Coffee Cake (Eggless)

The text as printed is an ingredient list only, and an incomplete one — it breaks off mid-line at "3", and the quantities that survive do not add up to a workable batter. Read the notes below before you buy anything.

• The recipe is truncatedNo method, no liquid, no pan size and no baking time were carried over into this entry, and the final line ends on a bare numeral. Anything you bake from it will be reconstruction rather than the original cake.
• "Eggless" but two eggsThe title says eggless while the list calls for 2 eggs. A typesetting collision between adjacent recipes is one possible explanation, and the fragment does end on a stray "3", but the cause cannot be established from the text as printed.
• No coffeeNothing in the list is coffee. In books of this period "coffee cake" usually meant a plain spiced cake to be eaten with coffee, though some versions used cold strong coffee as the liquid. Which was meant here cannot be recovered from this fragment.
• Missing liquid and fatOne cup of molasses cannot wet 4½ cups of flour. Cakes of this kind generally carried some further liquid (sour milk, water or coffee) and a fat such as butter or shortening; neither appears here, so the proportions are genuinely unknown.
• 1 nutmegA whole nutmeg grates to about 2 to 3 teaspoons — a heavy hand by modern taste, and enough to dominate the cloves and cinnamon beside it.
• ½ pound raisinsAbout 1½ cups. Toss them in a spoonful of the measured flour so they do not sink through a slack molasses batter.
• Baking powder with molassesThree teaspoons of baking powder for 4½ cups of flour is modest for a heavy, acidic molasses batter. Molasses supplies acid, and many recipes of this type used soda, alone or alongside the powder, to react with it.
• OvenThe fragment gives no oven direction. A dark, fruited molasses cake of this size would suit a moderate oven, around 325 to 350F, in a deep loaf or square pan; molasses scorches before the crumb sets if the oven runs hot.