Oven Scones
2 cakes FLEISCHMANN'S YEAST 2 cups milk, scalded and cooled 1 tablespoonful sugar 1 cup sugar 1/3 cup lard or butter 1 egg 1 cup raisins 1/2 cup citron 6 1/2 cups sifted flour 1 teaspoonful salt THESE Scones--buttered while piping hot and served with preserves or fresh honey--are the top-notch of deliciousness.
Dissolve yeast and one tablespoonful sugar in lukewarm milk, add three cups flour and beat well. Cover and let rise in warm place, free from draught, until light--about one hour.
Then add butter and sugar creamed, the egg well beaten, fruit well-floured, balance of flour, or enough to make a moderately soft dough, and the salt. Turn on board, knead lightly. Form into twelve round cakes. Cover and allow them to rise fifteen minutes.
Then roll one-fourth inch thick, cut across each way nearly through, making an impression of four cakes. Place in well-greased pans. Let rise about one hour, or until double in size. Then brush with egg diluted with water. Bake fifteen minutes in moderately hot oven.
A sweet, fruited yeast dough shaped into twelve rounds and marked into quarters. Despite the name, nothing in the method resembles the scone of a modern tea shop.
- Not that kind of sconeThere is no baking powder here and no cold fat rubbed in. These are yeast-raised and closer to a sweet bun than to a quick scone. The name distinguishes them from girdle scones, which were cooked on a hot plate over the fire rather than baked.
- CitronCitron means candied citron peel: the thick white rind of a large knobbly citrus, sold in tubs and still mostly a Christmas-baking item. Mixed candied peel is the ordinary substitute. Use the same half cup, chopped small, and not the lemon-flavoured sugar sold under similar names.
- Flour the fruitAdding the fruit well-floured is the old trick for keeping raisins from sinking and clumping in a slack dough. Toss them with a spoonful of the measured flour before they go in, and they will sit where they land.
- A rich dough is a slow doughA cup of sugar, a third of a cup of fat and a cup and a half of dried and candied fruit all work against the yeast, which is why two cakes are called for—about two sachets of dried yeast—and why the risings are still long. Extra warmth will not speed it up much; overheating a sweet dough mostly produces a yeasty flavour rather than lift.
- Read the shaping twiceThe order is unusual. Divide into twelve rounds first, rest them fifteen minutes, and only then roll each out to a quarter inch and cut it across both ways nearly through. The rest is what makes the rolling possible; a freshly shaped round fights back. The cuts mark each scone into four so it breaks apart at the table instead of being sliced.
- Moderately hot, and briefAround 375°F to 400°F (190°C to 200°C) for the fifteen minutes given. Egg wash, sugar in the dough and fruit at the surface all colour quickly, so turn the pan if one end is running ahead.
Marking a round of dough across both ways so that it breaks into four is Scottish practice, and the quarters have a name: farls. The leavening is the part that has since become unfamiliar. Before baking powder was a kitchen staple, scones were raised by yeast or by sour milk and soda, and the oven scone and the girdle scone were two genuinely different things rather than two names for one, which is why this recipe bothers to say which it is. What the booklet has done is push the form to its rich end. A cup of sugar, raisins and citron put these much closer to a tea bread than to the plain scone eaten with butter, and the headnote completes the move by recommending preserves or fresh honey on top. That direction of travel is the booklet’s whole method: a company selling cakes of yeast had little to gain from plain bread alone, and it is at the fancy end of the baking that the recipes collect their adjectives.