German Rusks
1 quart of flour. 2 eggs. 2 cups of sugar. 2 cups of lard and butter mixed. 2 cups of potato yeast. 2 cups of milk. 1 nutmeg.
Put all the ingredients in the middle of the flour, work well together and set to rise as loaf bread. Wash the rolls over with butter and sugar.--Mrs. C. L. T.
A sweet enriched roll built on a homemade liquid yeast, written for a cook who already knew what her bread dough should feel like. The proportions as given are a starting point, not a finished formula.
- The flour is nowhere near enoughA quart of flour is about 4 cups, against 8 cups of combined liquid, fat and sugar. Recipes of this kind often assumed you would work in flour until the dough came together; expect to add several more cups, and judge by feel rather than by the stated quart.
- Potato yeastA homemade liquid starter of mashed potato, sugar, salt and water, kept going in a crock and roughly the strength of a thin batter. Two cups of it supply both leaven and liquid. There is no clean modern equivalent by volume; a wet sponge made with a small amount of commercial yeast, flour and water is the closest substitute, and the dough will then need less added flour.
- Lard and butterTwo cups of mixed fat to a quart of flour makes this closer to a brioche than a bread roll. Half and half is one reasonable reading of "mixed"; all butter will also work.
- One nutmegA whole nutmeg grated yields roughly 2 to 3 teaspoons. That is assertive but in keeping with the period, when nutmeg appears frequently in Virginia baking.
- "Set to rise as loaf bread"With this much sugar and fat the dough is slow. Expect a long first rise, then shape into rolls and give a full second rise until visibly puffed before baking. Rushing the proof is the main way this fails.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Bake at 350–375°F until the tops are deep gold, about 20 to 25 minutes for rolls of ordinary size; the sugar in the dough browns early, so watch the colour rather than the clock.
- The butter-and-sugar washThe recipe does not say when it is applied; brushing it on the shaped rolls before baking gives a glazed, slightly crusted top, and it can be repeated on coming out of the oven if you want more shine.
- Rusks, twice bakedIf you want true rusks in the older sense, split the cooled rolls and dry them in a 250–300°F oven until crisp and pale brown. The recipe stops short of this step, which suggests these were eaten soft.
- YieldAround two dozen rolls, depending on how much flour the dough finally takes.
Rusk, from the Spanish and Portuguese rosca, originally meant bread baked twice so it would keep on a voyage or in a pantry; by the time Housekeeping in Old Virginia appeared in 1877 the word had drifted in American use toward any sweet, rich, yeast-raised roll of this kind, whether or not it was dried a second time. The "German" label attached to a good many sweetened yeast breads in nineteenth-century American cookbooks, which is usually taken to reflect the influence of German-speaking bakers in Pennsylvania, Maryland and the Valley of Virginia rather than any single German original. The reliance on potato yeast places the recipe firmly before packaged yeast became reliable and cheap: many kitchens that kept bread on the table would have kept a jar of starter alive, and a recipe calling for two cups of it assumed a household that baked constantly. Marion Cabell Tyree's book is a compilation of contributions from named Virginia housekeepers, which is why this one arrives signed with initials only.