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Cream Biscuit
1 quart of sifted flour.
Four teaspoonfuls of cream of tartar and two teaspoonfuls of fine table salt, which must be well diffused through the flour. Then add two ounces of fresh, good butter. Take one pint of pure, sweet cream, put in it two even teaspoonfuls of soda and then add it to the flour. The dough ought to be very soft; but should it be too soft, add a little more flour. Work it well, roll it out half an inch thick, cut with a biscuit cutter and bake in a quick oven five minutes.--Mrs. J. H. F.
A cream-of-tartar-and-soda biscuit from the era just before commercial baking powder won universal trust. The measurements are sound; only the baking time needs correcting.
- Work quickly once the cream goes inThe soda is dissolved in the cream, so the acid reaction begins the moment the two mixtures meet. Mix, roll, cut and get the pan into an already-hot oven without pausing, or the lift is spent on the counter.
- Quart of flourA quart of sifted flour is 4 cups, roughly 16 oz. Sift first and spoon it in lightly; scooping packed flour will add several ounces and give a dry, tough dough.
- Pint of creamTwo cups. Use heavy cream — the "pure, sweet cream" of the period was unhomogenized and rich, and half-and-half will not carry the fat this dough depends on. "Sweet" here only means unsoured.
- The leaveningFour teaspoons cream of tartar to two of soda is the classic 2:1 pairing that predates canned baking powder. By the usual kitchen substitution it stands in for something on the order of eight teaspoons of modern baking powder for this much flour -- a generous dose -- and unlike double-acting powder it is single-acting, hence the need for speed.
- Quick ovenConventionally reckoned at about 400-425F, fully preheated.
- Five minutes is too shortHalf-inch biscuits generally need 8 to 12 minutes in a hot oven to cook through and colour; judge by a dry, golden top rather than the clock.
- Two ounces butterFour tablespoons, cut cold into the dry flour before the cream. Cold butter left in flakes is what gives the layers; softened butter simply enriches.
- YieldRoughly two dozen or more biscuits from a 2-inch cutter, depending on how the scraps are re-rolled. Best eaten fresh.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree, 1878) gathered contributed recipes from Virginia households, which is why so many entries end in a set of initials rather than a name. This one belongs to the transitional moment in American baking when cooks raised bread chemically but still measured their own acid and alkali: cream of tartar, a byproduct of winemaking sold at the druggist's, paired with bicarbonate of soda in a two-to-one ratio. Packaged baking powder had existed since the 1850s and was widely sold by the 1870s, but it was often distrusted \-- alum was a genuine and legal formulation as well as the target of a controversy that peaked in the 1880s and 1890s \-- and some housekeepers appear to have gone on blending their own. Enriching the dough with cream rather than buttermilk may mark this as a company biscuit; in a dairying household sweet cream was the more valuable half of the milk, and spending a full pint of it on bread arguably said something about the occasion.