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Eighth Day: Rose
When Rose had finished the veal loaf and packed it in the pan, ready to go into the oven when Ellen's bread should come out, she set about trying a new recipe.
No. 107-GRANDMA'S SHORT-CAKE.
One pound sifted flour, dried in the oven for a few minutes, but not browned, a quarter of a pound butter, a heaping tablespoonful lard, a salt-spoonful salt, a pinch of soda dissolved in just enough vinegar to cover it and well worked in. Put together with ice-water, and roll out half an inch thick. Cut into squares, prick with a fork and bake light brown. "How can any one tell how much a pinch is, Aunt Jane?" asked Rose. "Is it about as much as when you take a pinch of anybody's arm?" "Oh, no," said her aunt, laughing, "a pinch is just about so much," showing her by taking up some soda between her finger and thumb. "A pinch is a pinch, that's all. A cook gets to feel those things after a while. There's a sort of instinct about it." "Now the salad dressing is done, aunty," said Mabel. "What shall I do with it?" "Ask Ellen for a funnel, and we'll pour it into this bottle and cork it tightly. We musn't forget to take along a small bottle of vinegar, too, for some people, especially children, don't like so large a proportion of oil." "May I make the biscuit now?" asked Edith, when her loaf-cake was kneaded into loaves and set to rise in the pan. "Better wait until the bread comes out. The gingerbread is in already, and we must leave a place for Grace's pies. Your biscuits will contain soda, you know, and so musn't stand a moment after they are mixed before they go into the oven. I wonder what keeps Grace so long at her pies; it seems as if they ought to be ready by this time."
It was not long before Grace came in, a pie carefully balanced on the palm of each hand. A glance at their extremely ornate appearance explained the delay. In the middle of one she had made not a bad imitation of a rose, whose paste leaves stood out quite naturally; around this was a series of rings laid over one another like shingles, producing a very pretty effect, and round the edge was a border made of long strips interlaced so as to make a sort of braid. The other was bordered with a series of little buttons, touching one another; inside of this was a circle of leaves quite neatly made, with a slender vine connecting the ends, and in the center in fat letters and figures was the date, "July 4, 1876." "Why, Grace, what a pie-ist you are!" exclaimed her brother Rob, who had stolen in to take a peep at the doings of the busy bees. "You're the Great Champion American Ornamental Pie Constructor, and no mistake. That pie's too fine to eat; let's send it to the Centennial." "You may send your piece there if you like, Rob," said his aunt, "but the rest of us would prefer to eat ours ourselves. Now, Edith, Ellen says it is safe for you to make your biscuit, and when that comes out, our work will be done for to-day."
The recipe is No. 107, Grandma's Short-cake, buried in the middle of the classroom chatter. It is a rich rolled biscuit dough baked as squares, not the sweetened cake served under strawberries.
- The measures in modern termsOne pound of sifted flour is about 3 1/2 to 4 cups (450 g); a quarter pound of butter is one stick (115 g); a heaping tablespoonful of lard is roughly 20 g. A salt-spoonful is about 1/4 teaspoon.
- The pinch, and what it doesAunt Jane is honest that a pinch is unmeasurable; for a pound of flour it is probably on the order of 1/8 teaspoon of soda. Dissolved in just enough vinegar to cover, much of the gas is given off before the dough reaches the oven, so the lift is slight, and the flakiness comes chiefly from the cold fat.
- Ice water is the unstated ingredientNo quantity is given. Expect somewhere between 1/2 and 3/4 cup, added a little at a time until the dough just holds together. Overshooting makes a slack dough that spreads rather than layers.
- Oven heatNone is specified, since these went into a wood range after the bread came out. Around 425F suits them; squares rolled a half-inch thick take roughly 12 to 15 minutes to reach light brown.
- Drying the flourWarming flour in the oven was a way to drive off damp from a barrel or bin stored in a cellar. Modern bagged flour does not need it, and if you do it, let the flour cool completely before it meets the butter.
- Why prick with a forkThe docking keeps the squares from puffing into hollow pillows, which matters with a dough as heavily shortened as this one.
- Handle cold, work fastA quarter pound of butter plus a spoonful of lard in one pound of flour makes a dough richer than ordinary biscuit, if not as rich as pie pastry. Keep the fats cold, cut them in rather than creaming, and stop mixing as soon as the dough coheres.
- YieldAbout 16 to 20 two-inch squares. They are meant to be eaten the day they are baked, ideally still warm.
- The surrounding advice still holdsAunt Jane's warning that soda biscuit must not stand a moment before going into the oven is sound. Chemical leaveners begin working on contact with liquid, and a mixed dough left on the bench bakes flat.
Six Little Cooks is generally attributed to Elizabeth Stansbury Kirkland and was published in Chicago in the late 1870s, one of a wave of instructional storybooks that taught cookery to girls through the fiction of a summer class with an aunt. The date Grace pipes onto her pie, July 4, 1876, and Rob's joke about sending it to "the Centennial" fix the scene at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, the hundredth anniversary of independence and the great national spectacle of that year. "Short-cake" here carries its older, plainer sense: cake made short, that is, tender and crumbling, by a large proportion of fat, with no sugar and no berries in sight. The soda slaked in vinegar is a relic of the decades before commercial baking powder became cheap and reliable, when cooks paired an alkali with whatever acid the pantry held: sour milk, cream of tartar, molasses, or vinegar. Aunt Jane's remark that a cook develops an instinct for a pinch is itself a period artifact; standardized level measurement in American cookbooks belongs to the generation after this one.