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Sponge Ginger-Bread
One cup sour milk, one of Orleans molasses, a half cup butter, two eggs, one tea-spoon soda, one table-spoon ginger, flour to make as thick as pound cake; put butter, molasses and ginger together, make them quite warm, add the milk, flour, eggs and soda, and bake as soon as possible. - Mrs. M. M. Munsell.
A one-bowl molasses gingerbread of the sour-milk-and-soda type, written for a cook who knew what a stiff batter looked like. Two things need pinning down: the flour quantity and the temperature of the warmed molasses mixture.
- "Flour to make as thick as pound cake"Pound cake batter is thick enough to hold a soft peak and drop reluctantly from the spoon, not pour. With this much liquid that is likely to take three cups of flour or more. Add it in stages and stop when the batter mounds.
- Sour milkCultured buttermilk is the direct modern substitute, and it is what the soda needs to react against. A cup of whole milk with a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar stirred in and left ten minutes also works.
- Orleans molassesNew Orleans molasses meant the lighter, sweeter first- or second-boil syrup, not blackstrap. Use ordinary unsulphured baking molasses; blackstrap will make the crumb bitter and dark.
- Warm, not hotThe butter, molasses and ginger are warmed only until the butter melts and the syrup loosens. If the mixture is hot when the eggs go in they may scramble; the milk goes in before the eggs, as directed, which will cool it.
- "Bake as soon as possible"This is the hinge. All the lift comes from soda meeting sour milk, and it begins the moment the two combine, so have the pan greased and the oven up to heat before you start mixing.
- Oven and panThe recipe gives no oven direction; a moderate oven, around 350F, suits it. An 8- or 9-inch square pan, or a 9x5 loaf, buttered and floured or lined with parchment.
- Timing and donenessExpect 30 to 40 minutes in a square pan, longer in a loaf. Molasses batters brown early and deceptively; test with a skewer in the centre rather than judging by colour.
- SaltNone is listed; butter of the period was often salted. If using unsalted butter, add half a teaspoon of salt with the flour.
- YieldOne 8-inch square cake, cut into nine or twelve squares. Best the day it is baked, though the crumb stays moist for two or three days wrapped.
Sponge gingerbread appears to take its name from texture rather than method: it uses no beaten-egg foam like a true sponge, but soda working against sour milk gives an open, springy crumb quite unlike the denser, keepable gingerbread cakes and the hard gingerbread cut into shapes found in such collections. Buckeye Cookery (1877, published in Marysville, Ohio) is a subscription book of contributed receipts, and the attribution to Mrs. M. M. Munsell is typical of how these collections worked, with each dish credited to the woman who supplied it. The instruction to specify "Orleans molasses" reflects a period when American kitchens distinguished among grades of molasses, the lighter Louisiana syrup from the darker West Indian product. And the direction to add flour by feel rather than measure is a reminder that standardized cup measurements were still some way from general acceptance; a cook was expected to know a pound cake batter by sight.