A little recipe for Catspaw. Culled, with great regard for authenticity, from a Scottish cookbook called "Tried Favourites Cookery Book" by Mrs. E.W. Kirk. In its twenty-third and enlarged edition, after sales of six hundred and forty six thousand. This book I bought from a second hand bookstall, and it had never been used. Possibly never been read. It has twenty-four recipes for various scones, oven or girdle (griddle).

Before I get to the scone recipe, let me quote some more gems from the work (which, by the way, has 6 American recipes, corn bread, corn pone, breakfast muffins, griddle cakes, popovers and crullers. No grits. It also makes prolific use of odd patent foods, such as Plasmon powder (?), and has antique advertisements for surviving and lost products. Some of them belong to that part of the British cuisine which, in 'spaw's words, belong in the garbage bin.

Hough and Macaroni: This is recommended to those thrifty wives who like to make a piece of meat go as far as is consistent with nutritious feeding.

Shape of cold fish and potatoes.

Bomb-Shell (From an old soldier of 1820) This is steak cooked in a scone dough in a cloth. "Very appetising and economical."

Remains of hare.

To dress a lamb's head and pluck. (take out the eyes - it won't see you through the week, but what the heck!)

Half-pay pudding - "without exaggeration, it may be said that this pudding is equal in nutriment to 1 and a half pounds beef steak."

Hygienic pudding

Restorative Meat Jelly

Artificial Asses' Milk

Sir W. Gull's cough prescription

Buchanan's Prune Paste (Invaluable in the home)

Apple Jam that will keep for years

Matrimony Jam

Scones: I lb flour, 2 oz butter 2 oz sugar (if made for tea) half oz cream of tartar, quarter oz bicarbonate of soda, half pint milk or (preferably) buttermilk. (be careful about milk quantities - I think American pints are a little different).

Rub fat into flour, add cream of tartar (and sugar, if using). Dissolve soda in milk, and mix with flour to a stiff dough. Roll out about an inch thick, cut into the needed size, and bake in a moderate oven about 15 minutes, or on a girdle. Serve hot.

On the subject of pronouncing scones, there was an editor of a pronouncing dictionary interviewed the other week who singled out this word for comment. " In the north, they usually say sconns, but scones (to rhyme with stones) when they want to sound posh. In the south, they usually say (this one defeats me, but is halfway between scones and scawns) but sconns when they want to sound posh."

However they're said, if the doctors permit, enjoy!