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Maple Biscuit
To the well-beaten yolks of twelve eggs, add half pound of powdered or granulated sugar and half a cup of sweet milk; mix one tea-spoon baking-powder in a (scant) half pound of sifted flour, then sift the flour gently into the batter and add flavoring, bake in biscuit pans, spreading the batter one and a half to two inches thick in the pan. If rightly made it will be very light. Do not bake too fast, and have the over about as for sponge cake. When cold, cut into slices three inches long and one inch wide. Ice the sides, ends and top with white, pink and chocolate icing. Dry in oven, and then, if desired, the bottom may be iced. Build in square blocks and place on table. Serve a plate of the white, one of the pink, and one of the brown, or they may be mixed in building.-Mrs. J. S. Sperry, Nashville, Tenn.
This is a rich yolk sponge baked in a slab, cut into fingers and iced on all sides — closer to petits fours than to anything a modern cook would call a biscuit. The batter has no fat and no liquid beyond half a cup of milk, so its lift comes entirely from the beaten yolks.
- Beat the yolks properlyThis is the hinge. Twelve yolks with the sugar must be whipped until pale, thick and falling in ribbons — five to eight minutes in a stand mixer. Underbeaten yolks give a dense, leathery slab that no amount of baking powder will rescue.
- WeightsHalf a pound of granulated sugar is about 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons. A scant half pound of sifted flour is roughly 7 to 7.5 oz, or about 1 3/4 cups; weigh it if you can, since the whole structure depends on not overloading the eggs.
- Fold, do not stir"Sift the flour gently into the batter" means exactly that — sift it over the surface in three additions and fold with a spatula. Beating in the flour deflates the yolk foam.
- Oven"About as for sponge cake" and "do not bake too fast" point to a moderate oven, in modern terms somewhere around 325-350F. At a 1.5 to 2 inch depth expect roughly 25-35 minutes; the top should spring back and a skewer come out clean.
- Biscuit pansPeriod biscuit pans were generally shallow rectangular tins. A 9x13 pan with sides deep enough to take a 1.5 to 2 inch layer suits this quantity; a full sheet will be far too thin.
- FlavoringUnspecified, as was usual — read it as 1 to 2 teaspoons of lemon extract, rose water or vanilla. Despite the title there is no maple in the recipe, and adding maple syrup would throw off the liquid balance.
- The icing and the dryingThe three icings were most likely a simple confectioners' sugar and egg-white glaze, tinted pink and flavored with melted chocolate for the brown. If you use raw white, use pasteurized. "Dry in oven" means a barely warm oven, 175-200F or the residual heat of a switched-off one, only until the surface sets; too much heat will crack the glaze.
- Twelve spare whitesThe recipe uses only yolks. The whites go naturally into the icing, with plenty left for meringues or an angel food cake.
- YieldA 9x13 slab cut into 3 x 1 inch fingers gives roughly 36 to 40 pieces. She directs you to build them in square blocks and to serve a plate of the white, one of the pink and one of the brown, or to mix the colors in building.
The name may well be a drift from Naples biscuit, the eggy sponge finger that appears in English and American cookery from the eighteenth century onward and turns up in older books as the base for trifles and charlottes; nothing in the ingredient list suggests maple sugar was intended. What Mrs. Sperry has done is take that sponge, bake it thick rather than piped, and finish it as a party confection: iced on every face, dried hard, and stacked in colored blocks on the tea table. Buckeye Cookery (1877) gathered contributions from women across the Midwest and South, and the instruction to "build in square blocks and place on table" is about display as much as flavor; white, pink and chocolate were familiar icing colors, the pink often got from cochineal.