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Bina's Strawberry Shortcake
Two heaping tea-spoons baking powder sifted into one quart flour, scant half tea-cup butter, two table-spoons sugar, a little salt, enough sweet milk (or water) to make a soft dough; roll out almost as thin as pie-crust, place one layer in a baking-pan, and spread with a very little butter, upon which sprinkle some flour, then add another layer of crust and spread as before, and so on until crust is all used. This makes four layers in a pan fourteen inches by seven. Bake about fifteen minutes in a quick oven, turn out upside down, take off the top layer (the bottom when baking), place on a dish, spread plentifully with strawberries (not mashed) previously sweetened with pulverized sugar, place layer upon layer, treating each one in the same way; and when done you will have a handsome cake, to be served warm with sugar and cream. The secret of having light dough is to handle it as little and mix it as quickly as possible. Shortcake is delicious served with charlotte-russe or whipped cream. Raspberry and peach shortcakes may be made in the same way.
A biscuit-dough shortcake built as a stack of thin layers baked together and pulled apart hot — closer to the original American shortcake than the sponge-cake version sold today. Two details carry the whole thing: minimal handling, and the butter-and-flour smear that lets the layers separate.
- The butter-and-flour trickThe dab of butter dusted with flour between layers is a release, not a filling. It keeps the sheets from fusing in the oven so they lift apart cleanly while hot. Skip it and you have one thick biscuit.
- A quart of flourReckon it as 4 cups, roughly 500 g. Because everything else is proportioned to it, halving the recipe is straightforward.
- Scant half tea-cup butterA teacup in books of this period is usually reckoned at about three-quarters of a modern cup, so a scant half is roughly 5 to 6 tablespoons. The measure is genuinely imprecise; anything from 4 to 6 tablespoons will work, and cold butter cut in gives the flakiest result.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh unsoured milk, specified to distinguish it from buttermilk or clabber. Whole milk is right; expect roughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups for a soft dough.
- LeaveningTwo heaping teaspoons of baking powder to a quart of flour is lean by modern habit, which runs to about a teaspoon per cup. Nineteenth-century baking powders varied in strength; if your layers come out dense rather than short, add a teaspoon next time rather than reaching for more milk.
- A quick ovenUsually reckoned at somewhere around 400 to 450F. Fifteen minutes is about right for layers rolled near pie-crust thinness; the top should be pale gold, not browned.
- The panFourteen by seven inches is a little smaller than a quarter sheet pan, and a 9-by-13 dish is a workable substitute. Four layers of that size will feed eight or so.
- Pulverized sugarIn this period the term means finely ground granulated sugar, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar in shops now. Superfine sugar is the closest match, and it draws juice from the berries without clouding them.
- Berries not mashedWhole or halved berries, sugared and left to sit twenty minutes or so, give juice enough to soak the layers without turning them to paste. Assemble and serve immediately while everything is warm.
Shortcake in American cookbooks of the 1880s means a rich biscuit dough, not sponge cake — "short" in the old baker's sense of being made tender by fat. Strawberry shortcake became a fixture of the June table as railway shipment and market gardening put berries in reach of town households, and church and community strawberry festivals built up around it. The Dixie Cook Book belongs to the family of compiled household manuals derived from Estelle Woods Wilcox's Buckeye Cookery, which printed contributed recipes with the giver credited, more often by initials and town than by full name; "Bina's" is one of those attributions. The closing suggestion to serve it with charlotte russe is a mark of the period's appetite for cream on cream, and the note that raspberry and peach may be treated the same way shows the dough was understood as a base for whatever the season sent.