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Dropped Biscuit
4 cups sifted Gold Medal flour 1 teaspoon sugar 1 teaspoon salt 4 teaspoons baking powder 2 tablespoons butter 2 cups milk Mix and sift the dry ingredients four times; cut and rub the butter, mix with the cold milk, beat vigorously for one minute; drop by tablespoons into hot iron gem pans, bake ten minutes in a quick oven. Excellent made with rye or graham meal.
Shortcake No. 1 2 cups sifted Gold Medal flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons baking powder 1/4 cup butter 3/4 cup milk 1 egg Mix and sift the dry ingredients four times; cut and rub in the butter, add the milk, lastly the beaten egg. Spread on a buttered biscuit tin and bake in a quick oven. Split apart at edge, cooling five minutes, spread with softened butter and fill with fruit.
Shortcake No. 2 4 cups Gold Medal flour 1 teaspoon salt 4 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 cup butter and lard mixed 1/4 cup milk Mix and sift the dry ingredients; cut and rub the shortening in, add the milk; bake in two long biscuit tins, marking off in squares before baking. Bake in a quick oven until a good brown. Use a generous quantity of fruit for each layer, dust thick with powdered sugar, pile whipped cream on the top layer just before serving.
If it is wanted crisp and short like pastry, the amount of shortening is doubled and water used to mix rather stiffer than before. All butter makes it more crisp than lard.
Old Fashioned Shortcake, No. 3 2 cups Gold Medal flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon soda 1 cup sour cream Mix and sift the dry ingredients four times; add the cream slowly; beat well for two minutes, pour onto a hot buttered spider or frying pan, cover with a flat tin and set hot griddle over. Be careful not to burn. Turn in less than ten minutes. When done break in pieces and serve on folded napkin.
A cluster of quick-bread recipes built on the same chemical leavening, ranging from a wet drop biscuit to three shortcakes, one of them cooked on the stovetop. A few of the measurements and vessels need translating before you start.
- Quick ovenRoughly 400-425F. The dropped biscuits need the full heat for their ten minutes; the shortcake sheets will take longer, perhaps 12-18 minutes depending on thickness.
- Iron gem pansCast-iron gem pans are the ancestor of the muffin tin. A standard 12-cup muffin pan works, and if you have cast iron, preheat it as the recipe's "hot" implies, and grease it well.
- Sifting four timesRepeated sifting helped with the coarser flour and lumpier baking powder of the period, and it distributed the leavening evenly. Modern flour and powder need one sifting, or a thorough whisk.
- Shortcake No. 2 liquidA quarter cup of milk to four cups of flour will not form a dough; this looks like a misprint. Add liquid until the dough holds; the book's own No. 1 proportions (3/4 cup milk to 2 cups flour) point to something nearer a cup and a half.
- SpiderIn No. 3 a spider is a cast-iron frying pan, originally one with legs. Setting a hot griddle on the covering tin creates top heat, an improvised oven; a heavy lid on a covered skillet over low heat achieves the same and needs watching, since the recipe's warning about burning is the real instruction.
- Sour creamThe sour cream of this period would have been cream left to sour naturally, sharper and often looser than the stabilized product sold now. If yours is too thick to pour, loosen it with a little buttermilk.
- Rye or grahamThe recipe recommends the substitution without qualification. A full swap will give a denser, lower biscuit, so you may prefer to replace only part of the flour.
- Splitting the shortcakeSplit No. 1 while it is still warm, as directed, and butter the cut faces at once. Once cool, a baking-powder shortcake tears rather than splits cleanly.
The Gold Medal Flour Cook Book was published by the Washburn-Crosby Company of Minneapolis, the milling firm that later became General Mills, and it existed to sell a branded sack of a commodity product by proving what could be done with it. That commercial purpose explains the structure of this page: one basic quick-bread formula shown in four guises, with notes on how to make the result softer, crisper, or shorter, and a running comparison of butter against lard. A "dropped" biscuit is simply a biscuit whose dough carries too much liquid to be rolled and cut, so it is spooned instead, a shortcut older than the branded flour itself. The stovetop version, labeled old-fashioned even in this book, preserves the older way of baking in a covered pan on the hearth, and it comes with the instruction to break it into pieces and serve it on a folded napkin.