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Tea-Cakes, to Toast
Cut each to its thickness; toast them on both sides before a nice clear fire, and as each slice is done, spread it with butter both sides. When a cake is toasted, on TEA-CAKES. pile the slices one other, cut them into quarters, put them on on the top of the immediately to table. As they are wanted, a very hot plate, and send the cakes allowed to stand, they spoil, unless kept in send them in hot, one or two at a time, as, if a muffin-plate over a basin of boiling water.
The text as printed is badly scrambled by the original typesetting, but the method underneath it is clear: split the cakes, toast them, butter both cut faces, quarter, stack and serve very hot. A tea-cake here is a soft yeast bun, usually with currants, not an American cookie.
- Reading the garbled linesThe sense is: cut each cake into slices according to its thickness, toast both sides, butter each slice on both sides as it comes off the heat, pile the slices up, cut the pile into quarters and send to table on a very hot plate, one or two cakes at a time.
- "Before a nice clear fire"A clear fire is one burnt down past the smoke to steady radiant heat. A broiler set high, or a dry cast-iron pan over medium heat, gives the same effect; a pop-up toaster works but browns less evenly on a soft crumb.
- Butter while hotThe butter must go on the moment the toast leaves the heat so it soaks in rather than sitting on top. Have it soft and ready before you start toasting.
- The muffin-plate over boiling waterThe plate of toast stood over a basin of hot water to hold its heat. A shallow bowl set over a pan of simmering water with a plate as a lid does the same job and keeps the cakes from going leathery.
- Serve in relaysThe instruction is not to toast the whole batch at once. Toasted tea-cakes soften quickly as steam works through the crust, so do one or two at a time as they are called for.
- YieldRoughly one tea-cake per person alongside tea; two if it is standing in for a meal.
Tea-cakes of this kind are light yeast buns, usually enriched with a little butter, sugar and currants, and are strongly associated with the north of England, where "teacake" still means a bun rather than a small cake or biscuit. Their place in a Victorian cookery book reflects the rise of afternoon tea as a fixed meal in middle-class households through the middle of the nineteenth century, with muffins, crumpets and tea-cakes toasted at the fire and brought to the table under cover. The muffin-plate mentioned here is paired with a basin of boiling water, an arrangement for keeping buttered toast hot without steaming it into sogginess.