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Lebanon Rusk
One cup mashed potatoes, one of sugar, one of home-made yeast, three eggs; mix together; when raised light, add half cup butter or lard, and flour to make a soft dough, and, when quite light, mold into small cakes, and let them rise again before baking. If wanted for tea, set about nine A. M. - Mrs. J. S. Stahr, A
A sweet potato-yeast roll built on the long, slack timetable of a wood-stove kitchen. Two things need translating before you start: the cup of home-made yeast, and the schedule implied by "set about nine A. M."
- Home-made yeastThe cup of yeast here is a liquid potato or hop yeast — mostly water, with a modest population of wild and cultivated yeast. Replace it with about 1 cup of warm liquid (the potato cooking water is traditional) plus 2 1/4 teaspoons instant or active dry yeast. Expect a faster rise than the original, since commercial yeast is far more concentrated.
- The potatoesPresumably plain boiled potatoes, riced or mashed smooth; the recipe does not specify milk, butter or seasoning. Use them warm, not hot, or they will kill the yeast. About one large russet gives a cup.
- SugarA full cup of sugar to roughly a pound of flour makes this a sweet dough closer to a bun than a dinner roll. Sugar at this level also slows fermentation, which may be part of why the original allows most of a day.
- Flour to make a soft doughReckon on 4 to 5 cups of all-purpose flour. Stop while the dough is still tacky and slack — added flour past that point gives a dry, bready rusk instead of a tender one.
- SaltNone is listed. Add 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons with the flour or the rolls will taste flat.
- The timetable"Set about nine A. M." for tea means roughly eight hours of total fermentation in a cool room. With modern yeast the sponge will be light in 1 to 2 hours, the dough in another 1 to 2, and the shaped cakes in 30 to 45 minutes. Judge by volume, not the clock.
- BakingNo oven is given. A moderate oven, 350-375F, for 15 to 20 minutes suits rolls this size and this sweet; the sugar browns quickly, so check at 15. Brushing with milk or a beaten egg gives a glossy top.
- YieldAbout 18 to 24 small cakes, depending on how small you mold them. They stale fast; split and toast the leftovers.
"Rusk" originally meant bread twice-baked to keep — ship's biscuit and its relatives — but in nineteenth-century American home cooking the word had drifted to mean a sweet, enriched yeast roll, often eaten fresh and only toasted the second day. The recipe came in from a named housekeeper, and the name attached to this one most likely points to Lebanon, Pennsylvania, where potato-yeast doughs were a fixture of Pennsylvania German baking. The potato is doing real work here: its starch feeds the yeast, holds moisture, and gives the crumb a soft, slightly waxy texture that flour alone will not. Before packaged yeast became generally reliable and cheap, many households kept a jar of liquid yeast alive on potato water or hop tea, and a recipe that calls for "one cup of home-made yeast" assumes the reader has some going — an assumption that dates the page as precisely as any printed year.