Beaten Biscuit

Ingredients

• two pints of flour
• one table-spoonful of lard
• one teaspoonful of salt
• a mug filled with equal parts of sweet milk and water

Method

1. 1

   Have ready a mug filled with equal parts of sweet milk and water, and add it gradually to the other ingredients, kneading all the while, and stopping as soon as the flour will hold together, for the dough should be very stiff.

2. 2

   Beat thirty minutes with an axe, or run the dough backward and forward through a kneading-trough until rather soft and perfectly smooth.

Nutrition per serving

Estimated from matched ingredients across 2 servings.

As published

This recipe was extracted from Virginia Cookery-book (1884) by Mary Stuart Smith, page 10. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

two pints of flour, one table-spoonful of lard, and one teaspoonful of salt. Have ready a mug filled with equal parts of sweet milk and water, and add it gradually to the other ingredients, kneading all the while, and stop- ping as soon as the flour will hold together, for the dough should be very stiff. Beat thirty minutes with an axe, kept for the purpose ; or, if you use a kneading-trough, run the dough backward and forward through it, until rather soft and perfectly smooth. In the Virginia of the olden time no breakfast or tea- table was thought to be properly furnished without a plate of these indispensable biscuits, which were wont to be " white as the driven snow " inside, and deemed both wholesome and palatable. Let one spend the night at some gentleman-farmer's home, and the first sound heard in the morning, after the crowing of the cock, was the heavy, regular fall of the cook's axe, as she beat and beat her biscuit - dough. Grown familiar, how appetizing the sound, as the gauge of good things to follow soon! Nowadays beaten biscuits are a rarity, found here and there, but soda and modem institutions have caused them to be sadly out of vogue. There are difficulties in the way. In the first place, there must be a biscuit-block, usu- ually the trunk of some solid oak or chestnut tree, felled and sawed off to a convenient height, when, of course, it must be planed smooth, and set up in some accessible place in or near the kitchen. Any ordinary table would 1000 be knocked to pieoesi 11 U9ed for tbuf ^eryice, A 8 VIBOINIA COOKERY-BOOK, machine may be obtained that answers the purpose ad- mirably, but it is rare. We have only seen one specimen in use. Then an axe, with a short, stout handle, must hang ever ready to be applied to this use, and this alone is a condition hard to comply with in a Southern kitchen, where servants are careless, as a rule. Lastly, most ser- vants object nowadays to the trouble of preparing this bread. But the house-keeper who has the energy to sur- mouiit these difficulties, and essays her skill in following the recipe here given, may be assured that she will be rewarded for her pains. Beatbn Biscuit, No. 2. One table-spoonful of butter and lard mixed, one eggy one quart of sifted flour, and one teaspoonful of salt

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.