Soda Biscuits
INGREDIENTS for 3 dozen biscuits. -1 lb. of flour, lb. of pounded loaf sugar, 1/4 lb. of fresh butter, 2 eggs, 1 small teaspoonful of carbonate of soda. AVERAGE COST, 10d.
Put the flour (which should be perfectly dry) into a basin, rub in the butter, add the sugar, and mix these ingredients well together. Whisk the eggs, stir them into the mixture, and beat it well until everything is well incorporated. Quickly stir in the soda, roll the paste out until it is about 1/2 inch thick, cut it into small round cakes SEASONABLE from November to February. with a tin cutter, and bake them from 12 Note. Ortolans are trussed and dressed in the same manner.
Snow Cake. INGREDIENTS for goodsized cake. lb. of tous-les-mois, lb. of white pounded sugar, lb. of fresh or washed salt butter, 1 egg, the juice of 1 lemon.
AVERAGE COST, 1s.
Beat the butter to a cream; then add the egg, previously well beaten, and then the other ingredients: if the mixture is not light, add another egg, and beat for hour, until it turns white and light. Line a flat tin with raised edges, with a sheet of buttered paper; pour in the cake and put it into the oven. It must be rather slow, and the cake not allowed to brown at all. If the oven is properly heated, 1 to 1 hour will be long enough to bake it. Let it cool a few minutes, then with a clean, sharp knife cut it into small square pieces, which should be gently removed to a large flat dish to cool before putting away. This will keep for several weeks.
TIME.-1 to 1 hour.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Snow Cake. (A genuine Scotch Recipe.) INGREDIENTS for a cake of moderate size.-1 lb. of arrowroot, 1/2 lb. of pounded white sugar, 1/2 lb. of butter, the whites of 6 eggs; flavouring to taste of essence of alkionds, or vanilla or lemon. AVERAGE COST, 2s. 3d.
Beat the butter to a cream; stir in the sugar and arrowroot gradually, at the same time beating the mixture. Whisk the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth, add them to the to 18 minutes in rather a brisk oven. After the soda is added, great expedition is necessary in rolling and cutting out the paste and in putting the biscuits immediately into the oven, or they will be heavy.
TIME.-12 to 18 minutes.
SEASONABLE at any time.
A plain English tea biscuit in the older sense of the word: a crisp, sweet, rolled-and-cut cake rather than an American quick bread. The whole method turns on speed once the soda goes in.
- Work fast after the sodaCarbonate of soda begins to give off gas as soon as it is wetted, and the dough has no acid to hold it in reserve. Roll, cut and get the tray into the oven without pause, or the gas escapes and the biscuits bake heavy, exactly as the original warns.
- The sugar quantity is missingThe ingredient list gives only "lb. of pounded loaf sugar" with the fraction lost. Somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 lb against 1 lb of flour will work: 1/4 lb gives a drier, crisper biscuit, 1/2 lb a sweeter, shorter one.
- Pounded loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar sold in a hard cone and broken up and pounded as needed. Caster sugar is the direct modern equivalent; granulated will leave a slightly gritty surface.
- Weights1 lb of flour is about 450 g, roughly 3 1/2 cups; 1/4 lb butter is 115 g, one US stick. Working by weight is worth it here, since the dough has no liquid beyond the eggs and a heavy cup of flour will make it crumble under the rolling pin.
- A brisk ovenRead that as somewhere around 375-400F (190-200C); the equivalence is a modern estimate, not the book's own figure. Twelve to eighteen minutes at that heat should give pale gold edges rather than real colour.
- Rolling and cuttingHalf an inch is thicker than a modern cookie and gives a biscuit with some crumb inside a crisp shell. A 2-inch plain cutter yields about three dozen, as stated.
- No acid, no lift to spareThere is nothing sour in the dough, so the soda works only on the heat and on whatever slight acidity the eggs bring. Do not increase it hoping for more rise; excess soda gives a soapy taste and a yellowish crumb.
- KeepingCool completely on a rack and store airtight. They soften quickly in a damp kitchen and are best refreshed for a few minutes in a low oven.
Bicarbonate of soda became available as a commercial baking article in the 1840s, and Beeton's book sits squarely in the period when cooks were learning what to do with it beyond a lump of dough for a griddle. "Biscuit" here keeps its older English meaning of a small, dry, twice-baked or crisply baked cake for the tea table, quite distinct from the soft American soda biscuit that shares the name. The average cost of tenpence, printed beside the ingredients, was one of the features that made the Beeton books so useful to the middle-class housekeeper: a mistress could see at a glance what a batch ought to cost and check the household accounts against it. The seasonable note, "at any time," marks this as a store-cupboard recipe, needing nothing that arrives with a season.