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Drop Biscuit
Into 1 quart of sifted flour mix 1/2 of a teaspoonful of salt, 1 teaspoonful of sugar and 2 teaspoonfuls of baking-powder and sift again, then rub in I heaping tablespoonful of butter or lard. Mix with sweet milk to a very thick drop batter, almost like a soft dough. Drop by spoonfuls on a buttered pan and bake in a quick oven.
A plain baking-powder biscuit dropped from the spoon rather than rolled and cut. The proportions are sound, with one exception worth catching before you start.
- The leavening is shortTwo teaspoonfuls of baking powder for a quart of flour is well under modern practice, which runs 1 to 1.5 teaspoons per cup of flour. Early baking powders were sold in varying strengths; with a current double-acting powder, plan on 4 to 6 teaspoons for this quantity or the biscuits will bake dense.
- A quart of flourFlour was measured by volume in these books: about 4 cups sifted, roughly 1 lb or 450-500 g. Sifting twice, as instructed, matters here because it is the main thing distributing the powder evenly through that much flour.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh milk, as opposed to the sour or buttermilk called for in soda-leavened recipes. Expect to use around 1.5 cups to reach a batter that just holds its shape on the spoon.
- A quick oven425-450F. Drop biscuits need the high heat to set the outside before the crumb slumps; 12 to 15 minutes is usually enough, and they are done when the tops are dry and lightly coloured.
- One heaping tablespoon of fatThat is roughly 20 g for 4 cups of flour, which is very lean even for a low-cost book. Rub it in until the mixture looks sandy; there is not enough to make visible flakes, so do not chase them.
- HandlingMix only until the flour is damped. A drop batter that has been beaten smooth turns tough, since there is no rolling stage to blame for it.
- YieldAbout 18 to 20 biscuits of ordinary size. They are best within an hour of baking and go stale quickly, having little fat to hold moisture.
Drop biscuits belong to the American chemically-leavened bread tradition that spread after commercial baking powder became cheap and reliable in the second half of the nineteenth century. They are the frugal cousin of the rolled biscuit: no board, no rolling pin, no cutter, and no rest between mixing and the oven, which is exactly why a book of low-cost recipes includes them. The lean tablespoon of butter or lard here tells you as much about the intended household as the title does, since a richer biscuit of the same period would take considerably more fat. "Sweet milk" appears in the text as the standard period term for fresh milk, and may also serve to distinguish this method from the older soda-and-sour-milk breads with which it long coexisted.