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Tops and Bottoms
1/2 lb. (I cup) sugar 14 ozs. (3½ cups) flour 1/2 pint (1 cup) milk 4 tablespoonfuls melted butter 1/4 teaspoonful salt 2 teaspoonfuls baking powder I beaten egg Mix the sugar with one cupful of the flour and stir in the milk. Set in a warm place for five hours. Add the melted butter, salt, baking powder and the remaining flour. Mold this dough into balls about the size of an egg, lay them "Bachelor's Buttons" is the quaint name of tiny oldfashioned English cookies. These biscuits are often served at afternoon tea. They are fine for the lunch box "Tops and Bottoms" is the strange title of this English nursery biscuit loved by children. The sweet biscuits are split and browned "No Matters are sweet fritters filled with apple sauce Cakes on buttered baking tins, brush over with the beaten egg and bake in a moderate oven until ready.
When cold divide the balls through the center; rearrange them with the cut surface upward on the baking tins, and return to the oven until they are nicely browned.
When there are children in the household nothing will please them more than an abundant supply of the English nursery biscuits that bear the strange title, "Tops and Bottoms."
A plain sweet biscuit dough that is baked twice: once as egg-sized balls, then split and returned to the oven so the cut faces toast. The five-hour warm rest is a souring step, not a rising one, and the dough will look and smell faintly tangy when you come back to it.
- The five-hour restSugar, one cup of flour and the milk are left in a warm place; with no yeast in the mixture and the baking powder not added until afterward, nothing rises during the wait, and the likeliest purpose is a slight souring of the milk-and-flour batter, though the recipe does not say so.
- Flour quantityThe flour figure has lost part of its fraction in this printing. Fourteen ounces of flour is about 3 1/4 to 3 1/2 cups measured by scoop and level, and weighing it is the reliable route. One cup of that total goes into the souring batter and the rest is added at the end.
- Half a pintAn Imperial half-pint would be 10 fl oz, but the recipe glosses it as one cup, so use 8 fl oz of milk. Whole milk gives the softer crumb these want.
- Moderate ovenConventionally taken as about 350F. The recipe says only to bake "until ready"; reckon on roughly 18 to 22 minutes, until set and pale gold, since they should not colour much at this stage.
- The second bakingCool the balls completely before splitting, or they tear rather than part cleanly. Cut surfaces up on the tin, return at 350F for 8 to 12 minutes until the exposed crumb is dry and browned. This is what makes them keep, in the manner of a rusk.
- Egg washOne beaten egg is more than enough for a batch; brush thinly, as a heavy coat sets into a leathery skin on a low-fat dough like this.
- YieldEgg-sized balls from this quantity give roughly 18 to 20 biscuits, so 36 to 40 tops and bottoms. Space them apart on the tins.
- KeepingThe second bake drives off moisture, which is what allows a biscuit of this kind to keep in a tin. Serve with butter.
Tops and bottoms belong to a family of English nursery biscuits, close cousins of the rusk. The point of the second baking is preservation as much as flavour, since a biscuit dried through keeps for weeks in a household without refrigeration and can be softened in warm milk for a small child or a convalescent. The five-hour souring of flour, sugar and milk is a survival from older baking, before chemical leaveners were stirred in at the last moment.