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GINGERBREAD LOAF (plain)
Put two pounds of treacle into a jar near the fire, with two ounces of butter, a quarter of an ounce of carbonate of soda, previously dissolved in a very little milk, and strained, and four ounces of moist sugar. Mix an ounce of powdered ginger, and one small nutmeg grated, with about three pounds of flour. When the butter is melted, stir the treacle into the flour, and water to moisten it, and bake in a well-buttered, shallow tin, in a slow oven, for one hour and a half. Probable cost, 1s. 2d.
A plain Victorian treacle gingerbread scaled for a large household. The quantities make roughly five pounds of dough, so most cooks will want to work in halves or quarters.
- The hingeThe only leavening is soda reacting with the acid in the treacle, so the batter should go into the tin and into the oven promptly once the two meet. Standing about while you butter tins loses most of the lift.
- TreacleBritish black treacle, or molasses (not blackstrap, which is harsher). Two pounds is about 2 2/3 cups. Warming the jar near the fire simply makes it pour; 30 seconds in a microwave or a bowl in hot water does the same.
- Carbonate of sodaBaking soda. A quarter of an ounce is about 1 1/2 teaspoons, a modest amount for 3 lb of flour. Dissolving it in a little milk and straining removes lumps that would otherwise leave bitter specks.
- Moist sugarUnrefined light brown sugar, sold then as "moist" because it retained syrup. Any soft light brown sugar works; 4 oz is about half a packed cup.
- FlourPlain (all-purpose) flour, since the soda supplies the rise. Three pounds is roughly 10-11 cups; weigh it rather than measuring by volume at this scale.
- OvenA slow oven is usually reckoned at roughly 300-325F (150-160C). Gingerbread this dark scorches easily because of the sugar in the treacle, and a hotter oven will set a crust before the centre has risen.
- WaterNo quantity is given, and treacle varies in thickness. Add enough to bring it to a stiff, spoonable dough that holds its shape, not a pourable batter.
- Tin and timingA shallow tin suggests a slab an inch or so thick rather than a modern loaf pan; baked that way it can be cut in squares. The full quantity would fill a large roasting tin, and ninety minutes suits that depth, but test with a skewer, and start checking a half-batch at 45-50 minutes.
- KeepingWrap the cooled slab and leave it a day or two. Treacle gingerbread is dry and sharp on the first day and softens noticeably as the moisture equalises.
Treacle gingerbread of this kind was the everyday version — no eggs, no butter to speak of, no candied peel — and its cheapness is the point of the "probable cost, 1s. 2d." that Cassell's appends to nearly every recipe: about fourteen pence for five pounds of cake. Ginger and nutmeg had been baked into English spice breads since the Middle Ages, when the sweetener was honey and the loaf was closer to a hard biscuit; the shift to treacle followed the cheap West Indian sugar refining by-products of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the shift from yeast or ale barm to carbonate of soda followed the commercial availability of the chemical over the course of the nineteenth century. Treacle is acidic enough to react with soda on its own, which is why plain gingerbread became one of the first genuinely quick cakes in the English repertoire and why it turns up in parkin and fairground gingerbread alike.