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Maryland Biscuit
1 pint flour 1/3 cup lard 1 teaspoon salt Milk and water in equal quantities
This is a beaten biscuit, and the recipe as printed is really just a list of proportions: the method it assumes has been left out. Two things carry the whole thing, and neither is stated here.
- A pint of flourPeriod measures were by volume, and a pint of flour is 2 cups, roughly 8 to 9 oz depending on how it is packed. Use plain all-purpose flour, not self-rising.
- No leavening, on purposeThere is no baking powder or soda in the list and none is missing. Beaten biscuits rise from air and steam physically worked into a very stiff dough, which is why they come out pale, dense and layered rather than fluffy.
- The liquid is deliberately vagueMilk and water in equal parts, added a spoonful at a time, until you have a dough far stiffer than an ordinary biscuit dough — about 1/2 cup total for this quantity, but stop when the mass just holds together and still feels dry.
- The beating is the recipeThe dough is beaten with a rolling pin, mallet or the flat of an axe head for 20 to 30 minutes, folding it over on itself repeatedly, until it blisters and turns smooth and satiny. A food processor with the metal blade, run in long bursts for a few minutes, is the usual modern substitute; a stand mixer with a dough hook will also do it, though the time needed varies with the machine.
- LardLeaf lard or ordinary rendered lard gives the right short, slightly crumbly texture. Shortening substitutes at the same volume; butter adds water and makes the dough harder to keep stiff.
- Shaping and dockingRoll to about 1/3 inch, cut with a small cutter, and prick each biscuit through twice with a fork. The holes keep them from puffing and splitting apart in the oven, which is the whole point of the flat, close-grained beaten biscuit.
- OvenNo oven heat is given in the recipe. A moderate oven works: bake at 350 to 400°F for 20 to 30 minutes, until firm and barely colored — they should stay ivory, not brown.
- YieldAbout 18 to 20 small biscuits. They are served split with ham, and they keep for days; unlike soft biscuits they are not much worse on the second day.
Beaten biscuits belonged to the upper South — Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky — where soft winter wheat flour, low in gluten, suited a dough worked by force rather than yeast. They are labor made visible: a half hour of pounding on a stump or a marble slab, work that in the antebellum and postbellum South was often done by enslaved or hired Black cooks, a fact the printed recipes do not mention. Hand-cranked biscuit brakes, a pair of rollers, were in use in better-equipped kitchens in the later nineteenth century alongside the mallet. The biscuits survive mainly as the traditional vehicle for a sliver of Smithfield or country ham.