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Gingerbread, Thick
Mix half an ounce of carbonate of soda, perfectly free from lumps, with two pounds of flour; add six ounces of brown sugar, two ounces of powdered ginger, and half an ounce of ground caraway-seed. Melt half a pound of fresh butter in two pounds of treacle. Mix this gradually with the flour--it must not be hot, or the gingerbread will be heavy--and add, last of all, three well-beaten eggs. Half fill shallow tins, well buttered, with the mixture, and bake in a moderate oven. Brush the gingerbread over with the yolk of an egg, mixed with a little milk, before it is put into the oven, and again two or three minutes before it is taken out. Time to bake, an hour and a half. Probable cost, 2s. for this quantity.
A very large Victorian batch — roughly five and a half pounds of batter before baking. Halving or quartering it is sensible unless you want gingerbread for a fortnight.
- The hinge: cool the treacle mixtureThe butter-and-treacle mixture must be no more than lukewarm when it meets the flour. Warm treacle sets the soda fizzing before the batter reaches the oven, and the crumb comes out dense and greasy — exactly the "heavy" fault the recipe warns of.
- Weights in modern terms2 lb flour is about 7 cups; 2 lb treacle about 2⅔ cups. Half an ounce of carbonate of soda is roughly 1 tablespoon of baking soda, 6 oz brown sugar about ¾ packed cup, 2 oz ground ginger about ⅔ cup, and half an ounce of caraway about 2 tablespoons.
- TreacleBritish black treacle is the intended ingredient; unsulphured molasses is the closest substitute. Avoid blackstrap, which is more bitter than anything a Victorian baker would have used here. Golden syrup is not a substitute — it lacks both the colour and the acidity that reacts with the soda.
- Carbonate of sodaPlain bicarbonate of soda, not baking powder. Sift it into the flour thoroughly; the instruction "perfectly free from lumps" is literal, since an unbroken lump leaves a bitter, discoloured spot in the finished cake.
- OvenA moderate oven is usually reckoned at about 350F, but for a dark treacle batter baking an hour and a half, 325F is safer — the sugars in treacle scorch readily. Test with a skewer at about 70 minutes if your tins are shallow.
- Shallow tins, half filledQuarter-sheet pans or ordinary square cake tins, buttered and preferably lined. Half filling matters: this batter rises well and a fuller tin gives a domed, undercooked centre.
- The double egg washThe first brushing goes on cold batter and gives the loaf its dark gloss; the second, near the end, sets to a lacquer. Thin the yolk with milk to the consistency of cream so it does not sit in streaks.
- Yield and keepingThe full quantity will fill two or more large shallow tins and yields a great many squares. Treacle gingerbread improves for two or three days wrapped in greaseproof paper and kept in a tin; the crumb softens and the ginger settles down.
Thick gingerbread of this sort — treacle-heavy, soda-raised, cut in squares — was a common English cake of the nineteenth century; the word gingerbread itself comes from Old French gingembras, meaning preserved ginger, and only later attached to the cake. The caraway is the giveaway that this is an older formula than it looks: caraway and ginger together were a standard pairing in English baking well into the Victorian period, and later recipes quietly drop the seed. Cassell's places the recipe among its plain, costed household bakes, and the note of "probable cost, 2s." is characteristic of the book's aim of letting a mistress or cook price a dish before committing to it. Chemical raising by carbonate of soda reacting with acidic treacle was the cheap alternative to yeast or long beating, and it is what makes this a quick cake rather than the stiff, rolled and cut gingerbread of the fairground stalls.