Biscuits and Butter and Jam, Oh My!

I love old-fashioned southern buttermilk biscuits. Some of my earliest memories are of eating cold unbuttered biscuits out of a cookie jar at Mary’s. Mary was the matriarch of a family who, one at a time, worked for my grandmother for decades.

This was the old segregated south. It was either illegal or socially unacceptable to hire African-Americans for anything but menial jobs. My grandfather had employed Mary’s father or grandfather, I’m not clear which, in his lumber yard and construction business. He would have liked to make him foreman, but he told my grandmother he didn’t dare promote him over the lazy, drunken white guys. It would have cost him his business. I don’t remember the man’s name, but I know that he invented a “pocket” window for my grandmother’s pantry. The window opened downward into the wall.

Mary, then her sons and daughters, worked for my grandmother. I particularly remember Roberta. She had gone to Howard University, but came home to work and put her little sister through college. Roberta had the most beautiful handwriting I had ever seen. She was more my grandmother’s business associate than domestic help and I hope my grandmother paid her accordingly. I admired Roberta and tried to copy her handwriting. When her sister finished college, they both moved north and we lost track of them.

Anyway, I spent a lot of time at Mary’s house. The first house of theirs I knew was literally a log cabin with a lot of land around it. They had to walk to a spring for water and carry it all the way back. They did laundry in a huge pot outside, filled with buckets and buckets of spring water toted from that spring. Our laundry was sent out and I don’t know who did it. I never quite understood that, though Mary’s brood might have done our laundry. It would have made sense.

I was often sent to stay at their house. When friends and neighbors chastised my mother for it, she would ask, “Who would dare hurt her?” And she had a point. So I had some insight into the African-American community in our small town that made me an advocate for civil rights years later.

Back to biscuits. I am constantly amazed at the variety of things called “biscuits.” I judge all biscuits by the standards Mary set. Hers were “short” enough not to need additional lubrication such as butter. I suspect what made them taste so good was that she used lard for shortening. Lard makes a superior pie crust, too. Scones are just biscuits with sugar and sometimes raisins.

Roy Rogers used to serves a sort of Western biscuits. They taste as if they’re made with self-rising flour and almost the only fat in is brushed on the top before baking. I don’t think they’ve ever seen milk.

Popeye’s biscuits are awful. They’re hard and dry and look horribly machine made. I’m not crazy about their chicken, either. It’s even harder and dryer than the biscuits.

KFC makes pretty good biscuits. Not as good as Mary’s, but passable. They have a crusty exterior and a soft inside and taste almost like buttermilk biscuits. When I used to live close enough to a KFC I would go in a buy a dozen biscuits and nothing else.

Oddly enough, my local supermarket, SuperFresh, makes excellent biscuits so I don’t need to drive a half hour to the nearest KFC. Or make my own. Biscuits aren’t hard to make, they just take time.

The difference between a buttermilk biscuit and a baking powder biscuit is that one uses baking soda and soured milk for leavening and the other uses, tad ah! only baking powder. The tang of the buttermilk (or milk “clabbered” with lemon juice) makes the biscuits better. They should never, ever be made with water. Always milk and plenty of shortening. My mother liked the crust, so she rolled them out thin so there wasn’t much middle Some people cut them out really thick so there’s lots of soft middle. . I prefer a modest amount of middle. Cold biscuits lose the crispness of the crust, anyway.

I no longer eat my biscuits cold and unadorned. I heat them up and butter them. I love 'em with chicken or beef gravy, too. For breakfast, “Day old” biscuits get toasted: split, buttered, and put into the toaster oven to get crispy and brown. My mother used to do that for a special treat and I still do it for breakfast. I’ve never decided whether I prefer them with or without preserves so I always do half-and-half and alternate bites. I always use preserves, AKA jam, never jelly or marmalade. Jelly is for my grandson’s peanut butter sandwiches. Marmalade goes on English muffins or toast.

However they’re made, whatever is on them, whether they’re hot or cold, biscuits always remind me of that cozy cabin smelling of wood smoke and filled with Mary’s children and grandchildren. Because my little blonde head spent time with Mary’s family, and I knew Roberta, I never did understand prejudice and I have retained a lasting love of biscuits.

(c) 2008 Katherine DeWitt