Food History

Today’s biscuit recipes are from The American Economical Housekeeper, and Family Receipt Book by Mrs EA Howland. It was published in Cincinnati in 1845. For saleratus you can use baking soda, and everything else is pretty obvious. Is it equally obvious that I’m falling asleep at my desk? I hope not.

“17. Brown Bread Biscuit.
Two quarts of Indian meal, a pint and a half of rye, one cup of flour, two spoonfuls of yeast, and a table-spoonful of molasses. It is well to add a little saleratus to yeast almost always, just as you put it into the article. Let it rise over night.

18. Bread Biscuit.
Three pounds of flour, half a pint of Indian meal sifted, a little butter, two spoonfuls of lively yeast; set it before the fire to rise over night; mix it with warm water.

19. Tea Biscuit.
* Take one pint of sour milk, one tea-spoonful of saleratus, flour enough to knead up, a small piece of lard or butter, a little salt; roll it out, and cut it into small biscuits.

20. Light Biscuit.
Take two pounds of flour, a pint of buttermilk, half a tea-spoonful of saleratus; put into the buttermilk a small piece of butter or lard rubbed into the flour; make it about the consistency of bread before baking.

21. Rice Biscuit.
Two pounds of flour, a tea-cupful of rice, well boiled, two spoonfuls of yeast; mix it with warm water; when risen enough, bake it.

25. Rich Milk Biscuit.
Two pounds of sifted flour, eight ounces butter, two eggs, three gills of milk, a gill and a half of yeast. Cut the butter into the milk and warm it slightly, sift the flour into a pan, and pour the milk and butter into it. Beat the eggs and pour them in, also the yeast; mix all well together with a knife. Flour your moulding-board, put the lump of dough on it, and knead it very hard. Then cut the dough in small pieces, and knead them into round balls; prick and set them in buttered pans to rise till light, probably about an hour, and bake them in a moderate oven.

26. Butter Biscuit.
Eight ounces of butter, two pounds of flour sifted, half a pint of milk or cold water, a salt spoonful of salt. Cut up the butter in the flour and put the salt to it, wet it to a stiff dough with the milk or water, mix it well with a knife. Throw some flour on the moulding-board, take the dough out of the pan, and knead it very well. Roll it out into a large, thick sheet, and beat it very hard on both sides with the rolling-pin. Beat it a long time, cut it out, with a tin or cup, into small, round, thick cakes. Beat each cake on both sides with the rolling-pin, prick them with a fork, put them in buttered pans, and bake them to a light brown in a slow oven.”

The weather is getting colder and I’m slowly getting over whatever it is I have had. By ’slowly’ I mean “Why aren’t you gone already, drabbit.” Two perfect excuses for more biscuits and scones, though some of the biscuits call themselves ‘cookies.’

Because I’m embedded in the 1920s, this set of recipes is from The Perry Home Cook Book, 1920.

Cookies
1 cap sugar; ½ cup butter; ½ cup sweet milk; 2 eggs; 1 teaspoon cream tartar; ½ teaspoon soda; flavor to taste. Knead soft. Roll thin and bake in quick oven.
-MRS. HOMER TRAPP, Oskaloosa, Kans.

Plain Cookies
1 cup butter; 2 cups sugar; 1 cup sweet milk; 5 cups flour; 2 teaspoons baking powder; ½ nutmeg; 1 teaspoon vanilla. Roll thIn, sprinkle with, sugar. Bake in hot oven.
-MRS. PIUS VOELKER

Chocolate Cookies
2 cups sugar; 2 eggs; 1 teaspoon soda dissolved in ½ cup warm water; 1 cup grated chocolate; ½ cup butter; ½ cup lard. Melt lard, butter and chocolate. When cool add to sugar and eggs. Flour enough to stiffen. Roll thin. When baked ice with white icing.
-MRS. ARTHUR MICHAEL

Chocolate Cookies
4 eggs; 1 cup sugar; 1 cup butter; 3 squares unsweetened chocolate; 3 cups flour; ½ teaspoon vanilla flavor. Flour sufficient to roll very thin.
-SYLVIA DOUGLAS, Oskaloosa, Kans.

Coffee Cookies
2 cups brown sugar; 1 cup butter; 1 cup raisins; 2 eggs; 1 cup coffee; 1 teaspoon soda-in-coffee; 1 teaspoon baking powder; 3 cups flour. 1 teaspoon vanilla. Beat well, drop on greased pans, bake in hot oven.
-M. J. BURKE.

