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Dessert

Maryland Biscuit

A simple biscuit 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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Maryland Biscuit

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, lard, and salt.

  2. Gradually add cold water to form a very stiff dough.

  3. Pound the dough for about 30 minutes until it becomes white and blisters.

Shape and bake

  1. Break off pieces of even size and shape into biscuits.

  2. Press the center of each biscuit with your thumb and finger, then prick twice with a fork.

  3. Bake in a hot 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once mixed with water.
Lard
Adds fat that shortens the dough and gives a tender, flaky texture.
Cold water
Hydrates the flour to bind the stiff dough together.

The step that matters

Pound the dough for about 30 minutes. Pounding works the stiff dough repeatedly, developing gluten so the biscuits become firm, white, and blistered rather than crumbly. Stopping early leaves the texture weak and the surface less smooth.

“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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