This article first appeared in Our Sunday Visitor magazine. Subscribe to receive the monthly magazine here.
Fans of the BBC series “Father Brown,” set in a 1950s British village and based on the Father Brown mysteries by G.K. Chesterton, know all about Mrs. McCarthy’s “award-winning strawberry scones.” Mrs. McCarthy is Father Brown’s church secretary and she brings a plate of the crispy, fluffy, jam-stuffed baked goods to many a rectory affair. (The character, played by Sorcha Cusack, departed the series after nine years, in 2023.)
Chesterton was not a gourmet — he had “a lyrical perception of the right proportion of things,” according to friend and biographer W.R. Titterton — but he was a great lover of hearth, home and family life, and he believed in the connective human importance of food and drink. In “What’s Wrong With the World,” he writes that “All true friendliness begins with fire and food and drink and the recognition of rain or frost. … Each human soul has the sense to enact for itself the gigantic humility of the Incarnation. Every man must descend into the flesh to meet mankind.”
Thus it’s a surprise to discover that Mrs. McCarthy and her scones are nowhere to be found in Chesterton’s original Father Brown stories, which don’t develop a backstory or establish a particular village location for the priest-detective. Chesterton wrote these stories to refute the prejudice that Catholic priests were somehow cloistered or unworldly; on the contrary, he proposed, a priest would make an ideal amateur sleuth due to his knowledge of human nature, including human depravity.
To recreate Mrs. McCarthy’s very British scones for American readers took some sleuthing of my own, since baked goods in particular don’t always translate between American and British English. The British scone is more like an American biscuit, with the difference that you rub room-temperature butter into the flour mixture for a more cake-like texture, rather than cutting in cold butter for flaky layers. And unlike American biscuits, British scones aren’t generally served with savories. In Great Britain, a “strawberry” scone means a plain scone served with clotted cream and jam, and debate rages about which to use as the bottom layer, cream or jam. The following recipe can be made plain, as Mrs. McCarthy’s are, or slightly Americanized, with dried strawberries in the batter. (British scones are generally more conservative on the add-ins than their American counterparts.) Try out either version for the next rectory potluck.
Mrs. McCarthy’s Award-Winning Strawberry Scones
Makes 8
— 2 cups flour
— 4 teaspoons baking powder
— 3 tablespoons sugar
— 1/2 teaspoon salt
— 6 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
— 2/3 cup milk (or 1/3 cup milk and 1/3 cup cream), plus 2 tablespoons for brushing
— 1 large egg, fork-whisked
— English clotted cream and strawberry jam (to serve)
— 1/2 pound of fresh strawberries, washed, for dried strawberries (optional)
1. Preheat your oven to 425°. 2. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper. 3. In a large mixing bowl, add flour, baking powder, sugar and salt, and whisk to combine. 4. Cut the butter into soft chunks and add to the dry ingredients, pinching in with your fingers until the mixture resembles coarse sand. If you are using dried strawberries, add the strawberries and stir. 5. Make a well in the center of the dough, add the egg, milk and cream (or just milk) and fork-whisk to combine. 6. Gently stir the wet ingredients through the dry, and then lightly crunch with your hands to bring everything together. The dough should be soft but not too sticky. 7. Lightly flour a workspace and roll the dough out to a 1-inch thickness. 8. Cut with a 3-inch round or fluted biscuit cutter (If you don’t have a biscuit cutter, chopping the dough into rough 3-by-3-inch squares isn’t as pretty, but works fine.) 9. Brush the tops with milk, and bake 13-15 minutes until fluffy and turning golden on top. 10. Serve with clotted cream and either strawberry jam or homemade strawberry sauce.
To make the dried strawberries: Preheat your oven to 200°. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper. Cut 1/2 pound of strawberries directly onto the paper and arrange in one even layer. Cook on low heat until leathery but still plumpish inside, around 2 1/2 hours, flipping the berries once after about 90 minutes.
