Scone

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The scone first shows up in writing in 1480, inside a petty customs account about a baker named Frank Mathewe. The clerk recorded that his small wooden chest held "400 spice cakes and 500 scone Jesus". The strange wording has a simple explanation. Bakers of that era stamped a figure of Jesus onto their goods to prove the flour was of the highest grade.

  That baker's chest holds the oldest known trace of a food that is now baked across the world. It is a traditional British and Irish baked good, and a cousin of it turns up on several continents. Yet nobody quite agrees on what to call it, or even how to say the name aloud. Where does the word come from? Is a scone a bread, a cake, or something else entirely? And how did a humble griddle bake become the centrepiece of an afternoon ritual?

  222621

• 2. A Word in Dispute

  ›

  In Ireland, the word scone rhymes with "tone". Natives of the United States say it the same way. In Northern England and Scotland, people make it rhyme with "gone", and that version also seems to be favoured in Southern England, the Home Counties and East Anglia. The "tone" pronunciation is strongest in the English Midlands, with smaller patches in Cornwall and Essex. British dictionaries usually list the "gone" form first while still recognising the other. A poem has even been written that plays on the difference.

  The spelling is no easier to explain. The origin of the word is obscure, and several sources have been proposed. The most widely accepted candidate is the Scottish Gaelic sgonn, meaning a large lump or mass. That fits an early scone, which was a rustic loaf shaped by hand. The word also appears in a 1513 poem, Aeneid, by Gavin Douglas.

  Other theories are less favoured in linguistic studies. One points to the Middle Dutch schoonbrood, meaning fine white bread. The Middle Low German schöne, also meaning fine bread, may have played a part as well.

  Sheila MacNiven Cameron offers a different route. She derives the word from the town of Scone in Scotland, pronounced "skuːn". It was an ancient capital where Scottish monarchs were crowned. The Stone of Scone is still used in the crowning of the monarchs of the United Kingdom.

  One piece of the vocabulary is settled. In Scots and Northumbrian English, a griddle is called a girdle. Linguists explain the swapped sounds as metathesis.

  The pronunciation question gained a very public moment in 2006. During the Austrian presidency of the European Union, the scone was chosen as Ireland's representative for Café Europe.

  347812

• 3. Bread, Cake or Neither

  ›

  The Oxford Companion to Food, written by Alan Davidson, names the scone as a cake. The Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries describe it the same way. Not everyone is convinced. In 2018, a discussion among Facebook users ended without agreement on whether scones are bread, cake, or deserve a category of their own.

  Food writers and producers lean toward that third answer. They argue that a scone is richer than bread but not as rich as cake, with a texture all its own.

  The method supports them. Bread dough is kneaded, but scone dough is only lightly worked. Cake, by contrast, starts from a batter, which a scone never is.

  One regulator has taken the argument to its logical end. Food Standards Australia New Zealand classifies scones as neither bread nor cake. It places them in a category titled Scones and Rock Cakes.

  36131419

• 4. Oats, Griddles and Baking Powder

  ›

  During the Middle Ages, scones were piled up alongside biscuits to build wedding cakes. Few written recipes survive from that time. The earliest known recipe belongs to a folio of handwritten recipes held at the Wellcome Collection, and it dates from 1669.

  Its title is "Mrs Fellard's scone cake". The ingredients are flour, currants, eggs, sugar, cream and a pint of ale yeast. That yeast marks it as a different creature from the baking-powder scone of today. The recipe also offers variations. One is savoury, made with bacon and served with gravy, much as American biscuits are served now.

  Scotland tells the humbler side of the story. A History of Scotland from the Earliest Times reports that in the 17th century, poorer people baked "oat cakes, or the scone of bere or barley" on a griddle. Another book, History of Scotland from Robert the Bruce to the Union of the Crowns, describes the reign of James VI. It says the poorer people "ate brose and scarcely anything else, and the scone, the bannock, kirnmilk and the kebbuck or cheese".

  The change that produced the modern British scone came in 1843. That was the year baking powder became available to the masses, and the sweetened scone known today first appeared. Scones are now sold in bakeries, convenience stores and supermarkets.

  2123241526

• 5. The Cream Tea Table

  ›

  In the early 19th century, scones became a staple of afternoon tea. The custom is reputedly credited to Anna, Duchess of Bedford. She is said to have popularised eating scones with tea as a light refreshment between meals. The sweetened scone is now a basic part of both the afternoon tea and the cream tea.

