Foodanddrink

I tried the biscuits from a 1940s cookbook, and now I'll never make them the same way again

Allrecipes · Jul 02, 2026 19:00 · 4 min read

This Beloved Restaurant Bakes 700 of These Biscuits a Day—Here’s the Easy Recipe — Credit: Getty Images

Discover the "five fundamental rules for a good biscuit."

Buttermilk biscuits were the first thing I learned how to make on my own. I was about eight years old when my sister taught me how to deftly crumble Crisco into self-rising flour with my fingers until it was tender and crumbly. From there, she taught me how to carefully pour in cold buttermilk until it reached the perfect pillowy, soft consistency. While we plopped biscuits onto a preheated baking pizza stone with a fork, she'd insist that the flour should always be White Lily—and I abided by her directive for most of my early days cooking in the kitchen.

Since then, I've baked more batches of biscuits than I can even begin to count, and I've experimented with a wide range of flours and biscuit-baking styles. Flaky layered biscuits require careful folding and cutting, beaten biscuits require some elbow grease, and butter swim biscuits are, well, extremely buttery.

During the spring months, I fold in fresh ramps, and I'm always up to experiment with new and old add-ins, techniques, ingredients, and methods. While I tend to experiment these days with all-purpose flour only, I always keep White Lily Self-Rising flour on hand for drop biscuits—the first ones I ever learned to make. After all, the century-old biscuit brand simply knows how to get hot, fresh biscuits on the table fast.

When I discovered that White Lily offers a library of retro cookbooks, published between 1931 and 2002, and available for free digital download on its website, I was delighted. My favorite in the bunch is by far the "White Lily Cooking Guide," which contains mostly biscuit recipes—yes, that's biscuit recipes plural.

White Lily's 'Vintage Cooking Guide'

Dough rolled out with round biscuit shapes cut out using a cutter resting on a floured surface

After 1938, the American Medical Association's Council of Food and Nutrition pushed to add nutrients to certain processed foods, including flour, for public health reasons—and the 1942 edition of White Lily's "Vintage Cooking Guide" reflects this period in food history. The very first page states that White Lily adopted the standards for an "enriched" flour product, meaning it's fortified with added vitamins and minerals that would otherwise be stripped from the flour and not added or reincorporated.

The book continues in a more reverent tone, its dedication reading: "This Book Is Dedicated To Those Women Who Find Joy and Satisfaction In the Preparation Of Good Food." Following that, the book boasts a great many recipes for confections, and at least six types of biscuits, but not before an instructional page about how to cook the very best ones—and these tips still hold up today.

White Lily's Biscuit Tips

The "Five Fundamental Rules for a Good Biscuit" instructs as follows:

1. Have good flour

This one's easy. The conceit of these biscuit rules is to use White Lily flour, which is, coincidentally, my favorite for quick-and-easy biscuits where you don't have to measure the salt, baking powder, or baking soda. But any fresh flour is good flour. To keep flour fresh for longer, transfer your opened bag to a sealed container. Like fresh coffee, keeping flour in a sealed container helps prevent any unwelcome moisture, further oxidation, and funky tastes.

2. Measure carefully

This is key. For many years, I made biscuits clumsily and haphazardly. While they typically turned out just fine, my biscuit-making improved drastically once I started measuring either by weight in grams or carefully spooning flour into measuring cups.

3. A soft dough, mixed quickly and handled lightly

In baking terms, a soft dough means that it's well-hydrated or, in other words, not tough and dry. Milk (like buttermilk) and butter (or shortening) typically hydrate biscuit dough—but it's a fine line between soft and wet! A soft dough should be just that: soft on your fingers, and even velvety. It may be slightly sticky, but it should not stick to your hands or surfaces, allowing you to handle it lightly and nimbly. A light dusting of flour may help with this.

4. Bake in hot oven

This seems like a simple tip, but it's an important one—and it's why most biscuit recipes call for an oven preheated to at least 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). If a round of biscuit dough goes into an oven that's warm but not hot enough, it will simply melt and harden into a flat puck. But place it in a hot oven, and the steam from the milk and butter will immediately react with the leavening agents in the flour. Towering, fluffy biscuits depend heavily on a piping hot oven.