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Cream Scones
2 cups flour 4 teaspoons baking power 2 teaspoons sugar ½ teaspoon salt 4 tablespoons butter 2 eggs 1/3 cup cream Mix and sift together flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt. Rub in butter with tips of fingers; add eggs well beaten, (reserving a small amount of unbeaten white) and cream. Toss on a floured board, pat, and roll to three-fourths inch in thickness. Cut in squares, brush with reserved white, sprinkle with sugar, and bake in a hot oven fifteen minutes. Baking Powder Biscuit I 2 cups bread flour 5 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon butter Mix dry ingredients, and sift twice. 1 tablespoon lard 1 cup milk and water in equal parts Work in butter and lard with tips of fingers; add gradually the liquid, mixing with knife to a soft dough. It is impossible to determine the exact amount of liquid, owing to differences in flour. Toss on a floured board, pat and roll lightly to one-half inch in thickness. Shape with a biscuit-cutter. Place on buttered pan, and bake in hot oven twelve to fifteen minutes. If baked in too slow an oven, the gas will escape before it has done its work.
Two related quick breads printed one after the other: rich egg-and-cream scones, and the plain baking powder biscuit that was the workhorse of the American breakfast table. Both stand or fall on a hot oven and a light hand.
- Oven temperatureThe book only says "hot oven" and gives no figure; in modern terms that is roughly 425-450F. The closing line of the biscuit recipe is the hinge for both: baking powder gas escapes before the crumb sets if the oven is cool, and you get flat, heavy rounds. Preheat fully.
- The salt in the sconesThe printed page gives half a teaspoon of salt for the scones, which is what our text now reads.
- Baking powderTurn-of-the-century tartrate and phosphate powders were largely single-acting, giving up their gas as soon as they were wetted, which may be why the quantities look generous. With modern double-acting powder, about 1 tablespoon for 2 cups flour is ample in either recipe.
- Cream"Cream" here is best read as a rich cream; a thin light or single cream will leave the dough dry. One-third cup plus two eggs is a stiff dough by modern scone standards, so expect to add a spoonful more cream if the flour absorbs it.
- Bread flourThe biscuit recipe specifies bread flour, which the book treats as distinct from the softer pastry flour. Modern all-purpose sits between the two and works for both recipes; if you use bread flour, handle the dough less.
- Rubbing in the fatFingertips were the period tool, but warm hands melt butter. Work quickly, or use a pastry blender, and leave the fat in visible flakes rather than rubbing to sand. That is what gives the layers.
- LardThe biscuit uses equal butter and lard for tenderness. Leaf lard or shortening substitutes directly; all butter is fine but the crumb comes out slightly tougher.
- YieldNeither recipe says. Two cups of flour gives about eight three-quarter-inch scone squares, or ten to twelve two-inch biscuits. Both are best within an hour of baking.
Fannie Farmer's book, first published in 1896 as The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, treats scones and baking powder biscuit as the same idea worked to different ends. The scone descends from the Scottish girdle bread of that name, originally baked on a griddle and cut in wedges, which came into American cookbooks in the later nineteenth century in an oven-baked, cream-and-egg-enriched form. The biscuit is the American branch, made possible by chemical leavening, which spread through home kitchens as commercial baking powders became available over the second half of the nineteenth century and freed cooks from waiting on yeast. Farmer's insistence on sifting twice and on a hot oven reflects the Boston Cooking School's larger project: replacing the handful-and-a-guess tradition with measured, explained procedure, which is also why she stops to tell the reader exactly what goes wrong in a slow oven.