Bread or Cake?

I have this vague sense of being sucked in by someone’s clever marketing-by-renaming trick when I make or eat banana 'bread'. I have the same feeling about muffins, which in their common modern form (not the traditional yeast-raised ‘English’ muffin) are just an excuse to eat cake for breakfast. I hasten to add that this fleeting feeling does not interfere with my enjoyment of the said ‘breads’ however.

Without getting involved in a convoluted argument about what constitutes ‘bread’, I would be interested to know your opinions. Is it only bread if it is leavened with yeast - which would make Irish soda bread not real bread? Or does it depend on the amount of sugar – and if so, how much (a teaspoon to start the yeast bubbling OK?). Or the fat (lots of butter in a lot of muffins)? The absence of fruit, nuts, spices …… ? Must it be baked, or are Chinese steamed buns also ‘bread’?. You get my definition drift?

There is probably no debate about bread being a starch-based food – but which starch? There is no debate about wheat being the best source of gluten, or the fact that gluten is what gives ‘bread’ its structure and texture, which makes wheat bread the ‘best’ bread from that point of view - it is the Gold Standard, so to speak. Nevetheless, many folk around the world are happy with, and even prefer, bread made from other grains and seeds such as rye, barley, oats, corn etc.

Bananas are starchy too, so it is not surprising that bananas can be used to make non-cakey banana bread. The trick, it appears, is not to use the mashed fruit, but to use banana flour – and Boy! Would I like to get my hands on some. I tried to find a complete recipe for banana bread using banana flour, but only managed to find general advice about using it to substitute for an amount (about a quarter?) of the wheat flour.

Banana flour is made by drying and grinding the green fruit – not an easy operation for the home cook. It was advocated as a healthy food in several books of invalid cookery in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as Mrs Rorer’s Diet for the Sick (1914). The well-known Mrs. Rorer says “banana flour is made from under-ripe bananas, thoroughly dried and ground. It is exceedingly good for diabetic, rheumatic, and gouty patients. It may be made into mush, or gems, or small cakes.”

Another ‘healthy’ (in this case vegetarian) cookery book, Reform Cookery: Up-to-date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century (1909) by Jean Oliver Mill gives a recipe for Banana Flour Scones, which is the closest I could get to a banana bread recipe today – and they sound absolutely delicious.


Banana Flour Scones
1 lb. banana flour, 2 oz. butter or “Nutter”, 2 oz. sugar, 1 teaspoonful baking powderd, milk. Mix flour – the banana flour sold by the lb. is best – sugar, and baking powder. Rub in butter, make into a light dough with milk. Cut into small scones, and bake in a good oven about 15 minutes.
These scones are exceedingly good, and quite different from those made with ordinary flour. They may be varied by adding a few Sultanas or a beaten egg.

P. S In case you want a reminder about ‘scones’ – go here, and here


Quotation for the Day

Yeah, I like cars and basketball. But you know what I like more? Bananas.
Frankie Muniz

What flavour scones?

March 24 ...

I know exactly what made me decide to feature ‘scones’ today. Sheer astonishment at the degree to which the human cook will go to adapt, modify, and ‘improve’ a perfectly good recipe, that’s what. I was quietly browsing an Australian cookbook (undated, but probably late 1930’s), not seeking to be shocked, disgusted, or even intrigued when I came across a chapter of recipes for ‘scones’. We have tackled the subject in a previous post, but just to remind you, a scone is ‘generally, a soft cake of barley- or oatmeal, or wheat-flour, baked in single portions on a griddle or in an oven. Also with defining words, denoting varieties of this cake, as butter, potato, soda, treacle scone; brown scone, one made of whole meal; drop-, dropped scone, one made of a small portion of batter dropped on the griddle or on a tin and baked.’ It is better known to some of you ‘over there’ is essentially the same thing as a ‘biscuit’.

There are few things simpler and better than an Authentic Devonshire Tea: scones with good jam (strawberry jam, preferrably) with lashings of proper cream, (‘clotted’ cream, preferrably). The use of whipped cream is a bit down-market, and the use of the synthetic stuff that looks like shaving cream from a can is an act of sacrilege. The only real debate is whether or not the scones should be plain, or contain sultanas. In Australia, whose housewives are (were?) famous for their scones, it is perfectly acceptable, maybe even desirable, to provide pumpkin scones.

