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Lancashire Tea Cakes
5 1/2 cups Gold Medal flour 1/2 cup butter 2 cups milk 1 yeast cake in 1/4 cup water 1/2 lb. currants 2 ounces candied lemon 2 eggs 2 tablespoons sugar A little grated nutmeg Put the sugar and currants with the flour; melt the butter in the milk which must be scaled, and when cool enough mix with the well-beaten eggs and yeast. Add the dry ingredients, beating all well, and set away to rise. When light put in cake pans to rise again to double its bulk. Bake in a moderately hot oven. These are delicious when fresh, and equally good split and roasted the second day.--Mrs. W. S. Turner, Ashville, N. C.
An enriched yeast dough with currants and candied peel, from an era when a recipe assumed the cook already knew how to handle bread. The original gives no timings and no oven number, so those are the gaps worth filling.
- Yeast cake to modern yeastOne yeast cake of this period is roughly equivalent to one packet (2 1/4 tsp) of active dry yeast. Dissolve it in the 1/4 cup of water, warm rather than hot, around 105F.
- "Scaled" milkAlmost certainly a misprint for "scalded." Bring the 2 cups of milk just to a shiver at the edges, then melt the butter into it and let the mixture cool to lukewarm before it meets the yeast and eggs, or the yeast will be killed.
- Oven temperature"moderately hot" corresponds roughly to 375-400F by the usual conversions for period oven terms; the book itself gives no figure. Start at 375F for an enriched, sugary dough; the currants and candied peel scorch readily at higher heat.
- Candied lemonTwo ounces of candied lemon peel, chopped fine. Modern candied peel is often sweeter and softer than the old solid citron-style pieces; buy whole pieces and dice them rather than using the pre-minced mixed peel, which turns to paste in the dough.
- Flour volume5 1/2 cups measures roughly 1 lb 8 oz to 1 lb 12 oz of modern all-purpose flour depending on how it is scooped. Hold back the last half cup and add it only if the dough is too slack to handle.
- Rising timesThe first rise takes 1 1/2 to 2 hours at room temperature, the second 45 to 60 minutes. Judge by the doubling the recipe describes, not the clock.
- Shaping and pans"Cake pans" here probably means plain round tins rather than layer-cake pans in the modern sense, though the recipe does not say. Tea cakes of this type are usually shaped as flattened rounds about 4 inches across and 3/4 inch thick; this quantity should make roughly 12 to 16. Bake individual cakes 18-22 minutes, larger rounds 30-35.
- The second-day instruction"Split and roasted" means split horizontally and toasted cut-side to the heat, then buttered. This is not a salvage tactic; the currants caramelise at the cut face and it is arguably the better way to eat them.
Lancashire tea cakes belong to the wider family of northern English enriched currant breads y— close kin to the Yorkshire teacake and the sweeter Chelsea and Bath varieties — served split, toasted and buttered with afternoon tea. That a version arrives here credited to a contributor in Asheville, North Carolina, says a good deal about how the Gold Medal books were assembled: Gold Medal was the Washburn-Crosby brand, and regional English baking traditions travelled into American kitchens under the names of the places they came from and stayed there. The presence of currants, candied lemon and grated nutmeg together marks the dough as a festive or Sunday-tea bake rather than everyday bread.