Home › Ginger-Bread › Ginger Cookies (Two cups molasses one of lard)
Ginger Cookies (Two cups molasses one of lard)
Two cups molasses, one of lard, one of sugar, two-thirds cup sour milk, table-spoon ginger, three tea-spoons soda stirred in the flour and one in the milk, two eggs. - Miss Tina Lay, Clyde.
A typical contributor's shorthand: proportions only, with flour left to the cook's judgment and no word about the oven. Everything you need to supply is listed below.
- The missing flourNo quantity is given because the cook was expected to add flour until the dough held together and could be rolled. Expect roughly 7 to 8 cups for this volume of liquid; work up from 6 and stop when the dough is stiff but still slightly tacky, since over-flouring makes these hard rather than chewy.
- Oven and timeNone is stated. Molasses cookies of this type bake at 350F for 8 to 10 minutes, pulled while the centers still look soft. They set as they cool and will be dry if baked to firmness on the sheet.
- Soda, and why there is so muchFour teaspoons total is a great deal by modern standards, but two cups of molasses plus sour milk is a great deal of acid. Divide it as written: three teaspoons sifted into the flour, one dissolved in the milk so it reacts immediately. Do not round the spoons up.
- Sour milkThis means naturally soured raw milk, not spoiled pasteurized milk. Use buttermilk, or stir two teaspoons of lemon juice or vinegar into two-thirds cup of whole milk and let it stand ten minutes.
- LardOne cup of lard gives a short, tender crumb and a mild flavor that lets the molasses through. Butter works and adds flavor but spreads more; shortening is the closest neutral substitute.
- MolassesOrdinary unsulfured dark molasses is right; blackstrap is too bitter at two full cups.
- Handling the doughChill it at least an hour before rolling. Freshly mixed, this much molasses and fat makes a dough too slack to cut cleanly.
- YieldA large batch by any measure; how many depends on the flour you end up adding and how thin you roll, but expect several dozen from a three-inch cutter. It halves without trouble.
Ginger cookies of this kind belong to the molasses economy of the American Midwest, where molasses was cheaper and more reliably available than refined sugar, and where sour milk was a daily byproduct of keeping a cow rather than something bought on purpose. Buckeye Cookery (published in Ohio in the 1870s and reprinted for decades) collected recipes from named contributors across the state and beyond, and the credit line here to Miss Tina Lay of Clyde is characteristic: the book functions as a community ledger, with each cook's proportions recorded in a terse style. The absence of flour weight, oven temperature and baking time reflects how such recipes circulated among cooks who judged a stiff dough by feel and an oven by experience.