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Soft Gingerbread (Two cups molasses one cup)
Two cups molasses, one cup water, not quite one-half cup of butter, one tablespoon soda, one tablespoon ginger; to be made about as stiff as sponge cake.
A typical late-nineteenth-century soft gingerbread: sweetened and leavened almost entirely by molasses and soda, with the flour left to the cook's judgment. The batter consistency is the whole instruction, so read that line carefully before you start.
- The missing flourNo flour quantity is given because the cook was expected to add it by feel. For two cups of molasses plus one cup water, expect roughly 4 to 5 cups of all-purpose flour. Add it a cup at a time and stop when the batter matches the description.
- "As stiff as sponge cake"This means a thick batter that drops heavily from the spoon rather than pouring, not a kneadable dough. Too much flour gives a dry, bricky crumb; molasses cakes firm up considerably as they cool, so err on the slack side.
- Soda and molassesA full tablespoon of soda is a large amount by modern standards. Period gingerbreads commonly pair generous soda with molasses, which was generally less refined and often more acidic than the modern product, though this varied from barrel to barrel. With modern unsulphured molasses, two teaspoons is likely to give a better balance; a full tablespoon can leave a soapy, faintly metallic edge.
- Molasses typeUse unsulphured dark molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and much less sweet. There is no other sugar in this recipe, so the molasses carries all of it.
- MethodThe recipe gives no method at all. A workable order: cream the butter, beat in the molasses, dissolve the soda in the water and add it alternately with the flour and ginger. Bake as soon as the soda is in, before the lift is spent.
- OvenBake at 325 to 350F. Molasses browns fast, and a hotter oven will set a dark crust over a raw center.
- Pan and timeThis makes a generous quantity, enough for a 9x13-inch pan. Figure 35 to 45 minutes, until the top springs back and a tester comes out clean. It serves about twelve.
- GingerA tablespoon of ground ginger is assertive by modern standards but correct for the style. Ground spice loses potency within a year, so old jar ginger will read considerably milder than the writer intended.
Soft gingerbread, as distinct from the hard rolled gingerbread cut into shapes, was a standing item on American supper tables through the nineteenth century. Supper was the lighter evening meal, and a molasses cake that kept well, needed no eggs, and could be cut in squares and eaten out of hand fit it precisely. Molasses is often said to have been the everyday sweetener in many households well into the 1800s, cheaper than refined sugar and abundant through the West Indies trade, and its natural acidity made it the natural partner for saleratus and later baking soda. Recipes of this vintage sometimes omit the flour quantity: the writer assumed a reader who had made gingerbread many times and needed only the proportions of the wet ingredients and a target consistency to work toward.