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Corn Bread
1 cup corn meal 1 cup Five Roses flour 2 teaspoons cream of tartar 1 teaspoon soda ½ teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons sugar 1 cup milk or water 1 egg 1 tablespoon butter.
Method:
Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl.
Sift the flour, soda and cream of tartar together. Beat egg till light, add it and the milk to the dry ingredients; lastly, add the butter which has previously been melted in the baking pan. Bake from 20 to 30 minutes in moderate oven.
N.B. Sour milk can be used instead of sweet milk-1 cup with½ teaspoon soda omitting the cream of tartar.
A plain quick bread from the era when cooks still mixed their own leavening rather than buying it in a tin. Two details need attention before you start: the leavening pair, and the stray line at the end.
- The stray last line"1 egg ½ cup sugar" at the end belongs to no step in this recipe and is almost certainly type that drifted in from the adjacent column. Ignore it; the recipe already calls for one egg and two tablespoons of sugar.
- Cream of tartar and sodaTwo teaspoons cream of tartar with one teaspoon soda is homemade baking powder. By the usual conversion (about ½ teaspoon cream of tartar plus ¼ teaspoon soda per teaspoon of powder) it stands in for something closer to three to four teaspoons of modern baking powder. It acts the moment the liquid hits it, so have the pan greased and the oven hot before you mix.
- Moderate ovenThe recipe gives no temperature. "Moderate" is usually read as somewhere in the 350-375F range; 20 to 30 minutes suits that, with the higher end giving a firmer crust.
- Butter melted in the panThis is the hinge. Melting the tablespoon of butter in the baking pan greases the pan and warms it at once, and pouring the batter into a hot buttered pan is what gives the bottom crust. Use an 8-inch square pan or a small cast-iron skillet.
- The sour milk variationThe note means: use one cup of sour milk, half a teaspoon of soda, and no cream of tartar. Cultured buttermilk is the modern stand-in. Fresh milk soured on the counter is not the same thing and should not be used.
- CornmealCommercially milled meal of this period was often finer than much of the stone-ground meal sold today. A fine or medium yellow meal gives the intended crumb; coarse meal will read as gritty at this one-to-one ratio with flour.
- SiftingThe method contradicts itself slightly, telling you to mix all the dry ingredients and then to sift flour, soda and cream of tartar. Sift the flour, soda, cream of tartar and salt together first, then stir in the cornmeal and sugar, which do not sift well.
- YieldOne 8-inch pan, six to eight squares. Best eaten warm the day it is baked; with only one tablespoon of fat it stales quickly.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Montreal and Winnipeg and handed out to buyers of Five Roses flour, which is why the flour is named in the ingredient list rather than simply called flour. Its recipes were gathered largely from Canadian housewives. The cream of tartar and soda pairing is the older way of raising such a bread: commercial baking powder was widely available by the time this book appeared, but many cooks kept mixing their own. The alternative for sour milk is a reminder of a kitchen where milk came unpasteurised and turning, and nothing was thrown out that could still leaven a loaf.