Historical Culinary Recreation:

Bisket Bread

Sophie Macomber and Ingrid Romero

Summer 2021

Bisket Bread

● Appears twice in The good hufvvifes Jevvell

● Had long been a hard and fairly tasteless food for soldiers (Lawrie)

● 16th century-shifted into a food that could be eaten at a banquet (Lawrie)

○ Typically equal amounts of flour and sugar

Lawrie’s interpretation of

Bisket Bread

Our Recipe

● Ingredients

○ Half a peck of fine white flour

○ 8 newly laid eggs, whites and yolks beaten together

○ 8 graines of fine Muske

○ Half a pint of Damaske water or rosewater

○ Wine or Muskadine (sweet wine)

○ 1 ounce of good anniseeds

○ Rose water

○ Sugar

● Methods

○ Beating Eggs

○ Mixing

○ Baking

○ Boiling syrup

Sophie’s Interpretation

● Bisket Bread

○ 4 cups of organic, all purpose flour

○ 2 eggs

○ ¼ cup of Rosewater

○ 2 cups Barefoot Moscato wine

○ 3 and ⅓ teaspoons of aniseed

○ No musk

● Sugar Syrup

○ ¾ cup of Rosewater

○ About 2 cups of sugar

Note: Forgot to mix aniseed into the batter, so it was added to the syrup to get the flavor

Methods

1. Set oven to 475 degrees and greased cake pan

2. Placed four cups of flour into a large bowl

3. Beat 2 eggs

4. Mixed together ¼ cup rosewater and 1 cup of wine

5. Mixed together liquids in flour (also forgot aniseeds)

6. Poured mixture into pan

7. Turned oven off and placed pan in oven

Methods Continued

7. Bake in oven for 25 minutes

8. Turn oven up to 350 and bake for 20 minutes

9. Mix ¾ cup of rosewater and ¾ cup of sugar over medium

heat

10. Allow to boil and add about an extra cup of sugar (and

anniseed) until it looks like it might thicken (15 min?)

11. Poke holes in bisket bread with toothpick

12. Pour over bisket bread and place back in oven for

another five minutes to allow to candy

Personal Struggles

● Difficult to read the fonts of old texts (D vs. M)

● What is Musk for a 16th century cook?

● Unknown amounts of liquid or suggested consistency?

● No cook times or suggestions to know when it is done

○ “Cook hard. . . or else indifferently”

● How to make a sugar syrup

○ What does it mean to thicken or candy

Ingrid’s interpretation:

● Sea Biscuits:

○ 2 cups of all purpose flour

○ 1 egg

○ ¼ cup of rose water

○ ¼ oz star anise (could not find aniseed)

○ 2 tbs of sugar and rosewater (glace syrup)

Note: I added ½ cup of water to the mix (the batter was too dry/unmanageable). No musk or moscato wine added to this

variant.

Method:

- Preheat oven at 475º F

- Line baking sheet with greased

foil paper

- Beat the egg until foamy

- Add ¼ cup of rosewater

- Mix the egg and rosewater into

the flour

- Add crushed star anise seeds

- Add ½ cup of water

- Fold all the ingredients until you

have a consistent dough ready

to cut disks

- Roll dough to ¼ inch thickness

and start cutting biscuits

Method continued:

- Use a fork to pierce the cakes

and allow any steam to scape

- Bake them for 10 minutes

Note:

- Used a mixture of rosewater

and sugar to coat some of the

biscuits (glaced). These were

the only biscuits that had a

sweet taste, the rest were very

aromatic but lacked taste.

What did I learn?

I decided to try the recipe in a different variety, as a sea or ship biscuit.

It was challenging to read/decipher the recipe, instructions and ingredients. Not only the images were opaque but the

font was hard to interpret at times.

The language used and the units of measurement were vague, the recipe lacked cooking temperature (not sure what

type of oven was used back then or how they measured heat). There was no cooking time, and some of the

instructions sounded as if the reader had already knowledge of the method, ingredients and measurements.

On the other hand, it was fun to look up medieval cooking terminology and find out my initial thoughts/interpretations

were completely off. By performing terminology searches, some interesting videos appeared and I spent quite some

time learning about sea or ship biscuits, the purpose of using hard bread to avoid spoilage during long journeys (as

food preservation). Just the word biscuit had more than four different spelling variants (besquite, bysqwyte, byscute,

bysket, and bisket).

While the aromatic nature of the rosewater and star anise seeds were appealing, the biscuit had more of a bland

flavor. I used a mixture of rosewater and sugar to coat some of the biscuits and give them a glace finish, which

ultimately added a bit of sweetness to the biscuit.