by Mary Jo
Several weeks ago, I set out to write about clotted cream and scones, and it rapidly ballooned into such a massive amount of material that I decided to do two posts, one on clotted cream and one on scones. (Anne Gracie has already blogged on the general subject of afternoon tea.)
And it's still a massive amount of material! In our private Wench discussion loop, we ran wild, and given that the Wenches come from the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia, the range of experience--and opinions!--is vast.
A Short History
To start with an important point: scones are a quick bread, leavened by baking powder or baking soda, not yeast. So while the word "scone" goes back to at least the sixteenth century, it originally described a different product, probably a yeasted griddle cake. Baking powders weren't developed until the early 19th century, and the kind we use now was invented in the 1840s. So Regency scones might be different from the modern kind.
How IS scone pronounced??
The next issue, and this one is BIG: is the name pronounced to rhyme with "own" or with "on?" Peaceable household have been rent asunder by this argument. <G> As a loose generalization, North Americans and Britons from the south of the UK are more likely to say "scown", while Scots, Northern English, Aussies, New Zealanders and South Africans are more likely to say "scon." In the UK, undertones of classism creep in, with Southerners more likely to think that "scon" sounds lowbrow while Northerners think "scown" sounds like "putting on airs." Did you ever dream that this was such a fraught topic????
Here's a fun article from the Oxford dictionaries on the subject. (Complete with pie charts!) As they point out, both pronunciations are in wide use so there isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to say. But that doesn't prevent the fur from flying. <G>
Is a Scone just a Biscuit?
And the last great battle: is a scone the same as a biscuit? One of the Wenches used to be on a Regency era list where asking this question could produce blood on the pixels:
"American biscuits were NOTHING like scones. Even when I provided two recipes side by side, scones were still NOT like US biscuits!!! It was the Americans arguing this, BTW, not the Brits or Aussie/NZers."
This may be related to the fact that American biscuits are soft and/or flaky, while in the UK, biscuit usually means a harder baked good that's more like a cracker or a cookie that can be either sweet or savory. And yet the Americans were arguing that scones and biscuits were nothing alike though biscuits are softish, like scones, in this part of the world.
This segued into a Wenchly discussion on the differences between scones and biscuits, of which our bottom line conclusion is that biscuits are more diverse in how they're made--though a buttermilk biscuit is indeed kissin' kin to a scone.
Another difference is that scones use butter while biscuits generally use shortening. Also, to make scones very light in texture, there's an emphasis on keeping ingredients cold and mixing them very quickly, keeping handling to a minimum because that toughens the end result.
Keeping ingredients cold is something I learned when I lived in England--having "a light hand for pastry" generally means having cold hands. I should bake more often since I tend toward cold hands. <G>
Biscuits tend to have more kneading and handling. Our one Wench who was Southern raised says, "All these fluffy biscuits just puzzle me. Biscuits are supposed to be flaky and break apart in many layers. You put them on a board and pat them out. Fold. Pat down. Fold, etc."
So that's another approach to biscuits. In the American South, gravy biscuits are a divinely unhealthy breakfast staple. (Hot biscuits split and topped with a white gravy that has lots of little bits of sausage in it. When my sister moved to Virginia and started mentioning gravy biscuits, I thought they sounded appalling. Until I ate some from a very find country kitchen. <G> Yum!)
Having provided all that background, here's a recipe provided by Anne Gracie for a very simple, classical scone.
Here's a very basic recipe -- quick and easy. It's 20 minutes from getting down the flour and taking the butter out of the fridge, to putting them warm in a basket. Plain scones need to be eaten fresh from the oven IMO -- but as I only make them when I have visitors, that's no problem. They go very quickly.
And here's a youtube video of a jolly New Zealand chef making scones with absolutely minimal handling. She grates in ice cold butter, does most of the mixing with a knife, and barely touches the dough at all. And they look pretty darned good!
So where do you stand on these great debates? Scowns or Scons? Are scones just a kind of biscuit? And are either biscuits or scones a regular part of your life?
Mary Jo, feeling hungry….!