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Bread Rusk
1 pint bread dough 3/4 cup sugar Butter size of egg Grated nutmeg Spread the bread dough open; work the other ingredients into it; roll out; cut in cubes; put them in buttered pans and set in a warm place until very light. Bake in a quick oven.
A sweet enriched roll built from a piece of plain risen bread dough — the sort of thing that made sense when a batch of dough was on the go every baking day. A few of the measures need translating.
- A pint of bread doughDough was measured by bulk in a pint or quart measure. Reckon a pint of risen dough at roughly 1 pound, i.e. a small piece pinched off a family baking.
- Butter size of eggA standard shorthand for about 2 ounces, or 4 tablespoons. Have it soft, not melted, or it will not work into the dough evenly.
- The hinge: the second riseKneading sugar and butter into already-risen dough knocks the gas out of it and the sugar slows the yeast further. "Until very light" is the whole instruction — it may well take considerably longer than a first rise, and cutting it short leaves the rusk dense and heavy.
- A quick ovenRoughly 400-425F. That is right for plain bread but hot for a dough carrying three-quarters of a cup of sugar; watch the bottoms and drop the heat if they are colouring before the centres set. Small pieces should be done in about 15-20 minutes.
- "Cut in cubes"Roll the dough to about an inch thick and cut into squares; they puff into rough rolls rather than staying cubic. Set them close in the pan so they support each other as they rise.
- NutmegGrated whole nutmeg is what is meant, and the quantity is left to the cook. Half a teaspoon or so for this amount of dough gives a clear flavour; more begins to taste medicinal.
- YieldAbout a dozen small rusks. They are best the day they are baked; stale ones split and toast well, which is closer to what "rusk" means elsewhere.
- Section headingThe page is filed under a Frozen Desserts heading, which does not describe the dish: this is a baked yeast roll. Why it sits there is not clear.
In American home cookery of this period "rusk" often meant a sweetened, buttered raised roll made by enriching a piece of ordinary bread dough, rather than the twice-baked dry biscuit the word can also denote (English rusk is generally traced to Spanish or Portuguese rosca, a coil or twist of bread). The recipe belongs to a kitchen where yeast dough was a standing resource: a cook who had set bread could pinch off a pint and turn it into something for the tea table without proofing a second batch, and many nineteenth-century books carry variations that add sugar, butter, eggs, currants or spice to the same starting point. Mrs. Fryer's loose-leaf format, with its removable pages meant to be shuffled and added to, was itself a product of that improvisational habit.