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Raised Biscuit
One pint of milk, one egg, one gill of butter, half-pint, or iess, of sugar, two potatoes baked quite dry and mashed through a colander. Mix together over night, with rather less than half a pint of yeast, and flour in proportion. In the morning mould them by hand, with as little flour as possible. These quantities will make three dozen biscuits.
An overnight potato-yeast biscuit — closer to a soft dinner roll than to a baking-powder biscuit. The original assumes you keep liquid yeast on hand and know by feel how much flour a dough will take, so two of its measurements need translating.
- A gill of butterA gill is half a cup, so 4 oz / 1 stick. Softened, not melted, worked into the warm milk.
- The half-pint of yeastThe yeast -- the recipe calls for rather less than half a pint, so just under a cup of liquid homemade yeast or barm, most of which is water and flour rather than leavening. A rough modern equivalent is around 2 teaspoons of instant dry yeast; the missing liquid means the dough will need less flour than the original cook used.
- "Flour in proportion"Genuinely unquantified; the wetness of the potatoes decides it. Expect roughly 5 to 6 cups of all-purpose flour for a soft, slightly tacky dough. Err on the slack side; potato doughs stiffen as they sit overnight.
- The sugarA half-pint is a full cup, which makes a distinctly sweet, sweet-roll-style biscuit. The recipe's own "or less" is an invitation; a half cup gives something closer to a modern supper roll.
- No salt is listedPossibly an omission, as older receipts often left salt to the cook's judgement, though the text gives no indication either way. Add about 2 teaspoons for this quantity of flour.
- The potatoesBaked dry rather than boiled, so they add starch without water. Two medium floury potatoes, riced or pushed through a colander while still hot, then cooled before they meet the yeast. Potato starch is what keeps these tender and slow to stale.
- The overnight riseSet the sponge somewhere cool — 60 to 65F, not a warm modern kitchen — or it will over-ferment and go sour by morning. The refrigerator works for the second half of the night.
- Shaping and second rise"Mould them by hand, with as little flour as possible" is the hinge: extra bench flour at this stage makes the biscuits dry and streaky. Oil your hands instead. The recipe skips the proof, but the shaped biscuits need 45 minutes to an hour until visibly puffed.
- OvenNone is given. Bake at 400F for 15 to 20 minutes, until the tops are deep gold. Three dozen means two or three sheet pans.
Potato in bread dough was one of the standard household tricks of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when yeast was kept alive at home rather than bought. Cooks fed their barm on potato water and mashed potato because the starch gave the wild yeasts something to work on, and the same starch in the finished dough held moisture and kept a loaf soft for days — a real advantage before commercial bread was a daily purchase. The overnight sponge here is the older rhythm of bread-making: mix at night, shape and bake before breakfast, because a slow cool ferment did the work that a packet of fast-acting yeast does now. The name is worth noting too: in American usage "biscuit" covered both the quick baking-powder kind and, as here, small raised rolls.