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Gingerbread Sponge
Put one pound of flour into a bowl; melt four ounces of dripping, and add to the flour, along with half a pound of treacle and one gill of milk; mix in four ounces of moist sugar, a tea-spoonful of ground ginger, half a tea-spoonful of mixed spice, and the yolk of an egg. Beat all for a few minutes, then put in the white of the egg, beaten, and a tea-spoonful of baking-powder, and bake in a shallow buttered tin in a moderate oven, gradually lessening the heat towards the end. It will take about an hour to bake. Probable cost, 10d.
A plain Victorian tray gingerbread, leavened with baking powder rather than the older saleratus-and-sour-milk method. Nothing here is difficult, but several of the ingredient names have drifted.
- DrippingBeef or pork dripping, the rendered fat saved from a roast. Unsalted butter at the same weight (4 oz / 115 g, melted) is the usual substitute; the crumb will be slightly softer and less savoury than intended.
- TreacleBritish black treacle, closer to blackstrap molasses than to the mild American variety. Half a pound is about 2/3 cup by volume. Golden syrup gives a much paler, sweeter cake and is not what is meant here.
- A gillIn this British book, a gill is a quarter of an imperial pint: 5 fl oz, or roughly 2/3 US cup. Weigh or measure carefully, as the batter should pour thickly rather than drop.
- Moist sugarUnrefined soft sugar, partly stripped of molasses. Light brown sugar is the direct modern equivalent.
- Mixed spiceA British blend, usually cinnamon and nutmeg with allspice, coriander and a little clove. Pumpkin pie spice is close enough; a half teaspoon is a very light hand by current taste.
- OvenA moderate oven is usually read as about 350F (175C). "Gradually lessening the heat" is not quantified in the original; a reasonable modern reading is to drop to around 325F (165C) partway through, since treacle and brown sugar darken fast and the top will set before the centre does.
- Tin and timing"Shallow" is not specified further; something on the order of a 9 x 13 in pan gives a thin slab. The original says about an hour, but at that depth it is worth testing earlier with a skewer and reserving the full hour for a deeper tin.
- Method noteThe whisked egg white and the baking powder go in last and the batter should reach the oven promptly, as baking powder begins working as soon as it meets moisture.
- YieldAbout 2 lb of cake, cutting into 16 to 20 squares. It keeps better than it eats fresh; wrapped for a day or two the crumb goes moist and the spice comes forward.
Gingerbread of this sort was the everyday, unceremonious end of a long tradition: not the moulded, gilded gingerbread of fairs and markets but a treacle cake baked in a tin, cut in squares and sold by the piece or made at home for tea. The economics are the point of the entry. The recipe gives a probable cost of tenpence for a cake built on a pound of flour and half a pound of treacle, which is why dripping stands in for butter and why the recipe is stretched with a single egg. Treacle, a by-product of sugar refining, was among the cheapest sweeteners available to a British household in the later nineteenth century, and ginger had long since ceased to be a luxury spice. "Sponge" in the title appears to signal texture rather than method, distinguishing this soft, cake-like version from the hard, snapping gingerbreads and from the dense parkin of the north of England.