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Tea-Cakes (Butter the size of an egg)
of butter the size of an egg, a little pounded sugar (4 lumps), a pinch of salt, 2 tablespoonfuls of brewer's yeast, or better still 1 oz. of German. Do not knead it, but work it up to a light dough. Put it in muffin rings on a tin; half fill them and set to rise about 10 minutes. Bake in a quick oven. Shortbread. (Mrs. Young.) Take 8 lbs. of flour, keeping back about 1 lb. to work up the cakes; 1½ lbs. castor sugar. Take ½ lb. each of orange peel, citron, and blanched almonds cut all in long pieces, and mix them well in the flour; then make a hole in the middle of the flour, and put in 4 lbs. 2ozs. of melted butter. Work it up, but not too much. Divide into 8 cakes, and roll them out.
Prick them on the top with a feather, strew sugar - plums, orange peel, and citron over them.
Bake them on a paper, dusted with flour, in a moderate oven. Shrewsbury Cakes. (Mrs. Adams, Washington. 1880.) These are cinnamon biscuits.
To 4 eggs take ½ lb. butter, 1 lb. sugar, 1 lb. or more flour, for the flour must be added till the dough is just stiff enough to roll out, and a tablespoonful of ground cinnamon. Stir butter and sugar till very light, then add the eggs well beaten, and the cinnamon; lastly add the flour.
Roll out as thin as a sheet of paper. Cut with a tin cutter, and bake a good dark brown in a rather quick oven.
Sultana Tea-cakes. (Mrs. Emslie. 1897.) Bake in ribbed quenelle moulds. ¼ lb. butter, ¼ lb. sugar, ¼ lb. flour, 2 ozs. sultanas, 2 eggs, a little candied peel, and baking powder.
Mix same as for a cake; bake in small ribbed quenelle moulds. When they are done cover them with icing of sugar and water, and put them on a wire sieve to dry. Tea-cakes. No. 1. 1 lb. flour, 1 egg very well beaten, 2 ozs. butter, 2 large spoonfuls of yeast, ½ pt. milk. Rub the butter in the flour, mix the milk warm, add the yeast and the egg, and beat the whole 10 minutes.
Butter the tins and quarter fill them for tea-cakes; for luncheon half fill them; let them rise to the top before the fire, and bake 10 or 12 minutes. Tea-cakes. No. 2. Excellent.
To 1 lb. flour add ½ lb. butter, ¼ lb. sugar and 2 eggs. Mix them well into a paste; roll them out thin and cut them with a round cutter and bake in a quick oven. Tea-cakes. No. 3. (Mrs. Brandreth. 1887.) 1 lb. of fine flour - into it rub an oz. of fresh butter, add a little salt and an oz. of baking powder. Mix very lightly into a dough with milk. Roll out till quarter of an inch thick; cut out with a cutter and bake in rather a quick oven on a buttered baking sheet until it is a nice gold colour.
Have ready some warmed butter on a plate, split the cakes as you would a muffin, and dip each half into the hot butter or spread butter over inside with a silver knife. Clap the halves together when enough buttered, cut across, and serve hot in a heated muffin dish with cover; each cake will make four pieces (not eight). Watford Cakes. 1 lb. flour, 3 ozs. white sugar, 3 ozs. butter, 1 oz. German yeast, ³¼ lb. sultanas, a little mixed candied peel and spices, 2 eggs.
Mix with warm milk; will take about 2 hours to rise. Bake. Yorkshire Cakes.
Beat well together 3 lbs. of flour, a pt. and a half of warm milk, 4 spoonfuls of yeast and 4 eggs, to rise in tins. Bake in a slow oven. (See also Birk Hall Rolls, under Bread.) Yorkshire Tea-cakes. (Miss Bowers.) To 2 lbs. fine flour put 2 spoonfuls of good fresh barm, 2 teaspoonfuls of sugar with 2 eggs beaten to a froth. Warm 2 ozs. butter in a pt. of milk, knead all into a light paste, then make up the tea - cakes and let them stand before the fire till well risen. Bake them in a slow oven. (We use this recipe omitting the eggs and sugar. C.C.)
