Ginger Snaps
One cup butter, one cup lard, one cup sugar, two cups molasses, one tablespoon ginger, a small tablespoon soda, a little salt; boil molasses, butter, sugar and lard about ten minutes or less; mix the soda in a little hot water, add ginger; when cool add the flour, mix then pretty stiff ; roll out as thin as possible and bake quickly.
A standard boiled-molasses snap of the late nineteenth century, written for a cook who already knew what the dough should feel like. Two things need spelling out: the flour is not measured, and "bake quickly" means a hot oven.
- The flour is up to youThe original gives no quantity, only "pretty stiff." With this much fat and molasses expect somewhere in the range of 7 to 8 cups of all-purpose flour, added a cup at a time until the dough rolls without sticking. Err on the soft side; too much flour gives a dry, sandy snap rather than a brittle one.
- Let the syrup cool properlyThe instruction to add flour "when cool" is the hinge. Flour worked into hot syrup gives a slack, greasy dough that is hard to roll out. Cool it to lukewarm, at minimum, before the flour goes in.
- "Bake quickly"Period equivalents for a quick oven are usually put at around 400-425F. For cookies rolled as thin as these, 400-425F for 5 to 8 minutes is the practical reading. They will still look soft at the edges when done and crisp as they cool.
- Soda in hot waterDissolving the soda before adding it is worth doing in a batter this dark; undissolved soda can leave bitter spots. "A small tablespoon" means a scant one, roughly 2 teaspoons.
- MolassesUse unsulphured cooking molasses, not blackstrap, which is more bitter than what a period cook would likely have had on hand. Sorghum syrup is a reasonable stand-in and was common in some American regions.
- The lardA cup of lard alongside a cup of butter gives the short, snapping texture; leaf lard is best. Substituting all butter works but yields a softer, chewier cookie, and vegetable shortening gives crispness without any flavor.
- Rolling thin"As thin as possible" is about 1/8 inch or less. Chill the dough thoroughly first, work with a quarter of it at a time, and keep the rest cold, or the fat softens and the sheet tears.
- YieldThis is a very large batch by modern standards, likely well over ten dozen small snaps. Halve it unless you are baking for a crowd; the dough keeps well wrapped and chilled for several days.
The "snap" in ginger snap is usually taken to refer to the sound and the break rather than to spice heat: the dough is rolled paper-thin and baked hot so it shatters rather than bends, and the same sense appears in the English brandy snap. Cookies of this type were built around molasses, generally cheaper than refined sugar in nineteenth-century American households, with sugar used sparingly alongside it; boiling the molasses with the fats before mixing helps give a smooth, well-blended dough and drives off a little water, so the finished snaps keep crisp. The soda dissolved in hot water belongs to the broader shift from pearlash and saleratus to bicarbonate of soda in home baking over the course of the century. Hard, long-keeping cookies like these were kept in a tin and brought out with tea or coffee.