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Scotch Scones
3 tumblers of flour 1 tumbler of sweet milk 1 teaspoon carbonate of soda 1 teaspoon of butter 1 teaspoon cream of tartar Mix the cream of tartar and soda with the flour, rub in the butter, and add the milk last. Roll out lightly, shape into rounds, and bake in a quick oven for fifteen or twenty minutes. Cut open, and butter. To be eaten hot or toasted.
A plain soda scone of the older Scottish type: no sugar, no eggs, and barely any fat. The dough wants speed rather than skill.
- TumblersA tumbler is a drinking glass of roughly 8 fl oz, so read this as about 3 cups flour to 1 cup milk.
- Carbonate of sodaBaking soda. With the cream of tartar it makes single-acting baking powder in the bowl, so the rise begins the moment the milk goes in.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh milk, as opposed to the soured or buttermilk that older recipes often called for. Whole milk gives the best crumb.
- Work fastThis is the hinge. Soda and cream of tartar react immediately in the wet dough, so mix, roll and get the scones into a hot oven without pause. Dough left standing on the board bakes flat.
- A quick oven425 to 450F. Fifteen to twenty minutes at that heat suits fairly thick rounds; thinner scones will be done sooner.
- The butterOne teaspoon in three cups of flour may well be as printed, though a slip cannot be ruled out; either way it produces something closer to a bread than a rich scone. A tablespoon or two rubbed in gives a softer result without changing the character.
- SaltNone is listed, which is easier to explain if the butter was salted. Half a teaspoon is worth adding.
- Shaping and yieldThis recipe directs separate rounds, though Scottish dough of this type was also patted into one large round and scored to be broken apart. Perhaps eight to twelve scones from this quantity.
- ServingThey stale within hours. The instruction to eat them hot or toasted is practical advice, not a flourish.
Soda scones belong to the Scottish girdle-and-oven baking tradition, where a chemically raised bread could be on the table in half an hour without waiting for yeast. Cream of tartar paired with carbonate of soda was the standard leavening in British kitchens for much of the nineteenth century, before packaged baking powder made the two-jar method redundant; Scottish recipes clung to it longer than most, and "cream o' tartar scones" remained a distinct name.