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Vanilla (Scald milk when lukewarm add)
Scald milk, when lukewarm add yeast cakes, and as soon as dissolved add three and one-half cups flour. Beat thoroughly, cover, and let rise; then add butter, lard, sugar, egg unbeaten, cinnamon, salt, and flour enough to knead. Knead until well mixed, cover, and let rise. Turn mixture on a floured cloth. Roll into a long, rectangular piece onefourth inch thick. Brush over with melted butter, fold from ends toward centre to make three layers and cut off pieces three-fourths inch wide. Cover and let rise. Take each piece separately in hands and twist from ends in opposite directions, then shape in a coil. Place in buttered pans, cover, again let rise, and bake in a moderate oven twenty minutes. Cool slightly, and brush over with confectioners' sugar moistened with boiling water and flavored with vanilla. 2½ cups scalded milk 1 yeast cake
This is a sweet yeast dough shaped into twisted coils and glazed — what a later cookbook would call cinnamon twists. Note that the ingredient list printed with the page has been cut off after the milk and yeast, so the amounts for butter, lard, sugar, egg, cinnamon, salt and the second addition of flour are simply not present here.
- The missing quantitiesOnly 2½ cups scalded milk and 1 yeast cake survive in the printed list. Anything else would be invention; the proportions for the enrichment cannot be recovered from the method alone, so treat this page as a shaping technique rather than a complete formula.
- One yeast cakeA yeast cake of this period was usually compressed fresh yeast, sold in cakes of varying size (the small household cake was around half an ounce). One packet of active dry or instant yeast, about 2¼ teaspoons, is the usual modern stand-in. Note that the method says "yeast cakes" while the surviving list gives one, so even this quantity is uncertain.
- Scalding, and why lukewarm mattersMilk was scalded partly for keeping and safety with unpasteurised milk; with today's milk it is generally held to help by denaturing whey proteins that would otherwise slacken a dough. The instruction to wait until lukewarm is the real point — around 110F is comfortable for yeast, but hotter liquid begins to stress it and hotter still will kill it.
- A moderate ovenRoughly 350 to 375F; the recipe itself gives no number. Twenty minutes suits pieces this small; pull them when the coils are golden, and about 190F at the centre is the usual modern doneness check for an enriched dough.
- The spongeMilk, yeast and 3½ cups flour are beaten and risen before any fat, sugar or egg goes in. This is deliberate — fat and sugar slow gluten development and yeast activity, so the flour is given a head start. Beat the sponge hard; it should be smooth and elastic before it rests.
- LardLard was an ordinary household fat in sweet doughs, valued for tenderness and keeping quality. Butter, or a mix of butter and shortening, can be used instead, though butter carries water as well as fat so the exchange is not strictly weight for weight; the crumb will be slightly less short.
- Rolling and foldingRolling to a quarter inch, brushing with butter and folding in three gives laminated layers that separate as the twist opens in the oven. Keep the dough cool enough that the butter does not soak in, and cut the ¾-inch strips with a sharp knife or bench scraper rather than dragging them.
- Twisting and the final riseTwist from both ends in opposite directions, then coil the strip and tuck the tail underneath so it does not spring loose. The recipe calls for a rise after cutting and again after shaping; the second is short, until the coils look puffy but still hold their shape.
- The glazeConfectioners' sugar moistened with boiling water and vanilla is a thin water icing — start with about a tablespoon of water per cup of sugar. Brush it on while the rolls are still warm so it sets to a translucent film rather than a white crust.
- YieldA dough built on 2½ cups of milk is large by modern standards, though with the second flour addition missing the total is unknowable. Expect several dozen small coils and more than one pan.
The odd title is an artifact of indexing rather than a dish name: the page has been catalogued under the last flavouring mentioned in it, and the ingredient list has been clipped in the process. The recipe itself belongs to the family of enriched, laminated, cinnamon-scented yeast pastries that German and Scandinavian bakers brought to American cities in the nineteenth century, and which turn up in New England cookbooks as "twists," "coffee cakes" or "Swedish rolls" without much consistency in naming. The presence of lard alongside butter is unremarkable: it was an ordinary household fat for baking, in domestic use across a very long span.