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Baking-Powder Biscuit
2 cups flour
2 tablespoons shortening
4 teaspoons baking-powder
¾ cup liquid (all milk or half
1 teaspoon salt milk and half water)
Mix dry ingredients and sift twice. Work in fat with tips of the fingers, or cut in with two knives. Add the liquid gradually, mixing with a knife to a soft dough. Owing to differences in flours, it is impossible to determine the exact amount of liquid. Toss on a floured board, pat and roll lightly to one-half inch in thickness. Shape with a biscuit-cutter. Bake in hot oven (450°- 460° F.) twelve to fifteen minutes.
The proportions here are still the standard American baking-powder biscuit, and the recipe is unusual for admitting outright that the liquid cannot be fixed in advance. A few notes on flour, fat and handling.
- The hinge: work fast and handle littleEverything that makes a biscuit tender happens in about two minutes of mixing and patting. Once the liquid is in, the dough should be pressed and cut with as few passes as possible and go straight into a preheated oven; a dough that sits on the board or gets kneaded like bread will bake dense and tough.
- "Liquid" and why it variesThree-quarters cup for two cups of flour sits at the drier end of current practice. Soft winter-wheat flours of the period generally absorbed less liquid than today's all-purpose, so you may need a tablespoon or two more milk to reach a soft, slightly sticky dough. Bread flour will need more still and will bake chewier.
- ShorteningIn this period that means lard, or, later, a hydrogenated vegetable shortening; butter works and many prefer the taste. Whichever you use, have it cold; leaving some pieces visible rather than rubbing it in completely helps with flake, though at two tablespoons to two cups of flour this is a lean dough.
- Baking powder quantityFour teaspoons to two cups of flour is about a third more than the common modern ratio of one tablespoon. Period powders were less consistent, and a high, fast rise was wanted. With a current double-acting powder, some tasters find a metallic edge at the full amount.
- Sifting twiceNot decorative. Baking powder clumped and flour packed, and sifting twice helped distribute the leavening evenly and gave a consistent measure. Whisking the dry ingredients thoroughly does much the same job now.
- Oven450-460°F is what the recipe calls for, and the oven should be genuinely preheated; twelve to fifteen minutes suits a half-inch biscuit, and thicker rounds will want a few minutes more.
- Thickness and yieldHalf an inch gives a flatter biscuit than most people now expect, useful for shortcake and for splitting under creamed dishes. With a two-inch cutter the batch makes a dozen or more, depending on how the scraps are re-rolled; cut straight down without twisting.
The baking-powder biscuit is closely related to the hearth-baked soda biscuits and beaten biscuits of the earlier nineteenth century, though beaten biscuits are leavened mechanically and are better seen as a parallel than an ancestor; its spread owed much to commercial baking powders — cream of tartar and phosphate blends, and, it is generally said, alum-based ones somewhat later — becoming cheap and reliable grocery items in the decades after the Civil War. Butterick, better known for dress patterns and The Delineator, published household compendiums aimed at the same readership of home managers, and a recipe like this earns its place by being a base formula rather than a dish: the same dough, in this and countless contemporary books, is stretched into shortcake, cobbler tops, dumplings, cheese biscuits and the crust over a meat pie. Its frank admission that flours differ is a small mark of the period's transition to standardized measuring cups, when writers were still negotiating between the cook's judgment and the printed number.