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Soft Gingerbread (Four tea-cups flour one)
Four tea-cups flour, one tea-cup sugar, one tea-cup molasses, one tea-cup buttermilk, half teacup butter, three eggs, one and one-half teaspoons soda, dissolve in one tablespoon hot water, one tablespoon ginger.
A list of ingredients with no pan, temperature or time — typical of a recipe written down for someone who already knew how gingerbread behaved. The proportions are sound; everything else has to be supplied.
- The tea-cupIn American receipt books of this period a tea-cup is generally reckoned at about 6 fluid ounces, or three-quarters of a modern cup. That makes roughly 3 cups flour, 3/4 cup each sugar, molasses and buttermilk, and 6 tablespoons butter. Some households used the tea-cup as a full 8-ounce cup, so the ratios matter more than the absolute numbers: flour to buttermilk runs 4:1 by volume either way.
- OvenNo temperature is given. A soft gingerbread of this type will bake well at around 350F; a 9-inch square or 8x8 pan takes roughly 30 to 40 minutes, a 9x13 closer to 25. It is done when the centre springs back and the edges have pulled slightly from the pan.
- Soda in hot waterDissolving the soda in a tablespoon of hot water before adding it is the hinge of the recipe. It distributes the leavening evenly through a heavy, acidic batter that would otherwise leave bitter yellow streaks where dry soda sat. Stir it in last and get the batter into the oven promptly, because the reaction with the buttermilk and molasses begins at once.
- MolassesUse unsulphured dark molasses, not blackstrap, which is markedly more bitter than the table molasses this recipe assumes. Light or "mild" molasses will give a paler, sweeter cake than intended.
- ButtermilkCultured buttermilk from a carton works, and is generally at least as acidic as churned buttermilk, which only helps the soda. Whole milk soured with a tablespoon of vinegar per cup is an acceptable substitute.
- GingerA full tablespoon of ground ginger is not an error — this style of gingerbread was assertively spiced. Ground ginger loses potency quickly, so a jar that has sat for two years will produce something much milder than the writer intended.
- No saltThe recipe calls for none; butter of the day was usually salted, which may be part of the reason. If using unsalted butter, add half a teaspoon to the flour.
- YieldA large pan cake; a 9-inch square or a 9x13, cut into a dozen or more pieces. It was served warm from the pan at supper, plain or with butter, and it keeps well wrapped for two or three days.
Soft gingerbread — the cake, as against the rolled and cut hard gingerbread or gingersnap — is the form that came to dominate American home baking once chemical leavening was cheap and reliable. The pairing of molasses with saleratus or soda was the workhorse of nineteenth-century cake making: molasses was the everyday sweetener in most households, considerably cheaper than refined sugar, and its acidity gave soda something to react against long before baking powder was on every shelf.