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Bread

Beaten Biscuit

A quick biscuit made by beating dough with lard, flour, salt, and water, then baking until puffed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Beaten 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. Work the lard into the flour until well combined.

  2. Add water and stir with your hand until a stiff dough forms.

  3. Knead the dough on a floured surface until smooth.

  4. Beat the dough with a rolling pin until it puffs up and feels light.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide the dough into small pieces and shape each into a half‑inch thick round.

  2. Prick each round with a fork and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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 and worked.
Lard
Coats flour particles to shorten gluten, giving the biscuit a tender, crisp bite.

The step that matters

Beating the dough with a rolling pin. Repeated beating works the dough and traps air in its stiff structure, so the biscuits puff and bake light. Stopping early leaves the dough dense and flat.

“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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