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Tea Biscuits
Follow the usual recipe and bake with two very hot radiators. BOSTON BROWN BREAD No. 1 2 cups yellow corn meal 2 cups graham flour 1 cup wheat flour 1 teaspoon salt 1 cup hot water 3 teaspoons baking soda 1 cup New Orleans molasses 1 quart buttermilk 2 teaspoons melted lard or butter Mix the corn meal, graham flour, wheat flour and salt thoroughly together. Dissolve the soda in the hot water. Whip all the liquids together; turn into the mixed flour; beat well and add the melted lard or butter. Bake in the cooker, using two very hot radiators, for about an hour and a half.
BROWN BREAD No. 2 1 quart buttermilk or sour milk 1 tablespoon melted butter 1½ tablespoons soda 1 tablespoon salt 1 cup New Orleans molasses 4 cups coarse graham flour 2 cups yellow corn meal 1/2 cup currants or raisins 1 teaspoon cinnamon 3/4 teaspoon allspice 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg 1/4 teaspoon ginger Mix the first five ingredients thoroughly; add the flour and meal; mix well; add the fruit and spices. Bake for three hours, using two radiators.
The fruit and spices may be omitted if desired.
These are fireless-cooker recipes: the batter goes into a covered pail set in an insulated box between two pieces of iron or soapstone heated red-hot on the range. Nothing here needs changing except the heat source, and that is the whole difficulty.
- What a "radiator" isNot a steam radiator but a solid iron or soapstone disc, heated on the stove until it glows, then set into the well of the fireless cooker above and below the food container. Two very hot radiators is about as hot a setting as these directions call for, giving the sort of long, gentle moist heat a covered mold in a steamer would.
- The Tea Biscuits lineThe first sentence is the tail of a cross-reference, not a recipe: it points back to the tea-biscuit recipe given elsewhere in the book and supplies only the cooker setting. The two brown breads that follow are complete.
- Steam, not bakeDespite the word "bake," the fireless cooker produces moist heat in a sealed vessel, which is how Boston brown bread was most commonly cooked. Modern practice is a greased 1-lb coffee can or pudding mold, filled two-thirds, covered tightly with foil, standing in simmering water in a covered pot. That is the closest equivalent to two hot radiators.
- Graham flourCoarse whole-wheat flour, stone-ground and unsifted, named for Sylvester Graham. Whole-wheat flour substitutes directly; the coarser the grind the closer to the original crumb.
- New Orleans molassesAn unsulphured cane molasses of medium darkness, sweeter and less bitter than blackstrap. Use ordinary unsulphured molasses; blackstrap will make the loaf harsh.
- The soda and salt in No. 2A tablespoon of salt and a tablespoon and a half of soda for six cups of meal and flour is heavy even allowing for a quart of sour milk and a cup of molasses. Excess soda leaves a soapy, faintly metallic taste and a greenish crumb; No. 1's three teaspoons of soda and one teaspoon of salt are the more reliable proportions.
- ButtermilkThe original means genuinely sour, live churn buttermilk. Cultured buttermilk works; sweet milk soured with a tablespoon of vinegar per cup is thinner and gives a slacker batter.
- Timing and yieldEach batch makes a large quantity of batter, well over two quarts, enough for several 1-lb cans or more than one large mold. No. 1's hour and a half is short for that volume by steam; expect two hours or more, and No. 2's three hours is not excessive. Test with a skewer, which should come out clean and the loaf pull slightly from the tin.
Fireless cookery was a serious domestic movement in the first decades of the twentieth century: an insulated wooden or metal chest, a set of soapstone or iron discs heated on the range, and a claim that food would finish cooking on stored heat while the fire went out and the kitchen stayed cool. Brown bread is a natural candidate for it, since the loaf wants long, damp, gentle heat rather than a hot oven. The bread itself is older than the cooker by a century or more: a New England household staple built on the cheapest local grains, cornmeal and coarse wheat or rye, sweetened with the molasses that came north through the West Indies trade, and leavened with soda against sour milk. It was traditionally steamed in a closed pail or pudding mold rather than baked, partly because early brick ovens were fired for a whole batch of bread at once and partly because the moist method suits a heavy, low-gluten batter. The fruit and spice option in No. 2 pushes the loaf toward a steamed pudding, the line between the two being thin in period cookery.