Dead Men's Bones -- a dessert biscuit

I enjoy watching the Great British Baking Show.  This does not surprise anyone!  I am not a dedicated baker -- I tend to wander here and there in the cooking world (again, not a surprise) -- but that show is a delight.  I often wonder what I would do if I was in the contestants' shoes, and honestly assess my skills as seriously lacking in comparison with theirs.

The technical challenge is especially intriguing to someone who plays with old recipes.  The "pared down" recipes sound so much like what old recipes say!  "Mix it, cook it, and serve" quite often are the type of directions old recipes have, or they say things like "boil" without specifying how hard, how long.  (Note to my gentle readers:  "boiling beef" means use a gentle simmer, or the meat becomes tough and chewy.  Trust me on this one.)

So when I was reading The Cookery Book of Lady Clark of Tillypronie and spotted the sweet biscuit recipe called "Dead Men's Bones," I was intrigued.  I didn't realize how much like a GBBS technical challenge it would be until I set out to try it.

The Lady's book was written during her lifetime and published by her husband after her death.  It is a compilation of Victorian era recipes and, because of the large number of them as well as their simplicity and the variations due to many cooks contributing, is considered to be very important and representative of the time.  In a previous post, I made the recipe for Frontignac (elderflower syrup).  Click here to read it.

Halloween is rapidly approaching and I wanted to make this recipe available in time for it.  

From page 27, in the "Biscuits, Sweet" section, we are given:

This looks pretty straightforward.

5 ounces all-purpose flour

4 ounces sugar

3 egg whites

vanilla to taste

My Notes

I used vanilla-scented sugar, so I did not add any more vanilla.  

Now here is where the technical challenge jumped right in:   How much should the egg whites be whipped?  

I decided to take them to about firm peak.

Here is where the trouble began.  When I mixed in the flour and sugar, the whole thing became thick and stiff.

I suspected (and I was right) that there was no way this would go through a funnel.  I decided to drop spoonfuls onto my baking sheet and bake them at 325 degrees F.  After 11 minutes they were very light brown on the bottom.

When they cooled, they were crunchy but not crisp.  They had a nice vanilla and sweet flavor.  

However nice they were, they were not what I expected from the recipe.

Take Two

I decided to add about 3 tablespoons water to thin the batter down and make it runny enough to pass through a funnel.

It worked but it flowed so slooooooooowly that I ended up using a chopstick to push it through.

You can see above that I made them small.  I tried the round (ratafia) and the long shapes and a few creations of my own.

I had no idea how long to let them "rise a little before the fire" and the batter was spreading so I waited maybe five minutes before putting them into the oven at 325 deg F.  It took 8 minutes to get the bottoms lightly browned.

Then I glazed them with just powdered sugar mixed with a little water and brushed on them while they were hot.

They weren't really crisp as much as they were chewy, and too sticky from the glaze, even after they cooled.  The flavor was a nice vanilla but, frankly, they weren't interesting to eat.  After a few hours, they were downright hard to bite.

Take Three

I used the same quantities but this time didn't beat the whites very much.  Really just until foamy and not showing liquid white below the foam.

The flour and sugar mix still made it stiff so I added a little bit of water until it was thick but flowed smoothly.

I put some on my silicone-coated pan and some on a standard baking sheet and baked them at 350 degrees F.  My hope was that baking them a little faster would crisp them.  

At 10 minutes, they weren't looking baked.  At 12 minutes they were almost there.  And then life intervened and I didn't get back to them until 14 minutes...

The ones on the silicone pan came off and were obviously overbaked.  You can see that they flowed together while baking as I had left a good 1/2 inch or more between them.  

They did not taste good as they were tough and dry.

The ones on the standard baking sheet were glued solid on the surface.  

You can see the broken one -- that is where I used a spatula with great effort to remove the cookie.  The rest had to be soaked about an hour in hot water to be removed.

The Verdict

I was glad I was not in the tent and that Paul and Prue were not watching.  What a disaster!  I ended up throwing the cookies away.

Failure.

I have since done some reading.  I probably should have baked them at a lower temperature (say, 300 degrees F) instead of increasing it to 350.  

I'm not sure how much the egg whites should have been beaten.  

The addition of the flour is what bothered me.  If it had been just sugar, the cookies would have been a crispy meringue.  The flour seemed to bring the whole mixture to a thick dough instead of a batter.

What Lady Clark would have done is beyond me.

