Rusk
To one half the rule for Milk Bread, add two eggs well beaten. Shape in small balls; place close together in baking pan; let rise until very light; brush with sugar dissolved in water; sprinkle with sugar. Bake.
Rusks must be very light before being baked.
A short enriched roll built on the book's Milk Bread formula, so the first job is reconstructing the dough it assumes you already have. Everything else is a matter of a slow final rise and a sugar wash.
- Half the milk bread ruleThe book's Milk Bread formula is not repeated here, so it has to be reconstructed. A milk bread of this period would typically run something like 1 pint scalded milk, 1 cake of yeast, 1 tablespoon each sugar and butter, 1 teaspoon salt and roughly 6 cups flour. Halved, that gives about 1 cup milk, 3 cups flour, and half the salt, sugar and butter (about 1 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast if substituting modern yeast); the two beaten eggs are most easily added with the milk once it has cooled to lukewarm.
- Adjust for the eggsTwo eggs add roughly 80 to 100 ml of liquid to a dough already sized for one cup of milk. Expect to work in another 1/2 to 3/4 cup of flour to get a soft, slightly tacky dough that still clears the bowl.
- Scalding milkScalding belongs to the era of raw milk: it both dealt with the raw milk itself and was held to prevent a slack, weakened dough (usually attributed to milk's whey proteins). With pasteurized milk, warming to lukewarm, about 110F, before the yeast goes in is enough.
- "Very light before being baked"This is the hinge. An egg-rich dough is heavy and the second rise is slow; give the shaped balls until they are visibly puffed and touching, pressing back sluggishly when poked, which may be 60 to 90 minutes in a warm kitchen. Underproofed rusks bake dense and tight.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given at all; the recipe says only 'Bake.' A moderate oven, around 375F for 18 to 22 minutes, suits these. The sugar wash colors fast, so watch the tops from about 15 minutes and tent with foil if they darken before the centers set.
- The sugar glazeRoughly 1 tablespoon sugar dissolved in 1 tablespoon warm water, brushed on lightly just before baking, then a dusting of granulated sugar. Applied too heavily it pools and scorches at the seams.
- YieldHalf the milk bread rule with eggs gives about 16 to 18 small balls, or one 9-inch square pan. Best the day they are baked.
Rusk has meant two different things in English kitchens. The older sense, generally derived from the Spanish and Portuguese rosca, is bread baked, sliced and baked again until dry enough to keep for months at sea, which survives today in Dutch beschuit and in the hard rusks given to teething children. The sense used here is the later American one: a sweet, egg-enriched roll, sugar-glazed, eaten soft and fresh, closer to a small brioche than to a biscuit. Lowney's Cook Book was written by Maria Willett Howard for the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and alongside its chocolate chapters it carries a full working set of household recipes. Writing a recipe as a variation on the one before it, rather than repeating the ingredient list, was a common practice in cookbooks of the period.