Home › The Principles of Cookery › GINGERBREAD LOAF (good)
GINGERBREAD LOAF (good)
Put six ounces of butter into a jar near the fire, with one pound of the best treacle. Let the butter melt, then add two ounces of candied lemon, cut into narrow strips, half an ounce of powdered ginger, half an ounce of caraway-seeds, five eggs, well beaten, and as much flour as will make a stiff batter. Beat it well for some minutes, till it is quite smooth and light, put it into a well-buttered tin, about two inches deep, and bake in a slow oven three-quarters of an hour. When baked, let the loaf remain a little while in the tin before turning out. Probable cost, 1s. 8d.
A Victorian treacle gingerbread leavened entirely by eggs, with no soda or baking powder. That single fact governs how it should be handled.
- Beat, then bake at onceThere is no chemical raising agent here: the five well-beaten eggs are the only lift. Beat the batter until it is genuinely light, then get it into the tin and the oven without delay.
- TreacleBritish black treacle, or American unsulphured molasses. One pound is roughly 1 1/3 cups by volume; weighing is easier and more accurate. Golden syrup is not a substitute here, being far milder and paler.
- The jar near the fireA stoneware jar set at the hearth gave gentle, indirect heat rather than direct flame. A saucepan over low heat or a bowl in the microwave does the same job. Let the mixture cool to lukewarm before the eggs go in, or they will scramble in the hot treacle.
- WeightsSix ounces of butter is 3/4 cup or 170 g. Half an ounce of ground ginger is about 2 tablespoons, which is assertive but correct for the style. Half an ounce of caraway is about 2 tablespoons; halve it if the flavour is unfamiliar, or leave it out.
- "As much flour as will make a stiff batter"Genuinely open-ended. In practice about 1 lb (roughly 3 1/2 cups) brings this quantity of treacle, butter and egg to a batter that drops heavily from the spoon rather than pours. Add it in stages and judge by consistency.
- Candied lemonCandied lemon peel, sold in strips or diced. Two ounces is about 1/3 cup. Modern diced mixed peel works, though the cut strips give better pockets of citrus.
- Slow oven300-325F (150-160C). Treacle scorches readily, so resist raising it. The recipe gives only a tin about two inches deep; choose one the batter fills to roughly that depth, test with a skewer, and give it longer in a deeper tin.
- Cooling and keepingLeaving it in the tin is not fussiness -- a hot treacle cake is fragile and will break turning out. Wrapped in paper and kept a couple of days, it becomes moister and the ginger settles.
- YieldCuts into roughly a dozen to sixteen squares, depending on the tin.
Cassell's marks this one "good" -- to distinguish it, one presumes, from the plainer and cheaper gingerbreads elsewhere in the book, since the butter, five eggs and candied peel put it in the parlour-cake class rather than the fairground slab. Its character comes from treacle, the dark residue of sugar refining, which by the mid-nineteenth century was cheap and abundant in British kitchens and did much of the work later handed to brown sugar. The caraway seeds now look odd alongside ginger, but seed cake and caraway-studded gingerbread were long-standing English tastes, and recipes pairing the two run back well before the Victorian period. The stated cost of 1s. 8d. is typical of Cassell's frequent habit of costing dishes for a household budgeting to the penny.