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Soft Gingerbread (Two cups molasses one cup) (II)
Two cups molasses, one cup of sour milk, one egg, one tablespoonful soda, dissolved in two tablespoons of hot water, a piece of butter the size of an egg, one heaping quart of flour; let all the ingredients, except the flour, be placed on the range and heat very hot, then grease well a tin and bake. This receipt makes very nice patty pan cakes; a little salt.
A molasses gingerbread of the sour-milk-and-soda school, mixed warm rather than creamed. The original gives no oven, no time and — oddly for its name — no ginger.
- The missing spiceAs printed there is no ginger at all, which may well be an omission in setting the type, or may simply have been left to the cook. A tablespoon of ground ginger, with a teaspoon of cinnamon if you like, brings it in line with most soft gingerbreads of the period.
- Heat the liquids, not the eggHeat the liquids -- The original says to heat everything but the flour on the range, egg included. If you would rather not risk the egg setting into threads, warm the molasses, milk and butter first and let the mixture cool to barely hand-hot before beating the egg in.
- Sour milkOld sour milk was clabbered raw milk, mildly acidic. Buttermilk is the direct substitute; failing that, a cup of whole milk with a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice, left ten minutes.
- The soda is deliberateA full tablespoon of soda looks alarming, but two cups of molasses plus a cup of soured milk carry a great deal of acid. Level the spoon rather than heaping it — excess soda gives a soapy taste.
- Butter the size of an eggBetween 2 and 2½ ounces, so 4 to 5 tablespoons.
- A heaping quart of flourGenuinely imprecise. A level quart is about 4 cups; heaped, call it 4½ to 5. Add the last half cup only if the batter is thinner than heavy cream — molasses batters stiffen as they cool and too much flour makes it dry.
- Oven and timingThe book assumes you know. Bake at 350F: about 35 to 45 minutes in a greased 9x13 tin, testing with a straw in the centre.
- Patty pan cakesPatty pans are small individual tins, near enough to a modern muffin tin. Fill two-thirds full and bake at 350F for 15 to 20 minutes; expect somewhere around two dozen, depending on the size of your tins.
- KeepingMolasses cakes improve overnight. Wrap when fully cool; the crumb softens and the flavour rounds out by the second day.
Soft gingerbread — as opposed to the hard, rolled, cut gingerbread of the biscuit tin — was one of the workhorses of the American supper table, and books of this period often print two or three versions in a row. The pairing of sour milk with soda predates reliable baking powder: soured or clabbered milk was a common enough thing in a kitchen, and the alkali both raised the batter and cut the sharpness of dark molasses, which in the nineteenth century was cheap, dark and a byproduct of sugar refining, though it was also valued for its own flavour. The suggestion that the batter also makes "very nice patty pan cakes" is characteristic of the genre: one bowl of batter that could be a loaf for the family or small cakes for company, depending on which tins were to hand.