In 1918, Genevieve Whimp wrote a column called, “The Culinary Department: Good Recipes and Suggestions for the Home,” a weekly feature in the Chicago Defender, then the most widely read Black newspaper in the country and a leading voice urging families to leave the South for northern cities. Whimp reached her readers during the First World War, when the U.S. Food Administration asked households to conserve wheat, meat, and sugar for the troops. Her recipes lean on molasses, sour milk, cornmeal, and stretched cuts of meat—thrifty choices that turned wartime scarcity into good eating and carried home cooking north alongside the paper’s migrating readers.
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Mrs. Genevieve Whimp opened her column with a biscuit built on buttermilk and a careful hand with the leavening. Her reassurance to the reader—that the full measure of cream of tartar is correct, “so don’t be afraid”—shows a teacher’s instinct to steady a nervous cook. Buttermilk, left over from churning, cost almost nothing and kept these biscuits within reach of any household budget.
Buttermilk Biscuits Recipe
2 cups good buttermilk
1 mixing spoon cream
2 teaspoons soda (a little rounded)
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
A good pinch of salt
Flour, enough to make a stiff dough
Directions
Dissolve the soda and cream of tartar thoroughly in the buttermilk, or sift them with the flour, as preferred. Work in enough flour to make a dough stiff enough to roll out and cut. Bake in a quick (hot) oven.
The Chicago Defender, March 30, 1918.