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Baking Powder Biscuit
2 cups sifted flour 1 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons butter or 4 teaspoons baking powder 2 tablespoons lard or * to 1 cup milk or half milk and half water 1 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon lard Mix and sift the dry ingredients. Add shortening and chop with knife until mealy. Add milk gradually until a soft spongy dough. Turn on to a floured board; toss with knife until whole surface is floured; pat lightly with rolling pin until one half inch thick. Cut in rounds and bake immediately on buttered sheet in quick oven, about twelve minutes.
A plain soda-cracker-era biscuit, and the method still works exactly as written. Two details need translating: the oven and the garbled milk quantity.
- "Quick oven"425-450F. Biscuits need the high heat to set the crust while the baking powder is still lifting; at 350F they spread and dry out. Twelve minutes is right at that temperature.
- The missing milk figureThe original reads "* to 1 cup milk" — the fraction has dropped out of the type. Judging by the flour quantity it was almost certainly three-quarters to one cup. Add it gradually as instructed and stop when the dough is soft and just holds together.
- The ingredient list is a set of alternativesThe run-together column is offering choices, not a cumulative list: 2 tablespoons butter, or 2 tablespoons lard, or 1 tablespoon of each. Total fat is 2 tablespoons for 2 cups flour, which is on the lean side by modern habit.
- Baking powderFour teaspoons to two cups of flour is a heavy hand by current standards; period powders were generally weaker and more variable than modern ones. Two to three teaspoons of modern baking powder gives the same rise without a metallic aftertaste.
- SaltA full teaspoon is on the assertive side; if you are using salted butter, you may want to cut it back to about three-quarters.
- Chop, don't rubCutting the fat in with a knife until "mealy" leaves small flakes rather than a smooth blend, and those flakes are what make the biscuit layer. A pastry blender or two knives does it; fingers warm the fat too much.
- Handle as little as possibleThe tossing-with-a-knife and patting with the rolling pin are deliberate — no kneading, no rolling pressure. Overworking develops gluten and gives a tough, bready biscuit.
- Bake immediatelyThe instruction is not decorative. Once the liquid meets the powder the gas begins escaping; dough left standing on the board rises noticeably less.
- YieldAbout a dozen two-inch biscuits, half an inch thick before baking.
Baking powder biscuits belong to the American shift, through the second half of the nineteenth century, from yeast and hand-mixed saleratus-and-sour-milk leavening to commercial chemical powders sold in tins. By the time Maria Willett Howard compiled this book for the Walter M. Lowney Company — a Boston chocolate manufacturer that, like many food firms of the era, published cookbooks partly to sell its own product — a quick biscuit was assumed knowledge in any household kitchen, which is why the instructions are so telegraphic. The heavy dose of baking powder here reflects the period's variable products rather than a stronger flavor preference; the choice offered between butter and lard reflects what was actually in the larder, lard being the cheaper and, for biscuit texture, arguably the better of the two.