Soups, savouries, sweets, with a chapter on breads

With a small wooden spoon stir into the yeast one dessertspoonful of light-coloured moist sugar and two of flour, adding lukewarm water until the basin is half full of a thick batter. Stand the basin near the fire out of draughts for thirty minutes, when, if the mixture has risen properly, it will be at the top of the basin, and, when stirred, show itself very light and ropy. Rub into this three pounds of white flour, three ounces of butter, and half a teaspoonful of salt, and as much lukewarm milk and water as will make the whole into a soft dough. When this has risen place it on a floured pastry-board, and roll across once, leaving the dough about an inch and a half thick. With a deep cutter * So that the savour spread throughout the camp Of new bread smoking, ' Edwin Arnold. N 2 * Wt* gude ait cakes or butter bakes, * 'Scottish Songs/ cut this into rolls the size wanted, and place them on a greased baking-sheet. Press in the centre of each roll with the end of a knife-handle ; brush each over with milk ; set before the fire twenty minutes to rise, and then bake in a moderate oven. Sbort Cafte. Half a pound of butter, six ounces of pounded sugar, the grated rind of half a lemon, one pound of decorticated wheatmeal. Beat the butter and sugar to a cream, add the meal by degrees, and lastly the lemonpeel. When thoroughly mixed, knead it out on a floured baking-sheet three-quarters of * / could come every aftertioon of my life to look at the farmer^ s girl boiling her iron tea-kettle and baking short-cake,'' — Walt Whitman. 1 80 * Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes or ale ? — * Twelfth Night.* an inch thick. Before putting it in the oven, mark out with the point of a knife the size the squares of cake are to be when baked. Bake it in a moderately hot oven half an hour. When taken from the oven, let it stand five minutes before removing it from the baking-sheet, so as to prevent its breakingin small pieces. lpoun&, See&, or iplum Cafte. One pound of butter, one pound of pounded sugar, one pound of flour (dried), two ounces of candied peel, two ounces of almonds blanched and split in flat lengths, eight eggs, half a pound of chopped raisins, and two ounces of well- washed and dried currants, or two ounces of carraway seeds. * There^s sax eggs in the pan ^ gude man,'* 'Scottish Songs.* * Frae mom to e'en ifs nought but toiling. At baking, roasting, frying, boiling ; Beat the butter and sugar to a thick cream in a basin with a spoon-whisk ; then add the eggs two at a time, whisking continuously, and for twenty minutes after all the eggs are in ; then drop in the flour a little at a time so that the batter is kept free from lumps ; then add the remaining ingredients. Pour the batter into two deep one-pound cake-tins, lined with well buttered kitchen-paper, and raised an inch or two above the tins, as this will help the cakes to rise and keep them from scorching. Bake the cakes in a moderately hot oven for an hour. Before taking them from the oven, test if enough baked by putting a wooden skewer through them. If the skewer comes out dry, the cake is done ; * An* the* the gentry first are strechin. Yet e*en the hcC folk fill their pechan W^ sauce, ragouts, an^ sic like trashtrie, Thetis little short o* downright wastriej* — Burns. * If you wish to grow thinner^ diminish your dinner^ And take to light claret instead of pale ale ;