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On the Making of the Scone
Foreword:
It is manifestly important to procure from one’s provender the finest and freshest of culinary ingredients. Ensure your flour is derived from organically grown wheat (Triticum aestivum), nurtured as in the fields of Elysian. Check the variety used! ‘Olympus’ is the consistently top-yielding variety. It offers a good stiff straw and an excellent overall disease-resistant package with superior grain quality. Spurn any chemical additive to the flour; such alchemy is to be despised in home cooking if you really wish to communicate your love to the recipients.
Like the flour, the sugar must be fine, organic and unprocessed. Saccharum officinarum, if you can find it, is so much better than Beta vulgaris (the clue, dear Reader, is in the name!)
The butter will be the product of hours of hand-churning the best of Jersey milk, using a traditional sycamore-wood paddle, its blade bleached by use alone and bearing the shiny patina only a woman’s hands may impart to a pole. Sultanas are the only fruit to use in a scone, cultivated as they are in the remoter regions of Asia Minor for their sweetness and seedlessness.
Brook no substitute for the best dark brown eggs, gathered with your own warmed, bare hands from beneath the brood pouch of your two-year-old Maran. Black Copper Marans are a stunning breed. Their feathers have an iridescent green sheen and copper flecks setting them apart in your flock. They are medium-sized and weigh about 7-8 lbs. Their plumage is incredibly soft making them great to snuggle with! And, as a bonus, they’re super easy to handle and socialize well with humans and other chickens.
Method:
The flour must be sifted, into a Mason Cash bowl, from a height of no less than 7 inches to the point of angel-breath fineness, before adding the sunshine yellow butyric shortening, this having been creatively crafted into cuboids of exactly quarter-inch sides. Take your time on this task of mindfulness, carefully cloning the cubes! The butter may then, and only then, be added in one glorious golden tumble. Knead as if fondling the nipples of a young maiden until they melt into the floury depths. The sugar – ah, the sucrose stars – should be added now; the frosty crystals have waited their turn long enough. The golden sultanas are next in the patient queue, joyously trundled in like pea gravel from a builder’s barrow. The egg and milk bring a happy harmony of bedfellows to your dry, downy, duvet of deliciousness. Perform a gentle admixture. It will be moist but, remember Mother’s words: moisture makes for a tumescent rise.
Baked at the usual temperature for scones and removed from the oven at climax, you cannot go wrong.
​Serve warm, to those you love, on a doily-shrouded plate.

Jill Hickling 22.3.25

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