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Scotch Scones
Half pound sifted flour, one teaspoon baking powder, half pint cold milk and two saltspoons salt. Place the flour in a bowl, make a small fountain in the centre, place all the ingredients in it; then knead it thoroughly with the hand to a thick paste. Roll it out to the thickness of an inch. Cut the paste into six equal square parts. Lightly butter a frying pan, heat it thoroughly, then place the scones in the pan, one beside another; set in a hot oven and when a good golden colour, which will take about twenty minutes, remove and serve.
A plain, unsweetened scone with no fat in the dough — closer to a soda bread than to the rich cream scones sold today. The whole method turns on a preheated pan, which does the work a griddle would once have done.
- Weights and volumesHalf a pound of flour is about 1¾ cups (225 g). Half a pint of milk is 1 cup in US measure; if you are working from an Imperial pint, it is 10 fl oz, so add the last of it only as needed. Two saltspoons is ½ teaspoon.
- "A hot oven"Read that as 425–450°F. At a lower temperature these will dry out before they colour, since there is no sugar or butter in the dough to help browning.
- Heat the pan first, and use the right oneThis is the hinge. The pan goes on the stove until it is genuinely hot, the scones go in, and the whole thing goes into the oven — the bottom crust sets on contact. Use cast iron or another fully ovenproof skillet, not a nonstick pan with a plastic handle.
- The raising agent is lightOne teaspoon of baking powder to 225 g flour is on the low side by current practice; 2 teaspoons gives a better lift with modern flour. Old baking powders were also more variable in strength than what is on the shelf now.
- An inch is not a typoRoll thick and cut cleanly into six squares. Thin scones bake into biscuits; the height is what keeps the crumb soft inside the twenty minutes given.
- Handle it briefly"Knead it thoroughly" should be understood as bringing the dough together, not developing it. A wet, barely worked dough gives a tender scone; a smooth elastic one gives a tough scone.
- Yield and servingSix scones, enough for three or four at tea. Being unsweetened, they take butter, jam or cheese equally well, and they are best within an hour of baking.
Scones belong to the older tradition of British griddle baking — a flat round of barley, oat or wheat dough cooked on a hot iron plate over the fire and cut into wedges, which is why the individual pieces are still called scones rather than the whole cake. The name is often traced to the Dutch schoonbrood or a related Low German word for fine bread, though the origin is genuinely uncertain and competing explanations circulate freely. What makes this version look modern is the leavening: baking powder became a reliable commercial product over the second half of the nineteenth century, and its spread offered an alternative to the sour milk and soda that had raised earlier girdle scones. The method here is a transitional one — the hot pan is a memory of the griddle, the oven is the new equipment.