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Scones
Sift one quart of flour; add half a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of sugar, a tablespoon of lard, one beaten egg, two teaspoons of cream tartar, one of soda and a pint of sweet milk. Mix to a thick batter, drop in squares on a very hot, greased griddle, and bake brown on both sides. Serve with butter and honey.
A griddle scone in the Scottish sense, closer to a thick pancake than to the oven-baked triangles sold under the name today. The batter is leavened with cream of tartar and soda, which begin reacting the moment the milk goes in.
- Work quickly once mixedCream of tartar and soda are a single-action pair: they fizz on contact with the liquid and are largely spent within a few minutes. Have the griddle hot before you combine wet and dry, and cook the batter straight away rather than letting it stand.
- A quart of flourFlour was measured by volume, so a quart is 4 cups, roughly 1 lb / 450 g. A pint of milk is 2 cups. The proportions give a batter thick enough to hold a rough square shape on the griddle, not to pour.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh unsoured milk, as opposed to the buttermilk or clabbered milk that many recipes of the period called for. Whole milk is the right substitute.
- Cream of tartar and sodaTogether these do the work of about 4 teaspoons of baking powder. Both are still sold; if you substitute commercial baking powder the crumb will be similar but the faint sharpness the cream of tartar gives will be gone.
- LardOne tablespoon in 4 cups of flour is a token amount for tenderness. Rub or cut it into the dry ingredients before adding the milk. Butter or shortening works in its place.
- Griddle heat"Very hot" is all the recipe says: a heavy pan or griddle hot enough that a drop of water skitters rather than smokes. Too hot and the outside browns before the centre sets; these are thicker than pancakes and will need several minutes a side.
- Drop in squaresSpoon the batter and nudge it into rough squares with the back of the spoon. Scottish griddle scones are traditionally cut into four farls, though those are wedges of a round rather than squares.
- YieldPerhaps 20 to 24 scones depending on size; the recipe gives no yield. They are best within the hour; reheat leftovers on a dry griddle rather than in a toaster.
Scones belong to the older tradition of griddle baking, from a time when, it is often said, many households had a hearth and a girdle plate but no reliable oven. In Scotland the bannock was baked flat on the girdle and cut into four farls, and the small scone is generally traced to that practice he later development, not the original. The name is generally traced to the Low Countries word schoonbrood, fine white bread, though the derivation has never been settled. Its appearance here marks the moment when chemical leavening had made quick breads a fixture of the American breakfast table: no yeast, no waiting, and a hot bread on the plate soon after deciding to make one.