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Sweet Potato Biscuit (Southern biscuit that every)
Sweet potato biscuit are a southern biscuit; that every one who has ever tasted agrees are delicious. One pint flour, one teacupful boiled and mashed sweet potatoes, one teaspoonful salt, tablespoonful sugar, one of butter, a scant half teaspoonful soda, and enough buttermilk-about a teacupful to make a soft dough; roll, cut into biscuit and bake in quick oven. Are as wholesome as toothsome, and take particularly well with children.
A soda-and-buttermilk biscuit enriched with mashed sweet potato, which keeps it moist and slightly sweet. The dough is deliberately wetter than a plain biscuit dough, and that is the point.
- A pint of flourFlour was commonly measured by volume: one pint is 2 cups, roughly 9 oz of all-purpose flour. Use soft winter wheat flour if you have it, since Southern biscuit flour is lower in protein than standard bread flour.
- A teacupfulA teacup in this period is smaller than a modern mug — reckon about 3/4 cup. That gives roughly 3/4 cup mashed sweet potato and a starting 3/4 cup buttermilk, with more milk added only as needed.
- Quick ovenRoughly 400-425F. Biscuits need the high heat to set the crust before the soda has finished working; a slack oven gives you flat, pale rounds.
- Soda without baking powderThe scant half teaspoon of soda is neutralised by the acid in the buttermilk, and there is no second, heat-activated leavener. Mix, cut and get the pan into the oven promptly rather than letting the dough rest.
- The potatoBoil or bake the sweet potatoes until fully tender and mash them absolutely smooth — lumps tear the dough and leave holes. Let them cool to warm before mixing so the butter does not melt out entirely, and add the buttermilk gradually, since potatoes vary a great deal in moisture.
- Soft dough, light handAim for a dough that is just barely handleable, closer to a drop biscuit than a pie crust. Flour the board well, pat rather than roll to about 3/4 inch, and cut without twisting the cutter.
- Yield and timeAbout a dozen 2-inch biscuits, 12–15 minutes until risen and browned. Best within the hour; the potato keeps them moist but they go dense once cold.
Sweet potato biscuits belong to a broad Southern habit of stretching wheat flour, which was expensive and often shipped in, with whatever starchy crop grew at hand — cornmeal, rice, or in the coastal and Upper South, sweet potatoes. The potato does more than economise: it holds water, so the biscuits stay tender longer than a plain soda biscuit, which is one reason the form survived long after flour became cheap. That this recipe leans on soda and buttermilk rather than baking powder places it in the older tradition; commercial baking powder had been on sale since the 1860s, with brands such as Rumford and Royal dating from that decade, but sour milk and soda are often said to have persisted in households that kept a cow. The compiler's aside that they "take particularly well with children" is typical of turn-of-the-century cookbooks, which routinely graded dishes by wholesomeness and suitability for the nursery table as much as by taste.