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Gingerbread
One-half cup of sugar, one-half cup of molasses, one-half cup of water, one-half cup of milk, three-fourths cup of butter. three cups of flour, two eggs, one tablespoon of ginger, and a dessert
— Mrs. Wheeler Howard
spoon of saleratus or soda.
A plain village gingerbread with no method, no pan and no oven given — typical of receipts written down for cooks who already knew the drill. The ingredient list is complete and workable; everything else has to be supplied.
- The garbled lineThe typesetting runs the contributor's name through the middle of the last instruction. Read it as a dessertspoon of saleratus or soda, with the attribution to Mrs. Wheeler Howard belonging at the end.
- SaleratusSaleratus is the older name for the chemical leavener that became baking soda; nineteenth-century saleratus was often potassium bicarbonate rather than sodium, but the receipt itself offers "or soda," so use baking soda. A dessertspoon is two teaspoons, which is a generous but not unreasonable amount for three cups of flour.
- Why no baking powderThe soda works against the acid in the molasses, which is the whole reason molasses gingerbreads take soda rather than powder. Dissolve it in the water or the milk before it goes in so it does not streak the crumb.
- ButterThree-quarters cup is a stick and a half, 6 oz. Cream it with the sugar, add the eggs, then the molasses, then flour alternating with the combined liquids.
- Salt and spiceNo salt is listed; butter of the period was frequently sold salted, which may account for the omission. Add half a teaspoon if using unsalted. A tablespoon of ginger is the only spice; a teaspoon of cinnamon and a grating of nutmeg are period-appropriate additions if you want them.
- Pan and ovenThe batter is a pourable one. The receipt names no pan and no oven; a 9x13-inch pan at 350F for 30 to 35 minutes, or two 8-inch square pans for about 25, is a workable modern reconstruction. It is done when the centre springs back and a straw comes out clean.
- YieldAbout 20 squares from a 9x13. It keeps three or four days wrapped, and improves on the second day as the molasses flavour settles.
Molasses gingerbread of this kind was an everyday cake of American households through the nineteenth century, cheap because molasses cost a fraction of refined sugar. Community cookbooks like this one, assembled from receipts contributed by named women of a town, often carry two or three gingerbreads — soft, hard, sour-milk, sugar — each attached to the household that made it best. The absence of any baking direction reflects a receipt written as a memorandum among cooks who already knew their own ovens, not a set of instructions for a stranger. Saleratus, from the Latin sal aeratus, "aerated salt," was sold in papers and boxes through the middle decades of the century and was gradually displaced in receipt books by the plainer word "soda."