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Bina's Strawberry Shortcake
Two heaping tea-spoons baking powder sifted into one quart flour, scant half tea-cup butter, two table-spoons sugar, a little salt, enough sweet milk (or water) to make a soft dough; roll out almost as thin as pie-crust, place one layer in a baking-pan, and spread with a very little butter, upon which sprinkle some flour, then add another layer of crust and spread as before, and so on until crust is all used. This makes four layers in a pan fourteen inches by seven. Bake about fifteen minutes in a quick oven, turn out upside down, take off the top layer (the bottom when baking), place on a dish, spread plentifully with strawberries (not mashed) previously sweetened with pulverized sugar, place layer upon layer, treating each one in the same way; and when done you will have a handsome cake, to be served warm with sugar and cream. The secret of having light dough is to handle it as little and mix it as quickly as possible. Shortcake is delicious served with charlotte-russe or whipped cream. Raspberry and peach shortcakes may be made in the same way.
A biscuit-dough shortcake built as a stack of thin layers separated by butter and flour so they peel apart after baking. The whole method depends on speed and a hot oven.
- The hingeThe butter-and-flour smeared between layers is what lets them separate cleanly after baking. Use a very thin film of softened butter and only a dusting of flour; too much of either and the layers steam apart into something greasy and pasty rather than flaking off in sheets.
- HandlingThe closing note is the real instruction: mix fast, handle little. Stir the milk in with a fork just until the dough holds, roll once, and stop. Rolled "almost as thin as pie-crust" suggests somewhere around 3/16 to 1/4 inch -- thinner than a modern shortcake, which probably accounts for the short fifteen-minute bake.
- A quick oven425-450F. At a lower temperature the layers will dry out before they rise.
- Quart of flourMeasured by volume, roughly 4 cups, about 1 lb 2 oz or 500g. Nineteenth-century soft winter wheat flour was weaker than modern all-purpose; a low-protein or pastry flour gives a more tender result.
- Scant half tea-cup butterA period teacup runs about 3/4 cup, so this is roughly 5 tablespoons (70g) for the dough, plus more for spreading between layers. Cut it in cold, as for biscuits.
- Baking powderTwo heaping teaspoons to a quart of flour is light by current practice, and period powders were generally weaker and more variable than modern ones (double-acting powder did not yet exist in 1877). Four level teaspoons to 4 cups of flour is the modern proportion and will not taste of soda.
- Pulverized sugarFinely ground sugar, the ancestor of confectioners' sugar but without cornstarch. Granulated sugar works; sweeten the berries ahead of assembling, as the recipe says, and give the sugar time to dissolve in the juice.
- Pan and yieldA 14 by 7 inch pan is close to a quarter sheet; a 13x9 baking pan is the nearest common substitute. Four layers of this size should serve eight to ten, and the recipe directs that the cake be assembled and served warm.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping (1877) came out of Marysville, Ohio, and like many church- and club-compiled books of its decade it credits contributors informally, by first name, which is all we can say for certain about "Bina." The recipe belongs squarely to the American biscuit-dough camp of the strawberry shortcake argument: a barely sweetened, chemically leavened short dough, split and filled with fruit and cream, as against the sponge or cup-cake versions that were already competing with it in the same period and eventually won the supermarket. Chemical leavening is what makes the dish possible at this speed, and its appearance here reflects how quickly commercial baking powder had moved into ordinary Midwestern kitchens after the Civil War. The instruction to serve it with charlotte russe, and the note that raspberries and peaches will do as well, are a reminder that shortcake was understood as a warm summer pudding to be got on the table the same hour it was baked.