Biscuit Bread
Biscuit comes from the Latin for "twice cooked". This recipe produces a hard, only slightly sweet cookie that keeps quite well. It’s only in theory twice baked — other biscuit bread recipes are more like biscotti, where a loaf is baked and them sliced into biscuits which are baked again.
To Make Biscuit Bread
Take one pound of flower, & one pound of sugar, one ounce of annisseeds, half an ounce of coriander seed, mingle these together, take viii eggs beat them verie well, then put in your stuff, then beat it alltogether very well, then take dishes & annoynt them with butter & put the stuf into them, Let the oven be as hot as it is for manchet, when it is browne at top turne it, & set it in againe, if you will have it light put in the yolks of viii eggs more to it, & beat the sugar with the eggs, before the flower bee put in.
--Lady Elinor Fettiplace, 1604
Grind spices. Beat the eggs well. Add sugar and beat again until the sugar is dissolved. Add the flour and spices. Mix well.
Drop by teaspoonfuls onto buttered baking sheets.
Bake at 350F for 5-10 minutes, until the biscuits begin to brown around the edges. Remove from oven and turn biscuits over. Bake an additional 5 minutes.
Makes about 4 dozen biscuits.
Notes:Spurling’s redaction calls for a much smaller amount of spices. However, I bought my spices in bulk, which is much cheaper than in jars at the supermarket. I got out the postal scale and weighed out the spices to Lady Elinor’s specifics. They were about 3 times the amount Spurling recommended.
Spurling, Hilary. Elinor Fettiplace’s Receipt Book, pages 119-120.
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Copyright 2002, Abigail Weiner