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Plain Biscuits (Women's Institute Recipe)
4 cups Five Roses flour (sifted) 2 teaspoons cream of tartar 1 teaspoon soda 2 dessert-spoons white sugar 1 (small) teaspoon salt 1 cup sweet milk 1 cup sweet cream.
Sift the cream of tartar and soda with the flour. Mix all with spoon, roll out and bake well in hot oven. A handful of currants is sometimes added. If no cream is at hand, substitute 1 tablespoon lard or butter.
A straightforward cream biscuit leavened with cream of tartar and soda rather than commercial baking powder. The dough is soft and wants a fast oven and a light hand.
- Hot ovenThe book gives no temperatures; "hot" in period baking is usually reckoned somewhere around 425-450°F. Bake on the upper-middle rack, roughly 12-15 minutes, until the tops are properly browned rather than pale.
- Dessert-spoonsA dessert-spoon is two teaspoons, so the sugar here is about four teaspoons in total — just enough to brown the crust, not enough to make a sweet biscuit.
- Cream of tartar and sodaTwo teaspoons cream of tartar with one teaspoon soda is the old single-acting equivalent of roughly four teaspoons of baking powder. It begins working the moment the liquid goes in, so mix, roll, cut and get the tray into the oven without pausing.
- Sweet milk and sweet cream"Sweet" means fresh and unsoured, as opposed to the buttermilk or clabbered milk many farm kitchens had on hand. Use whole milk and a cream of 33–35% fat; the cream is the only fat in the dough.
- The cream substitutionThe closing note is not a clean swap: a tablespoon of lard supplies only a fraction of the fat in a cup of cream, and none of its liquid. Presumably more milk is meant to make up the missing cup; either way the result will be leaner and less tender.
- Five Roses flourA hard-wheat Canadian all-purpose flour, stronger than most American all-purpose. Standard all-purpose works; the dough will simply take a little less liquid, so hold back a few tablespoons of the milk and add as needed.
- Handling"Mix all with spoon" is the whole method and it matters: stir only until the flour disappears, then roll about ¾ inch thick and cut. Kneading a cream biscuit toughens it, and there is no folding or rubbing-in step to rescue it.
- YieldFour cups of flour with two cups of liquid is a large batch: expect nearer two dozen biscuits at a two-inch cutter, depending on thickness. Best within an hour of baking; they stale quickly, having no egg and only the cream for richness.
Cream of tartar and soda were the household baker's leavening long before packaged baking powder became universal, and recipes like this one persisted in Canadian farm kitchens. The Women's Institute label is doing real work on the page: by the time the Five Roses book was compiled, the Institutes "Stoney Creek, Ontario, in 1897 " had become the country's rural adult-education network, running lessons in cookery, food safety and household management. The flour brand mattered too. Five Roses was milled by Lake of the Woods Milling Company from Canadian hard spring wheat, and the cook book was promotional literature, distributed cheaply to put that particular flour in the barrel of as many kitchens as possible.