Food History

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.

I was lucky, I grew up at the exact time Australia converted to metric and I can work in both. I’m still lucky, I started the biscuit and scone thing, so I know what’s happening and where we’re up to. Some of you are new readers, though, or have just dropped in because you were floating round the net, so I ought to explain. We’re slowly and gently collecting definitions of ‘biscuit’ and ’scone’ and recipes and one day I’ll put the whole lot together and make beautiful sense of it. Not for a while, I must admit. I like a lot of data when I can get it and there’s a ton more information about biscuits and scones out there. Till then you get recipes and excursions into other sources. Today is recipes.

Chocolate and Cocoa Recipes By Miss Parloa and
Home Made Candy Recipes By Mrs. Janet McKenzie Hill
Compliments of Walter Baker & Co., Ltd. 1909

CHOCOLATE BISCUIT

Cover three large baking pans with paper that has been well oiled with washed butter. Over these dredge powdered sugar. Melt in a cup one ounce of Walter Baker & Co.’s Premium No. 1 Chocolate. Separate the whites and yolks of four eggs. Add to the yolks a generous half cupful of powdered sugar, and beat until light and firm. Add the melted chocolate, and beat a few minutes longer. Beat the whites of the eggs to a stiff, dry froth. Measure out three-fourths of a cupful of sifted flour, and stir it and the whites into the yolks. The whites and flour must be cut in as lightly as possible, and with very little stirring. Drop the mixture in teaspoonfuls on the buttered paper. Sprinkle powdered sugar over the cakes, and bake in a slow oven for about fourteen or fifteen minutes. The mixture can be shaped like lady fingers, if preferred.

CHOCOLATE COOKIES

Beat to a cream half a cupful of butter and one tablespoonful of lard. Gradually beat into this one cupful of sugar; then add one-fourth of a teaspoonful of salt, one teaspoonful of cinnamon, and two ounces of Walter Baker & Co.’s Premium No. 1 Chocolate, melted. Now add one well-beaten egg, and half a teaspoonful of soda dissolved in two tablespoonfuls of milk. Stir in about two cupfuls and a half of flour. Roll thin, and, cutting in round cakes, bake in a rather quick oven. The secret of making good cookies is the use of as little flour as will suffice.

COCOA BISCUIT

2 cups or 1 pint of sifted flour,
3 level teaspoonfuls of baking powder,
1/2 a teaspoonful of salt,
2 level tablespoonfuls of sugar,
4 level tablespoonfuls of Baker’s Cocoa,
2 level tablespoonfuls of butter or lard,
2/3 a cup of milk or enough to make a firm but not a stiff dough.

Sift all the dry ingredients together, rub in the butter with the tips of the fingers. Stir in the required amount of milk. Turn out on slightly floured board, roll or pat out the desired thickness, place close together in pan and bake in very hot oven ten or fifteen minutes.