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To make common buns
Rub four ounces of butter into two pounds of flour, a little salt, four ounces of sugar, a desert spoonful of caraways, and a teaspoonful of ginger; put some warm milk or cream to four table spoonfulls of yeast; mix all together into a paste, but not too stiff; cover it over and set it before the fire an hour to rise, then make it into buns, put them on a tin, set them before the fire for a quarter of an hour, cover over with flannel, then brush them with very warm milk and bake them of a nice brown in a moderate oven.
A plain enriched yeast dough, lightly spiced and seeded, of the kind that predates the sweet fatty buns we now expect. Two things the original leaves out entirely: how much liquid, and how long to bake.
- The liquid is up to youNo quantity of milk is given. For 2 lb (900 g) flour, add warm milk gradually and keep going until you have a soft, slightly slack dough; expect to need a good deal more than a cup or two. The recipe's "not too stiff" is the only guidance and it matters more than any number.
- Four tablespoons of yeastThis most likely means liquid brewer's barm, which was much weaker than modern yeast. Substitute about 2 teaspoons (7 g) instant dried yeast, or roughly 20 g fresh. Using four tablespoons of anything sold as yeast today would be a disaster.
- A moderate oven350–375°F (175–190°C). Small buns of this size take 15–20 minutes; watch for the colour the recipe asks for rather than the clock.
- Dessertspoonful of carawaysA dessertspoon is about 2 teaspoons, so roughly 10 ml of caraway seed. Caraway in sweet baking has fallen out of fashion; if it is not to your taste, the buns work with the ginger alone.
- GingerGround dried ginger, not fresh root. A teaspoon in 2 lb of flour is a background warmth, not a hit of spice.
- Rising before the fireThe hearth gave a warm, dry, one-sided heat. Any spot around 75–80°F does the same job; expect an hour for the bulk rise and 30–45 minutes for the shaped buns rather than the quarter-hour given, since modern kitchens are cooler than a fireside.
- FlannelA wool cloth laid over the proving buns to hold warmth and stop a skin forming. A clean tea towel or loose plastic works, but do not let it touch the risen dough.
- The milk washBrushing with hot milk rather than egg gives a soft matte crust and a modest shine. Do it just before the tin goes in the oven, not before proving.
- YieldTwo pounds of flour makes roughly 18–24 buns of 60–70 g each. Halve the recipe comfortably.
Buns like these sit at the older, plainer end of the family: only 4 oz each of butter and sugar to 2 lb of flour, which is closer to a bread dough than to the butter-heavy buns of later baking. Caraway seed was, by all appearances, among the most common flavourings for English sweet baking, appearing in seed cakes, biscuits and comfits long before vanilla or cocoa were household goods, and its retreat to rye bread and sauerkraut is a nineteenth- and twentieth-century development. The instruction to raise the dough "before the fire" and cover it with flannel fixes the recipe in the era of the open hearth and the separately heated brick oven, when a cook judged temperature by hand and eye — the phrase "a moderate oven" was a real, usable measure to anyone who baked daily. Barm, the yeast skimmed from brewing, was the usual leaven, which is why four tablespoons of it is unremarkable here.