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Molasses Cookies (Eggless)
1 cup lard 2 cups molasses 1 teaspoon soda 1 dessertspoon ginger 1 teaspoon cloves 1 teaspoon spice Pinch of salt Five Roses flour to roll.
This is a proportion, not a procedure — typical of the era, when a cook was expected to know that fat and molasses are creamed together, the spices and soda worked in, and flour added until the dough will roll. A few things need translating before you start.
- "Flour to roll"The only vague measure, and the one that decides the cookie. Expect roughly 5 to 6 cups of all-purpose flour to bring 2 cups of molasses and 1 cup of lard to a stiff, rollable dough. Add it gradually and stop while the dough is still slightly tacky; a dough stiffened past that point bakes hard and dry.
- DessertspoonA dessertspoon is two teaspoons, so the ginger is double the cloves and "spice." It is a real spoon size in period British and Canadian kitchens, not a loose term.
- "Spice"In Canadian and British books of this period "spice" unqualified usually means allspice; mixed spice (a blend leaning on cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice) is the other reading. Either works here.
- Soda and molassesOne teaspoon of soda to two cups of molasses is the whole leavening, and it depends on the acidity of the molasses to work. Use a dark, full-flavoured molasses rather than a light table syrup, and dissolve the soda in a tablespoon of hot water before mixing it in so it disperses evenly.
- LardOne cup is about 200 g. Lard gives these cookies their short, crisp snap; butter or shortening will work but butter browns faster and spreads more, so chill the dough well if you substitute.
- OvenThe recipe gives no oven direction; a modern 350 to 375F suits these. Molasses scorches quickly, so watch the undersides rather than the tops -- the cookies are done when the edges are set and the centres still look slightly soft.
- Rolling and cuttingChill the dough at least an hour before rolling; warm molasses dough is sticky and impossible to lift. Roll about 1/8 inch thick for a crisp cooky, 1/4 inch for a softer one.
- YieldA large batch; two cups of molasses and a full cup of fat will give several dozen 2-inch cookies, the exact count depending on how thin you roll. Molasses cookies of this type keep well in a tin.
The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company and was distributed in very large numbers to Canadian households buying Five Roses flour -- a promotional book that was, for many households, the standard kitchen manual in much of English Canada. Recipes in it were contributed by home cooks who used the flour, which helps explain the telegraphic style here: no method, no oven, and "flour to roll" left to the reader's hands. The "eggless" label is worth noting. Eggs were seasonal and expensive, and a molasses dough leavened by the reaction of soda with acidic molasses needs no egg at all, which made cookies of this kind useful when eggs were scarce. Molasses was the everyday sweetener in much of Atlantic and rural Canada well into the twentieth century, arriving by ship from the West Indies and costing considerably less than refined sugar.