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Buns
Birk Hall Buns.
Take 2 lbs. of flour, 1 pt. of warm milk and about 1 oz. of German yeast; to be thoroughly mixed and allowed to rise for 1 hour before the fire, as for rolls. Work ½ lb. of fresh butter to a cream, add ½ lb. of pounded sugar and 5 eggs, one at a time; add these to the dough you have made, also ½ lb. of sultanas, and a few carraway seeds if you like them.
The mixture must then rise 2 hours more before shaping and putting into the oven on a baking sheet. They should be the shape of bakers' penny plum buns. Breakfast Buns. (Embley.) These are of the same dough as Birk Hall Rolls (see Bread, &c., Rolls) but sweetened, and with the addition of a few currants and carraway seeds; they are made the size of rolls, but glazed.
Emslie's Buns. (1887.) Made quickly with baking powder. 3/4 lb. fine, well-dried flour and a small dessertspoonful of any baking powder mixed in; then rub in 3 ozs. butter, add 3 ozs. sugar, 2 ozs. sultanas, and ½ oz. citron. Beat up 3 eggs in 2 tablespoonfuls of milk and add to the other ingredients lightly. Bake in buttered tins.
Bun Loaf. See Cakes, &c. - (Cake).
Marrow instead of Butter in Making Buns. See Short Sugar Paste, under Paste and Pastry; see also next page.
Plain Buns. (Burwarton, Bridgnorth.) 3 lbs. flour, ½ lb. butter, ½ lb. sugar, 1 oz. German yeast, 2 eggs, spice and candied peel to taste. Mix as you would any other buns, and bake. Rock Buns. (Caldy.) This quantity makes 4 doz. 2 lbs. flour, ½ lb. butter, ½ lb. sugar and the same of currants, 4 eggs. If required, a spoonful of cream.
Beat up as in making a pound cake; mix the flour in lightly; lay the mixture out in rough lumps on the baking sheet and bake in a moderate oven. Flavour with lemon peel grated.
Six bun recipes of varying completeness, collected from country houses and cooks rather than written as a set. The yeasted ones are enriched doughs on the brioche side; the last two are quick cakes in all but name.
- The 2 lb of butter is almost certainly an errorBirk Hall Buns give 2 lbs flour and then "2 lb. of fresh butter" creamed with only ½ lb sugar and 5 eggs. That is roughly equal weights of flour and butter, far beyond what a yeasted dough will carry. Read it as ½ lb, which matches the sugar, the egg count and the other bun recipes in this group.
- German yeastCompressed fresh baker's yeast, sold in blocks. 1 oz fresh is about 0.5 oz active dry or a scant 0.35 oz instant. For 2-3 lb of flour in an enriched, heavily fruited dough that is a reasonable amount; the fat and sugar slow fermentation considerably, which is why two further hours of rising are called for.
- Pounded sugarLoaf sugar crushed in a mortar, so a fine grain: caster or superfine sugar. Granulated will work but creams less readily into butter.
- A moderate ovenAround 350F. For small buns on a sheet, 375F gives better colour in 15-20 minutes.
- Rising before the fireThe dough was proved in front of the fire, warm on one side and drafty on the other. A covered bowl at around 80F does the same work; the first hour is the flour, milk and yeast only, before the butter, sugar, eggs and fruit go in.
- Citron and candied peelCitron is the candied rind of the citron fruit, firmer and less sweet than modern mixed peel. Chop it small; ½ oz in Emslie's Buns is a flavouring, not a fruit.
- Emslie's Buns are a stiff paste, not a batterEmslie's Buns are thick rather than a pouring batter -- three eggs and two tablespoons of milk against ¾ lb flour gives a heavy dropping consistency. "Buttered tins" here probably means small patty or bun tins; bake at 375F for about 15 minutes.
- Rock Buns yield and shapeThe original tells you: four dozen from 2 lb flour, so a little over 1 oz of mixture each. "Rough lumps" is the point of the name and of the recipe; smoothing them into balls loses the craggy crust.
- Cross-references you cannot followBreakfast Buns depend on the Birk Hall Rolls recipe printed elsewhere in the book, and Bun Loaf and the marrow-for-butter note are pointers to other sections. As printed here, only Birk Hall, Emslie's, Plain and Rock Buns are complete enough to work from.
Lady Clark of Tillypronie kept her recipes as a working private collection, naming each after the house or cook it came from, and this page reads like the index of a social circle: Birk Hall on Deeside, a few miles from Balmoral and from the Clarks' own Aberdeenshire house at Tillypronie; Embley in Hampshire, the Nightingale family seat; Burwarton near Bridgnorth in Shropshire; Caldy in the Wirral. The collection was gathered over decades in the second half of the nineteenth century and published posthumously in 1909, edited by Catherine Frere, which is why the entries vary so much in finish, some fully written out and others no more than a note to herself. The group also catches a change in baking mid-stride: the older buns are raised with German yeast, the compressed fresh yeast that reached British kitchens in quantity from the continent in the nineteenth century, while Emslie's contribution, dated 1887 and pointedly headed "made quickly with baking powder," needs no proving at all. Caraway in sweet buns, which reads oddly now, was still ordinary in Victorian baking and had been standard in seed cakes for generations.