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Fruit Biscuits
2 cups of flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons sugar 2 tablespoons butter 2/3 cup milk 2 teaspoons citron finely chopped 1/3 teaspoon cinnamon 1/3 cup seeded raisins finely chopped 4 teaspoons baking powder Mix the flour, butter, salt, milk, and baking powder the same as for cream biscuit.
Roll to one-fourth inch thickness, and spread with soft butter not included in the recipe. Sprinkle with sugar, cinnamon and fruit, and roll like a jelly roll. Cut in three-quarter inch slices, place in a buttered tin, bake in a hot oven fifteen to twenty minutes. Chopped raisins may be used in place of the currants.
A rolled, filled biscuit dough — essentially a quick-bread cinnamon roll leavened with baking powder rather than yeast. The method is sound; a few of the quantities and terms need translation.
- Hot ovenSet the oven to 425–450°F. At that heat the slices need the full fifteen to twenty minutes; the tops should be browned and the spiral centres dry.
- CitronThis is candied citron peel, the thick pale-green confection sold at holiday baking time, not the lemon-like fresh fruit or any citrus zest. Candied orange or lemon peel is the closest substitute. Two teaspoons is a token amount — it is there for perfume, not bulk.
- The currants that are not in the listThe final line offers raisins "in place of the currants," but the ingredient list already calls for raisins, so the two do not agree; the wording may have been carried over from another version. Read it as one-third cup of dried fruit, currants or raisins, chopped fine.
- Baking powderFour teaspoons to two cups of flour is heavy by current standards, probably reflecting the single-acting powders common at the time. One tablespoon is ample with modern powder; more than that can leave a soapy, metallic edge.
- "The same as for cream biscuit"Cut the butter into the dry ingredients until it is in small flakes, then add the milk all at once and mix only until the dough gathers. Overworking at this stage gives tough, tight spirals.
- Rolling and cuttingRoll to a rectangle a quarter inch thick, butter and fill, then roll up from a long side. A length of thread slipped under the log and crossed over the top cuts three-quarter-inch slices without squashing them.
- YieldAbout a dozen slices from a standard roll. Bake them close together in the tin so they rise upward and stay soft at the sides, and eat them the day they are made.
Meatless cookery books proliferated in the United States during and just after the First World War, when Food Administration campaigns pressed households to save meat, wheat and fat for the troops and for shipment abroad; "meatless" in that context usually meant patriotic economy rather than principled vegetarianism, though the two audiences overlapped and publishers were happy to serve both. A bread chapter in such a book leans heavily on chemically leavened quick breads, which need no yeast, no long proof and no watching — the sort of thing a cook could turn out between other tasks. Fruit biscuits like these sit at the point where the biscuit and the sweet roll meet: the rolled-and-sliced spiral is the same construction as a cinnamon bun, but built on baking-powder dough, so the whole thing is mixed, rolled, sliced and baked in short order. The candied citron might be read as a gesture toward an older, more festive tradition, since a few teaspoons of peel could suggest a rich fruited bread at small cost.