix only until the flour disappears; extra beating toughens a baking-powder dough.
- Quick ovenUsually taken as about 400 to 425F. At that heat small rusks take roughly 12 to 15 minutes; a single pan of them wants closer to 20.
- Shaping and yieldThe receipt names no pan. Rusk was often formed into rounds about two inches across and set close together in a greased tin so they rise into each other and pull apart. Expect 18 to 20 from this quantity.
- The second baking, if you want true ruskRusk generally means twice-baked. Split or slice the cooled buns, lay them cut side up and dry them in a 300F oven for 20 to 30 minutes until crisp and pale gold. Skip this and you have very good sweet biscuits.
- Baking powder strengthTwo teaspoons to three cups of flour is on the light side by modern reckoning, where one to one and a quarter teaspoons per cup is standard. Period baking powders varied in strength; if your rusks come out dense, go to three teaspoons next time.
- Butter and saltA pinch of salt probably assumes salted butter. With unsalted butter use a scant half teaspoon.
- ServingSplit, buttered and eaten warm with tea or coffee. Dried rusks keep well in a tin and were often soaked in milk, coffee or broth.
Rusk is one of the oldest surviving forms of bread preservation: dough baked, sliced and baked again until the moisture is driven off, giving something that keeps for weeks and softens in any hot liquid. The word appears to have come into English from the Iberian rosca, a twisted or coiled loaf, though the derivation is not certain; by the eighteenth century it covered both ships' bread and sweetened tea rusks. What is telling about this version is that the twice-baking has quietly dropped out of the instructions altogether. With chemical leavening widely available from the 1860s, a cook could produce a rich, tender bun in half an hour and call it rusk, drying it a second time only if she wanted something to keep. Community cookbooks like this one preserve exactly that kind of drift, because contributors wrote down the quantities and assumed every reader already knew the rest.