On a busy summer weekend, Moody’s Diner in Waldoboro serves roughly 400 biscuits — in breakfast sandwiches, with sausage gravy and haddock chowder. Every dinner comes with a homemade biscuit, and diners who still haven’t had their fill can order the strawberry shortcake for dessert.
Moody’s makes the biscuits with Bakewell Cream, a leavener developed in Bangor roughly 80 years ago that many home bakers in Maine — and their mothers, grandmothers and great aunts — still swear by. Bakewell Cream, they say, creates the lightest, fluffiest biscuits ever.
“I’m not really sure what magical powers it holds, but it definitely…” Heather Instasi, baker at Moody’s, didn’t finish her thought. “You know, we cannot make our biscuits without it.”
Colby College graduate (class of 1916) and Bangor businessman Byron H. Smith is said to have invented the leavener to alleviate a shortage of cream of tartar during World War II. Today, the product is part of the New England Cupboard group of companies, based in Hermon and owned by Jim Collins. He bought Bakewell Cream in 2008, and he manufactures the leavener in the Penobscot County town.
“It is my No. 1 product I do sell,” Collins said.
Mystery in a tin
You can learn a lot about Byron H. Smith in old newspapers.
He opened his eponymous business, Byron H. Smith & Co., in 1922, selling spices and flavoring extracts. By 1930, the extracts (vanilla, orange and lemon) were “becoming popular throughout the state for their uniform excellence,” the Bangor Daily Commercial wrote. Smith served on the PTA and in the state’s National Guard, which in 1932 held a chicken dinner in his honor and gave him an “attractive wrist watch,” the Bangor Daily News reported.
By the time Smith ran for the Legislature in 1940, he was a “substantial real estate owner (who) has built up a prosperous business,” the Bangor Daily News wrote. “A man of recognized ability and experience…”
Smith suffered a tragedy. In 1936, his 15-year-old daughter Marjorie died instantly in a car accident while driving back to Bangor from the family summer home in Hampden. His wife Jennie died in 1944 after a period of ill health. Two years later, Woodford M. Rand, a manager at Byron H. Smith & Co., accidentally shot and killed himself while cleaning his rifle. The business closed for a day in his honor.
Oddly, though, one thing you cannot learn about Byron H. Smith in old newspapers clippings is how and precisely when Bakewell Cream was invented.
Beginning in the 1840s, cream of tartar made baking without yeast much more reliable, a successor to pearlash and roughly concurrent with other new, similar products like baking powder and baking soda, which are in more common use today.
Cream of tartar is a byproduct of winemaking. In the 1940s, barely a decade after the repeal of Prohibition, the U.S. had no wine industry to speak of — hence no homegrown supply — while imports of the leavener (and much else) during wartime were tight. Bryon H. Smith & Co. had been selling “Pure Cream Tartar” since the early 1930s and apparently cast about for a substitute.
The one-page fact sheet that Collins sends with online orders — as well as Wikipedia, and several other sources — uniformly cite the 1940s/war-caused cream of tartar shortage as the impetus for Bakewell Cream.
But the Bangor Historical Society “has no objects in the collection related to it,” curator Matt Bishop said, and “the first mention of this product under this particular name is in an advertisement in the January 17th, 1955 issue of the Bangor Daily News,” emailed Mia Sigler, a reference librarian at the Maine Historical Society’s Brown Research Library in Portland.
Maine culinary historian Sandra Oliver isn’t surprised by the possible discrepancy. Food history is “really stuck in this attachment to invention and origin,” she said. “Most food, most of the recipes we follow, most of the dishes we cook, are descended from some place or have predecessors in the more distant past, but the story often gets terribly, terribly muddled by this desire for invention.”
“The ‘cream’ presumably is a reference to cream of tartar,” Oliver added, “and then the ‘Bakewell’ is just meant to make you feel warm and glowy.”
In any case, contemporary Maine bakers who are devoted to Bakewell Cream probably could care less about the details of its creation.
True believers
Two words come up a lot when you talk to Mainers about Bakewell Cream: “magical” and “secret.”
“I’ve been making Bakewell Cream biscuits for years,” Sheila Collins wrote on Facebook. “A friend from out of state loved them and asked me to send her some Bakewell Cream. Her family raved about how good her biscuits were, she never told them her secret.”
My colleague, Press Herald editor Eric Russell, said his grandmother, Frances Sweetser, would only use Bakewell Cream for her biscuits at Fran’s, her restaurant in North Yarmouth. His mother also kept a tin at home and when she pulled it out to use it would say, “‘This is the magic ingredient,’” Russell said.
