Cold Water Biscuits (aka Beaten Biscuits)

Cold Water Biscuits | The Old Mill | Pigeon Forge, TN

When the mill was under the ownership of John Sevier Trotter in the mid-1800s, a woman named Malinda Russell operated a boarding house and her own pastry shop a couple of counties over in Greene County, Tennessee an area known as Chuckey Mountain. In 1864 she was robbed and forced to leave the area with her son. They fled to Michigan where she set about raising the funds to one day return to East Tennessee to reclaim her property.

To support herself and save up the money, she wrote and published “A Domestic Cook Book, containing a careful selection of useful receipts for the kitchen” in 1866. Her cookbook went mostly unknown to the cookbook world until it was discovered a few years ago in the collection of a woman in California. It is available online to view here, provided by the Hathi Trust.

In the opening of her cookbook, she wrote her own autobiography, so we feel it best that she tells you herself who she was:

“I was born in Washington county, and raised in Green County in the easter part of Tennessee. My mother (grandmother who raised her) was a member of one of the first families set free by Mr. Noddie of Virginia. I am the daughter of Karon, the youngest of my grandmother. My mother being born after the emancipation of my grandmother, her children are by law free.”

When her cookbook was rediscovered, the cookbook world realized that she was the first African American to write and publish a cookbook in this country. She goes on to tell her readers that she married and had a son, but her husband died four years into their marriage. At the time she wrote and published her cookbook, she was still unmarried and went by her maiden name after her husband’s passing. Prior to the boarding house and pastry shop, she learned to cook, and ran her own laundry service.

Malinda, as we read her own words, sounds like a self-confident woman of fortitude, determination, and creativity. Even though she was a black woman during the time of the Civil War, was able to make it on her own in a time when most people like her were not, though it obviously was not easy. Her story is one that is still relatively unknown, even here in East Tennessee. Researchers have tried to piece together the rest of her story, but the only record of her is in her cookbook. We will feature a couple of receipts from her cookbook as part of our Forgotten Recipes of the Smokies, and we would like to start with her Cold Water Biscuit. Here is the receipt just as it was printed in her book:

Cold Water Biscuit Receipt

To one pint cold water, a piece of lard the size of a teacup, one and a half teaspoons salt; work it lightly in the pastry bowl, turn out on the dough board, and knead and pound until it blisters. Mould into biscuit, and bake in a moderate oven.”

This is what would also be called a Beaten Biscuit. These were made before leavening agents were available to make them rise. You would knead the dough until it was elastic, then beat it with a rolling pin, paddle, or large flat hammer. As you beat it, the dough would start to get pockets of air in it, which would look like blisters that would begin to pop and snap, and that’s when you knew the dough was ready.

Testing Notes:

In the testing process, we found that the kneading takes about 15 minutes and then the beating of the dough takes an hour or more. The dough became very elastic and slightly tacky, but not sticky.

When beating the dough, you fold it every minute or so. This helps to eventually create air pockets in the dough, which is where the blistering begins, and as you beat it those blisters pop, making the sound that lets you know your dough is about ready.

Then you pat or roll the dough out to about an inch thickness and cut with a biscuit cutter. Prick each biscuit with a fork — traditionally three times — across the top and bake them in a moderate oven of about 325 degrees for about an hour.

They will be slightly crunchy on the outside and dense on the inside and will remain a light color. When you cut them, you will notice that there are very few crumbs because of the tight texture of the biscuit.

Because there are no leavening agents in them, they don’t rise much but will swell up enough to then split and serve country ham pieces or bacon on them. They are best enjoyed fresh from the oven but will last up to 3 weeks when stored in an air-tight container.

Beaten Biscuits were such a staple in a pastry baker’s offerings that a table was designed just for beating the biscuits. It is a very laborious task, so anything to make it more convenient was necessary.

We hosted a Livestream on Facebook on June 25, 2021 with James Beard Award-Winning cookbook author and Food Network Kitchen chef, Virginia Willis, who demonstrated the beaten biscuits on her very own antique biscuit break table. We also discussed the progression of biscuits through the ages.

Yield: 2 dozen