Mrs Eaton’s biscuits
Just when you thought I had entirely forgotten my vague desire to document a vast array of biscuit and scone recipes, I found two recipes from the early part of the nineteenth century. These biscuits are English, I think. I’ll post a correction if the book turns out to have been published elsewhere.
I’m working through Mrs Eaton’s book alphabetically for entirely differnt purposes so you may find scones appear on the blog when I get to ’s’. Or you may not. I’ve been working on heightening levels of suspense in my fiction and I intend to practise wherever I can :).
BISCUIT CAKE.
One pound of flour, five eggs well beaten and strained, eight ounces of sugar, a little rose or orange flower water. Beat the whole thoroughly, and bake it one hour.
BISCUITS.
To make hard biscuits, warm two ounces of butter in as much skimmed milk as will make a pound of flour into a very stiff paste. Beat it with a rolling pin, and work it very smooth. Roll it thin, and cut it into round biscuits. Prick them full of holes with a fork, and about six minutes will bake them. For plain and very crisp biscuits, make a pound of flour, the yolk of an egg, and some milk, into a very stiff paste. Beat it well, and knead it quite smooth ; roll the paste very thin, and cut it into biscuits. Bake them in a slow oven till quite dry and crisp. To preserve biscuits for a long- time sweet and good, no other art is necessary than packing them up in casks well caulked, and carefully lined with tin, so as to exclude the air. The biscuits should be laid as close as possible ; and when it is necessary to open the cask, it must be speedily closed again with care. Sea bread may also be preserved on a long voyage, by being put into a bag which has been previously soaked in a quantity of liquid nitre, and dried. This has been found to preserve the biscuits from the fatal effects of the wevil, and other injurious insects, which are destructive to this necessary article of human sustenance.
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