Raisin crisps

Another very successful wartime recipe: raisin crisps.
3oz flour with 1tsp baking powder, half an egg, 1oz sugar, 1oz butter/marge, 1oz chopped raisins and a few drops of almond essence, mixed with milk and cut out small with a 2-inch cutter.
I've never encountered a recipe where you chopped up the dried fruit before mixing it (not anything as small as raisins, anyway), but it works very well; prevents the usual problems with dried fruit sticking out and burning, and probably helps distribute the sweetness/flavour better, as well. I don't even like almond flavouring -- but it isn't detectable in the finished product, which tastes very flavoursome, lasts well in an airtight container, and is good value for money.

The wartime rock buns (from We'll Eat Again) were also the most suuccessful I've ever made: 8oz flour with 1tsp cream of tartar and ½tsp bicarb to 2oz fat (I think I used lard/marge), 2oz sugar, 2oz dried fruit and 1 egg. They were supposed to have a teaspoon of sugar sprinkled over the top before baking, but I forgot that and they were still delicious; light, fluffy and moist.

'Monsieur' redux

On the subject of the Monsieur/Messieurs confusion, I've just started reading Hugo's "The Toilers of the Sea", and was very confused to discover a character who is referred to consistently as "Mess Lethierry", rendered literally as such. I couldn't tell if it was his name or his honorific, and it didn't look like either. I even went to the lengths of locating and downloading a French edition of the novel to see whether the 19th-century translator had become confused and/or altered the punctuation, but the name was printed exactly the same.

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So 'Mess' is an abbreviation in origin, apparently standing for 'Messire', but in this case being used by Hugo to impart a bit of local colour into the setting of his book. And apparently the 'mes' in 'Messire' is *not* plural, but is old French, from the Latin meos — so while 'messieurs=plural, monsieur=singular' is a handy mnemonic to remember which is which, it's not actually the origin of the words. 'Sire' is the oldest term, and 'sieur' and 'seigneur' derive from oblique cases, all stemming ultimately from the Latin senior (in the days when being old was regarded as a qualification for high position rather than a sign that your knowledge was out of date!)

Presumably "mon seigneur" and "mon sieur" arose on the French mainland at a later point, when 'mes' had been replaced by 'mon' as a male possessive, but 'messire' as a title had already fossilised...