Thursdays Are For Cooking
Biscuits Supreme from the Good Old Days
In this case, it’s a 1953 recipe titled “Biscuits Supreme” from Better Homes & Gardens. My dad used to make these, and pecan rolls, and they are really good on a cold winter weekend morning. When you split them open in the winter, the steam rising out of them is like perfume.
Biscuits Supreme from Better Homes & Gardens 1953 cookbook
Ingredients:
- 2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
- 4 teaspoons baking powder
- ½ teaspoon of salt
- ½ teaspoons cream of tartar (McCormick and others still make & sell this ingredient)
- 2 teaspoons of baking soda
- ½ cup shortening
- 2/3 cup of milk
Directions:
– Sift together flour, baking powder, salt, cream of tartar and sugar
– Cut in shortening till mixture resembles coarse crumbs
– Add milk all at once. Stir only till dough follows fork around the bowl.
– Turn out on a lightly floured surface
– Knead gently ½ minute
– Pat or roll to ½ inch thick
– Cut with a biscuit cutter (or a floured glass with a rolled-edged mouth)
– Bake on ungreased cookie sheet in a very hot oven (450F) for 10 to 12 minutes.
Note: the baking instruction is for a 1953 oven, so you might want to take the time to test the recipe with your current oven by baking a couple as test biscuits. If the modern oven gives the same results as the 1953 models – firm, but flaky – then finish baking the batch.
Don’t use the convection method for this. That is for roasting meat, not baking stuff.
- Serve warm with good butter and jam or honey, and maybe some Maryland crab cakes.
- These should go quite well with crab cakes, as well as other familiar condiments.
- Should make 16 medium-sized biscuits.
Gun Bunny, you listenin’???
Excellent choice M’Lady and there is nothing like a hot flakey biscuit stuffed or smeared with your favorite addition. Bacon, country ham, porked chop beast, beef cubed beast, most definitely a crabbed caked grilled beast, fresh butter, local honey, cane or maple syrup, james, jellys, mixed fruits or just right by themselves.
Pro tip. Difference between just a biscuit and a cat headed biscuit is the cat head is hand rolled and pinched off with floured hands. The patting out of the dough on the baking pan will generally leave 2 little “ears” on the biscuit and they will be the size of a cat’s head.
Tanks Matey! This posting is just more proof that you love us and want us to be fat and happy.
Thanks for the info on the cathead biscuits. I thought they were what my maternal grandma called “drop biscuits”, which was more of a wet dough dropped from a big spoon onto a greased griddle and flipped over for even cooking.
They were almost like dumplings, and I think she also baked them when she had time.
Have seen the drop biscuits or “dumplin biscuits” also. Not a big fan of either. No true consistency of texture or taste. And a lump dough dumpling is no way to go either. I think some chinese dumplings are made that way. Never been a big fan of oriental foods either. Never developed a taste for rat on a stick or stewed pet. If forced to eat at a chinese buffet I stick with whole shrimps, grilled ‘shrooms, and stir fry veggies.
Grandmother and Aunt Martha made their dumplings for chicken and dumplin’s by using the basic biscuit recipe and rolling them out very flat/thin. Drop them in a rolling/boiling pot of chicken stock and cook down. We cheat during the family re-union feast using the frozen Mary B’s Mary Hill’s or Annies brand. A good substitute is the packaged egg noodles. For those that want to cheat, Mary also make a fairly decent country style or buttermilk frozen biscuit that is not half bad. Keep frozen til ready to bake, eat immediately after baking and none of them keep well for eating later, unless you microwave or toast.
When I walk thru them Pearly Gates the FIRST thing my Mama gonna do (after she whups my butt) is to make me a pan of her catheads. Try as I can none of us have ever made them like she could. Sister E came closest. Attaching a linky to one of the eating places that I had planned on hitting today.
https://www.bing.com/search?q=front+street+resttarurant+and+bar+ogalalla+ne&PC=U316&FORM=CHROMN
Too long in the oven and one could have rubber biscuits by the Chips on Josie 1956. This past weekend, I made a batch of Ex’s sausage and penne which went faster than a mail bag at a whistle stop. Worth every penne’y”. Next time around, I’ll use ground chicken breast.
Yes, it is good, and I’m going to run that recipe here again if the weather stays on the chilly side.
I also have a bacon/cheese mac & cheese recipe I’ve posted before, perfect for chilly weather and easy to fix, also.
Hmmm. Not so sure about adding sugar into a biscuit dough unless it’s for strawberry shortcake, but iffin’ a body wanted to put sugar in the biscuit dough, is it a pinch? A cup? Or somewhere in between?
Was taught a coupla things about biscuit making that makes them much more likely to turn out good – stop mixing it before it looks like it’s very well mixed, and knead it only until the dough barely hangs together. Around here that means very little mixing in the bowl and even less kneading. By the time the dough gets flattened out for cutting, it is mixed just fine. Second, push straight down when cutting. Down and up – no turning or twisting. Doing so can seal the edges causing them to not rise properly.
Both grandmothers really knew how to make biscuits, and one of them was a Yankee! Of course, now I want some fresh, homemade biscuits. Yum. Dad & I made biscuits a few times. Mom thought we were hilarious, until she tasted the results. She approved and took to making jam to go with our biscuits.
I’m thinking that biscuit making really is a lost art, because so many people just get the canned stuff. This has no sugar in it, but I think there is sugar in the recipe for pecan rolls. I remember my Dad making those every fall.
This is really the basic biscuit recipe. There is also a buttermilk version, which I will happily try this fall, along with pecan rolls. Have to get the oven igniter replace because it isn’t working properly, but that can wait until very late summer, too.
Oh, yeah: why not get a new stove? Well, because this one will keep me fed and warm in the winter if the power goes out again. Sometimes, I would really rather have a reliable stove with a pilot light.
Good luck with the stove. A few years ago it was impossible to find a new one without an electric igniter, which made cooking difficult during power outages. That seems to have changed in the past few years. Old stoves are just cool. Keep yours and fix stuff when it needs it – sounds like a plan, a very good plan.
I asked about the sugar because the instructions say to sift the sugar with the other dry ingredients.
My mother would make a few dozen of these (we were a large family) and then we’d open up the fig preserves my paternal grandmother would can each year. My grandmother had several fig trees in her back yard, and we boys would help pick them, then she’d make fig preserves.
We could go through 3 dozen buttered biscuits and two jars of figs in no time.
We are trying (again) to get a fig going in our back yard. Had a transplant from my sister-in-laws and the blamed dog chewed it to a nub. The dog is long gone, so we’re trying again.
Lord willing, I can start making fig preserves in a few years.
The pecan we planted last year has survived so far – so in 15 years or so….
Stick around, Graybeard. Things may seem strange at times, but sometimes, it’s just growing pains.