February 17, 2010

Beaten Biscuits

To one quart of flour add one teaspoonful salt, one pinch soda, sift these alltogether, then mix in one tablespoon of lard, which has previously been on ice. (It must be cold and stiff.) Moisten all with half a pint of milk, which also has been on ice and in which two tablespoonfuls of crushed ice is put. Mix all well together, beat or work in machine until light, and bake in a moderate oven. A hot oven blisters them.
—Laura Thornton Knowles, Southern Recipes Tested by Myself. New York: George H. Doran, 1913.

February 10, 2009

“Kill your hogs when the wind is from the north-west. The night before you salt the meat take a string of red pepper and make a strong tea. (Let it remain on the stove over night.) Put in the tea 2 heaping tablespoons of saltpetre to every 2 gallons. Take this strong tea and pour on the salt. Salt the meat lightly the first time to run off the blood. Let the meat lie packed 3 days–longer, if the weather is very cold. Then overhaul the meat and put 1 teaspoon of pulverized saltpetre on the flesh side of each ham and rub in well. Then rub with molasses mixed with salt. Pack close for 10 days. After this overhaul again, rubbing each piece, and pack close again. Hang the meat in 3 weeks from the time the hogs were killed. Before hanging, wash each piece in warm water, and while wet roll in hickory ashes. Then smoke with green hickory wood, and tie up in cotton bags in February.”

—Minerva C. Fox, The Blue Grass Cook Book. New York: Fox, Duffield & Company, 1904