One of the most surprising things about being a food historian is having to confront the arrogant notion that our ancestors were more ignorant and naïve about cookery than we are today.

Perhaps it seems logical that the natural progression of knowledge is upward, each succeeding generation learning from the last one and expanding on what they’ve learned, particularly given the technological innovations that revolutionized kitchens in the last century and a half.

If only that were true. The sad truth is, the progression of knowledge has not always been vertical, and technological innovations have not always made cooks wiser; they’ve only made the job easier. Indeed, in some instances, technology has had a negative impact on the quality and character of cookery, in some respects making us more ignorant than our ancestors.

And, unhappily, in the present generation, there has been a tendency to by-pass the knowledge of the past as a quaint inhibition to creativity. What this usually leads to is not creativity, but a lot of time wasted re-inventing something that already exists.

Besides, most modern innovations in cooking equipment have not expanded our knowledge of cooking well; all they’ve done is take some of the work out of it—and not always to the benefit of the end result.

Yes, a food processor will do most cutting jobs faster and at a fraction of the effort required of a sharp chef’s knife and skilled hand, but faster and easier does not mean better. While the food processor does most jobs adequately, in many cases it doesn’t do it nearly as well.

Yes, you can make Hollandaise in a blender, without turning your hand to a whisk or fiddling with a double boiler, and it will be more than passable. But it will not be better: it can never have the fluffy, silky delicacy of one that’s executed by hand.

You do not have to constantly refuel a modern range. You do not have to know what kind of wood to burn for a hot quick fire required for roasting or sautéing, or for a slow, smoldering one needed for a gentle simmer.

You do not have to use what they called a chafing dish (a tripod for holding a few coals) for that Hollandaise or a stew-stove apparatus (a masonry shelf with a well and small chamber for small amounts of slow-smoldering coals) for a slow-simmered stew or stock, both of which required extra firing, the handling of hot, live coals, and constant supervision. On a modern range, you can make that Hollandaise over a burner that goes on and off in a blink, and put a pot of stock on to a slow simmer and walk away from it.

But while the range makes the job easier, it does not make the sauce, stew, or stock any better. We still need our ancestor’s knowledge of how to do it well if we want the results to be more than passable.

The least improved equipment of all is the oven of a modern range, whose only virtue is convenience. A woman once bounced up to me at a book signing and, citing “reliable ovens,” said she thought cooking had just come into its own in the last fifty years. Sadly, few modern ovens are very reliable. Of all the problems customers bring to us in the store about their home kitchens, the most common is their temperamental oven.

This is not surprising: with its thin, uneven-heating steel walls and thermostatic control that is only as reliable as its calibration, a range oven is decidedly inferior to the built in brick oven and cast iron Dutch ovens used in open-hearth days.

For one thing, they lack the even radiant heat generated by brick and cast iron. For another, the thermostat has made us lazy: we’ve lost the ability to feel the heat and know when the oven is at the right temperature. And because the walls are not heat retentive, we compromise the chamber’s overall heat every time we open that honking big door on the front.

The biggest thing lost with a modern range oven is the ability to roast. With that sealed chamber and those thin, uneven-heating walls, the meat is actually baking, not roasting.

Now, that’s not to suggest that we abandon our modern equipment, of course. I would not want to have to cook on an open hearth every day. But we do need to be aware that our level of knowledge is actually not what it was back before the range replaced the hearth, that we don’t in fact know more than a cook who could turn out the same meals that we do under conditions that were a lot more taxing.

We also need to use care with the choices we make for the sake of convenience. My grandmother made biscuits almost every day of her life up until she discovered the canned variety. She never looked back. They weren’t nearly as good as hers, and she kind of knew that, but they shaved about twelve minutes off the hours she had to spend in the kitchen in the morning, and she did not have to fiddle with flour dust floating around in the air of her kitchen.

Was her life better for those extra twelve minutes of freedom? I don’t know—all I do know is I don’t remember anything that she did with those minutes that equaled her biscuits, and that she and my grandfather did not eat as well. And, worst of all, when she tried to make biscuits from scratch later, she could no longer do it. The skill and recipe that she had carried in her head and hands for more than forty years died with the first can of biscuits that she popped, and was not passed on.

No, we do not know more than our ancestors did, and if we really want the progression of knowledge in our kitchens to be vertical, we have to go back and learn the lessons that they took for granted.

My Biscuits

Biscuits are not hard to make, but they do take practice to make them well. My grandmother made “cat-head” biscuits by pinching off the dough and lightly rolling it in floured hands. I make cut biscuits, which have a flakier texture that tears open right in the middle. To work the dough, insuring an even distribution of the moisture and introducing flaky, even-tearing layers, I use a folding technique that I learned from the late Bill Neal. It isn’t the same as kneading and requires as light a hand as possible.

Makes 12 biscuits

2 cups Southern soft-wheat flour, pastry flour, or all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons double-acting baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons chilled lard (yes, pig fat, not vegetable shortening)

About 1 cup whole milk buttermilk or plain yogurt thinned with milk to buttermilk consistency

1. Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat it to 450° F. Sift or whisk the flour, baking powder and salt together in a mixing bowl. Add the lard and cut it in with a pastry blender, fork, or knives until it is the texture of very small peas. Do not over-blend—small lumps of shortening are what make biscuits flaky.

2. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in ¾ cup of the buttermilk (you may not need quite all of it—ambient humidity and the moisture content of each bag of flour will vary virtually every time you make bread). Mix with as few strokes as possible until the dough clumps together and pulls away from the sides of the bowl, adding more milk by spoonfuls until all the dry ingredients are incorporated into a dough that is no longer crumbly.

3. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and pat it flat (about 1-inch thick). Fold it in half and pat flat again. Repeat this twice more, then lightly flour the surface and roll or pat it out ½-inch thick. Using a sharp, round 2-inch biscuit cutter dipped in flour before each cut, cut the dough straight down without twisting the cutter, into 12 biscuits. When you are cutting at the edges, be sure that there is a cut side all the way around the biscuits or they won’t rise evenly. You will have scraps left over and won’t want to waste them. They can be reworked with care. Gather them together and lightly fold the dough over itself and pat flat about three times—until it is just holding together, then pat out ½ inch thick and cut it into biscuits as before.

4. Put the biscuits on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake until they are risen and golden brown, about 8 to 10 minutes. Serve piping hot.