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Ginger Bread
One cup of molasses, one-half cup of sugar, one-half cup of butter or drippings, two eggs, two and one-half cups of flour, one teaspoon of ginger, one-half teaspoon of cinnamon. Stir all together, then add two even teaspoons of soda dissolved in one cup of boiling
— Mrs. Charles Trowbridge
water.
A plain hot-water gingerbread, the kind that was mixed in one bowl and baked in a sheet. The typesetter dropped Mrs. Trowbridge's name into the last line: the recipe ends "one cup of boiling water."
- The hinge: boiling water lastThe dissolved soda and boiling water go in at the very end, and the batter goes straight into the pan. The soda begins reacting with the molasses immediately, and a batter left to stand will lose some of its lift.
- Expect a thin batterA cup of molasses plus a cup of water against only two and a half cups of flour gives something closer to pancake batter than cake batter. That is correct for this style; do not add flour to thicken it.
- Soda quantityTwo even teaspoons for two and a half cups of flour is at the high end even allowing for the acidity of the molasses. If your molasses is mild rather than dark and sharp, one and a half teaspoons will avoid the faintly soapy, metallic edge that excess soda leaves.
- MolassesUse unsulphured dark molasses, not blackstrap and not the treacle-and-syrup blends. Blackstrap is bitter and far more alkaline-tasting in a cake this plain.
- DrippingsDrippings meant the rendered fat saved from roast beef or pork, kept in a crock by the stove. Butter is the straightforward substitute; bacon fat works and gives a savory background that suits ginger surprisingly well.
- Pan and ovenBake in a greased 9x13 sheet pan, or two 8-inch squares, at 350F. A sheet takes about 30 to 35 minutes, until the center springs back and a tester comes out clean.
- YieldAbout 12 to 16 squares. It is better on the second day, and it keeps well covered at room temperature for three or four.
Hot-water gingerbread of this kind was one of the most reliable cakes in a nineteenth-century American kitchen because it depended on nothing perishable: molasses, flour, soda, and spice all sat on the shelf, and the eggs and butter could be reduced or replaced with drippings when they were short. Molasses was an everyday sweetener in the Northeast long after refined sugar became affordable, though this recipe uses both. The reliance on soda rather than yeast or long beating is often taken to suggest a date after chemical leavening had become cheap and standardized, though baking soda was in domestic use well before mid-century. As with most of the "Village Receipts" here, the contributor's name did the work that a headnote would do now, and the printed page was a way of fixing a neighbor's proportions on paper.