  The cream tea has its own paper trail. The first written link between scones and the cream tea comes from The Cornishman in 1932. Yet it is reported that Devonians had adopted scones before the Cornish did. The usual toppings are butter, jam and cream, and strawberries are sometimes added.

  The business side is considerable. A 2005 market report valued the United Kingdom scone market at £64m, an increase of 9% over the previous five years. Part of the rise comes from a growing taste for impulse and convenience foods.

  Shape depends on where the scone is made. Commercial scones are usually round, though some brands are hexagonal because that shape tessellates and saves space. At home, scones may be triangles, rounds or squares. Home baking is often tied to heritage. Cooks tend to rely on family recipes rather than cookbooks, and one relative usually holds the most treasured version.

  Devotion to the scone can also be measured in miles. In 2023, a woman from West London finished a project that had taken a decade. She had tasted a scone at every National Trust location, 244 sites across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

  2130272031

• 6. Sweet, Savoury and Fried

  ›

  British scones can be lightly sweetened or savoury, and they often hold raisins, currants, cheese or dates. Most sweet versions use self raising flour, milk, sugar and a fat, traditionally butter. The British celebrity baker Mary Berry adds an egg to her scone dough.

  Scotland and Ulster have their own savoury family. Soda scones, also called soda farls, sit beside soor dook scones, which are made with sour milk. Then there are potato scones, known in Scotland as tattie scones. They resemble small, thin savoury pancakes made with potato flour. Also called potato farls or potato cakes, they are most often fried and served in a full Scottish breakfast or an Ulster fry.

  The griddle scone skips the oven altogether. It is baked on a griddle or frying pan, and goes by many names. Scots speakers call it a girdle scone or a drop scone, and in Northumbrian English it is a Singin' Hinnie. In New Zealand, griddle scones are usually cooked as one large disc and cut into wedges. They are often served with golden syrup or jam.

  Some recipes stray further. The lemonade scone replaces butter and milk with clear lemonade and cream. The fruited scone mixes in currants, sultanas, peel and glacé cherries. In some countries, cheese or bacon is mixed in or piled on top.

  3334374541

• 7. Scones Abroad

  ›

  In Australia, the pumpkin scone, made with mashed cooked pumpkin, gained wider exposure when Florence Bjelke-Petersen was in the public eye. Date scones are also found there. Another older method, used in the colder months, is to deep-fry or pan-fry the dough in dripping or oil. These fried scones are called "puftaloons".

  Canada welcomes both the British and the American types. In Newfoundland and Labrador, the American style appears as a close relative called a "tea bun". Recipes often use evaporated milk and may be sweet or savoury. Fillings include raisins, blueberries, lingonberries, molasses, crowberries, coconut or salted pork.

  New Zealand counts the scone as part of kiwiana. It is among the most popular recipes in the Edmonds Cookery Book, the country's best-selling cook book. The Edmonds version is unsweetened, using only flour, baking powder, salt, butter and milk. Cheese scones are a favourite in cafes and tea shops, where they are commonly served toasted with butter.

  In South Africa, scones come with cream and jam, and grated cheddar cheese is another popular partner.

  Hungary has a lookalike called pogácsa. It is made with yeast rather than baking powder, and it is almost always savoury, with seasonings and toppings such as dill and cheese. Several neighbouring languages have adopted the name.

  In Argentina and Uruguay, scones arrived with Irish, English and Scottish immigrants, and with Welsh settlers in Patagonia. Britons are the third largest foreign community in Argentina. The texture differs from the British scone. People eat them with tea, coffee or mate, or as part of merienda, the Argentinian afternoon tea.

  The American scone is a different product from the rest of the world. It contains more butter and sugar, so it is richer and meant to be eaten alone. It is usually triangular, with blueberries, sultanas, pumpkin, cinnamon or chocolate chips, and sometimes icing. It turns up in coffee houses. American biscuits and cobbler batter are closer to the traditional British scone.

  In Idaho and Utah, the local "scones" are a different thing again. They are fried sweet yeast dough, with buttermilk and baking powder or soda added. They resemble Native American frybread or New Orleans beignets and are served with butter and either honey or maple syrup.

  In Zimbabwe, scones are often eaten at breakfast with English tea, jam and clotted cream. They arrived during British colonial rule. The scone is sometimes seen as a symbol of the country's historic link to the United Kingdom, one that has been Zimbabweanified.

  3941454451