THE BEST RECIPES HAVE A STORY
Join us as we re-create the favourite recipes of history’s most fascinating people. Today we’re dusting flour across the kitchen table of Agatha Christie, the Queen of Crime, and baking her delectable teatime scones.
For Heirloom Recipes served hot to your inbox, join Ironclub.
Recipe Vault Rating: 9.6/10
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cooking Time: 10 minutes
Difficulty: Peasy
Pans required: 1 Legacy Pan
There had been ten scones. He was quite sure of it.
The recipe was Agatha Christie’s. And Agatha was famously precise. If she said serves ten, she meant serves ten.
He counted again. Nine. How strange.
He called out, “Is anyone in the house?”
No answer.
The back door was shut. The windows locked. He touched the pan. Still warm.
Was it a clue? Hard to say. He’d never seen a clue.
He checked the recipe again: two cups of flour, 115 grams of cold butter, a pinch of salt. Just enough buttermilk to bring it together. He had followed it exactly.
He couldn’t serve nine scones to the vicar.
While he didn’t know any vicars, surely there were rules. Ten was etiquette. Nine was suspicious.
He would have to even them out.
He picked up one of the fragrant lumps, buttered it, and let the perfect morsel melt in his mouth.
He looked at the plate.
Five.
It had happened again.
Something was very wrong.
And he would get to the bottom of it.
But first, a scone.
You can’t solve a mystery on an empty stomach.
Welcome back to Heirloom Recipes. The Ironclad series that recreates the favourite recipes of the world’s most fascinating people. Meals that reveal the human behind the fame.
We’ve stirred Johnny Cash’s chilli. Slurped Al Capone's spaghetti. And flipped Rosa Parks’ pancakes.
Today we creep into the kitchen of a writer who made a career out of tea, scones, and polite murder.
Agatha Christie lived an extraordinary life long before anyone called her the Queen of Crime. She was a nurse in the First World War, a pharmacist who learned exactly how to poison people, an archaeologist’s wife who spent years living on dusty dig sites, and a woman who once vanished for eleven mysterious days and never explained where she’d been.
Through all of it, she adored the small, steady rituals of a British teatime. A pot of strong tea. A plate of warm scones. A quiet moment before inventing another spectacularly complicated murder.
Agatha Christie in WW1, about to learn a great deal about poisons.
Afternoon tea on the balcony of room 411, Hotel Semiramis, Baghdad.
Agatha travelled Iraq with her tea set, typewriter, and revolver.
Morning writing at Greenway House, Devon.
Agatha wrote in the mornings and did her plotting at night.
2 c white flour
¼ c sugar
1½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda
½ tsp ground cardamom
½ tsp salt
115 g cold butter, cut into small chunks
1 egg
½ c buttermilk
1 tbsp orange zest
1 c fresh or preserved figs, chopped into quarters
Extra flour for the table
Heat oven to 225°C.
Combine the dry ingredients, then rub the butter in with your fingers until the mix resembles breadcrumbs.
Whisk together the egg, buttermilk and orange zest, and lightly fold into the buttery flour until just combined. Lastly, add the fresh figs and mix very gently, making sure you don’t break up all the fig flesh.
The mixture will be quite sticky, so liberally flour the benchtop and gently form the dough into a rectangle about 2 cm thick. Sprinkle extra flour on top if your hands are sticking.
Lightly grease your Ironclad Grande Pan or Legacy Pans.
Using a sharp cookie cutter, cut into 10 rounds and place all 10 in the Grande Pan, or 5 each in the Legacy. You’ll cut the first 6 out, then gently reform the dough to make the remaining 4.
Bake for 10 minutes.
Serve warm with whipped or clotted cream and extra figgy goodness on top.
