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Baking-Powder Breads: Bread
Corn Bread. 2 cupfuls sour milk, 3 eggs, 2 cupfuls Indian meal (white), 1 teaspoonful soda, 1 teaspoonful sugar.
Beat the eggs separately, sift the soda twice through the meal, and add the salt. Beat the ingredients well together, adding the whites last of all. Bake in a moderate oven in muffin rings, with a large spoonful of the batter to each, until golden brown.
Batter Cakes. 1½ teaspoonfuls soda, 3 cupfuls sour milk, 3 eggs, 3½ cupfuls flour.
Beat thoroughly the soda with the sour milk. Beat the yolks of three eggs and add to the milk, then stir in the flour and a little salt, making the batter of the consistency of cake.
Then beat the whites to a stiff froth, fold in, and bake.
Biscuits. 1 quart flour, 4 tablespoonfuls lard, 1 teaspoonful salt, 1 teaspoonful soda.
Sift the flour, add the lard, salt, soda, and enough sour milk to make soft dough; roll thin, cut into biscuits, and bake in a very quick oven. Entire-Wheat Gems. 2 cupfuls sour milk, 2 tablespoonfuls brown sugar, 1 saltspoonful salt, 1 teaspoonful soda.
Stir them all together, add sufficient flour to make a batter that will drop without spreading. Bake in gem pans.
Spoon Biscuit.
BAKING-POWDER BREADS 4 cupfuls sour milk, 2 teaspoonfuls soda, 1 saltspoonful salt, 2 tablespoonfuls melted butter.
To the sour milk add the soda, salt, butter, and sifted flour to form a batter that will drop from a spoon.
Drop into a hot greased pan, and bake in a quick oven.
Five quick-bread formulas built on the same chemistry: soured milk plus soda. The proportions assume ingredients and equipment that have shifted, and two of the five leave the flour quantity to your judgment.
- Sour milk means buttermilkNineteenth-century "sour milk" was raw milk left to clabber, acidic enough to react fully with soda. Cultured buttermilk is the direct modern equivalent; pasteurized milk left on the counter spoils rather than sours and should not be used. Plain kefir or milk soured with a tablespoon of vinegar per cup will also work.
- Soda proportionsThe rule behind these formulas is roughly half a teaspoon of soda per cup of sour milk. If your buttermilk is mild, a little of the soda will go unreacted and leave a soapy, faintly yellow taste — reduce by a quarter teaspoon rather than adding more.
- Indian mealCornmeal, here specified white. The recipe as printed lists no flour at all, so the corn bread is a true all-cornmeal batter: dense, crumbly, and dependent on the beaten whites for lift.
- Salt in the corn breadThe instructions say to add salt but the ingredient list omits it. Half a teaspoon is in keeping with the other recipes on the page.
- Oven temperaturesModerate, quick, and very quick are all used on this page. The usual modern equivalents given for these terms are approximately 350-375F for moderate, 400-425F for quick, and 450F or above for very quick. The biscuits want the high end; the heat sets the outside before the soda has spent itself.
- A quart of flourMeasured by volume, about 4 cups, or a pound. The entire-wheat gems and spoon biscuit give no flour quantity at all — add until the batter drops from the spoon in a lump without running, which for 2 cups of sour milk lands near 2½ to 3 cups.
- SaltspoonfulA quarter teaspoon.
- Muffin rings and gem pansMuffin rings were bottomless metal hoops set on a hot griddle or baking sheet; a standard muffin tin substitutes directly. Gem pans were heavy cast iron with deep oval cups, preheated and greased before the batter went in — the modern equivalent is a preheated cast-iron popover or muffin pan.
- Batter cakes are griddledBatter cakes of this kind were normally cooked on a griddle rather than in the oven, and "bake" was often used loosely of griddle work. Cook on a greased griddle over medium heat, turning once. Entire-wheat gems means whole-wheat flour.
- YieldThe recipes state no yields; as rough estimates, about a dozen corn muffins, a dozen or so gems, about 18 rolled biscuits from the quart of flour, and 20-odd batter cakes. The spoon biscuit uses twice the milk of the gems and will make proportionally more.
Baking powder was widely available by the 1860s, but American home cooks kept using soda and sour milk for decades after, and this page shows why: a section headed "Baking-Powder Breads" in which none of these recipes uses baking powder. Soured milk was free, the by-product of a household that kept milk without reliable refrigeration, and pairing it with soda cost pennies. The same logic explains the run of names here — gems, spoon biscuit, batter cakes — all quick breads that skipped the hours of yeast rising and could be got onto the table for breakfast. "Indian meal" for cornmeal is the older American term, a survival from colonial usage distinguishing native maize from English "corn," which referred to grain generally; it was sounding old-fashioned by the early twentieth century and faded from cookbooks thereafter.