Reader Recipe

Atticus Café Scones

A 25 year quest for a scone recipe comes to a satisfying conclusion for tastebud reader Julie Fallone:

“In the early 1980s my husband and I frequented the Atticus Café, near the Yale campus in New Haven, Connecticut. I was content to eat bread & jam while looking through my book purchases, but Jim’s favorite was the scone. He was mildly obsessed with them, so for years I have tried a number of scone recipes, hoping to find one that compared to Atticus. I tweaked and adjusted but they weren’t the scone he remembered: too cakey, too much like shortbread, too moist, too dry, never ever quite right.

I finally Googled the recipe, thinking it was a long shot. Imagine my delighted surprise to find a posting: “I was the chef at the Atticus Café in the early 80’s and here is my scone recipe.” I felt a rush of adrenaline thinking, this is really it. Quest over! The recipe was quite different than what I had been experimenting with. Cream of Tarter? I was not even close.

So I made them, infused with the love I have had for my husband since the day I met him in 1981. They were beautiful; brushed with an eggwash and embedded with currants. I finally made THE SCONE.”

Thank you Chef John Ryan from the Atticus Café Scones

• 2 cups flour
• ½ cup sugar
• 2 tsp cream of tartar
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 6 Tbs cold butter
• ½ cup chopped walnuts or currants
• 2 eggs with milk added to total ½ cup

Turn your oven on to 375°F and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or aluminum foil. While your oven heats up, mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. Cut the butter into the dry ingredients until it is the size of gravel smaller. Then quickly press/rub the lumps of butter between your palms—imagine flattening the butter into leaves. Work quickly so the butter doesn’t soften. When the mixture resembles cornmeal, stir in the walnuts or currants.

Beat the eggs and milk together in a measuring cup, then pour over the dry ingredients and toss. Gather the mixture like a snowball and flatten it on the counter into a disc about ¾ - inch thick. Cut the disc into pie-shaped wedges and lay them on your cookie sheet. Bake until they are golden brown, 25 to 30 minutes.