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Plain Biscuits (First Prize Fall Fair)
Into 1 sifter of Five Roses flour, put 1 teaspoon soda, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon salt, 2 teaspoons sugar. Sift 2 or 3 three times, then mix with 2 cups cream and 2 of buttermilk. Roll out half an inch thick, put into smart oven and bake.
A prize-winning fair recipe written for someone who already knew what her sifter held and what her stove was doing. Two things need pinning down before you start: the flour quantity and the oven.
- "1 sifter of flour" is genuinely ambiguousHousehold flour sifters of the period varied in capacity, commonly holding somewhere in the region of three to five cups, though larger ones existed. The 4 cups of liquid here suggest a very large batch, but the original gives no way to be certain. Work by feel: add flour to the liquid until you have a soft dough that just holds together and is barely workable on a floured board.
- A "smart" oven"smart" here means a hot oven; period guidance for hot, quick or brisk ovens falls broadly in the 400–450°F range, so bake at the upper end. Biscuits want the heat high so the leavening lifts fast and sets before the fat renders out. At 350°F they spread and go pale.
- Soda and baking powder togetherThe soda is there to neutralize the buttermilk's acid and give extra lift; the baking powder does the rest of the work. Both are needed.
- The cream"Cream" in a farm kitchen was heavy, often slightly soured, and supplies all the fat in this dough — there is no butter or lard cut in. Use heavy cream (35%). Half-and-half will give a flat, dry biscuit.
- Sift three times, and mean itThere is no fat to rub in, so the sifting is the only thing distributing the leavening and salt evenly through the flour. Skip it and you get bitter soda pockets.
- Handle it as little as possibleMix only until the dry flour disappears, pat or roll to the half inch, and cut straight down without twisting the cutter, which seals the edge and stunts the rise.
- Time and yieldHalf-inch biscuits take 10–14 minutes at 450°F, until well domed and browned on top. Scaled to roughly 8 cups of flour this makes four to five dozen two-inch biscuits — fair-day quantities. Quarter it for a household.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Winnipeg and Montreal, and it was assembled largely from recipes sent in by the women who bought the flour — the credit line "First Prize Fall Fair" is the whole point of the page, an endorsement from a real judging table rather than a test kitchen. Agricultural fall fairs across Ontario and the Prairies ran domestic-science classes alongside the livestock and field crops, and these classes included baking. What distinguishes this entry is the extravagance of using two cups of cream, which was possible in a farm kitchen with its own separator.