The recipe for beaten biscuits, flatter and more cracker-like than the biscuits we now know, must have been considered an essential food of the time, as it can be found in Abby Fisher’s 1881 cookbook, What Mrs. Such labor was not practical for a housewife with other chores to complete, but in the Southern colonies, where slave labor was embraced, it was a duty that typically fell to enslaved women. Using a rolling pin or mallet, the dough was beaten by hand for over an hour, a laborious task. In order to improve their texture, cooks developed a technique of beating the dough to introduce some air, which gave the biscuits a modest rise. Baking soda and baking powder wouldn’t be invented for more than 100 years (in 18, respectively), and so the biscuits were unleavened.
Although yeast was available to the colonists, it was expensive, could be hard to source, and was difficult to store. In Southern colonies, successful wheat harvests gave the colonists access to fresh flour, cows and pigs supplied buttermilk and lard, and biscuits gradually began to transform into something more palatable. But they became a mainstay in colonial times because they could be baked quickly and required few ingredients. Part of what makes biscuits so enduring is their versatility.īy the time European settlers arrived in the New World, these dense, flavorless biscuits were an established part of their diet. Photography by Rick Holbrook food styling by Kaitlin Wayne For longer trips, the biscuits - made only of flour, water, and salt - were baked four times and prepared six months in advance so they’d be sufficiently dry for the journey and wouldn’t spoil. Called hardtack, the hard, flavorless biscuits kept well aboard their ships, though were purportedly so durable that they were also used as postcards. As part of their rations, soldiers in ancient Rome received biscuits, and, in 1588, biscuits were introduced to Great Britain and included as part of rations for sailors in the Royal Navy. The word biscuit comes from the Latin “biscotus,” which means twice-baked, and in medieval times probably resembled what we now know as biscotti. The history of one of America’s earliest and most iconic baked goods actually begins in Europe. The humble yet delicious biscuit has a complicated and storied journey in America, one intertwined with enslavement, war, gender stereotypes, and economics.
A journey from Europe to Southern kitchens So ubiquitous were freshly baked biscuits - at our table and the dinner tables of most other Southerners I knew, as well as at gas stations, restaurants, and drive-thrus - that I never really thought about why biscuits were synonymous with the South, much less considered that they are one of the most foundational baked goods in America, as old as the country itself. We’d pluck them from the basket, slather them with butter, and take a bite. They were brought from oven to table with no delay, swaddled in tea towel-lined baskets so they stayed warm, and it was always a race to see who could unwrap the fabric first to reveal the steaming mounds nestled inside. I grew up in the South, where biscuits were a mainstay at most meals.
0 kommentar(er)
