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Boston Cookies
One cup of butter, one and one-half cups of sugar, three eggs, one teaspoon of soda, one and one-half tablespoons of hot water, three and one-half teaspoons of cinnamon, one-half teaspoon of salt, one cup of chopped walnuts, qne-half cup of currants, one-half cup of raisins. Cream the butter, adding sugar gradually, then the beaten eggs; add the soda dissolved in hot water, and half of the flour mixed and sifted with the salt and cinnamon, then the nut meats, currants and raisins and remaining flour.
— Mrs. Charles G. Coffin
A drop cookie in the Boston Cooking School mould, but as printed it has a serious gap: no flour is listed, although the method tells you to add it in two stages. Read the notes before you start.
- The missing flourThe instructions call for flour twice and none appears in the ingredient list. Printed versions of Boston Cookies from this period use something in the range of 3 1/2 to 4 cups of sifted flour once scaled to this quantity of butter, sugar and eggs; a line seems simply to have been dropped in setting the type. Start at 3 1/2 cups and add more only if the dough will not hold a mound.
- CinnamonThree and one-half teaspoons is a great deal of cinnamon for one batch, and it sits suspiciously close to the missing flour line. Printed versions of this cookie generally call for about a teaspoon. Start at one, taste the dough, and add more if you want it assertive.
- Soda and hot waterDissolving the soda in hot water before it goes in distributes it evenly and prevents bitter yellow flecks. With no acid in the batter, the lift is modest — these are meant to be firm, not cakey.
- Butter and saltThe half teaspoon of salt suits unsalted butter; if you use modern salted butter, cut it to a scant quarter teaspoon.
- Currants and raisinsDried currants can be hard and gritty; rinse them, and if they are stiff, plump both fruits in hot water for ten minutes and dry them well before folding in, or they will pull moisture from the dough.
- BakingThe original gives no baking direction at all. Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls, well apart, on a lined sheet and bake at 375F for 10 to 12 minutes, until the edges are set and browned.
- YieldRoughly four to five dozen small cookies. The dough keeps well chilled for a day and is easier to portion cold.
Boston Cookies appear in Fannie Merritt Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book and were copied widely from there into community collections like this one; the proportions of butter, sugar and eggs here look like a scaled-up version of that formula. The name appears to signal origin rather than any distinguishing feature: a rich butter drop cookie with nuts, currants and raisins, and cinnamon as the only spice. Reprinting such a recipe under a contributor's name is typical of how these books worked — a receipt copied from a printed cookbook or a neighbour's card entered the local canon as the contributor's own, small transcription errors and all, which is one way a recipe comes to be published with its flour missing.