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Vanilla Buns (Sift half pound flour)
Sift half pound flour on a corner of the table, make a fountain in the centre, pour into it two gills cold milk, add a teaspoon compressed yeast and one saltspoon salt. Knead all well together with the hand for five minutes, or until a light dough. Place the dough in a large bowl and set in a cool place for thirty minutes. Then add two eggs, two ounces well-picked currants, half ounce finely chopped candied lemon peel and a teaspoon vanilla essence; briskly beat up with the hand for five minutes. Divide the paste into six equal parts. Roll each piece into cake form and place in a lightly buttered tin. Let rest for fifteen minutes. Moisten the surface of each with a beaten egg and set in the oven to bake fortwenty minutes. Remove and serve.
A yeast-raised sweet bun built by the well method, written in the shorthand of a professional kitchen. The measurements convert cleanly, but the hydration and the rising instructions need judgment.
- The measurementsHalf a pound of flour is about 1¾ cups (227 g). Two gills is one cup, a saltspoon is ¼ teaspoon, two ounces of currants is a scant ½ cup, and half an ounce of candied peel is about 1½ tablespoons.
- Watch the liquidA cup of milk to 227 g of flour is close to 100 percent hydration — nearer a batter than the "light dough" described, and it slackens further when two eggs go in. Hold back part of the milk and add it only as needed, or expect to work in extra flour.
- Compressed yeastThis means fresh cake yeast. A teaspoon of it is roughly ½ teaspoon active dry or ⅓ teaspoon instant; err on the smaller side.
- "A cool place"The thirty-minute rest in a cool place is a slow first ferment that develops flavor before the eggs and fruit are beaten in. In a modern kitchen at 70F that is fine; do not force it in a warm proofing spot, or the dough will be over-risen before the enrichment goes in.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Small enriched buns of this kind take 375–400F, and twenty minutes at that heat is about right for six buns; they are done at an internal 190F or when the bottoms sound hollow.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, not fresh red or black currants. Plumping them in warm water or a little rum for ten minutes and patting dry keeps them from scorching at the surface.
- The egg washBrush lightly, after the fifteen-minute rest and just before baking. Heavy egg on a slack dough will pool and set into a leathery skin.
- YieldSix buns, each roughly 105 g of dough. They are best the day they are baked; the currants and egg keep them tender for a day, no longer.
The "fountain" — flour heaped on the bench with a well hollowed in the middle — is a standard pastry-room method of professionally trained kitchens, and its appearance in an English-language cookbook reflects how Continental professional baking practice had become. The bun itself sits in a broad family of enriched, currant-studded yeast buns that runs from the English hot cross bun through the German rosinenbrötchen; the vanilla essence is the modern touch here, more widely and cheaply available after the commercial synthesis of vanillin in the 1870s, though flavouring extracts were in use before that. Candied lemon peel was sold by weight and, as here, used in small quantities.