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Biscuit (Take one quart sifted flour)
Take one quart sifted flour (loosely put in), one measure each of the acid and soda (or two heaping teaspoons acid and one moderately heaping teaspoon soda) of Horsford's Bread Preparation, one teaspoon salt, three gills of water; shape with a spoon and the floured hand.
A lean water biscuit built around a branded two-part leavener that no longer exists in that form. The conversion is straightforward once you know what Horsford's was.
- Horsford's Bread PreparationA two-part leavener sold as separate acid (acid calcium phosphate) and bicarbonate of soda powders, each taken with the measure supplied. Note that the proportions are not equal: the recipe's own gloss is two heaping teaspoons of acid to one moderately heaping teaspoon of soda. Modern double-acting baking powder is broadly the same chemistry pre-blended, so roughly 4 teaspoons of baking powder for this quantity of flour, in place of both powders, is a reasonable substitute.
- A quart of flour, loosely put inFour cups, and the parenthesis matters: flour sifted and spooned in weighs roughly 16 oz total, against 20 oz or more if you scoop and pack. Weigh it if you can, or the dough will take far more than the stated water.
- Three gillsA gill is half a cup, so this is 1 1/2 cups of water. That is a wet, sticky dough by biscuit standards, which is why the instruction is to shape it with a spoon and a floured hand rather than to roll and cut.
- No fat at allThere is no butter, lard or milk here. Expect a plain, crusty, bready biscuit rather than a flaky Southern one; this is the economical version, and fatless doughs of this kind are best eaten the day they are baked.
- The missing ovenThe original assumes you know. Bake on a hot sheet at 450F for 10 to 12 minutes, until the tops are set and lightly browned. A slower oven lets the phosphate leavening spend itself before the crumb sets.
- Work fastAcid phosphate powders begin reacting the moment water hits them and were not double-acting in the modern sense. Mix, shape and get the pan into a preheated oven without pausing.
- YieldAbout 16 to 18 biscuits of two-inch size.
Horsford's Bread Preparation was a widely advertised grocery item in the post-Civil War United States, and its appearance by name in a recipe is a small piece of commercial history. It grew out of the work of Eben Horsford, who held the Rumford professorship at Harvard and whose acid calcium phosphate leavener was manufactured by the Rumford Chemical Works in Rhode Island; the phosphate was promoted as restoring to white flour some of the mineral matter that milling removed, a selling point that shaded from chemistry into health claim. Sold as two separate powders to be measured with an enclosed scoop, it sat between old-fashioned saleratus-and-sour-milk baking and the single-tin baking powders that would displace it. Cookbooks of the 1880s sometimes printed recipes keyed to one brand or another, and The Dixie Cook Book was exactly the sort of place where such a product was expected to earn its keep.