To Bisket

This whimsical 1706 recipe hails from an early English manuscript—at a time when elaborate sweet confections were becoming a desirable finish to aristocratic meals. Recipes labelled 'To Bisket' refer to sweet, meringue-like confections, often incorporating fruits, and flavored with exotic additions like rosewater and musk, reflecting the global spice and perfume trade of the era. Apples were abundant and popular in English cookery, while rosewater and musk lent a luxurious touch that marked the dessert as special-occasion fare among the well-to-do. The slow oven-drying method hints at the transition from hearthside cooking to the use of early enclosed ovens in 18th-century kitchens.

Cooks of the era would use a large brass or copper pot to boil the apples over an open fire. They’d mash fruit with a wooden pestle or flat spoon, and beat mixtures with a birch or willow whisk until light. The mixture would be dropped by spoon onto sheets of buttered parchment or thick paper. A 'slak oven'—an oven allowed to cool after bread baking—or the gentle embers of a dying hearth would provide the low, even heat needed to dry but not bake the biscuits.