A run of related tea-table bakes from the Tillypronie book, ranging from yeast-risen tea-cakes to a very large batch of festive shortbread. The measures are imperial and the ovens are described by feel, so a few conversions are needed before starting.
- The ovens, in numbersA quick oven is 425–450F (220–230C), a moderate oven 350F (180C), a slow oven around 300F (150C). The yeasted cakes baked in a slow oven will take considerably longer than the thin rolled biscuits at quick heat; go by colour rather than the clock.
- German yeast and brewer's yeast"German yeast" is fresh compressed baker's yeast; 1 oz is roughly a 28 g block, or about 2–3 teaspoons of instant dried yeast. "Brewer's yeast" and "barm" mean the live foam skimmed from fermenting beer, which was weaker and more variable — the note that 1 oz of German is "better still" reflects exactly that. Modern brewer's yeast sold as a supplement is dead and will not raise anything.
- Butter the size of an egg, 4 lumpsButter the size of an egg is about 2 oz (55 g). A sugar lump of the period was roughly a teaspoon's worth, though loaf sugar was cut by hand and sizes varied, so 4 lumps is about 4 teaspoons.
- Imperial pintsA pint here is the imperial 20 fl oz, not the US 16. Half a pint of milk in Tea-cakes No. 1 is 10 fl oz (300 ml); the pint and a half in Yorkshire Cakes is 30 fl oz (850 ml).
- Scaling the shortbreadMrs Young's shortbread is a household batch of 8 cakes from 8 lb of flour. Divide throughout by eight for a single round: 1 lb flour (keeping back 2 oz for working), 3 oz castor sugar, 1 oz each orange peel, citron and almonds, and about 8 oz melted butter. Sugar-plums are small hard sweets; coarse nibbed sugar or candied peel alone can stand in.
- The hinge in shortbread"Work it up, but not too much" is the whole instruction. Melted butter and flour brought just together gives the short, sandy crumb; extended working develops gluten and the cake turns hard rather than crisp. Pricking with a feather — a bundle of skewer holes will do — stops it doming.
- Quenelle moulds and muffin ringsRibbed quenelle moulds are small fluted boat- or oval-shaped tins; deep madeleine or barquette tins are the nearest modern equivalent, or a mini muffin tray. Muffin rings are plain metal hoops set on a baking sheet, and crumpet rings still sold today work as they stand.
- Shrewsbury cakes, rolled thin"As thin as a sheet of paper" is not exaggeration for these — they are meant to snap. At that thinness the described "good dark brown" happens fast, so watch them from about six minutes.
- Baking powder by weightMrs Brandreth's ounce of baking powder to a pound of flour is a little over 2 tablespoons, on the generous side of modern practice but usable for a scone-type dough eaten hot. Powders sold in 1887 were single-acting tartrate types of variable strength; two to three teaspoons per pound suits a current tin.
Lady Clark's manuscript book, compiled through the second half of the nineteenth century and published after her death in 1909, was a working collection: many of the recipes carry the name of the friend, cook or hostess they came from, and the dated ones in this cluster run from 1880 to 1897. This cluster shows the range of what "tea-cake" covered in a Scottish country house — yeast-raised split-and-buttered breads of the Yorkshire type, thin rolled biscuits, and small iced sponges — all belonging to the afternoon tea that had become a fixed meal in such households by the 1880s. The heavily fruited shortbread, built on pounds rather than ounces and studded with citron, orange peel and sugar-plums, is the older Scottish festive form, generally associated with Christmas and Hogmanay and quite unlike the plain three-ingredient shortbread now sold under the name. A note at the end signed "C.C.", generally taken to be Lady Clark herself, records that her kitchen made the Yorkshire tea-cakes without the eggs and sugar — the kind of household amendment that makes the book a record of practice rather than aspiration.