The first recipe test: walnut biscuits

From p 787 of 'Lady Hackett's Household Guide' by Deborah Buller Murphy (1940)

I chose this recipe because...I had the ingredients to hand; as good a reason as any!

It was easy to mix up, although the dough was a little too dry and I had to add 3 tbs milk to make it soft enough to roll out thinly. Because they were a little crumbly, I didn't use a 'fancy cutter' but simply cut them into squares. They were quite easy to handle both before and after cooking in this sturdy shape. Thin is best for these biscuits, around 1/2 cm thick or less: my chunkier ones tasted a bit 'chalky'. I also found that 20 minutes', rather than 30 minutes' cooking time was plenty for these thinner biscuits.

The biscuits are semisweet, not sweet, and I think they would be best paired with cheese or dips. With this in mind, I would have used olive oil (not an ingredient mentioned in the Guide!) to make the dough more pliable instead of milk. I think this would make them more like a cracker.

After making a couple of batches, I pressed some fennel seeds from my garden on top of the final batch, and the sweet aniseed flavour of the fennel works beautifully with the walnut crackers.

All in all, they are a tad dry, but crisp and a good sturdy base for cheese and the like. The fennel is a nice addition, and it would be fun to try with some other herbs and seeds. They would hold their own on a cheese platter!