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English Scones
1/3 cup currants 1 egg 1/2 cup milk 3/4 pound flour 3 ounces sugar 2 ounces lard 2 teaspoons baking powder Beat the sugar and lard to a cream; add the egg, then the milk and flour sifted with the Daking powder. Have the currants well washed and drained and mix them in before all the flour is added. Make a soft dough; roll out and cut like tea biscuits. Bake in a quick oven.
A plain, lightly sweetened currant scone built like a biscuit dough. The measurements mix weight and volume, so weigh where you can.
- Quick ovenRoughly 400-450F in modern terms. Scones want the high heat to spring before the crumb sets; a moderate oven gives you flat, tough rounds.
- Flour by weightThree-quarters of a pound is 12 ounces, roughly 2 3/4 to 3 cups of all-purpose flour. The dough is meant to be soft, so hold back the last few ounces and add only what it takes to make it handleable.
- Sugar and lard in ouncesThree ounces of sugar is a scant 1/2 cup; two ounces of lard is 1/4 cup. Lard gives a short, tender crumb, but unsalted butter at the same weight works and tastes closer to what most people now expect from a scone.
- SaltNone is listed. Add 1/2 teaspoon with the baking powder if you want; without any the scones can taste flat.
- CurrantsThese are dried Zante currants, not fresh red or black currants. Washing and draining them plumps them slightly; pat them dry so they do not slacken the dough.
- Add the fruit earlyMixing the currants in before the last of the flour goes in is the one instruction worth following exactly. It distributes them with minimal working of the dough, which is what keeps the crumb light.
- ShapingRoll about 3/4 inch thick and cut with a 2-inch cutter, pressing straight down without twisting. Setting them close together on the sheet is often said to help them support one another as they rise.
- Yield and timingExpect 12 to 14 scones, baked 10 to 12 minutes until risen and pale gold. Best eaten the day they are made.
Scones belong to the British tea table rather than the dessert course. The name is generally traced to Scotland, where the original was a large round of soft dough baked on a griddle and cut into wedges; the small cut round baked in an oven, of the sort described here, is the later English form.