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Buttermilk Sweet Rolls
Cheap and off-hand. Often made at stage stations and village inns. 2 pounds of flour. 2 teaspoonfuls of carbonate of soda. 4 ounces of butter. 4 ounces of sugar. Salt. 2 eggs and 2 yolks more. 1 large pint of buttermilk.
Sift the soda in the flour. Mix all the other articles with the buttermilk. Make up like biscuit or Vienna rolls. Glaze or sugar over when baked. The yellow specks in the crust for which the soda is blamed are oftener due to the particles of curd of sour milk, which brown quickly in the oven. If you use "clabber," pass it through a seive first.
A soda-raised roll dough with no yeast and no rising time, written for a cook who already knows how biscuit dough behaves. The measurements are by weight, which makes it easier to follow than most recipes of its vintage.
- Work fast, bake immediatelyThe soda begins reacting with the buttermilk the moment they meet, and this dough has no second chance. Mix, shape and get the rolls into a hot oven; dough left standing on the bench will rise poorly.
- Carbonate of sodaPlain baking soda, not baking powder and not washing soda. Two teaspoons for 2 pounds of flour is about the usual ratio, which is why the acidity of genuinely sour buttermilk matters.
- ButtermilkThe recipe assumes real cultured buttermilk, thick and sharp. Modern low-fat cultured buttermilk works; sweet milk soured with vinegar is thinner and less acidic, and the rolls will rise less.
- A large pintAmbiguous. A US pint is 16 fl oz and a British pint 20; "large pint" suggests a generous measure. Hold back some of the liquid and add it until the dough is soft but still handleable, like biscuit dough.
- ClabberNaturally soured, set raw milk, no longer sold and not something to improvise. Sieving it, as instructed, breaks up the curd; commercial buttermilk needs no sieving, though a whisk smooths any lumps.
- OvenNo temperature is given, and none can be inferred from the text. Treat them as biscuits: 425F for 15 to 20 minutes, until well browned. Too cool an oven gives pale, heavy rolls.
- SaltUnquantified, as was normal. About 2 teaspoons for 2 pounds of flour, more if the butter is unsalted.
- Glazing"Glaze or sugar over when baked" most likely means brushing the hot rolls with a thin sugar syrup, or simply dusting them with sugar while the crust is still tacky.
- YieldTwo pounds of flour makes a substantial batch, roughly 24 to 30 rolls of dinner size. Halving the recipe is straightforward.
Soda-and-buttermilk breads belong to a nineteenth-century American kitchen where yeast was unreliable, sour milk was a daily byproduct of butter-making, and someone needed hot bread on the table within the hour. The note that these were "often made at stage stations and village inns" places them precisely: coaching stops fed travellers on short notice and could not wait for a sponge to rise. Clabber, the thickened raw sour milk the recipe mentions as a substitute, was a household staple across the rural South and Midwest and disappeared from cooking with pasteurisation and refrigeration. The aside about yellow specks in the crust addresses a familiar complaint: cooks blamed undissolved soda for the blotches, and he points instead at browned particles of curd. The recipe also tells you to sieve the clabber first.