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Jam-Jams (No. 1)
2 eggs. 1 cup brown sugar 1 cup shortening 6 tablespoons syrup 2 teaspoons (small) soda 1 teaspoon lemon or vanilla Five Roses flour to roll thin. 2 quarts Five Roses flour. 1 teaspoon soda. 2 teaspoons cream of tartar. 1 1/2 cups lard. 1 1/2 cups yellow sugar (rolled smooth). 3 eggs. 1 tablespoon vanilla. Milk.
Roll thin, cut and bake. While warm, put two together with jam.
A stiff rolled cookie dough with no eggs and no liquid beyond the syrup, baked thin and sandwiched with jam while still warm. The original assumes you know your own oven and your own flour, so both need pinning down.
- Flour quantity"Flour to roll thin" is genuinely open-ended, and the amount depends on how soft your shortening is. Expect roughly 3 to 3 1/2 cups, added until the dough is firm enough to roll without sticking but still pliable; too much and the cookies bake dry and hard.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Thin rolled cookies of this type belong in a moderately hot oven, 375F, for 6 to 8 minutes, until the edges just darken. They scorch quickly at the rim because of the sugar and syrup.
- The syrupIn a Canadian kitchen of this period this most likely means corn syrup or molasses rather than maple. Molasses gives the darker, spicier cookie and is acidic enough to work with the soda; corn syrup gives a paler, milder one.
- "2 teaspoons (small) soda"Soda is baking soda (bicarbonate). "Small" most likely means scant, level rather than heaped, spoons, though the book does not explain the notation. Molasses, if that is the syrup used, supplies the acid; going over the amount can leave a soapy, metallic taste.
- ShorteningProbably lard, or a lard-and-butter mixture, though commercial vegetable shortening was also available by this period. Modern vegetable shortening works and keeps the cookies tender; butter gives better flavour but a dough that spreads more, so chill it before rolling.
- The hinge: sandwich while warmJam spread on a warm cookie softens and soaks slightly into the crumb, then sets as the cookies cool so the pair holds together. Use a thick jam and pair them soon after they come off the sheet.
- Rolling thinAim for about 1/8 inch. This is a firm, unchilled dough, so roll on a lightly floured board in batches and keep the trimmings covered; repeated re-rolling toughens it.
- YieldOn these quantities expect nearer 4 dozen finished sandwich cookies from a 2 1/2-inch cutter, depending on how much flour the dough takes.
The Five Roses Cook Book was issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Montreal to promote its Five Roses flour, and it presented its recipes as contributions from users of the flour across Canada; several versions of the same cookie appear, numbered No. 1, No. 2 and so on. Jam-jams are a fixture of Ontario and Maritime home baking: two thin molasses-and-brown-sugar rounds cemented with raspberry or strawberry jam. The name is usually taken as simple reduplicative nursery-speak for a jam sandwich. The recipe's eggless, milkless economy suits everyday farm baking, where syrup and shortening kept well in the house.