Seed Biscuits
-INGREDIENTS for 3 dozen biscuits.-1 lb. of flour, lb. of sifted sugar, 1/4 lb. of butter, 1/2 oz. of caraway seeds, 3 eggs. AVERAGE COST, 10d. Beat the butter to a cream; stir in the flour, sugar and caraway seeds; and when these ingredients are well mixed, add the eggs, which should be well whisked. Roll out the paste; with a round cutter shape out the biscuits, and bake them in a moderate oven from 10 to 15 minutes. The tops of the biscuits may be brushed over with a little milk or the white of an egg, and then a little sugar strewn over.
TIME.-10 or 15 minutes.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A plain caraway shortbread-type biscuit, worked as a rolled paste rather than a dropped dough. Two of the original quantities have lost their fractions in printing, so read the ingredient list with care.
- The missing fractionsThe list reads "1 lb. of flour, lb. of sifted sugar" — the sugar's fraction has dropped out of the text. Comparable Victorian seed biscuit formulas commonly use half the weight of sugar to flour, so 8 oz is a plausible reading, but the original as printed is genuinely incomplete. The caraway is printed clearly as 1/2 oz.
- Weights in grams1 lb flour is about 450 g, 1/4 lb butter about 115 g, and 1/2 oz caraway seeds is roughly 2 level tablespoons. Caraway at that rate is assertive; halve it if you want the seeds in the background.
- Moderate ovenThe book gives no temperature; "moderate" is conventionally read as somewhere around 350F / 175C. At 10 to 15 minutes the biscuits should be set and barely coloured at the edges — they crisp as they cool, so pulling them while the centres still look pale is correct.
- Creaming without sugarThe butter is creamed alone, then flour and sugar are rubbed in, which gives a short, sandy crumb rather than a light one. Do not switch to the modern butter-and-sugar-together method unless you want a softer, cakier biscuit.
- Sifted sugarIn Mrs Beeton's usage this is loaf sugar crushed and passed through a sieve — closest today to caster sugar. Granulated will work but leaves a slightly grittier surface.
- Rolling and cuttingRoll to about 1/4 inch (6 mm). The paste is stiff and eggy; if it cracks, press it together and rest it ten minutes rather than adding liquid.
- The glazeEgg white gives a shinier, crisper top than milk, and holds the strewn sugar better. Apply it after cutting, on the tray, or the wash will glue the scraps together when you re-roll.
- Average cost, 10d.A figure aimed at a housekeeper checking her accounts, not a modern price guide.
Caraway seed has long been associated with English plain baking, and by the sixteenth century the seeds were served as comfits — sugar-coated and handed round after dinner as a digestive — and worked into seed cakes and biscuits in the same spirit. By Mrs Beeton's day the seed biscuit was firmly domestic tea-table baking: cheap, keeping well in a tin, and made from staples any household already had — flour, sugar, butter, eggs and the caraway itself. The recipe sits among other biscuit formulas in Household Management, many of them differing only in a flavouring or the proportion of butter. Caraway fell out of English favour over the twentieth century, which is why a biscuit that once needed no explanation now reads as distinctly old-fashioned.