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Dessert

Beaten Biscuit

A simple biscuit made with flour, lard, salt, and water, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Beaten Biscuit

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, lard, and salt.

  2. Add enough water to form a stiff dough.

  3. Work and beat the dough until it blisters and becomes soft.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough to a thickness of ½ inch.

  2. Prick the center of each biscuit with a fork.

  3. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°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 structure of the biscuit as its proteins build a gluten network.
Lard
Fat that coats flour particles and shortens gluten, giving a tender, flaky bite.

The step that matters

Work and beat the dough until it blisters and becomes soft. Repeated beating stretches the gluten into strong layers and traps air, which creates the blistered, layered texture. Beating too little leaves the biscuits dense and hard.

“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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