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Cream Biscuits
Put one-half pound of flour in a basin, form a hollow in the center and work in the whites of three eggs, one-half teacupful of cream, one ounce of sugar, one wine-glassful of brandy and a small quantity of salt. When it is quite smooth roll out the paste very thin, cut it into rounds with a cutter two inches in diameter, prick them all over with a fork, put them on a floured baking-sheet and bake in a hot oven until done. Turn them out, let them get cold, and use as desired.
This is a biscuit in the British sense — a thin, crisp sweet wafer, closer to a cracker than to an American baking-powder biscuit. There is no leavening at all, so everything depends on rolling thin and baking fast.
- Roll it thinner than feels rightWith no chemical leavening and no beaten air, the only route to crispness is thinness; the recipe says only "very thin", and something around 1/16 inch is a reasonable working target. Much thicker and it tends to bake into a hard, pale slab rather than a snapping wafer.
- Weights and vesselsA basin is a mixing bowl. Half a pound of flour is about 225 g, roughly 1 3/4 cups; one ounce of sugar is about 2 tablespoons. The well-in-the-center method is simply a way of drawing liquid into flour by hand, and a food processor pulsed briefly does the same job.
- Half a teacupful of creamA period teacup is usually reckoned at somewhere between 4 and 6 fluid ounces, so this is roughly 2 to 3 fluid ounces, or 1/4 to 3/8 cup. Add the smaller amount first: three egg whites and a wineglass of brandy already bring a good deal of liquid, and the dough should be stiff enough to roll.
- A wineglassfulStandard reckoning is 2 fluid ounces, 1/4 cup. Most of the alcohol bakes off; what it leaves behind is tenderness, since alcohol does not develop gluten the way water does.
- A hot ovenThe recipe gives no temperature; "hot oven" is conventionally read today as somewhere around 400 to 450F. At that heat rounds this thin need only a few minutes, and they colour very fast at the end — watch the edges rather than the clock.
- Why the fork mattersPricking lets steam escape so the rounds stay flat instead of blistering into domes. Do it right before they go in the oven, and do it all the way through.
- CoolingThey firm as they cool, so judge crispness cold, not hot. Move them to a rack straight from the sheet and store airtight; they soften quickly in a humid kitchen.
- Yield and servingThe recipe states no yield, but at this thinness half a pound of flour will make a large batch of two-inch rounds. "Use as desired" is left open-ended; wafers of this type were commonly set beside ices, creams and stewed fruit.
Oscar Tschirky, maître d'hôtel at the Waldorf and the nominal author of the 1896 Cook Book that bears his name, was assembling a professional reference rather than a home baking manual. A thin brandy-and-cream wafer of this kind belongs to the European dessert-biscuit family — Dutch-style rolled wafer — the sort of thing set beside ices, custards and stewed fruit, and the recipe ends with the open-ended "use as desired" instead of a serving suggestion. The use of egg whites only, with the yolks presumably going into custards elsewhere in the kitchen, may hint at how a hotel pastry room worked.