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English, or Hot Cross Buns
1 pint of "liquor"--being half yeast, half water or milk. 1 teaspoonful of salt. 4 ounces of sugar. 4 ounces of butter, melted. 2 eggs--or 4 yolks, better. Nutmeg or other extract. Flour to make soft dough. Mix up everything at once. Manage according to extended directions for rusks. Make into round balls flattened. Brush over with syrup when done. But then rusks will still be dry rusks or "tops and bottoms," according to some understandings of the term, and hotel pastry cooks are often called on to make them at pleasuring places, for wine parties, and for out-door occasions.
A plain enriched bun dough written for a professional shop where the sponge, the kneading and the baking were covered elsewhere under rusks. The gaps are assumed knowledge rather than omissions.
- The "liquor"A pint of liquid, half of it liquid yeast (barm or a poured-off sponge) and half water or milk. Modern equivalent: 2 cups of milk or milk-and-water at blood heat with about 2 teaspoons of instant yeast, or ferment a loose sponge of a cup of the flour, the liquid and the yeast for an hour first, which is closer to what the original intends.
- Weights4 ounces of sugar is a scant 2/3 cup; 4 ounces of butter is one stick. "Flour to make soft dough" with a pint of liquid lands around 5 to 6 cups, roughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb, and the dough should stay slack enough to stick lightly to the hand.
- "Mix up everything at once"A straight-dough approach rather than building a sponge first. If you take it literally, hold back the melted butter until the flour is incorporated, or the fat coats the gluten and the buns come out crumbly rather than shreddy.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Small enriched buns of this size want 400F for 12 to 15 minutes, until the tops are deep gold and the underside sounds hollow. Egg-yolk doughs colour fast, so check early.
- The syrup washBrushing with syrup after baking, while the buns are still hot, is what gives the lacquered top. A simple 1:1 sugar and water boiled a minute is enough; milk or egg brushed on before baking gives colour but not the shine.
- No fruit and no crossThe recipe as printed contains neither currants nor a marked cross, which the name promises. Currants or mixed peel were commonly added with the flour, and the cross was usually cut with a knife; piped flour-and-water paste is a later convention. The book assumes the pastry cook knows this.
- "Nutmeg or other extract"Loose shorthand for whatever flavouring the shop had open. For a bun of this type, a rounded teaspoon of mixed spice or cinnamon with a good grating of nutmeg is more in character than an extract.
- Yield and servingRoughly 20 to 24 buns of two ounces each, shaped as flattened rounds. Best the day they are baked; day-old ones split and toast well.
Hot cross buns belong to Good Friday, and the practice of marking spiced bread with a cross is old enough that its origin is traditional rather than documented; the frequently cited landmark is the Elizabethan restriction on when spiced bread and buns could be sold commercially in London, which pushed them toward feast days and funerals. What is interesting here is the company the buns keep: the author files them beside rusks and "tops and bottoms"—twice-baked, dried enriched dough sold as keeping bread and nursery food—because in a hotel bakeshop the same dough, differently shaped and differently baked, served both purposes. The closing note about pleasure grounds, wine parties and outdoor occasions is a reminder that an American hotel pastry cook of this period worked to order for excursions and picnics, where dry rusks travelled and soft buns did not.