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A Flour Cake
Appears in
By David Bowers
Published 2014
A quart of flour two eggs beat up yolks and whites two spoonfulls of barm and as much warm milk and water as will wet it, knead it well and shape it lay it before the fire to rise half an hour and bake it another half hour.
—from an 18th century Irish cookbook manuscript
If there’s no bread in the house, it’s as if there’s no food, and any Irish cook worth his or her salt can generally whip up a batch of scones or soda bread. They’re nearly the same thing, but somehow that difference in shape affects the texture. White scones or fruit scones (as they’re called when you add raisins) seem dense and creamy, while white soda bread is fluffy and lighter. Both, like most Irish foods, benefit from lashings of good butter.