The encyclopædia of practical cookery

(8) Scotch. — Weigh out lib. of bread dough in the early morning, work up in it 6oz. of butter and 6oz. of caster sugar, and leave it in a warm place to prove. About two hours after work it together, and beat in two eggs and a small teaspoonful of Caraway-seeds. Knead it until smoothly blended (about half-an-hour) ; then work in gib. of flour, and continue kneading for about five minutes. Set it in a warm place for two hours to rise, and then break again. Butter a cake-mould, put in the batter, and let it rise for another hour, and then bake like bread in a quick oven. Caraway Candy. — Pound Joz. of Caraway-seeds to a fine powder, and boil it with lib. of loaf sugar and a breakfastcupful of water to the crack (see Sugar-boiling). Pour out on a greased slab to cool, or the sugar when boiled may be flavoured with the essence of Caraway. Caraway Comfits. — (1) Take a table-spoonful of Caraway-seeds and put them in a comfit-pan, and heat them by stirring with a wooden spoon over a chafing-dish containing live embers of charcoal. Take 6oz. of gum arabic and dissolve it in water, but not to make it too thin, and have ready 3jlb. of syrup of 32deg. (see Syrup), which must be kept as hot as possible without boiling. Put a little of the syrup into the pan with a little of the dissolved gum, place the pan over the chafingdish, and stir until the seeds are quite hot, and then add another table-spoonful of the gum, and continue to stir until the gum has dried on the seeds; put in a little more of the gum, and sprinkle over a little starch powder to give them another coating. Put a little of the boiled sugar and gum into a bag, and with a beading funnel give them another coating. Separate the seeds as much as possible, and put them on a sieve to remove any particles of sugar that do not adhere. Repeat this operation five times more, taking care to clean out the comfit-pan each time, and when they are done put them in a warm place for a day, to dry. Give them another coating, and continue this six times in all, when they will be ready for use. A table-spoonful of seeds is used at a time: with more than that quantity one is not likely to succeed. Caraway — continued. (2) Have a large copper preserving-pan, about 2ft. wide, with two handles and two iron rings, one at each side. Sling this pan to a beam by means of a long cord over a pulley fixed to a beam, .with a hook at each end of the cord to hook into the iron rings attached to the pan. Underneath this hanging pan have a charcoal fire in an iron pot, not a very hot fire, only sufficient to keep the pan warm. Boil in another pan some syrup for a-quarter-of-an-hour, and mix with it some tine white starch crushed to powder, the starch should be the whitest obtainable. In another pan warm some gum arabic and water. Take some large Caraway-seeds, sift the dust from them, and put them into the large hanging pan ; add a ladleful of the warmed gum arabic and water. Rub the seeds with the hands till they are dry. Add gum arabic and rub till dry, then add a ladleful of starch and syrup, and rub and shake this over the charcoal fire till all are dry. Repeat this three or four times, boiling the syrup more as the seeds begin to get coated with it, and using less starch. When they have been dried seven times, put them in a sieve, and leave them in the stove till next day.