Eggless Cookies
1 cup shortening; 1 cup molasses; 1 cup brown sugar; 1 cup sour milk; 1 teaspoon soda; mix shortening and sugar then molasses, then sour milk with soda; enough flour to make stiff batter. Roll out ½ inch thick. Bake in moderate oven.
-MRS. J. E. HERRON, Pittsburgh, Penn.

Filled Cookies
1 cup chopped raisins; 1 cup sugar; 1 tablespoon flour; ½ cup water; Boil mixture till thick, watch closely as it burns quickly. DOUGH 1 cup sugar; ½ cup shortening; ½ cup milk; 3½ cups flour (scant); 1 egg; 1 teaspoon baking powder; 1 teaspoon each vanilla and lemon. Roll dough very thin, cut, spread with paste, putting another cooky on each. Bake in moderate oven. These keep moist indefinitely, improving with age.
-MRS. W. J. FROST.

Ginger Cookies
1 cup molasses; ½ cup sugar; 2 eggs; 1 cup lard; ½ cup cold water; 1 tablespoon soda; 1 tablespoon ginger; flour enough to make stiff. Mix well and bake in quick oven. Roll thin.
–MRS. H. G. WOLFE

Grandma’s Cookies
2/3 cup butter; 1 cup sugar; 4 tablespoons milk; 2 teaspoons baking powder; 2 eggs; 1 teaspoon vanilla; flour to make soft dough. Roll and cut.
-KATHLEEN HAYNES

Hermit’s Cookies
3 eggs; 1 cups sugar; 1 cup butter; 1 cup seedless raisins; 1 teaspoon each of cinnamon, cloves, salt; 1 teaspoon soda dissolved in 3 tablespoons sour milk; flour enough to roll. Do not roll too thin on account of raisins. Bake only to a light brown.
-MRS. SOPHIA O’ROKE

I’m taking today off and maybe tomorrow. I’ve got a virus. Serves me right for doing an autumn post and overworking all on the same day. I taught this morning, but since then have spent vast amounts of time asleep, so I don’t feel quite as totaled, but I still need a little time out.

To entertain you while I sleep some more, here are some recipes for the biscuit and scone collection. These are from the second edition of The Neighborhood Cook Book, Portland, Oregon. It was compiled on behalf of the Portland Section of the Council of Jewish Women, originally in 1912, but this version in 1914.

Biscuits

One quart flour sifted twice with three teaspoons Crescent baking powder. Shortening size of large egg, half butter, half lard. If you only use butter, take twice the size of an egg. One rounding teaspoon salt. Sweet milk enough to make a soft dough. Roll thin and bake in hot oven seven to ten minutes.

Five o’Clock Tea Biscuits

Mix one-fourth of a pound of flour and one teaspoon Crescent baking powder, one cup of sugar, the rind and juice of two lemons with one-half pound of butter, which has been worked into a smooth paste, add to this the whites of two eggs and a little milk. Roll this and cut into biscuits, and brush them over with the yolks of the eggs. Sprinkle with a little sifted, pulverized sugar and bake in buttered tins.

Chocolate Cookies

One cup brown sugar, one cup white sugar, three sticks chocolate, one tablespoon whiskey, four eggs, three cups flour, two teaspoons Crescent baking powder, one teaspoon each of all kinds of spices. Beat the yolks of the eggs with the sugar. Add chocolate, syrup, whiskey, spices, and then the flour, and last the beaten whites over which the baking powder has been sifted. When stiff enough to roll, brush tops of cookies with beaten egg.

Drop Cookies

Three eggs, two cups brown sugar, one cup butter, level teaspoon soda, dissolved in two tablespoons boiling water, one cup walnuts chopped, three cups flour.

Date Cookies

One-fourth pound dates pitted and cut in half, one-fourth pound almonds blanched and cut lengthwise, one-fourth pound granulated sugar. Whites of two eggs, beaten very stiff. Put dates, almonds, and sugar in bowl together and mix well. Then add beaten whites. Grease tins very well. Sprinkle with cracker dust to prevent sticking. Bake in hot oven.

Tonight I’ve been testing dishes for the Prohibition banquet again. I have a vegetarian dish that would be perfect … for brunch. The rest was better.

Testing dishes makes me tired, so today you’re getting some more biscuit and scone recipes for our ever-growing collection. These are from 1904, from The Blue Grass Cook Book, compiled by Minnie C Fox.

Beaten Biscuits (more…)

Tonight I crossed nikujaga with Irish stew for dinner. It tasted entirely delicious, but made me feel very guilty about warping history. I think the moral of that story is never to make Irish stew while you’re missing your Japanese friends.

