Soy Bean Meal Biscuit

1 cup soy bean meal or flour
1 cup whole wheat
1½ teaspoons salt
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon corn syrup
2 tablespoons fat
1 cup milk

Sift dry ingredients. Cut in fat. Add liquid to make soft dough. Roll one-half inch thick. Cut and bake 12 to 15 minutes in hot oven.

From "Foods That Will Win the War, and How to Cook Them", 1918

Potato Biscuit

1 cup mashed lightly packed potato
2 tablespoons fat
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
About ½ cup milk or water in which potatoes were cooked

Add melted fat to mashed potato. Mix and sift flour, baking powder and salt and add to potato mixture, add enough of the milk to make a soft dough. Roll out ½ inch thick, cut with a biscuit cutter and bake in a quick oven for 15 minutes. (If bread flour is used in place of whole wheat, the biscuits are slightly lighter and flakier in texture.)

From "Foods That Will Win The War And How To Cook Them", 1918, by C. Houston Goudiss and Alberta M. Goudiss

Southern-Style Soda Biscuit

Sift a quart of flour with a heaping teaspoonful of baking soda. Add a good pinch of salt, rub well through lard or butter the size of the fist, then wet with sour milk to a moderately soft dough, roll out, working quickly, cut with small round cutter, set in hot pans, leaving room to swell, and bake in a quick oven just below scorching heat. Handle as lightly as possible all through—this makes flaky biscuit.

By way of variety, roll out thin—less than a half-inch, cut with three-inch cutter, grease lightly on top, and fold along the middle. Let rise on top a hot stove several minutes before putting to bake. By adding an egg, beaten light, with a heaping tablespoonful of sugar to the dough in mixing, these doubled biscuit will be quite unlike the usual sort.

From "Dishes and Recipes of the Old South", by Martha McCulloch Williams, 1913.

Sweet Potato Biscuits, Old Style

Boil soft two large or four small sweet potatoes, mash smooth while very hot, free of strings and eyes, add a pinch of salt, then rub well through three cups of sifted flour. Rub in also a generous handful of shortening, then wet up soft with two eggs beaten very light, and sweet milk. A little sugar also if you have a sweet tooth—but only a little. Roll to half-inch thickness, cut out with small cutter, lay in warm pan, and bake brown in a quick oven.

Soda and buttermilk can take the place of eggs and sweet milk—in which case the sugar is advisable. Mix the soda with the milk—enough to make it foamy, but no more.

From Dishes & Beverages of the Old South, by Martha McCulloch Williams, 1913

Biscuit Recipes: Old-Style Southern Beaten Biscuits

Sift a quart of flour into a bowl or tray, add half a teaspoon salt, then cut small into it a teacup of very cold lard. Wet with cold water—ice water is best—into a very stiff dough. Lay on a floured block, or marble slab, and give one hundred strokes with a mallet or rolling pin. Fold afresh as the dough beats thin, dredging in flour if it begins to stick. The end of beating is to distribute air well through the mass, which, expanding by the heat of baking, makes the biscuit light. The dough should be firm, but smooth and very elastic. Roll to half-inch thickness, cut out with a small round cutter, prick lightly all over the top, and bake in steady heat to a delicate brown. Too hot an oven will scorch and blister, too cold an one make the biscuit hard and clammy. Aim for the Irishman's "middle exthrame."

There are sundry machines which do away with beating. It is possible also to avoid it by running the dough, after mixing, several times through a food-chopper. Also beaten biscuit can be closely imitated by making good puff paste, rolling, cutting out, pricking and baking—but rather more quickly than the real thing. All these are expedients for those who live in apartments, where the noise of beating might[30] be held against good neighborhood. Householders, and especially suburban ones, should indulge in the luxury of a block or stone or marble slab—and live happy ever after, if they can but get cooks able and willing to make proper use of it.

Light Biscuit No. 1

Take a piece of bread dough that will make about as many biscuits as you wish; lay it out rather flat in a bowl; break into it two eggs, half a cup of sugar, half a cup of butter; mix this thoroughly with enough flour to keep it from sticking to the hands and board. Knead it well for about fifteen or twenty minutes, make into small biscuits, place in a greased pan, and let them rise until about even with the top of the pan. Bake in a quick oven for about half an hour.

These can be made in the form of rolls, which some prefer.

Raised Biscuit

Sift two quarts of flour in a mixing-pan, make a hole in the middle of the flour, pour into this one pint of warm water or new milk, one teaspoonful of salt, half a cup of melted lard or butter, stir in a little flour, then add half a cupful of yeast, after which stir in as much flour as you can conveniently with your hand, let it rise over night; in the morning add nearly a teaspoonful of soda, and more flour as is needed to make a rather soft dough; then mold fifteen to twenty minutes, the longer the better; let it rise until light again, roll this out about half an inch thick and cut out with a biscuit-cutter, or make it into little balls with your hands; cover and set in a warm place to rise. When light, bake a light brown in a moderate oven.

Rub a little warm butter or sweet lard on the sides of the biscuits when you place them on the tins, to prevent their sticking together when baked.