Miss Sallie’s Maryland Beaten Biscuits

2 quarts flour, unsifted
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup lard (solid pork fat)
1 teaspoon salt
1 pint milk

Sift the dry ingredients together. Work in lard with fingers, then stir in the milk. Work in lard with fingers, then stir in the milk. Turn onto pastry board and beat with a wooden mallet, fold over and beat again. Continue folding dough and beating for about 30 minutes or until blisters appear on dough. Pinch off pieces about the size of small walnuts, work round in hands, and press flat. Stick four times with silver fork. Bake on ungreased pan about 20 minutes in hot oven.

A collector’s item for our confectionary file comes from Mrs. Nellie Altvater of Talbot County, MD, president of Maryland state home demonstration clubs.

***** Notes: This is the recipe for the beaten biscuits that my father (Uncle Jerry) insisted we have for Thanksgiving dinner. Mommom (Lillie Jarrell) and Aunt Mary Downs (Mommom's sister) would come to the house several days before Thanksgiving. They would help mix up the batter and beat the biscuits. Then we had them for Thanksgiving dinner. Interestingly, it was my mother's family who came for Thanksgiving, but my father's mother and aunt helped to prepare the beaten buscuits.
For Thanksgiving dinner 1996, when David Amorozo was with us from Ecuador, we made them in our kitchen in Dover. That Thanksgiving David Hamilton and family were with us as well. We all made the beaten biscuits using the biscuit boards. We beat and beat and beat. The biscuits were good. The board is a pie shaped board that we still have around the house.
These days I buy them from the Acme. They taste just like the home made kind.