The other thing I ate today was a test recipe for the Prohibition banquet. It was a rice pudding that just doesn’t make the cut. The flavour is almost divine, but the texture was so sad I nearly wept. I wasn’t sure about rice pudding on the menu anyway, so it’s gone. Well, except the last little bit, which is tomorrow’s breakfast.

To assuage my guilt and the recipe failure, I’m giving you recipes from 1838. There’s a surety and certainty about life in 1838 that is missing today. What’s also missing today is the level of adulterated foods for purchase in shops. We have occasional problems (cassava imported into Australia is an issue right now, for instance), but that’s all.

The book is The Virgina Housewife, by Mrs Mary Randolph. It’s from Baltimore.

What she called a drop biscuit, I call a biscuit. Tavern biscuit is also a biscuit in my book. It’s rather nice when Australian and US biscuit recipes overlap for a change. What this means is terminology overlap and that things are suddenly hotting up in the little collection of biscuit and scone recipes.

To make drop biscuit

Beat eight eggs very light, add to them twelve ounces of flour, and one pound of sugar; when perfectly light, drop them on tin sheets, and bake them in a quick oven.

Tavern biscuit

To one pound of flour, add half a pound of sugar, half a pound of butter, some mace and nutmeg powdered, and a glass of brandy or wine; wet it with milk, and when well kneaded, roll it thin, cut it in shapes, and bake it quickly.

To make nice biscuit

Rub a large spoonful of butter into a quart of risen dough, knead it well, and make it into biscuit, either thick or thin: bake them quickly.

Soufle biscuits

Rub four ounces of butter into a quart of flour, make it into paste with milk, knead it well, roll it as thin as paper, and bake it to look white.

We’ve seen these cookbooks before and we might visit them again. There’s a lot of interesting things to be found in both of them.

The first book was published as part of the quest for women’s rights and the second in the early days of US independence. Both help us understand how ideas integrate with food in a society. Also, they give us more recipes – how much better can it get? (more…)

I feel full of Australian slang today. This means you need biccies and scones. Lots of them. And it means I need to behave and not fill your minds with Strine (Aussie dialect, full of amazingly strange terms and not always terribly respectful). The simplest way to avoid talking about how tired are my plates of meat (feet and summertime, you know, don’t always mix) is to find you US recipes.

These ones are from the charming Miss Leslie (Directions for Cookery, in its various branches, 10th edition) and demonstrate to us that scones were known in the US as ‘tea biscuits’ in 1840. (more…)

This is another set of biscuit recipes where the title says it all. I might come back to this book again one day, though, and talk about it a bit more. I’ll also talk about Southernness, perhaps, one day.

CONFEDERATE RECEIPT BOOK. (more…)

Today’s recipes come from a book with such a long title that I rather think it introduces itself.

THE COMPLETE CONFECTIONER, PASTRY-COOK. AND BAKER.
PLAIN AND PRACTICAL DIRECTIONS FOR MAKING CONFECTIONARY AND PASTRY, AND FOR BAKING;
WITH UPWARDS OF FIVE HUNDRED RECEIPTS:
CONSISTING OF DIRECTIONS FOR MAKING ALL SORTS OF PRESERVES,
SUGAR-BOILING, COMFITS, LOZENGES, ORNAMENTAL CAKES, ICES LIQUEURS, WATERS, GUM-PASTE ORNAMENTS SYRUPS, JELLIES, MARMALADES, COMPOTES, BREAD-BAKING, ARTIFICIAL YEASTS, FANCY BISCUITS, CAKES, ROLLS, MUFFINS, TARTS, PIES, &c. &c.
WITH ADDITIONS AND ALTERATIONS, BY PARKINSON,
Practical Confectioner, Chestnut Street.
PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 1864. (more…)

Some recipes that suit the wintry among us and the summery are recipes for biscuits and scones. For the next few days I think I shall give you some US recipes for these comestibles, just to expand our biscuit and scone recipes and to let the rest of the world labour over conversions for a change. (more…)

I’m still thinking of biscuits and scones. This is largely because it’s so very hot here. Too hot to bake, but not too hot to dream of a day when baking is possible.

Today’s imaginary afternoon tea is from GOOD HOUSEKEEPING’S Menus, Recipes, and Household Discoveries, 1922, one of my many, many sources for the Prohibition Banquet. The first progress report for Conflux 5 is about to come out and with it, the announcement about the Prohibition Banquet. Treasure your advance knowledge – the geekworld is about to catch up!

