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One Egg (Ounce of Butter)
One ounce of Butter.
Half a pint of warm Milk.
Mix the sugar and yeast together; beat up the egg, add it to the milk and pour it into the yeast.
Have the flour, salt, and butter in a, basin.
Pour the dissolved yeast to these, and beat all together. Let the dough rise about two hours; make the mixture into rolls; let them prove, and bake in a quick oven. boy
This entry has come down to us garbled: the title carries part of the ingredient list, the method names sugar, yeast, flour and salt that were never quantified, and a stray "boy" has crept in from the neighbouring column. What survives is a plain enriched roll dough, and it can be read as one.
- What is actually givenOne egg (from the title), one ounce (about 30 g) of butter, and half a pint of warm milk; read as an imperial half-pint that is 10 fl oz, roughly 285 ml. The sugar, yeast, flour and salt are called for in the method but no amounts are printed; do not guess at them from the title.
- Working proportionsFor 10 fl oz of milk plus an egg, an enriched roll dough runs to roughly 1 lb (450-500 g) of strong flour, with salt and sugar to taste. That is a reconstruction, not the author's figure.
- The yeast"Yeast" here is most likely fresh compressed yeast, creamed with the sugar until it liquefies, which would explain the instruction to "pour the dissolved yeast"; barm or brewer's yeast is also possible in a book of this kind. About 20 g fresh, or 7 g (one sachet) of instant dried, suits this quantity; instant dried needs no creaming and goes straight into the flour.
- Warm milkBlood heat, around 37C. Hotter than about 50C begins to kill the yeast, so let scalded milk cool to hand-warm before the yeast or the beaten egg goes in.
- A quick ovenAbout 400-425F (200-220C). Small enriched rolls want the upper end and 12-15 minutes; they are done when the base sounds hollow and the crust is a deep gold.
- Rise and proveTwo hours for the bulk rise suits a cool kitchen. In a modern warm room, judge by volume -- roughly doubled -- which may take half that. The second prove, after shaping, is 30-45 minutes until the rolls are puffy and hold a fingerprint.
- YieldDepends entirely on the reconstructed quantity of flour; from a pound of flour, roughly 8 to 12 rolls of dinner size.
The enrichments here \, of butter, milk instead of water — are the minimum that lifts a plain dough into the fancy class, and the recipe is titled after them. That naming habit may explain the odd title: it reads like the head of an ingredient list that has parted company with its own body, though this is only a plausible reading.