To my mind “Crackers” usually means “Soda Crackers”, i.e., saltines, but they can often be flavored, for example, Ritz crackers, Triscuits, and a whole raft of things produced by Nabisco, often intended for use as hors d’oeuvres or canapes, usually with cheese and gherkins, pickled onions, and the like. Thin and crispy? Most definitely! If they’re not crispy, they’re stale.
I grew up on biscuits, made with baking soda. But then, my grandmother was from Texas. To me, something made with yeast involved results in a roll (i.e., dinner roll), which is something else entirely.
American biscuits are definitely not quite the same as British scones, which I have had - bought from an import shop - covered in clotted cream and strawberry jam. Without butter and honey (or gravy), biscuits don’t really have much flavor to them.
Just as escargot is nothing more than an excuse to eat melted garlic butter, American biscuits are really just the delivery system for whatever you slather on 'em - butter, fig preserves, sausage, country ham. A breakfast of country ham biscuits and mustard is the most truely civilized start of a day, as far as I am concerned.
Like I said, I think there is a bit of overlap depending on the recipe used. The scones I had for our tea break everyday for two months in Argyllshire in Scotland were very much like American biscuits and looked very nearly like this, except with some raisins thrown in.
just my 2 cents. First off, as to the original topic of this thread, it seems to me if someone from the UK wants what Americans call a biscuit they would have to ask for 'American Biscuits" since they don’t have a native word for them, wouldn’t that be their default name?
Secondly, I was raised in southern American family with all of it’s roots in Kentucky (both my grandfathers were coal miners in the early 20th century). When I grew up we had biscuits and gravy 2 meals a day (breakfast and usually with dinner too). The gravy could be made from sausage, but also from bacon, and at dinner often from chicken, the grease was the primary component which should give you an idea of how fatty it was. Sausage gravy was darker and grayer while bacon gravy was lighter but neither came close to white in color, chicken gravy was the lightest in color.
American sausage for breakfast comes in two main varieties ‘patty’ which is the familiar round sausage discussed so far, and links, which for breakfast sausages are perfectly straight complete sausages only about 3" in length and perhaps 1/2" wide with a basically identical taste except you have to eat the casing of these unlike sausage patties. Country sausage is usually very spicy because it’s origins were with the poor, and the heavy spice was used to preserve, and keep the stuff edible for as long as possible, as well as hide the taste of the worst cuts of meat used to make it.
The biscuits my mother (and grandmother) made did NOT have to rise overnight, they were produced in one operation before the meal and generally did not take excessively long to prepare (I never did the cooking but based on observation I’d say 15 minutes of work with some breaks during the process to attend to other parts of the meal. Baking them took only about 5 minutes and they rose in the oven. One particular difference between these biscuits and any type of English bread product I’ve ever seen is that these were universally very ‘crumbly’ and not chewy at all. A friend of mine has my mothers biscuits and gravy recipes I could contact her and get the ingredients and directions if anyone cares.
Lastly, by the time I was a teenager my stomach couldn’t take biscuits and gravy, particularly gravy made from sausage without hours of intestinal distress. I didn’t care and if my mother was still alive and making them still wouldn’t care. I’d eat them (too much of them in fact, usually 3 biscuits 2" tall and 3" in diameter with loads of gravy). Both my favorite breakfast and favorite dinner meal include biscuits and gravy, however I’m unlikely to ever have them again as I can’t boil water, and have no spouse to make them for me.
Also, odd but true, my maternal grandmothers family was from England, and one of the reasons I was so confused the first time I heard a Brit talk about ‘biscuits’ was that somehow I got the idea they had come over with my great grandmother from England (they did keep some English touches, my grandmother even served a proper ‘tea time’ in British style on occasion.)
Hope someone gets something useful from this,
AllFree
Baking Powder buscuits are the only kind I can make. Like at KFC. Very bad for you but very Tasty. I think the distinction is that in the us we want our biscuits served warm and not the canned crackers they serve in England. In colonial US they called them ‘hard tack’ and they keep forever.
Another thing I haven’t seen mentioned is that American baking powder biscuits can either be dropped or rolled. Dropped tend to be denser and crumbly and the “dough” is more like a quick bread batter, they might resemble scones more. With rolled the dough starts out denser and is worked like a yeast bread and rolled out and usually cut with circular cookie cutters the result tends to be lighter and flakier. These are the type served at KFC or come in those tubes that you break open and then bake. Dropped are definitely more rustic and need to be topped with something for flavor but a good rolled biscuit can be just fine with only butter.
I have not found this to be the case. The availability of biscuits & gravy outside the south is highly variable. In many places you’ll only find it at certain national chains and places claiming to serve “southern cooking.” If you go into your average diner in NYC, for example, they won’t even know what you mean by “sausage gravy” much less serve it. I find there is a high correspondance with whether or not the diner also serves grits. I remember a greek diner in Michigan attempting “biscuits and gravy” with hilarious yet disgusting results (the waitress shook her head sadly and said, “I’m from North Carolina… I tried to tell him…”).
I have never in my 7 years of living in Virginia, even heard of a yeast-raised biscuit. I’m sure such a thing exists (and may be common in some particular geographic locale), it just isn’t the most common or typical type overall.
I have seen a couple of yeast biscuits. They are very rare though. The texture and flavor is a lot like a biscuit but with a slightly softer, smoother crumb like a dinner roll. However, they are so much like a baking powder biscuit that it’s not really worth the bother and extra time to fuss with the yeast. BTW, I also have a recipe for sour dough biscuits.
American Biscuits are actually quite flavorful if the fat used is pure butter and liquid is buttermilk, but, yeah, they are mostly there to keep the honey and jam off your hands.
Out west we seem to do biscuits and gravy just fine. Maybe it came in through the ranching and farming families as they traveled west.
A British biscuit will not keep forever and are a very different beast to crackers, which we also have in the UK. An American biscuit is a very very different thing to the British food of the same name.
Originally, Graham crackers were unsweetened whole wheat crackers/biscuits. Now they are generally sweetened (cooked with honey, say) & are sort of an anomaly in American crackers. Animal crackers are considered sort of hard cookies in the US, & seem to owe their name to a Shirley Temple song about something else entirely.
Hm, maybe I’ve just been lucky, then. There’s a Greek diner my mom goes to often (in Cleveland) that does just fine with it, as well as other American classics like meatloaf and country-fried steak.