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Endcliffe Buns
(England.) Mix 6 ounces sugar with 4 ounces butter, add 1 egg, 1 1/2 pounds flour, 1/4 ounce baking powder, 6 ounces currants or raisins, and 1/2 pint milk. Beat the egg, white and yolk separately, before adding. Mix all, and bake in a hot oven with sugar over. Cut into squares when serving.
A very lean, scone-like dough baked as one slab and cut up rather than dropped as individual buns. The proportions are austere by modern standards, and the liquid is the thing to watch.
- The hinge: judge the dough, not the numbersFour ounces of butter and half a pint of milk to a pound and a half of flour gives a stiff, barely cohesive dough. Add milk a spoonful at a time beyond the stated amount until it just holds together — it should be soft enough to spread in the tin, not crumbly.
- Which pintAn English book of this period means the imperial pint, 20 fl oz, so half a pint is 1 1/4 cups, not 1 cup. The difference is significant in a dough this dry.
- Weights to volume1 1/2 lb flour is roughly 5 1/2 cups; 6 oz sugar is about 3/4 cup plus a little; 4 oz butter is one stick. 6 oz currants is about a generous cup. 1/4 oz baking powder works out at roughly 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 level teaspoons, which is modest for this much flour.
- Hot ovenRead "hot" as 400–425F. Because this is baked as a thick slab rather than as small buns, the lower end is safer; 20–25 minutes, until the top is set and pale gold and a skewer comes out clean.
- Separating the eggThe recipe directs that white and yolk be beaten separately, a common instruction in period baking. With modern baking powder it buys little, but folding the whipped white in last does lighten a stiff dough noticeably.
- Sugar overCoarse or granulated sugar scattered on before baking, not icing sugar — it gives a crackled top. Brush the surface with milk first so it sticks.
- Pan and yieldUse a greased shallow tin about 9 by 13 inches, or a rimmed baking sheet. Cut into roughly 24 squares while still warm; they are best the day they are made and stale quickly, as any low-fat scone dough does.
Endcliffe is a district of Sheffield, and the name may point to a household recipe carried into print under the address it came from — the sort of provenance found in With a Saucepan Over the Sea, which gathered dishes from many countries and labelled them simply "(England.)" or "(France.)". The formula itself is a plain currant bun dough: a great deal of flour, a little butter, dried fruit, and chemical leavening, baked in one piece and divided afterwards to save the trouble of shaping. Baking powder had been commercially available in Britain since the 1840s, which is why a bun of a type that might once have been raised with yeast goes straight into a hot oven here.