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Ginger Snaps
Three teacups New Orleans molasses, one cup of sugar, one cup of lard, one cup sour milk, one tablespoon ginger, one tablespoon cinnamon, three tablespoons soda, one heaping teaspoon salt, flour enough to roll.
— Mrs. Mima Hill
A plain village drop-in-the-crock recipe: no oven temperature, no baking time, and no yield, which is normal for a book written for cooks who already knew what a ginger snap looked like. The proportions are worth reading carefully before you commit flour to the bowl.
- Teacups and cupsA teacup in this period is usually reckoned at about 3/4 cup, smaller than the "cup" named later in the same list, though the measure was not standardised between households. Read that way, the three teacups of molasses come to roughly 2 1/4 cups and the sugar, lard and sour milk to 8 fl oz each, which keeps the ratios sensible.
- The soda is the thing to watchThree tablespoons of soda is far more than modern practice would use, even against 2 cups of acidic molasses and a cup of sour milk. Old sour-milk cookies did carry heavy soda for lift and browning, but at this level the dough will taste soapy and the snaps will go dark and bitter. Start at one tablespoon and taste a test cookie before baking the batch.
- New Orleans molassesThe better grade of cane molasses, milder and lighter than the harsh last-boiling product; it is not blackstrap, which is far more bitter and will overwhelm the spice. Ordinary supermarket unsulphured molasses is a reasonable substitute.
- Sour milkNot spoiled milk but naturally soured raw milk, thick and acidic. Cultured buttermilk is the direct replacement; whole milk with a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice stirred in and left ten minutes also works.
- LardOne cup of lard is about 7 oz by weight and gives a short, sandy crumb that butter will not quite reproduce. Vegetable shortening is a closer swap than butter if you would rather not use lard.
- "Flour enough to roll"Expect somewhere between 8 and 10 cups for a full batch — enough that the dough is stiff and only barely tacky. Chill it before rolling; molasses dough handles badly warm.
- Oven and timingNone is given. Bake at 350–375F for 8–12 minutes, until the edges are set and the centres no longer look wet.
- Rolling thin makes the snapA ginger snap gets its crispness from being rolled thin. Roll to about 1/8 inch; much thicker and it bakes into a soft ginger cookie instead.
- YieldThis is a full-day batch — well over a hundred thin cookies. Halving or quartering it is reasonable for a household kitchen.
Ginger snaps of this type belong to the American sour-milk-and-molasses tradition that was common in home baking through the nineteenth century, when a jug of souring milk and a crock of cane molasses were both simply on hand. Molasses was an everyday sweetener, cheaper than refined sugar and long-keeping, which is why it appears here in far larger quantity than the sugar. The naming of a specific molasses suggests the cook expected the reader to know the difference between the mild table syrup and the harsher last-boiling product. The recipe's shape — quantities only, no oven, no time, no count, signed with a contributor's name — is characteristic of community cookbooks, compiled among women who had all baked the thing before rather than as instructions for beginners.