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Cheese Biscuits No. 2
1/4 pound of soft cheese 2 cups of flour 4 teaspoons of baking powder 1 teaspoon of salt 1 cup of water Mix and sift the dry ingredients, then work in the cheese with a fork, and add the water slowly. Place the dough on a floured board, roll out, and cut with a biscuit cutter. Put in a buttered pan and bake in a quick oven from twelve to fifteen minutes. The biscuit may be sprinkled with cheese before being put into the oven.
A plain baking-powder biscuit with cheese worked in place of most of the fat. Two things need translating: the oven and the word "soft."
- Quick ovenBake at 425-450F. Twelve to fifteen minutes at that heat is right for a half-inch biscuit; lower and slower gives a pale, dry result since there is little fat to carry browning.
- "Soft cheese"In an American cookbook of this period this means a young, moist, easily mashed cheese - a fresh farmer cheese, pot cheese or a mild soft-curd American cheese - not brie or cream cheese. A crumbly fresh farmer cheese or a well-drained whole-milk ricotta behaves closest. 1/4 pound is about 4 oz, roughly 1/2 cup.
- No fat at allThere is no butter or lard in the dough, so the cheese is doing the shortening's work. If you substitute a firm aged cheddar, grate it fine and expect a tougher, more bready biscuit; a tablespoon or two of butter cut in first fixes the texture without altering the character.
- Baking powder quantityFour teaspoons to two cups of flour is high by current standards, where 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons per cup is normal. Baking powders of the period were commonly single-acting rather than double-acting. With a modern brand, 3 teaspoons is ample and avoids the metallic aftertaste.
- The waterAdd it slowly, as directed, and stop when the dough just holds together. Flour then was softer than today's all-purpose and absorbs less liquid; you may not need the full cup. A slack dough here is better than a stiff one.
- HandlingRoll to about 1/2 inch and cut straight down without twisting the cutter. Set the rounds close together in the pan so they support each other and rise upward rather than spreading.
- Yield and servingAbout twelve 2-inch biscuits. Best within the hour of baking - with almost no fat, they stale fast. The optional sprinkle of cheese on top wants to be a drier, sharper cheese than the one inside it, or it will simply melt away.
Meatless cookery of this period was not vegetarianism in the modern sense so much as household economy and wartime food conservation - Britain and the United States both ran official campaigns urging meatless days, and cheese was among the substitute proteins promoted. The recipe's numbering as "No. 2" tells you the same idea appeared more than once. Baking-powder biscuits themselves are an American form, generally traced to the spread of commercial chemical leavening after the mid-nineteenth century, which let cooks put hot bread on the table in under half an hour without keeping yeast alive.