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Huntsville Crackers
Take a lump of risen dough, as large as your double fist, a heaping teaspoonful of loaf sugar, <??> with the yolk of an egg. Mix with the dough a lump <??> the size of a hen's egg and an equal quantity of lard, a <??> of soda dissolved in a cup of cream. Beat a long time stirring in flour all the while, till quite stiff. Roll out, cut in square cakes and bake in a brisk oven.--Miss E. P.
A beaten cracker built on a piece of leftover bread dough, with several words lost from the page. What survives is workable if you read the missing quantities as the standard proportions of the period.
- The gapsThree passages are illegible in the source. The most likely readings are "mix" or "rub" with the egg yolk, "a lump of butter the size of a hen's egg" (about 2 oz, since the recipe then calls for "an equal quantity of lard"), and "a pinch" or "a saltspoonful" of soda. These are inferences, not readings from the page itself; treat the amounts as approximate.
- A double fist of doughA fist measure is elastic; perhaps 12 to 16 oz of dough, but the amount is a judgement call. Use dough that has had one full rise and is still soft, not dough that has been shaped and proofed.
- Loaf sugarSugar sold in hard cones, chipped and pounded before use. Ordinary granulated sugar is the equivalent; a heaping teaspoonful is a modest sweetening for this quantity of dough.
- Cream and sodaNineteenth-century cream was often faintly sour, which is what the soda reacts with. Sweet cream plus soda gives very little lift and can leave a soapy taste, so use buttermilk or cream soured with a teaspoon of lemon juice if you want the chemistry to work as intended.
- The beating is the point"Beat a long time" is the hinge. Beaten biscuit and cracker doughs of this family were worked with a mallet or the flat of an axe for twenty to thirty minutes to blister the gluten and drive in air; that mechanical work, not the soda, gives the dry snapping texture. A stand mixer with the dough hook on medium for ten to twelve minutes is the nearest modern substitute.
- Brisk ovenRoughly 400 to 425F. Roll thin, no more than an eighth of an inch, prick each square with a fork, and bake 10 to 15 minutes until pale gold and firm all the way through. Any softness left in the center means they will go leathery rather than crisp as they cool.
- YieldExpect three to four dozen two-inch crackers. They keep several weeks in a tin once thoroughly dry.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named Virginia housekeepers, is full of these initialed recipes traded between households, and this one belongs to the beaten-biscuit family that defined Southern baking before commercial baking powder took hold. The tradition is often explained by the soft, low-gluten wheat flour of the upper South, which is said to have made a light yeast loaf difficult and a hard, blistered, long-beaten cracker the sensible alternative; the labor was supplied before emancipation by enslaved cooks, and afterward the biscuit brake, a hand-cranked roller, gradually replaced the mallet. Recipes like this one, which start from a lump of dough already risen for the day's bread, show how little was allowed to go to waste in a working kitchen. What Huntsville refers to, the book itself does not explain.