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Buns
Dissolve one cake of yeast in one pint of lukewarm water, add flour to make a moderately stiff sponge, let rise until it begins to drop (about two hours), rub together one-fourth pound of butter, one-fourth pound of sugar and two eggs, one cup of warm milk, a little salt, and add all to the sponge; let rise one hour, then mold, put in pans, let rise until light, and bake. Mrs F. M. Hall. Lincoln.
A sponge-and-dough sweet bun from the era when a recipe assumed you knew what a finished dough felt like. The flour is never measured, and the oven is never described, so the two things that most need judgment are the two things left out.
- The yeast cakeOne cake of compressed yeast is roughly equivalent to 2 1/4 teaspoons (one packet) of active dry or instant yeast. Older cakes were less reliable, so the long sponge did double duty as a proof and a flavour builder.
- Weights to cupsOne-fourth pound of butter is 1 stick, or 1/2 cup. One-fourth pound of granulated sugar is a generous 1/2 cup. A pint of water is 2 cups.
- Flour is unmeasured, by designThe flour is never measured and the amount cannot be derived from the text. A pint of water will take a good deal of flour — likely 4 cups or more — before it reaches a moderately stiff sponge, and more again after the enrichment goes in. Add it gradually and go by feel; enriched doughs should stay slightly tacky.
- "Until it begins to drop"The sponge domes, then collapses in the centre as the gluten gives out. That fall is the signal, not the two hours. In a warm modern kitchen it may come sooner.
- Temper the milk and eggsRub the butter, sugar and eggs together first, as written, then add the cup of warm milk — warm, not hot, or the eggs will scramble and the yeast will suffer. Everything should go into the sponge at blood heat.
- "Mold" means shapeDivide and round the dough into buns rather than baking it as a loaf. Set them in greased pans a finger's width apart if you want soft sides, further apart for crisp ones.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Enriched buns of this size bake at 375°F for 15 to 20 minutes, until deep gold and 190°F inside. Any hotter and the sugar and butter colour before the crumb sets.
- YieldBecause the flour is unmeasured the total cannot be pinned down, but the dough will run to something over 3 lb and makes roughly two dozen buns. It is a large batch by modern standards; it halves cleanly.
This is the sponge-and-dough method as it was practised in American home kitchens around the turn of the century: a loose flour-and-water ferment set with yeast, allowed to rise and fall, then enriched with butter, sugar, eggs and milk for a second, shorter rise. The long first stage helped compensate for yeast of variable strength and gave the buns flavour that a straight dough could not match in the same time. The attribution — Mrs F. M. Hall of Lincoln — suggests a reader's or contributor's recipe, a common construction in American cookbooks of the period, many of which were compiled from named housekeepers in named towns, though single-author books were equally current. Such recipes were written cook-to-cook, which is why the flour goes unmeasured and the oven unspecified: both were largely assumed knowledge, and many household ranges of the period had no means of registering a temperature.