When the holiday season rolls around, many people get homesick for traditions — especially foods. Among Eastern Shore natives and transplants, some get nostalgic for Maryland beaten biscuits. (And there are others who don’t lament the absence of what they consider to be golf balls in disguise, but that’s ok — more for the rest of us.)

Nowadays, few people have the time available to make these treats at home. And there’s no longer a commercial beaten biscuit bakery, making them hard to find, except perhaps at a few church or fire company bazaars.

So we put together a reminiscence that we know cannot take the place of enjoying this Eastern Shore delicacy, but it’ll have to do for now.

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Our friend, Brock Switzer, Cultural Heritage Photographer at the Mariners’ Museum and Park in Newport News, Va., tells how he learned about, and learned to make, Maryland beaten biscuits. His amusing article is full of information and includes wonderful historical photographs. He writes:

“I recently had cause to photograph some of [the Mariners’ Museum’s] ephemera (a fancy word for printed memorabilia) from The Baltimore Steam Packet Company. You may be more familiar with their moniker “Old Bay Line.” One of the items I digitized was the menu for the Baltimore Steam Packet Company’s centennial celebration dinner on May 23, 1940. From the menu, it’s safe to assume that it was a grand affair featuring such sophisticated dishes as seafood cocktail, terrapin a la Chesapeake, golden roast pheasant, Maryland Beaten Biscuits, Cen–

“Wait. Just. One. Minute.

“I’m sorry. Maryland, what now?”

For the whole article you’ll need to click this link – it’s well worth it!

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CSES writer Peter Heck wrote about his family memories of beaten biscuits while he was a reporter for the Kent County News. Beaten biscuits were a regular feature at holiday meals when he was growing up on the Eastern Shore. His mother, Ermyn Jewell Heck, would tell of making them on the family farm near Worton, where she grew up. Her brother Hyland would beat the dough with the back of an axe, using a special biscuit block the family owned. Ermyn said the family had given away the block when they moved to town, to someone who was making the biscuits for sale. Peter often asked his mother if they could make up a batch — he volunteered to beat them — but she always said it wouldn’t come out right without the special block. In later years, he wondered whether that was just an excuse.

When he went away to college, then worked in other states, he discovered that these special biscuits are unknown in New York, Massachusetts, Indiana, or really any other place than the Eastern Shore of Maryland. He missed them. After holiday visits home, he would always bring back batches to wherever he was currently living. When he returned to Kent County to work, Peter would often eat a lunch of beaten biscuits and country ham or sharp cheese, warming up the biscuits for half a minute in the microwave. When Orrell’s, the last commercial maker of biscuits on the Shore, went out of business in 2016, he wrote an article lamenting the passing of a Shore culinary tradition that had been part of his life for as long as he could remember. The whole article — “The Beaten Biscuit Mystery” — is available for subscribers to MyEasternShoreMD.com newspapers. It can also be accessed free of charge through most of the local public library digital services.

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Finally, another CSES writer, Jan Plotczyk, was so entranced with beaten biscuits that she wrote about them two years ago. A Marylander — but not an Eastern Shore native — her experience was limited to memories of bags of beaten biscuits for sale at the local grocery store. Sadly, those bags have disappeared.

To read the article, which includes a humorous story of motivation for beating the biscuit dough, click here.

We hope your holidays are sweet and savory!