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Imperials
(English Tea Cakes.) Beat 6 ounces of butter to a cream, add 1 pound of flour and 8 ounces of sugar, then 2 ounces of candied peel, chopped fine, the zest of a lemon, 1/2 pound currants, and 4 beaten eggs. Drop in balls on a tin and bake until brown.
A stiff, biscuit-like currant cake of the Victorian tea table, made without any raising agent. The dough is worked more like shortbread than a cake batter, and the balls hold their shape in the oven.
- Cream the sugar with the butterThe original adds flour before sugar, which makes for hard work. Beat the 6 oz butter with the 8 oz sugar until light, then work in the flour, fruit, peel and zest, and finally the eggs.
- Weights, in cups1 lb flour is about 3 1/2 cups; 8 oz sugar is 1 heaping cup; 6 oz butter is 1 1/2 sticks. 1/2 lb currants is roughly 1 1/2 cups. Weighing gives a far more reliable dough here, since the flour-to-fat ratio is high.
- Currants means Zante currantsSmall dried grapes, not fresh red or black currants. Sold as Zante currants or dried currants; raisins chopped small are the nearest substitute.
- Candied peelTwo ounces is about 1/3 cup once chopped. Buy whole candied orange or lemon peel rather than the diced mixed peel sold for fruitcake, which is often more sugar syrup than citrus.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives none. Bake at 350F for 15 to 20 minutes, until the edges are set and the tops are lightly coloured. These go from brown to dry very quickly because there is no liquid beyond the eggs.
- No leavening is intendedImperials are meant to be firm and close-textured, closer to a rock cake or shortbread than a soft cookie. Do not add baking powder unless you want a different biscuit.
- Shaping and spacingWalnut-sized balls, flattened slightly, spaced about 2 inches apart on a lined sheet. They spread only a little.
- YieldAbout 3 dozen. They keep well for a week in a tin and firm up further as they cool.
With a Saucepan Over the Sea belongs to a turn-of-the-century American genre in which a compiler gathered dishes attributed to European and colonial kitchens and presented them to home cooks. The parenthetical gloss "(English Tea Cakes.)" suggests the name Imperials would have meant little to an American reader and needed translating into a familiar category. Names of this sort — Imperials, Queen Cakes, Rocks — were attached to a range of small baked goods by British bakers in the nineteenth century, and seem to have signalled a shop tradition rather than a fixed formula. What is clear from the recipe itself is the ratio: a full pound of flour against only six ounces of butter and four eggs, with half a pound of currants carrying the richness — a sturdy keeping cake rather than a light one.