How To Make Sweet Bath Buns From Jane Austen’s 19th Century England

Max MillerofTasting Historyprepared the lavish treat of bath buns", yeasted sweet rolls made with caraway that were popular among the higher classes during Jane Austens 19th century England.

Now bathbuns sometimes called bath cakes ...isusually sweetened quite a bit and has caraway forflavoring, or did have caraway for flavoring.Today they're usually made with sultanas, or raisins or currants or other fruit.

While the buns were baking, Miller spoke about how the time of breakfast was indicative of class during this time. The later the meal, the more wealthy the residents were, a finer point that was made by Austen in her renowned 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice.

Jane Austen is telling us something about the societal station of Mr. Bingley's house guests who are all from London ...she does this byletting you know that they are having breakfast2 hours or so later. ...See itwas common knowledge that the well-to-do ladiesand gentlemen of London ate breakfast much laterthan the middle classes, especially those who livedoutside the city middle class families like theBennetts.

While the time of breakfast had wide social ramifications back then, it doesn't really matter that much in modern times.

Now this is something thatis completely lost on us now, we wouldn't evenmake that connection or at least I didn't andI've read this book many, many times but when thebook was published in 1813, the people reading would have made that connection.

The buns, however, seem timeless.

The texture is really nice. I do think that one of these one of these will fill me up prettygood. So Jane Austen saying that she was goingto fill up on bath buns makes sense. What I really like is they're sweet, but they're not super sweet. It's not like a dessert. It's very lightly sweet, but the caraway, that flavorcan be easily overpowering and it's not.It's there, it's present but it's not overpowering. It's delicious.