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Gingerbread, Imperial
Beat three ounces of butter to a cream. Mix with it six ounces of flour, two ounces of sugar, a dessert-spoonful of caraway-seeds, and a dessert-spoonful of powdered ginger. Stir three ounces of treacle into half a pint of new milk, make the whole into a paste, and bake on buttered tins in round cakes or fingers. Stick on the cakes a little candied peel, cut into strips. Time, about half an hour to bake. Probable cost, 6d.
A plain Victorian gingerbread with no raising agent at all, so expect something closer to a dense, chewy biscuit-cake than a risen loaf. The one thing to settle before you start is the liquid.
- The milk is the problemSix ounces of flour will not make a "paste" with half a pint (10 fl oz British) of milk — that is a thin batter. Either the quantity is a misprint or the cakes were intended to be dropped and spread. Begin with two or three tablespoons and add only enough to bring the mixture to a stiff, pipeable or spoonable dough.
- Weights in grams3 oz butter is 85 g, 6 oz flour 170 g, 2 oz sugar 55 g, 3 oz treacle 85 g. A dessert-spoonful is roughly two teaspoons, so about 2 tsp each of caraway and ground ginger.
- TreacleIn Victorian recipes treacle generally means the dark sort, black treacle: dark and bitter. Molasses (not blackstrap) is the closest substitute; golden syrup will give a much paler, sweeter cake and is not the same thing.
- New milkSimply fresh, unsoured whole milk, as distinct from the day-old or skimmed milk a household might otherwise have on hand. Ordinary whole milk is correct.
- OvenThe recipe gives no oven setting; a moderate oven, around 350F / 180C, suits it. Treacle scorches, so watch the undersides from about twenty minutes and pull them when the edges are set and the centres still slightly soft.
- Buttered tinsBaking parchment is easier and safer with a sugar-and-treacle dough, which sticks hard as it cools. Lift the cakes off while still warm either way.
- The carawayCaraway with ginger is a genuinely Victorian pairing and reads as unusual now. If it does not appeal, leaving it out gives a straightforward ginger biscuit; there is nothing structural about it.
- Candied peelPress the strips on before baking so they set into the surface. Cut them thin — thick pieces sit proud and burn.
- YieldAbout twelve rounds or eighteen fingers. They firm up considerably on cooling and keep a week in a tin.
"Imperial" as a recipe name in Victorian cookery books need not imply any royal connection, and this version is a comparatively rich one, with butter, candied peel and a good measure of ginger. Gingerbread by this period existed in two broad families: the soft, treacle-heavy cake baked in a tin, and the crisp cut biscuit sold at fairs and markets, and this recipe sits between them, offered as rounds or fingers at the cook's choice. The caraway is the older element -- seed cake and caraway comfits were long-standing staples of English baking -- and caraway has largely dropped out of British recipes since. The costing of 6d, printed as a matter of course throughout Cassell's, reflects a readership of household managers expected to account for every dish.