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Gingerbread (Eggless)
2 cups molasses 2 teaspoons ginger ⅔ cup butter 3 teaspoons soda 1 cup buttermilk Five Roses flour to thicken.
Stir the molasses and butter together, add ginger. Put the soda in a cup and pour a little boiling water over it, then fill up cup with buttermilk. Mix thick with flour, but not too thick. Quick oven. 1 egg
A contributed recipe of the loose, tell-you-nothing kind: the flour is given as "to thicken" and the oven as "quick." It works, but you have to supply the numbers yourself.
- The stray eggThe title says eggless yet the ingredient list ends with "1 egg"; the two contradict each other, and the trailing egg may well be a printing stray, though the page gives no way to be sure. The batter is leavened by soda and buttermilk and needs no egg; leave it out if you are following the title.
- How much flour"Thicken, but not too thick" means a batter that ribbons thickly off the spoon rather than a dough. With 2 cups molasses and 1 cup buttermilk that lands around 4 to 4½ cups of flour. Add the last cup gradually and stop while it still pours.
- The soda stepDissolving 3 teaspoons of soda in a little boiling water before topping the cup up with buttermilk is the hinge. Once soda meets the acid molasses and buttermilk the batter is actively rising, so have the pans greased and the oven hot before you combine, and get it in without delay.
- Quick ovenA quick oven is usually reckoned at somewhere around 400-425F, though the term was never precise. In a modern 9x13 pan two inches deep, the high sugar in the molasses will scorch the edges before the centre sets; 350F for 35 to 45 minutes is the practical equivalent for that depth.
- MolassesUse unsulphured cooking molasses, not blackstrap and not treacle. Blackstrap is markedly more bitter and will throw the balance of the cake off.
- ButtermilkCultured buttermilk from a carton is a fair substitute for the period's churn buttermilk. If you have none, sour whole milk with a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice and let it stand ten minutes — the acid is doing structural work here, so plain milk will not do.
- Ginger aloneTwo teaspoons of ginger and nothing else is all the recipe calls for. A half teaspoon of cinnamon and a quarter of cloves will round it out if you want that, though it is not what the recipe asks for.
- Yield and donenessFills a 9x13 pan and serves about 12. It is done when the centre springs back and a tester comes out clean; molasses cakes read moist and dark even when baked through, so trust the spring rather than the colour.
The Five Roses Cook Book was issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Winnipeg and Montreal to sell Five Roses flour, and like most milling-company books it was built largely from recipes sent in by customers — which is why the measurements read like kitchen shorthand and why the flour is simply "to thicken." Molasses gingerbread was a fixture of Canadian and New England baking because molasses was cheap, kept indefinitely, and provided the acid that soda needed before commercial baking powder was universal. Eggless versions like this one appear throughout early twentieth-century household books, usually as thrift recipes for seasons when eggs were scarce or dear.