Good Things in England - A Practical Cookery Book for Everyday Use, Containing Traditional and Regional Recipes Suited to Modern Tastes. Florence White
a bushel of fine wheat flour, twenty eggs, and three pounds fresh butter, salt and balm, as to the ordinary manchet, temper it with new milk pretty hot; then let it lie the space of half an hour to rise so you may work it up into bread, and bake it and let not your oven be too hot.’
1932 RECIPE
INGREDIENTS: Fine wheat flour 2 lb.; salt 1/2 oz.; butter 2 oz.; egg 1; new milk (warm, not hot) 1 pint; compressed yeast 1 oz.; castor sugar 1 teaspoonful.
TIME: to rise, 30 minutes; to bake about 20 minutes according to size of manchets.
METHOD
1.Mix the salt in the flour, rub in the butter.
2.Cream the yeast with the sugar.
3.Add it to 3/4 pint of the warm milk.
4.Beat up the egg and mix with the yeast and milk.
5.Make a well in the flour, pour in the yeast mixture, and mix into dough.
6.Shape the dough into small flat round cakes about 3/4 inch thick and 3 1/2 inches across.
7.Mark them across with lines to form diamonds 1 inch in length.
8.Put to rise for 30 minutes.
9.Then bake in moderate oven as above.
Cornish Manchants
Penzance, 1931
Miss M. W. Rogers (Marazion) writes:
‘As to Manchets. In this part of the world, a “manchant” is a loaf of bread shaped by hand, not baked in a tin. The term is still used by Penzance bakers, and the derivative is obvious.’
Manchets Fine
Sent by Miss Ogleby, Washington, Ventnor, Isle of Wight.
For soups, and stews and choice ragouts Nell Cook was famous still;
Her manchets fine were quite divine, her cakes were nicely brown’d;
Her boil’d and roast they were the boast
Of all the ‘Precincts’ round.
From The Ingoldsby Legends.
Huffkins
An East Kent Tea-bread
All over England there are to be bought small traditional tea-breads similar in type but differing more or less in varying districts.
There are for example: Surrey Manchets still made at Guildford and Chertsey; Cornish splits; Devonshire Chudleighs; Bath whigs; Hawkshead wiggs; Yorkshire oven cakes; Norfolk rusks; Kentish huffkins to be found at Maidstone and Elham, near Canterbury, and many others. There are almost if not quite as many varieties of whigs or wiggs (as they are spelt in different districts) as there are of Scotch scones — the plain lighter variety of which they much resemble. They are very good indeed eaten either hot or cold; and are quite easily made.
Huffkins are simply thick flat oval cakes of light bread; with a hole in the middle:
INGREDIENTS: Plain flour 1 lb.; lard 1 oz.; sugar 1 teaspoonful; salt 1/2 teaspoonful; compressed yeast 1 oz.; about 2 1/2 gills of warm milk and water. It is impossible to give the exact quantity of liquid as some flours take up more than others.
TIME: to rise 1 hour; time to ‘prove’ 1/2 hour; to bake 15 to 20 minutes according to size in a fairly hot oven (Regulo No. 7 in the Junior New World cooker is a good heat 375° to 385°F.).
METHOD
1.Warm the mixing basin.
2.Sift the flour and salt together into one basin.
3.Rub in the lard.
4.Cream the yeast with the sugar in another basin.
5.Add the lukewarm milk and water to it.
6.And with it make the flour into a light dough.
7.Cut a cross on it and stand it in a warm place for one hour to rise.
8.Knead well.
9.Divide up into flat oval cakes about 1/2 inch thick; make a hole in the middle.
10.Flour well.
11.Place on warm tin.
12.Allow to ‘prove’ in warm place till well risen.
13.Then bake in hot oven from 10 to 20 minutes according to size.
14.Take out and wrap in a warm blanket till cold; this keeps the outside soft and tender as it should be.
[N.B.—‘Self-baster’ meat tin (see p. 146) is ideal for baking huffkins, and indeed bread and cakes of many kinds.—ED.]
Cornish Splits
Mrs. R. Bennett’s Recipe
INGREDIENTS: Flour 3 lb.; butter 1/2 lb.; lard 2 oz.; yeast 2 oz.; milk 1 gill; salt 1 teaspoonful, sugar 1 teaspoonful, warm water 1/2 pint.
TIME: sufficient to rise twice. Approximately 1 1/2 hours.
METHOD
1.Put yeast in basin with sugar, then add the warm water and add a tablespoonful of flour.
2.Cover with a cloth and leave to rise in a warm place.
3.Put milk, butter and lard in a saucepan to get warm.
4.Warm the flour and put in a mixing bowl.
5.Make a well in the middle and pour in the milk, etc., and yeast mixture.
6.Mix all into a nice soft dough and put to rise as before.
7.When well risen, knead and place on baking tin in small rounds and let them rise again.
8.Then bake in a moderate oven.
9.Take out and rub over while hot with a slightly buttered paper, to give them a gloss.
10.Place them all on a warm blanket or cloth, and cover lightly with the same. This makes the outside soft instead of crisp.
Devonshire Chudleighs
These are made in the same way but smaller.
Whigs 1826
Some plain rolls known as Hawkshead wigs or whigs and a cake known as Hawkshead cake exactly similar to those eaten by Wordsworth when he was a boy at school are still made and sold at Hawkshead; some were shown at the first English Folk Cookery Exhibition held in London on January 16th, 1931.
The following recipe makes whigs slighty richer than the Hawkshead rolls and more like those made and sold at the Red House Restaurant, Bath.
INGREDIENTS: Flour 2 lb.; 1 teaspoonful salt; butter 4 oz.; cream or milk about 1/2 pint; warm water 1/4 pint; castor sugar 1 oz.; compressed yeast 1 oz.; nutmeg; ground mace and cloves; caraway seeds 1/4 oz.; 1/4 lb. sugar.
METHOD
1.Mix the salt with the flour.
2.Rub in the butter.
3.Cream the yeast with the sugar, add the warm cream (or milk) and water.
4.Use it to make the flour into a light paste.
5.Set it to rise.
6.When it is double its bulk, add the nutmeg, mace, cloves, caraway seeds and sugar.
7.Work