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Soda Biscuit
One quart of flour, two teaspoons of cream of tartar, one teaspoon of soda, one teaspoon of salt, two tablespoons of butter, one pint of milk.
— Mrs. Catherine Van Buren
A bare list of proportions in the older style, with the method assumed. The proportions are sound; what needs translating is the volume measure and the missing oven instruction.
- A quart of flourFlour was measured by volume, so a quart is 4 cups, roughly 1 to 1 1/4 lb (about 450-500 g) of all-purpose flour depending on how it is scooped. Scoop and level rather than packing it, since a quart of compressed flour will throw the leavening ratio off badly.
- A pint of milkTwo cups of milk to four cups of flour gives a wet, sticky dough closer to a drop biscuit than a rolled one. If you want to roll and cut, hold back about a third of the milk and add it only as needed.
- Cream of tartar and sodaThis is homemade baking powder: two parts cream of tartar to one part soda, which is the standard ratio. It begins working the moment the milk goes in, so mix quickly and get the pan into the oven without delay.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because the cook was expected to know. Soda biscuits want a hot oven, 450F, for 12 to 15 minutes, until well risen and browned on top.
- The butterTwo tablespoons for a full quart of flour is lean by modern standards and gives a plain, bready biscuit rather than a flaky one. Cut it into the dry flour while cold; four to six tablespoons will give a richer crumb, though many modern recipes use more fat still.
- HandlingThe hinge is speed and a light hand. Overworking a chemically leavened dough develops gluten and drives off the gas, and the biscuits come out tough and squat.
- YieldA quart of flour makes a large batch, roughly 18 to 24 two-inch biscuits. Halve the whole list for a household of two or three, as they are best the hour they are baked.
Soda biscuits belong to the period when chemical leavening was displacing yeast for everyday bread on American tables. Before commercial baking powder became cheap and reliable in the later nineteenth century, cooks mixed their own acid and alkali at the bowl: cream of tartar, a byproduct of winemaking sold at the druggist, against bicarbonate of soda, which older books often call saleratus, though the name earlier attached to potassium bicarbonate. The result was bread in well under an hour rather than half a day, which is why receipts like this one crowd the pages of village and church collections, contributed by name and passed between neighbors as proportions rather than method. A compiler could print six ingredients and no instructions at all and expect to be understood.