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Calumet Surprises
Use dough same as for standard baking powder biscuit, roll thin and cut with biscuit cutter. 1/2 pound pork sausage 1/2 pound sliced bacon Place small lump of sausage and one strip of bacon on half biscuit; fold over and press edges together. Bake same as biscuits.
A promotional filler recipe from a baking powder booklet: biscuit dough turned into a stuffed turnover. The whole difficulty is that the filling is raw pork and the dough bakes fast.
- Cook the filling firstA baking powder biscuit is done in 12 to 15 minutes, which is not enough to bring a lump of raw sausage sealed in dough to 160F, and bacon inside a closed pocket steams rather than renders. Brown the sausage in small crumbles and cook the bacon to just short of crisp, drain both, then fill and fold.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe only says to bake as biscuits. A hot oven, in the region of 450F, is usual for baking powder biscuits; at that heat the filled turnovers take about 12 to 15 minutes, until well browned.
- The doughThe recipe assumes a plain baking powder biscuit dough, typically something on the order of 2 cups flour, 4 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 4 tablespoons shortening and about 3/4 cup milk. Rolled thin here suggests about 1/4 inch, thinner than for plain biscuits, so the dough cooks through in step with the filling.
- Cut the bacon downA full strip of bacon in a biscuit-cutter round is far too much. Use a third to a half strip per turnover, chopped, or the fat floods the dough and the seam bursts.
- SealingPressing the edges with the fingers is not reliable with a greasy filling. Brush the rim with milk or water, fold, and crimp with a fork; cut a small vent if the filling is bulky. Chilling the filled rounds for 10 minutes before baking helps them hold their shape.
- YieldA pound of filling with a two-cup batch of dough should give somewhere in the region of 16 to 20 turnovers cut with a 2 1/2-inch cutter. They are meant as a hot luncheon or supper dish and are best straight from the oven, when the biscuit is still short and tender.
The recipe booklet issued for decades by the Calumet Baking Powder Company of Chicago exists, page by page, to sell tins of double-acting baking powder — hence a savory filled pastry built on biscuit dough rather than on pie crust or yeast dough. "Calumet Surprises" is the booklet's own coinage, the surprise being the meat hidden inside; the same idea appears in American cookbooks of the period under names like sausage rolls. It reflects a moment when chemical leavening had made quick dough the default vehicle for anything a household wanted to bake between one meal and the next, and when booklets given away with the product did much of the work of teaching people how to use it.