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Buns
1 cup scalded milk 1/3 cup sugar 1/3 cup butter 1 yeast cake dissolved in 1/4 cup lukewarm water ½ teaspoon salt ½ cup raisins stoned and cut in quarters 1 teaspoon extract lemon
This entry is an ingredient list only — the page carries no flour, no mixing directions and no oven time, because in the original the method was shared with the neighbouring raised-dough recipes. Anyone working from it needs to supply both.
- The missing flourA sweet dough built on 1 cup of milk plus 1/3 cup butter takes roughly 3½ to 4 cups of flour to come to a soft, kneadable state. Add it gradually and stop while the dough is still slightly tacky; sugar and butter both slacken a dough, and too much flour gives dry, bready buns.
- One yeast cakeYeast cakes of this period varied: some were compressed fresh yeast, others dry cakes, and sizes were not standard. A rough modern equivalent is 2¼ teaspoons (one envelope) of active dry or instant yeast. Dissolving it in ¼ cup lukewarm water is still good practice for active dry.
- Scalded milkMilk was routinely scalded before use in bread doughs; the usual explanation is that heating denatures milk proteins that would otherwise weaken gluten, and with pasteurised milk the step is often held to be unnecessary. Heating is in any case the easiest way to melt the butter and dissolve the sugar. Cool the mixture to about 110°F before it meets the yeast; much hotter and the yeast will be damaged.
- "Raisins stoned and cut in quarters"Seeded muscat raisins were the common large raisin then. Modern seedless raisins need no stoning; if using them, leave them whole and use about 1½ cups. Toss them in a little of the flour so they do not sink or scorch.
- Order of workCombine milk, sugar, butter and salt, cool to lukewarm, add the dissolved yeast, then the flour. Knead, let rise until doubled (about 1½ hours), work in the fruit and lemon extract, shape into buns, and let them rise again until light before baking.
- OvenEnriched buns of this size bake at 375–400°F for 15 to 20 minutes. Sweet doughs brown faster than plain bread, so watch the tops rather than the clock.
- Lemon extractA full teaspoon of extract in this quantity of dough reads as strong and slightly medicinal to modern palates. Half a teaspoon, or the grated zest of one lemon, gives a cleaner flavour.
- YieldExpect about 18 buns of two-inch diameter, or a dozen larger ones. They are best the day they are baked, or split and toasted after.
Buns in the American cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s meant a sweetened, raisin-studded yeast dough — the same family as the English currant bun and the hot cross bun, minus the cross and the Lenten spices. Such recipes were often treated as a variation on the basic raised dough rather than a separate art, which is why the page reads as a list of what to add rather than a set of directions; readers were expected to have worked through the plain bread recipes first and to carry the kneading, rising and shaping over in their heads. The instruction to stone the raisins suggests an early date: seedless varieties only gradually came to dominate the American market over the following decades, and until they did, picking seeds out of muscats was ordinary kitchen drudgery.