Drop Cakes
INGREDIENTS for 12 cakes.-2 cupfuls of sugar, pounded, 2 oz. of flour, 1 oz. of butter, 2 eggs, salt. AVERAGE COST, 18.
Beat the butter with half the sugar, whisk the eggs, add them with the remainder of the ingredients, and beat for 15 minutes. Drop the mixture on buttered tins, and bake for 15 minutes in a moderate oven.
TIME. hour.
SEASONABLE at any time.
DUCK AND PEAS.
Duck and Peas, Stewed. (Cold Meat Cookery.) - INGREDIENTS for dish sufficient for 4 persons. The remains of cold roast duck, 2 oz. of butter, 3 or 4 slices of lean ham or bacon, 1 tablespoonful of flour, 2 pints of thin gravy, 1, or a small small bunch of green onions, 3 sprigs of parsley, 3 cloves, 1 pint of young green peas, cayenne and salt to taste, 1 teaspoonful of pounded sugar. AVERAGE COST, exclusive of the duck, 1s. 3d.
Put the butter into a stewpan; cut up the duck into joints, lay them in with the slices of lean ham or bacon; make it brown, then dredge in a tablespoonful of flour, and stir this well in before adding the gravy.
Put in the onion, parsley, cloves, and gravy, and when it has simmered for 1/4 hour, add a pint of young green peas, and stew gently for about 1/2 hour. Season with cayenne, salt, and sugar; take out the duck, place it round the dish, and the peas in the middle.
TIME. hour.
SEASONABLE from June to August.
Duck and Peas, Stewed. (Cold Meat Cookery.) - INGREDIENTS for dish sufficient for 4 persons. The remains of cold roast duck, 1/2 pint of good gravy, cayenne and salt to taste, 1/2 teaspoonful of minced lemon-peel, 1 teaspoonful of pounded sugar, 2 oz. of butter rolled in flour, 1½ pint of green peas. AVERAGE COST, exclusive of duck, 1s.
Cut up the duck into joints, lay it in the gravy, and add a seasoning of cayenne, salt, and minced lemon-peel; let this gradually warm through, but not boil.
Throw the peas into boiling water slightly salted, and boil them rapidly until tender.
Drain them, stir in the pounded sugar, and the butter rolled in flour; shake them over the fire for two or three minutes, and serve in the centre of the dish, with the duck laid round.
TIME.-15 minutes to boil the peas, when they are full grown.
SEASONABLE from June to August.
Duck, Hashed. (Cold Meat Cookery.)-INGREDIENTS. - The remains of cold roast duck, rather more than 1 pint of weak stock or water, 1 onion, 1 oz. of butter, thickening of butter and flour, salt and cayenne to taste, 1/2 teaspoonful of minced lemon-peel, 1 dessertspoonful of lemon-juice, glass of port wine. AVERAGE COST, exclusive of cold duck, 4d. Cut the duck into nice joints, and put the trimmings into a stowpan; slice and fry DUCKS, ROAST. the onion in a little butter; add these to the trimmings, pour in the above proportion of weak stock or water, and stew gently for 1 hour. Strain the liquor, thicken it with butter and flour, season with salt and cayenne, and add the remaining ingredients; boil it up and skim well; lay in the pieces of duck, and let them get thoroughly hot through by the side of the fire, but do not allow them to AYLESBURY DUCKS. boil; they should soak in the gravy for about 1/21 hour. Garnish with sippets of toasted bread. The hash may be made richer by using a stronger and more highlyflavoured gravy; a little spice or pounded mace may also be added, when their flavour is liked.
TIME.-1 hour.
SEASONABLE from November to February; ducklings from May to August.
A plain Victorian sponge drop: a very small quantity of batter beaten hard until it holds air, spooned onto tins and baked quickly. The beating is the whole method, since there is no chemical raising agent.
- The sugar quantity does not balanceTwo cupfuls of sugar against 2 oz of flour, 1 oz of butter and 2 eggs will not form a droppable batter, and the printed figure looks like a misprint or an OCR error. Treat it with suspicion and reduce the sugar to something nearer the weight of the flour.
- Moderate ovenBake at 350F (180C). Small drops on a thin tin colour fast; check at 10 minutes and expect pale gold edges rather than brown.
- Pounded sugarSugar crushed fine in a mortar, because Victorian loaf sugar came in hard lumps. Caster is the nearest modern equivalent; granulated will leave the drops gritty.
- Fifteen minutes of beatingThat timing assumes a hand whisk or wooden spoon. In a stand mixer, 4 to 5 minutes on high after the eggs go in will bring the mixture to the pale, thick ribbon stage intended. Do not shorten it further; the aeration is the only leavening.
- Buttered tinsButter alone on a modern flat sheet works, but baking parchment is safer with a sugary batter that has no flour to speak of. Space the drops well apart; they spread.
- "Time: hour"The stated baking time in the method is 15 minutes, which is the figure to follow for cakes dropped a teaspoonful at a time.
- Yield and keepingTwelve small cakes, each a mouthful or two. They soften within hours, so serve the day they are made or store airtight with a sheet of parchment between layers.
Drop cakes belong to the same family as sponge fingers, ratafias and the various "drop biscuits" that filled the tea tables and dessert baskets of nineteenth-century England: tiny, egg-raised, barely more than sweetened air, and cheap enough that Beeton could price a dozen at a shilling. Before reliable baking powder became a household staple, lift in such mixtures came entirely from beating eggs and sugar to a foam, which is why the instruction to beat for a quarter of an hour is not padding but the recipe's real technique. The name simply describes the shaping: rather than being rolled and cut, the batter is dropped in spoonfuls onto the tin, a labour-saving habit that later crossed into the American drop cookie.