Sausage Rolls and Queen Victoria

 Wow.  I watched the entire three seasons of Masterpiece Theater's Victoria series.  I am excited for the fourth season!  I think the actors are wonderful and I am thoroughly caught up in the stories of their lives.  But, as what happened when I watched Downton Abbey, my attention got riveted on the kitchen scenes.

I was impressed with the actor, Ferdinand Kingsley, who played the chef Charles Elmé Francatelli.  Something they showed several times was him vigorously mixing things in bowls -- and the actor looked like he was really putting in the effort it took to make mayonnaise and other goodies.  

My favorite guest taster noticed my interest, did some research, and discovered that Mr. Francatelli (the real one!) had published some cookbooks.  He bought me A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes.  It was originally published in 1861.  

What I like about this book is that the man who wrote it was in charge of cooking for Queen Victoria and her royal household.  Later, he was a cook/chef/manager for a number of notable clubs in England, mixing with all sorts of upper class people, I'm sure.  He could have looked down upon the working class as not worthy of tasty food that is prepared well.  He could have thought his talents and experience were too high for the common folk.  But he wrote this book, for them.  He included tips and advice to the woman of the house, encouraging her to think broadly about what she can fix with inexpensive cuts of meat, or to treat her family, or to stretch what she can afford.  To me, he comes across as a kind man.

There are several recipes I want to try.  This one, Sausage Rolls, is quick and convenient because today I have bread dough.  Usually I make one big loaf with my sourdough starter but today I used half to make a loaf and the other half is reserved for this recipe.  It is recipe number 85 on page 44.

Sausage Rolls

Procure a quartern of dough from the baker's, knead this with four ounces of butter, dripping, or chopped suet; divide it into twelve equal parts, and use each piece of paste to enfold a beef sausage in it; place these rolls on a baking-tin, and bake them in the oven for about twenty minutes or half an hour.

My Redaction

1 pound and a little more sourdough bread dough

1 ounce and a little more butter (softened)

1/2 pound homemade sausage, blend #3  (click here to learn what this is)

My Notes

A quartern of dough was about four pounds by weight.  My dough was a little over 1 pound, so I kneaded it with a little over 1 ounce of butter.  This made the dough very slippery and buttery. 

I didn't have beef sausages but, being a resourceful working-class cook, I made do with some of my homemade sausage.  I cut the meat into four equal pieces and patted them into beef sausage shapes.  

I cut the dough into four equal pieces, flattened them out as best I could, and embedded a piece of sausage in each one.  This was challenging because buttery dough does not really want to stick to itself.  I persevered and encased the sausage completely, although I don't think the rolls were really very attractive to view.

They baked in a preheated oven at 375 degrees F. for 30 minutes, which made them lightly brown and smell really good.  

The Verdict

I let them cool to be comfortable to handle, and served them with a good, coarse mustard.  My guest taster and I weren't hungry enough for a full meal, so we just had one roll each and some pinot noir on the side.

I worried that the bread-to-sausage ratio would be too big, that we would feel like we were eating chunks of bread that might have some sausage in it somewhere, but that wasn't the case.  There was a lot of bread but it wasn't dominating over the sausage except near the ends, which is usually what happens when you have a bread-encased whatever.  

The butter proved to be a good addition.  The bread was flaky, not doughy or dense, which my guest taster commented on favorably.  I was pleased with the result.  A few places were a little undercooked but not in any way that put me off.

The flavor was what you might expect:  tasty bread with tasty sausage.  The mustard was a good addition, as long as it was put on lightly, or you couldn't really taste the meat.  The bread and meat combination was a good one, but that is not surprising.  I enjoyed it and so did my guest taster.

It might have been better to cook them at 400 degrees F instead.  The bread soaked up the fat from the sausage, especially on the dough between the meat and the metal tray.  It was moist but not raw or sticky.  I think a higher temperature might have browned the surface better, and cooked the dough more to the middle, but I do have to point out that the sausage was cooked all the way through.

I suspect that I should have kneaded the dough longer to mix the butter in.  I'm not sure why I think that but it seems like it might have given the dough more time to absorb it before shaping and baking.

Success!  I would do this again for a simple dinner or fun food for a gathering.  We had the two other sausages for breakfast the next morning, which was tasty and fun.  I might try it again (the next time I make bread!) with actual sausages, and attempt to make the bread casing thinner.

And, just for kicks and bragging rights, here is my loaf of sourdough bread: