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Cheese Biscuits
1 1/2 cups flour 2 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon shortening 6 tablespoons grated cheese 5/8 cup milk Sift together flour, baking powder and salt; add shortening and cheese; rub very lightly with fingers; add milk slowly, just enough to hold dough together. Turn out on floured board and roll about 1/2 inch thick; cut with small biscuit cutter. Bake in hot oven 12 to 15 minutes.
A plain baking-powder biscuit enriched with cheese, from one of Royal's promotional booklets. The measurements are workable as written; only the oven and the odd fractional cup need translating.
- Hot ovenRoughly 425 to 450F. Biscuits depend on a fast oven to set the crust before the baking powder has spent itself; 12 to 15 minutes at that heat suits half-inch rounds.
- 5/8 cup milkThat is 10 tablespoons, or a half cup plus 2 tablespoons. Hold back a little and add the last of it only if the dough will not cohere — flour absorbency varies more than the booklet allows.
- 1 teaspoon shorteningNot a misprint, though it is a very lean dough by modern standards; the cheese supplies most of the fat. Butter or lard works in place of vegetable shortening, and cold fat cut in gives a flakier crumb than rubbing soft fat.
- Grated cheeseA dry, sharp cheese of the sort then sold as store cheese is the likely intention; a firm aged cheddar is the closest match. Six tablespoons is roughly 1 1/2 ounces, so the cheese flavour is mild; doubling it gives a stronger biscuit and needs no other change.
- Rub very lightlyThis is the hinge. Handle the dough as little as possible and press the scraps together rather than kneading them, or the gluten develops and the biscuits come out tough and bready.
- CuttingPress the cutter straight down without twisting; twisting seals the edge and stops the biscuit rising evenly.
- YieldAbout a dozen biscuits from a 2-inch cutter. Best eaten within an hour of baking — they stale fast and are dry the next day.
The New Royal Cook Book was published by the Royal Baking Powder Company, and like all such booklets it exists to sell the tin named in every ingredient list. Its biscuit chapter reflects the American chemical-leavening habit that took hold through the second half of the nineteenth century: where an English cook would more often have made a yeast-risen roll, the American household cook made a quick biscuit with baking powder in a matter of minutes, and books like this one are usually credited with helping to spread the method. Cheese biscuits belong to the tea-table and luncheon end of that repertoire, served with soup or salad in place of crackers, and the small quantity of cheese here may reflect a period in which a sharp aged cheese was more often a flavouring used sparingly than the bulk of the dish.