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Plain Molasses Cookies
1 cup Molasses, 1/2 cup (scant) sour 1 teaspoonful Salt, Cream or Milk, Flour, sufficient, 1/2 cup Lard or Butter, 1 teaspoonful The Great (softened) "Arm & Hammer" Soda.
Stir together the molasses, softened lard, (or butter), sour cream, (or milk), salt, Soda and sufficient sifted flour to make a dough stiff enough to roll out in a sheet, not too thick. Cut out and bake on flat tins. Oven should not be too hot. One heaping teaspoonful of ginger can be added. 2 Eggs,
The text is set in two columns and has been transcribed across them, so the ingredient list reads out of order — note that the "2 Eggs" stranded at the end belongs in the list, not the method. Otherwise this is a straightforward rolled molasses cookie leavened by the reaction between soda and sour milk.
- The ingredient list, sorted out1 cup molasses, a scant 1/2 cup sour cream or sour milk, 1/2 cup softened lard or butter, 2 eggs, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon baking soda, and flour as needed. Optional: 1 heaping teaspoon ground ginger.
- Sour milkNineteenth-century sour milk was raw milk left to clabber, which pasteurised milk will not do safely. Stir 1 1/2 teaspoons of white vinegar or lemon juice into a scant 1/2 cup of whole milk and let it stand five minutes, or use buttermilk. Sour cream off the shelf works as written.
- The soda is the pointThis is an Arm & Hammer advertising pamphlet, so the soda carries the whole leavening. It needs the acid in the soured dairy to work; sweet milk with this much soda gives a soapy, faintly metallic cookie. Molasses is also mildly acidic and contributes.
- "Flour, sufficient"Expect roughly 3 1/2 to 4 cups of all-purpose flour to reach a dough firm enough to roll. Add it in stages and stop while the dough is still slightly tacky — molasses doughs stiffen considerably as they rest, and overfloured ones bake hard.
- "Oven should not be too hot"A moderate oven, in the region of 325-350°F. Molasses browns and then burns quickly at the edges, which is why the original warns against heat. Roughly eight to ten minutes for a sheet rolled about 1/4 inch thick; the cookies should still look slightly soft in the centre when they come out.
- LardRendered leaf lard gives the tenderest result and can usually be had from a butcher; supermarket lard is generally a more ordinary rendered or hydrogenated grade. Butter is the stated alternative and behaves fine; modern vegetable shortening will also work but flattens the flavour.
- Chill before rollingNot in the original, but the dough is soft and sticky when freshly mixed. An hour in the refrigerator makes it far easier to roll and cut, and keeps the shapes from spreading on the tin.
- YieldAbout three to four dozen cookies from 2 1/2-inch cutters. "Flat tins" means an ungreased or lightly greased baking sheet; parchment is easier.
Arm & Hammer issued small recipe pamphlets — a series generally traced to the later nineteenth century — and their purpose was frankly commercial: the leavening is called for by name in the ingredient list in case anyone missed it. Molasses cookies suited that campaign perfectly. Molasses was a cheap sweetener in nineteenth-century American households, and its acidity pairs with soda to produce both lift and the dark, faintly bitter depth that separates a molasses cookie from a sugar cookie. The pairing with sour milk is older than the branded product: farm kitchens are often said to have had clabbered milk on hand, and soda was one way to put it to use. The optional ginger is a nod to the nearly identical family of soft gingerbread and ginger snap recipes that fill the same pamphlets, distinguished mostly by how thin the sheet is rolled and how long it stays in the oven.