Any other varieties seem superfluous somehow. But superfluity is no barrier to housewives who want to get creative when the ladies are coming over for afternoon tea. A previous story featured two scone recipes from New Zealand, and these were not too startling – apart from the first being called ‘buns’ when they are clearly ‘scones’, and the second containing preserved ginger. The Australian book that gave shocked me however, contained a couple of pretty scary scone recipes amongst the forty it had on offer.

Be honest now. Would you ever be inclined to serve Bloater* Scones or Curry and Egg Scones?

Bloater Scones.
½ lb self-raising flour
1 oz. butter
1 egg
lemon juice to taste
2 oz. bloater paste
salt and cayenne
1 gill** milk
Sift flour, salt, and cayenne. Rub in butter and bloater paste. Add egg and milk and lemon juice, and make into a soft dough. Knead slightly. Roll out ½ inch thick. Cut into small rounds 1 inch in diameter. Glaze and bake in a quick oven eight to ten minutes.
Filling: 1 dessertspoon bloater paste and one dessertspoon whipped cream, blended together and flavoured with cayenne, lemon juice, and salt.

Curry and Egg Scones.
½ lb. self-raising flour
1 oz. butter
1 dessertspoon curry powder
pinch salt
1 hard-boiled egg
1 gill milk.
Sift flour, curry powder and salt into a basin. Rub in butter and add egg chopped finely and milk. Make into a dough, roll out, cut into rounds, brush over with milk and bake about ten minutes.
[From: Australian Cookery of Today Illustrated, by ‘Prudence.’]

*bloaters are herrings: bloater paste is, essentially, pureed bloaters.

**gill = unit of volume in the British Imperial and United States Customary systems. It is used almost exclusively for the measurement of liquids. Although its capacity has varied with time and location, in the United States it is defined as half a cup, or four U.S. fluid ounces, which equals 7.219 cubic inches, or 118.29 cubic cm; in Great Britain the gill is five British fluid ounces [Encyclopedia Britannica]

Tomorrow’s Story …

A wedding breakfast, 1571.

Quotation for the Day …

In nothing more is the English genius for domesticity more notably declared than in the institution of this festival - almost one may call it - of afternoon tea...The mere chink of cups and saucers tunes the mind to happy repose. George Gissing (b. 1857)

Kiwi Food.

Today, September 6^th …

In honour of my friend and fellow-blogger Barbara of winosandfoodies, today I give you a taste of New Zealand’s culinary history. The Edmonds Cookery Book was a marketing exercise on the part of the Edmonds company to promote their baking powder and jelly, and has somewhat iconic status in the country. It is now freely available online. The Director of the online project, Alison Stevenson, says that there are not many families in New Zealand who have grown up without a copy. The online version is the third edition, published in 1914, and like Australian cookbooks of the era, is more English than Antipodean. You wont find barbequed kiwi bird or silver fern salad within its pages.

Even if they cooked the same old things from ‘home’, early settlers often gave their dishes ‘local’ names. There is one single recipe with a local name in this little book. It is a scone, really.

New Zealand Buns.
1 breakfastcup flour
1 tablespoonful sugar
1 heaped teaspoon Edmonds' Baking Powder
1 egg
3 ozs. butter

Rub the butter into flour, sugar, and baking powder, then add the egg well beaten, and enough milk to make a stiff dough. Place in heaps on cold greased oven shelf. Bake quick oven 10 to 15 minutes.

I liked this one too – another scone recipe to add to our collection.

Preserved Ginger Scones.
½ lb. flour (one breakfast cup)
1 oz. butter
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon Edmonds' Baking Powder
Preserved Ginger
Milk and water to mix

Sift baking powder and salt with flour, rub in butter, mix to a stiff dough, turn out on board, cut in two equal parts, roll out, spread one-half with thinly-cut ginger, place the other half on top, cut in squares, brush over the milk, and bake in quick oven.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Eating in Oxford.

Quotation for the Day …

“ Love in a ——— ”

“ Do you love me ? ” said the cup to the custard.
“ I'm just brimming up in you,” replied the custard.
“ You sweet thing,” answered the cup.
“ Delightful.”

A Golden Rule.—Hold fast to that which is good.

[From the cookbook featured today! I don’t quite know what to make of this.]

The Breakfast of Travellers.

