Tea scones and memories of love
I can hear the sound of steam filling the radiators. It’s a reassuring sound reminiscent of the sound of winter heat in our house in Brooklyn. The furnace was decidedly different, enormous by modern standards, but it too heated water in a boiler that became steam which snaked its way up through the pipes in the walls to the radiators. Forced air can’t compete when it comes to that comforting whisper.
It’s cold today, and the weather prognosticators are telling us that it will be more of the same with some deeply cold nights ahead. So, hurrah for our steam heat and the heavy sweater that is keeping me cozy as I write.
It’s a small thing, a very ordinary thing and a powerful prod to my memory. I am experiencing again the same sounds and sense of quiet comfort and security of childhood, when the steam came from water boiled in a furnace fueled by coal.
I wasn’t aware of the effort it took to heat a home. Mine was a world of school and homework and crayons and checkers with my siblings, of daydreaming about the places that I read about in books. I was warm and safe. It never would have occurred to me to think beyond that … and for a few moments I will indulge my more-than-adult-self in reveries that attend the simplicity of a warm house.
I will let the long list of worries, about health and family, politics and the coming material craziness of the season ahead, live somewhere else, darken some other place, while I am engaging in the fantasy that I allow today.
What other pleasures come along with the soft whispers of the steam? Something as warming, something as singular to my childhood.
I think I’ll bake something. And what will I bake today? My grandmother’s tea scones.
My grandmother also lived in Brooklyn. We lived on 55th Street between Third and Fourth Avenue. My grandmother lived on 70th street between 18th and 19th Avenue. It took two buses to get to our house. If I try, I can hear her turn the brass latch on the door under the stoop. I can see her unbuttoning her black coat and removing her hat, smiling as she held her arms open to me. She would rub her hands together, “It’s cold out there, but,” she would comment, and I can hear her laugh as she hugged me close, “it’s so warm in here.”
We all looked forward to her visits. She, though busy helping our mother, always had time for us, and always brought us a treat.
During what were parsimonious times, simple ingredients, limited by income, rationing and the hard experience crafted during the depression, became, with her creativity, the height of luxury for us. Her riches weren’t in things of material value, but in what she did for others, for us.
There were cookies she called “rocks,” having acquired their name from the raisins and nuts that were a part of the recipe, which really wasn’t a recipe but rather a bit of this and that which combined and baked came out as cookies that we loved. How this thrifty grandmother afforded the nut meats would seem to be a mystery to anyone who was not a grandmother.
The more common of these luxuries were plain, ordinary biscuits which my grandmother said made every meal important. No meal was complete without them. I learned to make them when I was too small to reach the table. She would stand me on a chair and show me how to “rub the fat” into the flour, how to add just enough milk and how to meld it all together gently so that the biscuits were light and flaky. I’ve committed that recipe to memory, a treasured gift.
And then there were the “ultimates,” my grandmother’s tea scones. Just thinking of them makes me salivate. She didn’t make them often, because they required three eggs, and eggs were thought of as an extravagant commodity to be used sparingly. They were an exceptional treat for us.
I have her handwritten recipe, one that I copied from a slim, faux leather-covered notebook that she bought at the five and dime. These scones are a variation of what we normally think of as scones … really a sugared biscuit. These are decidedly heavier in weight and texture. You can decide for yourself how to categorize them.
Yes, I’ll make these today, warmed by the rising heat in our radiators and the memories of my sweet, creative, generous grandmother. I’ll make them with a child’s remembrance of security and love. And when my grandsons come to stay with us this weekend, I’ll make them again. Perhaps they will remember the sound of the steam in the radiators, the tea scones and their grandmother.
Ann Ferro is a mother, a grandmother and a retired social studies teacher. While still figuring out what she wants to be when she grows up, she lives in Marcellus with lots of books, a spouse and a large orange cat.
Mabel Gwendolyn Champion’s Tea Scones:
2 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 cup buttermilk (sour milk)
1/4 tsp of salt
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup raisins or currants
2 slightly beaten eggs
1 egg beaten with 1/8 tsp of water (egg wash)
Sift dry ingredients together. Rub shortening in with fingertips until mixture looks like breadcrumbs. Add remaining ingredients (with the exception of the egg wash) with a fork. Turn the mixture out onto a board dusted with flour. Form into a ball and flatten. Roll dough out to a half-inch thickness. Use a large cookie cutter to cut out individual scones. Reroll and cut leftover dough to use up. Brush each scone with egg wash. Place scones on greased cookie sheets. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes or until golden brown. Allow to cool on racks.
