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Russian Biscuits
Mix 1/2 pound of sifted flour with 1 ounce of sugar, a pinch of salt, a spoonful of caraway seed, and 1/2 pint of milk or cream. Beat all well, roll out thin, cut into 32 oblong strips, and bake 6 minutes in a hot oven. Eat cold, with salad or cheese or stewed fruit.
A plain unleavened cracker rather than anything a modern American would call a biscuit. It has no fat and almost no sugar, so everything depends on rolling it thin and getting it out of the oven before it colours much.
- The hinge: roll it very thinWith no leavening and no butter, thickness is the only variable that decides whether these are crisp or leathery. Aim for about 2mm, thinner if the dough will take it, and prick each strip with a fork so it does not blister.
- Weights and measuresHalf a pound of flour is about 1 3/4 cups; 1 ounce of sugar is 2 tablespoons. Thirty-two strips from that quantity gives small crackers.
- The liquid is likely too muchHalf a pint of milk to half a pound of flour makes a batter, not a dough that can be rolled. Whether the author meant a US half pint (1 cup) or an imperial one (10 fl oz), either is generous; add the milk gradually and stop at a stiff, barely tacky dough, probably somewhere near half the stated amount.
- A hot ovenRead that as 425-450F. Six minutes is realistic at that heat for a thin cracker, but watch from four minutes on -- they go from pale to scorched quickly.
- Caraway"A spoonful" is unspecified and could be anything from a teaspoon to a tablespoon of whole seed. Warming the seed in a dry pan for a minute before mixing sharpens the flavour, which otherwise gets lost against the milk.
- CrispingThey will still be soft when they come out and firm as they cool. If they stay bendy, return them to a 300F oven for five to ten minutes to dry rather than to brown.
- Yield and keepingThirty-two crackers, enough for a cheese board for six. Stored airtight they keep a week; recrisp in a low oven if they soften.
"Biscuit" here carries the older British sense of a hard, twice-baked or thoroughly dried cracker, not a raised quick bread -- the instruction to eat them cold with salad, cheese or stewed fruit places them alongside the water biscuits and caraway crackers of the period. Caraway runs through the rye and wheat baking of Russia, Poland and the Baltic, and the attribution here may be loose.