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Fresh from the Oven
English Scones Sally Lunns place on well-buttered pans to rise. When double in size, glaze with white of egg diluted with water. Bake in a moderate oven fifteen minutes. Ice while hot, with plain frosting. Spread with almonds.
This is a fragment: the loose-leaf page carries the finishing instructions for a sweet yeast dough, not the dough itself. Read it as the tail end of a Sally Lunn or rich scone recipe and supply a dough you already trust.
- What is missingThere is no ingredient list and no mixing method here — the text begins mid-process, at the shaping stage. Any enriched yeast dough (flour, milk, butter, sugar, egg, yeast) shaped into rounds will take these instructions.
- "Moderate oven"About 350F (period 'moderate' runs roughly 350-375F). Fifteen minutes suits small buns of two to three ounces each; larger Sally Lunn rounds will likely want 20-25 minutes and an internal temperature near 190F.
- Rising to doubleOn a buttered pan at ordinary room temperature this is 45 minutes to an hour for an enriched dough. Judge by the dough, not the clock — a poke that springs back slowly is ready.
- The egg glazeOne egg white to a tablespoon of water, brushed on lightly. Apply it just before baking rather than at the start of the rise, or the surface sets and restricts the lift.
- Icing while hotThis is the hinge. Plain frosting here means confectioners' sugar thinned with water or milk to a pouring consistency; poured onto hot buns it melts and glazes rather than sitting as a crust. Let them cool and you get a different, thicker finish.
- AlmondsBlanched and shredded or sliced, scattered onto the wet icing so they stick. Toasting them first improves flavour; the recipe does not say whether they are raw or toasted.
- Scones or Sally LunnsThe heading names both, though this fragment does not show how the book handled either; the instructions (rise to double, egg glaze) point to a sweet yeast dough rather than a modern baking-powder scone. Do not substitute a chemically leavened scone dough — it will not rise to double and the glaze-and-ice finish will not behave.
- YieldA dough using about four cups of flour gives roughly 16 small buns or two 8-inch Sally Lunn rounds.
Sally Lunn is a rich, lightly sweetened yeast bread associated with Bath in the west of England and generally traced to the late eighteenth century; the name is variously said to come from a baker or street-seller called Sally Lunn, or to be an English mangling of the French soleil et lune, sun and moon, for its gold top and pale crumb. It crossed to America early and became a staple of Southern and Mid-Atlantic baking, where it was often baked in a turban mould or a deep pan and served hot at tea. That an American teaching cook of the early twentieth century would file it beside "English Scones" reflects how loosely the two names were used once both had become tea-table breads rather than regional specialities.