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Good Cookies
Two cups sugar, one of butter, one of sour cream or milk, three eggs, one tea-spoon soda; mix soft, roll thin, sift granulated sugar over them, and gently roll it in. -Mrs. Judge West, Bellefontaine, Ohio.
A terse nineteenth-century rolled cookie, typical of contributor recipes in Buckeye Cookery: the flour is left to the cook's judgment and the oven is not mentioned at all. Read the notes before you start, because both of those gaps need filling.
- The flour is missingNo quantity is given, and "mix soft" is the only guide. With two cups sugar, one cup butter, one cup sour cream and three eggs you are looking at roughly 5 to 6 cups of flour to reach a dough firm enough to roll thin, but this is genuinely undetermined in the original. Add flour gradually and stop as soon as the dough holds together and leaves the bowl clean.
- Sour cream or sour milkThe soda needs acid to work against. Period sour milk was naturally clabbered; today use cultured buttermilk, or full-fat sour cream, both of which are reliably acidic. Fresh sweet milk will leave the cookies flat and faintly soapy.
- SodaOne teaspoon of soda here is what an older book might call saleratus. Sift it with the flour rather than dropping it into the liquid, or it will streak and leave bitter spots.
- OvenUnstated, as was normal when the writer assumed a wood range. Bake at 375F for 7 to 10 minutes, until the edges are just colouring; thin rolled cookies of this sort overbake in under a minute of inattention.
- Roll thin, and chill firstA dough this rich in butter and sugar will smear at room temperature. Refrigerate it an hour, then roll about an eighth of an inch thick on a lightly floured board, working with one portion at a time and keeping the rest cold.
- The sugar crustSift granulated sugar over the rolled sheet and pass the pin over it once, gently, so the grains press into the surface instead of scattering. The original says only to sift sugar 'over them, and gently roll it in', which may mean the rolled sheet or cookies already cut, so either order is defensible. The pressed sugar bakes to a crisp sparkling surface. (Cut the shapes after this, not before.) The sugar melts to a thin crackling glaze in the oven. --- Corrected: The sugar crust -- Sift granulated sugar over the rolled dough and pass the pin over it once, gently, so the grains press in rather than scatter. The original's 'over them' is ambiguous -- it may mean the sheet or the cut cookies -- so cutting before or after is a matter of preference. Pressed-in sugar gives a crisp, sparkling top rather than a true glaze.
- YieldAround six to eight dozen small rounds, depending on your cutter. The dough halves cleanly if that is more cookies than you want at once.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping was published in Marysville, Ohio, the widely circulated 1877 printing describing itself as revised and enlarged from a slightly earlier issue, and it was reissued repeatedly through the 1880s. It was assembled largely from contributed recipes printed with the contributor's name and town attached, which is why this one carries Mrs. Judge West of Bellefontaine rather than an author's byline. That format goes some way to explaining the brevity: contributors were writing for readers who could be assumed to know how much flour a soft rolled dough would take and what their own stove did, so a good deal was left out. Sour cream and soda cookies of this kind were common in nineteenth-century American home baking before commercial baking powder became cheap and dependable, the soda reacting with the lactic acid of a dairy product that had soured. Sifting sugar over the rolled dough and pressing it in with the pin gives a crisp sugared surface.