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Soda Scones
1 pound of flour 1/2 pint of milk 1/2 teaspoon soda 1/2 teaspoon tartaric acid 2 ounces of butter Rub the tartaric acid and soda in the flour, and put them through a sieve; work in the butter; make a hole in the middle of the flour, and pour in the milk, mixing as quickly as possible. Roll out, about an inch thick, and cut into rounds the size of a pudding plate, and then into eight wedge-shaped divisions.
A plain chemically leavened scone dough of the sort made before commercial baking powder was universal. The recipe gives no oven and no time, so the two things to settle are the liquid and the heat.
- The acid and soda are homemade baking powderTartaric acid plus bicarbonate of soda was one of the standard self-raising pairs; tartaric acid is faster and stronger than cream of tartar. If you substitute cream of tartar, use about 1 teaspoon to the 1/2 teaspoon soda. If you use ready-made baking powder instead, the recipe's own quantities correspond to roughly 2 teaspoons to the pound of flour, though modern scone recipes commonly use more.
- Sift, and mean itRubbing the two powders through a sieve with the flour is the whole insurance policy against yellow, soapy pockets of undissolved soda. Sift twice if the acid is at all lumpy.
- How much milkAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz (1 1/4 cups); an American half-pint is 8 oz. Start with 1 cup for a pound (about 3 1/2 cups, 450 g) of flour and add the rest as needed — the dough should be soft and slightly tacky, not stiff.
- Add saltThe recipe gives no salt, and butter of the period was often salted. With unsalted butter, work in about 1 teaspoon of salt with the flour or the scones may taste flat.
- Speed is the hingeTartaric acid begins reacting the moment the milk goes in and does not wait for the oven. Mix, roll and cut in one continuous movement and get the tray into the heat; dough left standing ten minutes bakes noticeably heavier.
- OvenNo temperature or cooking method is given at all. For an oven, bake at 425-450F for 12-15 minutes, until risen and pale gold. On a griddle over medium heat, allow about 5 minutes a side and roll a little thinner than an inch.
- Thickness and shapeAn inch thick is deliberate: thin scones dry out before the leavening lifts them. Cutting each round into wedges gives the familiar shape, though "farl" strictly means a quarter of a round rather than an eighth; leave them touching on the tray for soft sides, apart for crisp ones.
- YieldA pound of flour with this much liquid makes roughly one large round an inch thick, so about 8 wedges. Best within hours of baking; soda scones stale quickly and are usually split and buttered warm.
The scone belongs to the Scottish girdle tradition, where a soft round of dough was cooked on a flat iron plate over the fire and cut into farls — quarters — before serving, and the wedge-shaped divisions here preserve that shape long after the oven replaced the girdle. What dates this version is the tartaric acid: the recipe calls for the acid and the bicarbonate separately rather than a packaged baking powder, which is why it insists on sieving them through the flour and working quickly. The pairing of an acid salt with soda is generally traced to the chemical bakery experiments of the 1830s and 1840s, and household books went on printing both the do-it-yourself and the ready-made versions for decades.