Today, June 11^th …

Today is a public holiday in most of Australia. It is the Queen’s official birthday, hence, as a relic of our colonial past and in recognition of Her as Head of the Commonwealth, we get a Monday off work. It is the one day a year I am a minor Royalist, in gratitude for the holiday.

For those of you who must drag yourselves reluctantly to work this Monday morning, pause a moment and think yourself back to 1911, when June 11^th was a Sunday. On this retrospecive Sunday morning imagine yourself aboard the magnificent R.M.S. Lusitania and blissfully unaware of its fate in 1915 at the hands of a German U-Boat. Your imagination can only manage Second Class, but the breakfast choices are still pretty good.

Apples
Oatmeal Porridge and Fresh Milk
Broiled Codfish Steaks Aberdeen Haddock
Boiled Eggs to Order
--
Broiled Cumberland Ham Fried Eggs
Grilled Beef Steak Saute Potatoes
Rice Cakes, Golden Syrup
--
COLD
Corned Beef
--
Watercress
White & Graham Rolls Soda Scones
Vienna Bread
--
Marmalade Jam
--
Tea Coffee Cocoa

Ham and eggs sound a good breakfast choice, but my history choice today is the Soda scones, for there is in soda scones the complete history of grain-based cuisine.

On the sad off-chance that there may be some of you who don’t know what a scone is, it is the little treat defined by the OED as “ … generally, a soft cake of barley- or oatmeal, or wheat-flour, baked in single portions on a griddle or in an oven. Also with defining words, denoting varieties of this cake, as butter, potato, soda, treacle scone; brown scone, one made of whole meal; drop-, dropped scone, one made of a small portion of batter dropped on the griddle or on a tin and baked.”

If you grow grain, what can you do with it to make it more digestible and palatable? You can soften up the whole grains in water, boil them up, and make a sort of porridge called frumenty. You can first grind the grain to a varying degree from very coarse to very fine. You can then get creative with this idea of grain mixed with water. Your mixture can be varied, depending on which grain you use, how ‘wet’ you make it, and what else you add to enrich it. You can cook it on a flat hearthstone or metal griddle over your fire, or inside your oven, if you have one. From this grain and liquid you can end up with:

Pancakes, drop scones, or pikelets (Australia) or hoe-cakes (America) – with a wettish batter, cooked on a griddle.
Griddle (or girdle) scones – with a bit less liquid so you have a dough rather than a batter. Or a damper, if you are in Australia and make one large scone with your dough.
Bread – if you add yeast (or the air adds it for you).
Cakes and soda scones – if you add a rising agent such as baking powder.
Pastry - if you add fat, and handle lightly.

Baking powder leavening agents were developed in the mid-nineteenth century, so by definition, soda scones did not exist before then. A textbook of 1848 called “School chemistry: or, practical rudiments of the science” by Robert Dundas Thomson describes how this works “Soda scones are made by mixing bicarbonate of soda with the flour, and then baking the mass up with buttermilk; the acid of the milk displaces the CO2”

In yet another example of two countries with a common culinary heritage being divided by their common language, what is called a ‘scone’ in England and Australia, is a ‘biscuit’ in the United States. Technically, the word ‘biscuit’ means ‘twice cooked’ – so a crisp, hard thing - so we who use ‘scone’ for this soft cooked dough tend to feel linguistically correct and therefore superior on this point. Imagine my surprise then, when I took up that quintessentially English cookbook author, Isabella Beeton (1861), to give you her soda scone recipe, to find that she calls them Soda Biscuits!

A book of the same era - Cookery and domestic economy, by Somerville (1862) – recognises the difference (or is it the similarity?) and gives these two recipes:

American Biscuits.
Mix half a pound of sugar with one pound of flour, half a tea-spoonful baking powder, and rub in four ounces of butter; make into a dough with warm milk, roll out thin, cut them out, and bake immediately in a quick oven.

Soda Scones.
To every pound of flour give one half tea-spoonful of carbonate of soda, and the same of cream of tartar, make it into a dough with very sour butter-milk; knead quickly; make it up in small round balls, roll out pretty thin, prickle them with a fork, and bake immediately on a hot griddle or in the oven. A little butter rubbed amongst the flour may be added if wanted richer, and a few currants.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Life with Dates.

Quotation for the Day …

In nothing more is the English genius for domesticity more notably declared than in the institution of this festival - almost one may call it - of afternoon tea...The mere chink of cups and saucers tunes the mind to happy repose. George Gissing.