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Soft Ginger Cake
1/2 cup Shortening, 1 cup hot Water, dripping or lard, 31/2 to 4 cups pastry 1 Flour, teaspoonful "Arm & Hammer" Soda. lasses, 1 pinch Salt, 2 to 3 heaping teaspoonfuls Ginger.
Melt the shortening in a deep saucepan; pour into it the molasses and hot water and a pinch of salt.
When cooled down to lukewarm, add the Soda and stir until the batter foams; then stir in the sifted flour in which you have mixed the ginger. Bake in greased paper-lined cake tins. Do not fill over 1¼ inch deep in the pans, otherwise it may not bake well in the center.
A molasses gingerbread leavened entirely by soda reacting with the acid in the molasses, with no baking powder, eggs or milk. The method is the old melt-and-pour type, and the order of operations matters more than the measurements.
- The hinge: lukewarm, not hotThe soda must go in after the mixture has cooled to lukewarm, exactly as written. Added to hot liquid it gases off before the flour is in, and the cake bakes flat and soapy-tasting. Stir only until the batter foams, get the flour in, and get it into the pans.
- Missing molasses quantityThe amount of molasses has dropped out of the ingredient list; only the word survives. Comparable soft gingerbreads of this era, built on 1 cup of hot water and 3 1/2 to 4 cups of flour, generally use about 1 cup of molasses, but the original figure here cannot be recovered.
- Soda amountThe soda quantity is hard to read: a stray "1" floats in the garbled line ("pastry 1 Flour, teaspoonful 'Arm & Hammer' Soda") and most likely belongs to "1 teaspoonful" of soda. One to two level teaspoons would suit this volume of batter.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is specified. Molasses cakes scorch easily because of their sugar content, so a moderate oven of around 325-350F is a reasonable modern choice, with the pans on a middle rack. A shallow sheet of this batter will likely take somewhere near 20-30 minutes; test with a skewer at the centre.
- Pastry flourPastry flour is soft wheat, around 8-9 percent protein. All-purpose will work but gives a tougher crumb; substituting a mix of all-purpose and cake flour comes closer. Sift it with the ginger as directed so the spice distributes evenly.
- Shortening and dripping"Shortening, dripping or lard" meant whatever fat the house had. Beef dripping gives a savoury edge some will like in gingerbread; lard or a neutral solid shortening behave much the same way here since the fat is melted anyway, though butter carries water and milk solids and is not a like-for-like swap.
- GingerTwo to three heaping teaspoons of ground ginger is a strong hand by modern standards, and deliberately so. Old ground spice lost potency in the tin; fresh jars of ginger are considerably sharper, so start at two level teaspoons if you are uncertain.
- Pan depthThe depth limit in the last line is garbled. Read it as a shallow cake: pour the batter no more than about an inch deep so the centre sets before the molasses edges darken. Paper-lining is worth doing, as this batter sticks.
- YieldWith a cup of water, the missing molasses and close to four cups of flour, this makes a large quantity; poured shallowly it will need more than one tin, though the exact number cannot be pinned down from the text. It keeps well wrapped for several days.
Soft gingerbread, as distinct from the hard rolled gingerbread cut into shapes, was one of the standard uses for baking soda in nineteenth and early twentieth century American kitchens: molasses is acidic, and soda stirred into it foams on contact, giving a lift with no eggs and no baking powder. That chemistry fits a recipe carrying the "Arm & Hammer" brand name in its ingredient list. Church & Dwight, the makers of Arm & Hammer soda, issued promotional recipe pamphlets and cards.