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Sweet Cream Cookies
1 cup cream 1 cup sugar 1 egg 1 teaspoon cream of tartar ½ teaspoon soda' ½ teaspoon salt Five Roses flour to make soft dough.
Roll thin and bake in quick oven.
Flavour with nutmeg, lemon or ratafia.
A plain rolled cooky from the era when leavening meant soda plus cream of tartar and the flour was measured by feel. The only real decision is how much flour goes in.
- "Sweet cream"This means fresh, unsoured cream, as distinct from sour cream. Use heavy or whipping cream; the fat is doing the work of butter here, so lighter cream gives a drier, tougher cooky.
- Flour to make soft doughExpect roughly 3 to 3½ cups, but the original gives no figure and the amount genuinely depends on your cream. Add it until the dough just holds together and is barely tacky, then chill it an hour before rolling. Over-flouring is the usual way this recipe goes wrong.
- Cream of tartar and sodaTogether they are an early single-acting baking powder: the soda reacts with the acid the moment liquid hits it. Mix, roll and bake without long delays, or the lift is spent. If you substitute baking powder, use about 1½ teaspoons and omit both.
- "Quick oven"Usually rendered as roughly 400-450F. For thin rolled cookies, set 425F and watch them; they will be done in about 5 to 8 minutes, when the edges just colour.
- Roll thinAbout 1/8 inch. These are meant to be crisp; rolled thick they turn cakey and the cream flavour disappears.
- RatafiaA sweet almond-and-fruit-kernel flavouring, sold as an essence in this period. Modern almond extract is the direct substitute, about ½ teaspoon. Nutmeg wants about ½ teaspoon grated; lemon, the zest of one plus a teaspoon of juice.
- YieldDepends on thickness and cutter size; expect several dozen small cookies. No sugar topping is specified, though a sprinkle of sugar before baking suits them.
The Five Roses Cook Book was issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company and distributed to Canadian households that bought its flour, with much of the content contributed by customers -- which is why measurements like "Five Roses flour to make soft dough" survive unedited. The recipe belongs to a large family of North American cream cookies leavened with cream of tartar and soda measured separately; sweet cream versions like this one sat alongside sour cream and sour milk variants depending on what the dairy had produced that week. The ratafia flavouring is the most dated touch: an almond-scented essence common in nineteenth-century British and Canadian baking, later largely displaced by plain almond extract.