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Soft Gingerbread
Take one cupful of molasses, one cupful of sugar, one cupful of sour milk, half a cupful of butter, five cupfuls of sifted flour, and somewhat more than half a teaspoonful of soda. Melt the butter in the molasses and sugar, with the soda, add the ginger, and, if you like, a little cloves, the sour milk and flour. The cake should be just stiff enough (a thick batter) to rise nicely in baking and not fall afterwards.
A plain molasses gingerbread leavened by the reaction between soda and sour milk. The original assumes you know what a gingerbread batter should look like and gives neither spice quantities nor an oven temperature.
- The missing gingerThe ingredient list omits ginger entirely, then the method tells you to add it. For five cups of flour, 1 to 2 tablespoons of ground ginger is a reasonable amount, plus about a teaspoon of cloves if you want them.
- Sour milkThis means naturally soured raw milk, thick and acidic. Buttermilk is the direct substitute; failing that, a cup of milk with a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar stirred in and left ten minutes. With fresh sweet milk you lose most of the acid the soda needs -- the molasses supplies some, but the rise will be poorer and the cake denser.
- "Somewhat more than half a teaspoonful of soda"Read this as about three-quarters of a teaspoon. It is on the low side for a cup of acid milk plus a cup of molasses, and modern gingerbreads of this size typically use closer to two teaspoons. Err toward the larger amount if your molasses is dark and strongly acidic.
- Melting the butterWarm the molasses, sugar and butter gently together and let the mixture cool to lukewarm before the soda and milk go in, or the leavening will spend itself before the batter reaches the pan.
- Judge the flour by the batterFive cups is a starting figure for the sifted flour of the original. Hold back the last half cup and stop when you have a thick batter that drops heavily from the spoon rather than a dough.
- OvenBake at 350F. Molasses browns fast, so anything hotter darkens the crust before the centre sets.
- Pan and timingThe quantity fills a 9x13-inch pan. Expect 35 to 45 minutes, until the top springs back and a skewer comes out clean. In two 8-inch square pans, check at 30 minutes.
- Why it might fallThe original ties this to the consistency of the batter: too thin and it will not hold its rise. Underbaking will do it too -- molasses cake stays moist-looking at the centre long after the edges are done, so leave it until the middle no longer wobbles when the pan is nudged.
Soft gingerbread is the American cake-pan descendant of the hard, rolled, spiced honey and molasses cakes of medieval Europe, and in the nineteenth century it was a New England staple: cheap, keeping well, and made from molasses that arrived by the barrel through the West Indies trade rather than from expensive refined sugar. Recipes like this one rely on the older method of leavening, in which the standard lift came from pairing soda with something acidic already in the pantry, usually the crock of milk that had turned. The ginger carries no measurement, which may be nothing more than a printing slip, since the method assumes it was listed.