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Dessert

Lazy Biscuits

A quick biscuit dough made with flour, lard, salt, and cold water, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Lazy Biscuits

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift the flour into a bowl.

  2. Mix the lard thoroughly with the flour.

  3. Gradually add the salt and cold water, mixing as little as possible.

  4. The dough will look ragged; do not knead it.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut with a biscuit cutter.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the biscuits together as they bake.
Lard
Coats the flour particles so the dough stays tender and separates into flaky layers.

The step that matters

Mixing as little as possible. Mixing and kneading develop gluten, the stretchy network in flour, which makes biscuits tough. Stopping once the dough just comes together keeps them tender and flaky.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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