Home › Village Receipts › Best Gingerbread
Best Gingerbread
One egg, one-fourth cup of butter, one-half cup of sugar, onehalf cup molasses, one-half cup of sour milk, one and one-half cups of flour, one level teaspoon each of soda and ginger, one-half teaspoon each of cloves and cinnamon. This will be very thin when mixed, but is all right.
— Mrs. F. W. Goodrich
A small, thin-battered sour-milk gingerbread of the kind that fills a single 8-inch square pan. The batter really is loose, as Mrs. Goodrich promises, and the finished cake is soft rather than sturdy.
- Sour milkThis means naturally soured raw milk, which is acidic enough to react with the soda. Substitute buttermilk cup for cup, or add half a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar to a half cup of fresh milk and let it stand ten minutes.
- Soda, not baking powderThe single level teaspoon of soda is doing all the lifting and depends on both the sour milk and the molasses for its acid. Do not swap in baking powder measure for measure.
- MolassesUse unsulphured light or dark molasses, not blackstrap, which is far more bitter than the period product and will overwhelm the small amount of sugar.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Bake at 350F for roughly 25 to 30 minutes, until the centre springs back and a straw comes out clean.
- Pan and yieldAn 8-inch square pan, greased and floured, suits this quantity, giving a shallow layer that serves six to nine. A loaf pan will need longer and may set unevenly, given how thin the batter is.
- Mixing orderThe recipe gives none. Cream the butter and sugar, beat in the egg, then the molasses, then alternate the flour and spices with the sour milk, holding back a little milk to dissolve the soda; stir that in last and get the pan into the oven promptly, before the gas is spent.
- The thin batterResist the urge to add flour. The looseness is what keeps this crumb moist; extra flour turns it into a dry, cakey brick.
Sour-milk gingerbread was a common form in American home baking through the nineteenth century, when households were likely to have milk on the turn and molasses in the pantry, and before baking powder was widely available and dependable. The soda-and-sour-milk pairing was a cheap, fast leavening, and molasses served as both sweetener and acid at a time when refined sugar generally cost more. A recipe signed with a contributor's name and no further explanation is typical of the community-cookbook format: the assumption is that the reader already knows what gingerbread should look like and needs only the proportions and one reassurance, here that the batter is meant to be thin.