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Ginger Drops
3 eggs. 1 cup butter 1 cup brown sugar 1 cup molasses (or syrup) 1 tablespoon ginger 1 tablespoon soda dissolved in 1 cup boiling water 5 cups Five Roses flour (unsifted).
Drop from tablespoon into well-greased pan, 3 inches apart. Bake in slow oven.
A large batch of soft, cakey molasses-ginger drops of the sort a farm kitchen turned out by the dozen. The method is terse, so a few things need filling in.
- Slow ovenBake at 300-325F. These are meant to set and dry rather than brown; at 350F the sugar-heavy dough darkens at the edges before the centres are done.
- Order of mixingCream the butter and brown sugar, beat in the molasses and ginger, then alternate the flour with the boiling water in which the soda is dissolved. The hot soda water will foam sharply against the molasses - add it in two or three goes so the batter does not thin out all at once.
- Soda quantityA full tablespoon reads as a lot by modern standards, but it is neutralising a cup of acidic molasses across five cups of flour. Use fresh soda; stale soda is a common reason these come out flat.
- Molasses, not blackstrapMolasses in recipes of this kind generally meant a milder table grade. Blackstrap is far more bitter and mineral, and will overwhelm the ginger. Fancy or cooking molasses, or golden syrup where the recipe says syrup, is closer.
- Unsifted flourThe instruction is deliberate: the five cups are meant to be scooped, not aerated. Expect a soft, sticky drop batter rather than a stiff dough.
- GingerA tablespoon of ground ginger is correct for this quantity and is the whole point of the cookie. Ground ginger loses its heat within a year or so; taste a pinch before committing.
- Spacing and yieldThree inches apart is not caution - these spread considerably. Expect roughly five to six dozen from the full batch, and let them firm on the sheet a minute before lifting.
- Greasing"Well-greased pan" means a heavily buttered flat sheet. Parchment does the same job and makes the molasses edges much easier to lift intact.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Montreal as an advertisement for its hard-wheat flour, and it collected recipes sent in by home cooks across Canada - which is why the instructions assume you already know how to cream butter and read a wood stove. Ginger drops belong to the enormous family of soft molasses cookies that dominated North American baking through the nineteenth century, when molasses was cheaper than refined sugar and ground ginger was one of the few spices in every pantry. The soda-in-boiling-water trick, common in these books, both dissolves the leavening evenly and slackens the batter enough to drop from a spoon; the reaction with the molasses supplies the lift, and this recipe uses no eggs at all.