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Gingerbread
Three pounds of flour, one-half pound of butter, two tablespoons of ginger, two tablespoons of soda. Put the butter, flour and other ingredients together and mix as much molasses as will make a dough. Roll into thin sheets. Cut in any shape you fancy and bake in a moderate oven. -Mrs James T. Halsey, Philadelphia.
A reader-contributed rolled gingerbread from the days when bakers measured flour by the pound and molasses by eye. It works, but it is written at a scale few home cooks want and it leaves the most important quantity unstated.
- The hinge: molasses is the only liquidThere is no egg, milk or water here, so the molasses does all the moistening as well as all the sweetening. Add it gradually and stop when the dough just holds together in a stiff, clay-like mass; too much and the sheets spread and will not hold a cut shape.
- How much molasses, roughlyFor 3 lb of flour expect somewhere in the region of 3 to 4 cups, though this is an estimate rather than anything the recipe supplies. The original simply declines to say, leaving the cook to judge by feel.
- Weights in modern termsThree pounds of flour is about 11 cups; half a pound of butter is two sticks, or 1 cup. This makes an enormous batch — dividing by three or four gives a manageable quantity.
- Soda, not baking powderThe soda here is bicarbonate of soda; older books often call it saleratus, a term that originally meant potassium bicarbonate before sodium bicarbonate displaced it. It is doing double duty, leavening against the acid in the molasses and darkening the crumb. Do not substitute baking powder, which will not have the same effect on colour or flavour.
- Moderate ovenRead that as somewhere around 350F. Thin rolled sheets at this size bake in roughly 8 to 12 minutes; molasses doughs scorch on the bottom quickly, so watch the edges rather than the clock.
- Rolling thinAbout 1/8 inch gives the crisp snap this dough is built for. Chill the dough first — warm molasses dough sticks badly — and roll between sheets of paper if it fights you.
- Ginger aloneTwo tablespoons of ground ginger and nothing else makes for a plain version. Other warm spices can be added if you like them, but they are not missed if you leave them out.
- YieldAt full scale this produces several dozen thin cookies depending on your cutter. They keep well in a tin for a couple of weeks and soften as they sit.
Rolled molasses gingerbread of this kind was one of the most durable of American home baked goods: cheap, keepable, and dependent on nothing more exotic than flour, fat, ginger and molasses. Because it uses no eggs and very little butter for its bulk, it belonged to the everyday end of the baking repertoire rather than the company end, and doughs of this sort were often cut into figures for children. The attribution to Mrs James T. Halsey of Philadelphia reflects the common magazine practice of printing recipes sent in by readers under their own names, so what survives here is one household's working proportions rather than a tested standard.