Perfect for Soup Weather: Mrs. Perkerson’s Cheese Biscuits

By ANGELA McRAE, Special to The Coweta Shopper

Angela McRae

I am always on the prowl for vintage cookbooks. The find is even better if it happens to be a local cookbook containing some Coweta names of yesteryear. One such book I came across in a downtown Newnan antique shop years ago was titled Strictly Personal: The Family Book, and it was published by the American Legion Auxiliary, Alvin Hugh Harris Unit No. 57.

There’s no publication date I can find, although a note about the club mentions something that happened in 1952, so it was obviously published after that. The ads in the book were a delight to read, as some of these businesses were already long gone by the time I arrived here in the late eighties.

Newnan Dry Goods Company was located at No. 3 Greenville St., and the phone number was AL 3-5156. Newnan Bowling Lanes, Inc., with “16 AMF Lanes for Your Bowling Pleasure,” was on the Atlanta Highway North. Newnan Motor Company advertised its vehicles for sale at 115 Temple Avenue, and Coweta Dairies, with offices at the Temple Avenue Extension, boasted of its All-Jersey Milk. Milk not your thing? Pepsi-Cola and Coca-Cola were advertisers as well, and radio station WCOH cleverly referred to itself as “Your Best Recipe to Good Listening!”

There are plenty of tempting recipes in the book. I like the ingredients in Mrs. Opal Johnson’s Russian Tea recipe, and I wonder if Mrs. Ples Lambert’s Buttermilk Spoon Bread tastes like the wonderful spoon bread I savored at a Kentucky inn years ago. Mrs. David Burnham’s Waldorf-Astoria Chocolate Nut Cake boasts enough chocolate and nuts to make that one a real contender, and the White Cake (Coconut) by Mrs. Dorsey Beavers is also on my must-try list.

And since I tend to make a lot of soups in the fall, I pay attention to any new (or new “vintage”) recipes for biscuits, cornbread, and the like, since these breads are great accompaniments to soup and chili. For that reason, Mrs. J. F. Perkerson’s Cheese Biscuits recipe caught my eye.

I happened to have all the ingredients on hand, and while a cheesy biscuit dough sounded as if it might be fussy to work with, it wasn’t. This dough came together easily, and that pinch of paprika gives these biscuits the perfect bit of pizzazz.

Mrs. J. F. Perkerson’s Cheese Biscuits

2 cups all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon paprika
4 tablespoons shortening
2/3 cup grated cheese, mild (I’m a rebel and used sharp)
2/3 cup milk
2 teaspoons prepared mustard

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Sift dry ingredients together. Cut in shortening, then add grated cheese, milk, and mustard; work in lightly with a fork. Toss dough onto floured board, then pat it out and roll into 1/2-inch thickness and cut out with a biscuit cutter. Place biscuits onto an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned. Yields one dozen 2 1/4-inch biscuits.