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Currant Tea Ring
2 cakes FLEISCHMANN'S YEAST 1 cup milk, scaled and cooled 1 cup lukewarm water 1 tablespoonful sugar 7 cups sifted flour 6 tablespoonfuls lard or butter 1/2 cup sugar 3 eggs 1/2 teaspoonful salt THESE directions assure you a delicious Tea Ring for your five o'clock tea or Sunday supper. The ingredients specified will make two large or three small rings.
Dissolve yeast and one tablespoonful sugar in lukewarm liquid. Add three cups of flour and beat until smooth. Add lard or butter and sugar, thoroughly creamed, and eggs beaten until light, the remainder of the flour gradually, or enough to make a moderately soft dough, and the salt. Turn on board, knead lightly, or "throw and roll" as shown on page 15. Place in greased bowl. Cover and set aside in a warm place to rise, for about two hours. Roll out in oblong piece, one-fourth inch thick. Brush with melted butter. Sprinkle with brown sugar, currants and cinnamon. Roll up lengthwise and place in a circle on a large, shallow greased pan or baking sheet. With scissors cut three-fourth-inch slices, almost through. Turn each slice partly on its side, pointing away from center. This should give the effect of a many-pointed star, and show the different layers with the filling.
A rich, eggy sweet dough rolled around a cinnamon and currant filling, then cut and fanned into a star. It is the showpiece of the book, and also the page where the instructions give out soonest.
- These are not fresh currantsThe currants meant here are Zante currants: small, dark dried grapes, sold beside the raisins. The name descends from “raisins of Corinth,” and has nothing to do with the red and black currants that grow on bushes. Fresh fruit would flood the filling and unglue the coil.
- The recipe stops before the ovenAfter the slices are cut and turned, the page ends. Two steps are missing. The shaped ring needs a final rise until visibly puffy, and then a bake; a ring this size belongs in a moderate oven, around 350°F, until it is deeply browned and the innermost coil is set rather than doughy. The center is always the last part to cook.
- The filling has no quantitiesMelted butter, brown sugar, currants and cinnamon are named and never measured, which was ordinary in a book that assumed a cook already knew. Work to the roll instead of to a number: a thin even film of butter, enough sugar to coat, currants scattered so they do not pile up along the seam. Overfilling is what makes a ring unroll in the pan.
- Two cakes, and a large batchTwo cakes is about four and a half teaspoons of active dry yeast for seven cups of flour, which is generous but suits a dough weighed down with butter, sugar and eggs. It is worth remembering that the company printing the recipe sold yeast by the cake. The yield is the booklet’s own: two large rings or three small ones. To halve it, beat the three eggs together first and measure out half.
- Throw and rollThe book’s “throw and roll” refers to an illustration on a page not reproduced here. It describes slapping a soft dough down onto the board and folding it over on itself rather than pushing it with the heel of the hand. That is the right treatment for a dough this slack and rich, where a bench scraper and a light hand matter more than extra flour.
- Scissors, not a knifeThe cutting tool is specified for good reason. A blade drags and smears a soft filled coil; scissor cuts three quarters of the way through leave a clean face, so the layers show when each slice is turned on its side.
A tea ring is occasion baking, and the booklet names its occasions: five o’clock tea and Sunday supper. The shape belongs to a wide family of coiled, filled sweet breads found across northern Europe, and the booklet claims no particular ancestry for it. What the page does reveal is how the book is assembled. The ring is left bare at the point where the recipe stops, and the icing sits on its own page as Plain Frosting, a short way off. This is a book of parts a cook is expected to combine, not a sequence of finished dishes, and it takes for granted a reader who does not need to be told that a tea ring gets iced while it is still warm.