In an email, Farmington resident Scott Cook said both his mother and grandmother relied on it. “I was born in 1963 and, 60 years later I’m still using it for biscuits (the best) and pancakes almost every Sunday. Love the stuff and would not be without it.”
And Catherine Raynor, of Auburn, recollected her late father’s attachment to the product. James Betsch was a perfectionist in everything he did, she said, and was locally famous for his Sunday breakfasts with “pretty fabulous” biscuits, eggs and bacon. Everyone was invited to stop by, and if the eggs and bacon sometimes ran out, the biscuits never did.
“He swore by Bakewell Cream,” Raynor said. “More than once he would bring it up: ‘I made these biscuits with Bakewell Cream.’ And my mother made strawberry-rhubarb jam. To this day, I can still taste those warm biscuits with butter and strawberry-rhubarb.”
Betsch continued to make biscuits well into his 80s. He died two years ago at age 90. “He just loved that product,” Raynor said. “When they came to clean out the house, I’m sure there was some in the kitchen.”
The power of brands
What makes us loyal to particular brands? Richard Bilodeau, senior lecturer of marketing and entrepreneurship at University of Southern Maine, says several factors are at play. Such ties, he added, are not easily severed.
“From a sociologic perspective, someone in your reference group, your grandmother or someone in your family, gave the product high marks and always used it. So that’s going to increase the likelihood that you use it,” Bilodeau explained.
“From a cultural perspective, there are a lot of Maine people who like to buy things that are Maine-made. We used to have a much larger manufacturing economy, and people took a lot of pride in the things that were made here. People still take a lot of pride in products that are made here, so that sort of cultural affect can also create that bond.
“Then psychologically, if we have learned to use this product in baking, let’s say we were baking with our grandmother or mother or an aunt, those learned behaviors also encode on us.”
“Our brain doesn’t like to make new decisions,” he said. Translation: If the bakers in your family always reached for that yellow and blue tin of Bakewell Cream, the one with the image of biscuits topped with dabs of melting butter, you probably will too.
Take me to the fair
Minus a single four-year-break, Carolyn Small has run the exhibition halls at the Cumberland County Fair since 1994. Starting around the same time, or possibly a few years earlier, the fair has included Bakewell Cream baking contests, one for adults and one for “youth.” They’re the only such competitions in the state, as far as Collins knows, and New England Cupboard sponsors them. (One-Pie Pumpkin and King Arthur Flour, which, as it happens, uses Bakewell Cream Baking Powder for its cooking classes, sponsor their own baking competitions at the fair.)
Contestants get a Bakewell Cream recipe that they must follow. The youth often get a cookie recipe — “Kids like to do cookies,” Small explained. For the adults, it’s usually biscuits, although last year they were asked to make Grape-Nuts Bread. Both adults and youngsters must bring a tin of the leavener when they deliver their baked good to the fairgrounds as proof they actually used it. “We got to keep it honest,” Small said with a laugh.
The adult winners take home $50 (the kids get $30) and a fresh can of Bakewell Cream, with their blue ribbon. Last year, that was Westbrook resident Linda Hanscom, a regular contestant at the fair, as is her husband, Mike. Actually, he’s entered the Bakewell Cream contest himself in the past, and has won it, too, with “Mike’s famous biscuits.”
“He’s very, very proud of that, of course,” Hanscom said. “Very proud.”
Hanscom had never made Grape-Nuts bread before she entered the contest last year — though according to a back-of-the-box recipe from roughly the late 1950s, it was one of the six most popular recipes in Grape-Nuts’ history. She never got to taste it, either, as the uncut loaf went to the fair to be judged. And although Hanscom grew up in West Forks, less than two hours’ drive from Bangor, birthplace of Bakewell Cream, you wouldn’t have found a tin in her childhood home.
“My mother was not a baker at all,” Hanscom said.
The doubters
The recipe for the famous biscuits is right on the tin, as is a recipe for pancakes. If you need more ideas, you can buy an undated 40-page cookbook full of suggestions (banana bread, pumpkin bread, lemon bars and so on) on the Bakewell Cream website.
Bakewell Cream has just two ingredients: sodium acid pyrophosphate and cornstarch. To use it in place of baking powder (a product the company also makes), substitute two parts Bakewell Cream and one part baking soda.
