Buns
1 teaspoon salt yeast cake + cup lukewarm water 3 eggs Mix salt, sugar, butter and milk. When lukewarm, add dissolved yeast cake, yolks well beaten, whites well beaten and flour. Knead thoroughly; let rise over night; knead, roll into flat cake, fold in three pieces. Knead and fold in this way four separate times. Add one cup cleaned currants. Cut off small pieces, shape into rolls, and brush with butter; let rise. Bake in a moderate oven thirty minutes; brush with molasses or sugar dissolved in milk; return to the oven to dry. 4 cups flour 1 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons sugar ½ cup butter
The ingredient list has been scrambled in the original printing, with quantities running into the method and the milk missing entirely. What follows is an enriched, laminated yeast dough in the English bun tradition; the technique is sound even where the typesetting is not.
- The missing milkNo quantity of milk is given anywhere on the page. For 4 cups of flour plus 3 eggs and half a cup of butter, the liquid needed is small, but the original simply does not say — treat this as an incomplete ingredient list rather than guessing from the text.
- The yeast cakeA compressed yeast cake is usually equated with about 2¼ teaspoons of modern active dry yeast; the small cake is 0.6 oz, though period cakes came in more than one size. The cup of lukewarm water (the fraction is dropped in the original) is only for dissolving it.
- Lukewarm means lukewarmMixing the butter and milk first and adding the yeast only when the mixture has cooled to lukewarm matters: liquid up around 130-140F kills yeast, so scalded milk straight from the pan should be left to cool before the dissolved cake goes in.
- Moderate ovenThe recipe gives no temperature; "moderate" is conventionally read as roughly 350-375F. Thirty minutes suits buns of a good size; smaller rolls will be done sooner, and are cooked through at around 190F internal.
- The foldingRolling flat and folding in three, four separate times, is a rough lamination — the same principle as puff pastry, done with a butter-rich dough rather than a butter block. Rest the dough briefly between folds if it fights back, and keep it cool so the butter does not smear out.
- Overnight riseAn unheated 1900s kitchen ran cool. In a modern room the dough will over-prove and go sour by morning; the refrigerator gives the equivalent slow rise.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, not fresh red or black currants. "Cleaned" means picked over for stems and grit, which packaged fruit no longer requires; a brief soak in warm water keeps them from scorching.
- The glazeBrushing with molasses or milk-and-sugar after baking and returning the buns to the oven sets a thin sticky lacquer. Two or three minutes is enough — long enough to dry, short enough not to burn the sugar.
- YieldThe original gives no yield; 4 cups of flour would plausibly give somewhere in the region of 16 to 24 buns, depending on how small the pieces are cut.
Buns of this kind — a sweetened, enriched, fruited yeast dough, glazed with molasses or sugar — belong to the English baking tradition carried into New England. The laminating step, folding the dough in three four times over, marks this as a more ambitious bun than the plain currant roll: it borrows from puff-paste method to give a flakier crumb. Lowney's Cook Book was published by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and, as with other house cookbooks, its chocolate recipes sit alongside a full run of general household cookery, which is why a bread chapter appears at all. The garbled ingredient list is the sort of error such quickly typeset volumes are prone to.