Aunt Malindy’s Buttermilk Biscuit (more…)

Everyone I know seems to be cooking up a storm for holiday guests. In a couple of days holidays will be over for most people. In the meantime, you might want a few biscuit and scone recipes. Handy for the collection I’m making on this blog, and handy for your store cupboard.

There’s always a guest who comes just after the holidays and who deserves home made biscuits. These ones are particularly sound in a political sense*. They may delight the heart of your after-holiday visitor or they may lure them to great wrath (”Women? Voting? Preposterous!!”) in which case you get to finish the plate in comfort after they’ve stormed off in high dudgeon.

Cookies

One cupful sour rich cream, one cupful white sugar, one-half teaspoonful soda, flour enough for a soft dough-only enough to roll out easily; salt and nutmeg if desired.
MRS. SARA T. L. ROBINSON.

Cream Cookies

Two cupfuls of sugar, one cupful of butter, one-half cupful of sour cream, one level teaspoonful of soda dissolved in a little hot water, enough flour to roll out as soft as possible.
EMILY S. BOUTON.

Fruit Cookies

One and one-half cupfuls sugar, one-half cupful butter, five tablespoonfuls milk, one teaspoonful soda, spice of all kinds, one cupful currants or raisins, chopped, flour to roll out thin.
MRS. L. W. JONES.

Lep Cookies

One gallon molasses, two pounds lard, one pound citron, one teacupful each of cinnamon and spice, one-half teacupful cloves, four or six nutmegs, two pounds picked nuts (hickory or pecans), flour to make a stiff dough; roll thin, and bake quickly; ice, and dry well before putting away.
MRS. JESSIE F. A. BANKS.

Molasses Cookies

Put into a large coffee-cup one teaspoonful of soda, two tablespoonfuls of hot water and three tablespoonfuls of melted butter. Fill the cup with molasses, add a little ginger if liked. Two cups are enough for one baking. Mix soft and bake quickly.
LOUISA G. ALDRICH.

Molasses Cookies

One egg, one cup molasses, one-half cup of sugar, one teaspoonful each of salt, soda and ginger; flour enough to roll easily. This receipt calls for neither milk or shortening, and makes very nice cookies. Bake in quick oven.
MRS. ELLIE A. HILL.

New Bedford Cookies

Two cups of sugar, one cup of sour milk with half a teaspoonful of soda dissolved in it, one cup of butter. Flour to roll not too stiff, and bake quickly.
EMILY A. FIFIELD.

Spiced Cookies

One cup of sugar, two cups of molasses, two-thirds of a cup of butter, one cup of milk, one teaspoonful of soda, one small teaspoonful of cloves, and one small teaspoonful of cinnamon, two eggs, one-half a nutmeg, and five cups of flour.
LOUISA G. ALDRICH.

Sugar Cookies

One egg, one cup of sugar, half a cup (scant) of butter, half a cup of milk, nutmeg to taste, two teaspoonfuls of cream of tartar, one of soda. Make soft dough as can be handled; roll thin and bake in quick oven.
MRS. ELLIE A. HILL.

Sugar Cookies

Two eggs, one cup sugar, two thirds cup of butter and lard, one teaspoonful cream-tartar, one scant teaspoonful soda, two tablespoonfuls cold water. Flavor with lemon; flour to roll. Roll thin. Bake in quick oven.
MRS. M. A. EVERETT.

*They come from the 2nd edition of The Woman Suffrage Cook Book, 1890.

You don’t have nearly enough cookie recipes yet. I’m assuming this because all my friends who do that mysterious and little-known festival called Christmas are baking and baking and baking. Slices and biscuits and every kind of cake, as well as identifiable recipes such as plum pudding and Christmas cake.

Me? I’m taking pasta with avocado and macadamia cream sauce (maybe also artichokes in the sauce – I need to think about this) to Christmas lunch at a friends, and that’s really all the cooking I have to do.

Today’s recipes are from 1845, (more…)

What do American Orphans recommend for Christmas? Especially what did they recommend in 1798? Amelia Simmons in her American Cookery, gave us two cookie recipes, which means I get to add to my biscuit recipes and you get something a bit different to all the pudding variants. (more…)

All around me people are panicking and making pronouncements and cooking and creating plum puddings and cakes. To celebrate the vast amount of festive fare being created in the Christmassy hemisphere (as opposed to the places the rest of us live, which presumably are lacking in reindeer and elves) I’m going to give you a bunch of plum puddings, from The complete cook by J. M. Sanderson, 1864. No history lessons today – these plum puddings will leave you too full to think.

Plum Pudding Sauce. (more…)