A “ton” of chemical leaveners like Bakewell Cream came along in the 18th and 19th centuries, Oliver said, and they were particularly well-suited to Americans. No need for a nation that was always in a hurry to wait around for yeast doughs to rise (twice).
But Oliver, who lives on Islesboro, is skeptical of the brand’s alleged magical culinary powers.
“Think about all the things that make biscuits fluffy, including the cook. How deft a hand does the cook have?” Oliver said. “If he’s clunky and over-kneads the biscuits, they’re not going to be light and fluffy. No amount of cream of tartar (or its substitute) is going to improve that situation.”
She’s not the only one with doubts.
“Some years ago Food 52 had the chutzpah to do a comparison of biscuits made with Bakewell Cream versus something else,” Nancy Jenkins, a 12th-generation Mainer, cookbook author and food expert, wrote in an email from her home in Camden. “Their conclusion? No difference! I beg to differ — I wouldn’t dare use anything else.
“It’s in my pantry now,” Jenkins added, “waiting for baking powder biscuits to go with the great strawberries from Goranson’s (Goranson Farm in Dresden) or Beth’s (Beth’s Farm Market in Warren).”
Strawberry shortcake with Bakewell Cream biscuits
Strawberry Shortcake practically shouts Fourth of July celebration, so you can show your Maine patriotism, too, by making the biscuits with Bakewell Cream. The recipe for the biscuits comes straight from the tin (with a few minor clarifications). No yield is given on the tin and, curiously, it calls for baking the biscuits for just 5 minutes, then leaving them in the hot, turned-off oven to finish cooking.
You can buy Bakewell Cream at most Hannafords. Jim Collins, who owns and manufactures Bakewell Cream as part of New England Cupboard, said it’s also available at Market Basket, though I couldn’t find it at their Portland store. You can also buy directly from New England Cupboard online, where one (8-ounce) tin sells for $5.75.
For the biscuits
4 cups flour
4 tsps Bakewell Cream
2 tsps baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup shortening
1 ½ cups cold milk
Mix and sift dry ingredients.
Add shortening and mix with pastry blender. Add milk all at once and stir quickly with a fork. (Some flours may require a little more liquid to make a nice, soft dough.) Turn out on a floured board and knead 5 or 6 times. Do not over-knead.
Roll or pat dough out on a lightly floured board to 1/2-inch or 3/4-inch thick. Cut the dough with a biscuit cutter and put on a cookie sheet. Bake the biscuits in a preheated 475 degrees F for 5 minutes. Turn off heat and leave the biscuits in the oven for 5 to 10 minutes until golden brown.
For the strawberries:
2 pints ripe, local strawberries, plus 6 whole berries for garnish
1/3 cup sugar, more or less
This amount will yield enough for 6 biscuits. You’ll probably have extra biscuits.
Slice the berries and place them in a bowl. Add the sugar and toss. Crush some of the berries with a wooden spoon or potato masher. Let berries macerate for at least 1/2 hour at room temperature to let the sugar draw out the berry juices. Taste for sugar and add more if you think necessary.
To put together:
1/2 pint whipping cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
Confectioners’ sugar, to taste
Whip the cream in a mixer with the vanilla extract and sugar. Be careful not to overwhip or the mixture will turn to butter.
Split the slightly cooled biscuits in half and place the bottom halves in individual bowls. Spoon a generous amount of the berry mixture over each biscuit half. Top with whipped cream. Put the top half of the biscuits over the cream, drizzle with a little more berry mixture and garnish each shortcake with a pretty whole berry.
Bakewell Cream Grape-Nuts bread
This recipe is the one that adult contestants in the Bakewell Cream competition at the Cumberland County Fair last year were instructed to make. Linda Hanscomb, who took home the prize, said she followed the recipe except for one thing. Based on her baking experience, she baked her loaf for just 1 hour. She said when she brought her bread to the fair to be judged, she noticed that other contestants had much darker, overbaked loaves, so she felt good about her chances of winning.
1 cup Grape-Nuts
3 cups flour
2 ½ tsp Bakewell Cream
1 ½ tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 cups scalded milk
1 egg, beaten
3/4 cup sugar or honey
Pour scalded milk over Grape-Nuts and let stand until cool.
Add beaten egg, sugar, and then mixed dry ingredients.
Pour into greased loaf pan. Let stand for 20 minutes, then bake at 350 degrees for 1 ½ hours (or less. See recipe header note above).
This story was originally published by the Maine Trust for Local News. Peggy Grodinsky can be reached at pgrodinsky@pressherald.com.