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Individual Shortcakes with Stewed Fruit
Measure a pint of sifted flour. Sift with it two tablespoonfuls sugar, half a teaspoonful salt, and four scant teaspoonfuls baking-powder. Cut into the mixture one-fourth cup shortening (equal parts butter and chicken fat or beef dripping may be used). Make a soft dough with about threefourths of a cup of milk. Bake in small tins, split after baking, butter the halves and spread between and on top any left-over stewed or canned fruits such as peaches, apricots, blackberries, or currants. Small amounts may be used, varying the filling if there is not enough of one kind to go around, or a meringue may be made, for the top, of the beaten whites of two eggs sweetened with three tablespoonfuls powdered sugar and flavored with lemon-juice.
A plain sweetened biscuit dough, baked in small tins and used as a vehicle for whatever stewed fruit is sitting in the icebox. Two things need translating: the flour measure and the leavening.
- A pint of sifted flourFlour was measured by volume in a pint measure: about 2 cups sifted, roughly 8 ounces. Sift first, then measure, or you will end up with a stiff dough that needs more milk than the recipe allows.
- Four scant teaspoons of baking powderThat is heavy by modern standards; the powders of the period were single-acting and lost strength on the shelf, so recipes often specified more. With current double-acting powder, 2 to 2 1/2 teaspoons for 2 cups of flour should be enough; the full four may leave a metallic edge.
- Oven temperatureNone is given, as was normal when ranges had no thermometers. Small shortcakes want a hot oven, 425 to 450F, for 12 to 15 minutes, until well risen and lightly browned.
- The shortening"Equal parts butter and chicken fat or beef dripping" is thrift-book advice, and the savory fats will read as savory under sweet fruit. All butter, or half butter and half vegetable shortening, gives a cleaner result; a quarter cup total is correct either way.
- Keep the dough softThis is the hinge. The three-quarters cup of milk makes a soft, sticky dough, which is what gives a tender crumb that splits cleanly. The recipe says 'about' that much, so add most of it, stir just until it comes together, and stop.
- Splitting and butteringSplit while still hot and butter both cut faces at once. The butter seals the crumb so the fruit syrup moistens rather than dissolves it.
- The fruitDrain stewed or canned fruit well and reserve the syrup to spoon over at the table. Undrained fruit floods the bottom half within minutes.
- If you use the meringueTwo whites with three tablespoons powdered sugar will cover about six cakes. Spread it on the assembled tops and set it in a 350F oven for 12 to 15 minutes, so the egg is cooked through rather than merely tinted. A quick pass under a broiler will colour the top but will not cook the whites through.
- YieldAbout six small shortcakes from this quantity, depending on the size of your tins.
Left-over cookery books like this one were a recognisable genre in the first decades of the twentieth century, aimed at the middle-class housekeeper who answered for the household accounts. The logic here is characteristic: a cheap, fast quick-bread built on baking powder, extended with rendered chicken fat or beef dripping saved from other meals, and topped with fruit in quantities too small to serve on their own, with the explicit permission to mix kinds "if there is not enough of one kind to go around." Shortcake itself is older than the book and older than baking powder, the name coming from "short" in the sense of crumbly with fat rather than from any small size; the strawberry version was well established in America long before this book.