Hermits
Three-fourths cup of butter Two eggs One cup of chopped seeded raisins One cup of hickory nut meats One teaspoon of Larkin Cloves One teaspoon of Larkin Cinnamon One teaspoon of Larkin Allspice Two teaspoons of Larkin Baking Powder Add sufficient flour to make batter stiff enough to drop from spoon on to buttered tins.
A drop cookie written in the shorthand of a company recipe pamphlet, with the method assumed and one ingredient apparently lost in the typesetting. Read the notes before you start creaming butter.
- The sugar is missingHermit recipes of this period are typically sweetened with roughly a cup to a cup and a half of sugar, often brown, and sometimes molasses, creamed with the butter. As printed, this list has none, and three-quarters cup of butter with two eggs will not make a sweet cookie. Treat it as a likely omission and cream in about 1 1/4 cups of packed brown sugar.
- "Larkin" is a brand, not a varietyThe Larkin Company of Buffalo sold soap by mail along with its own spices, extracts and baking powder. Use ordinary ground cloves, cinnamon and allspice, and any modern double-acting baking powder, teaspoon for teaspoon.
- Flour, quantified"Sufficient flour to make batter stiff enough to drop" works out to roughly 2 1/2 to 3 cups for this quantity of fat and egg. Add it a half cup at a time and stop when a spoonful holds its shape rather than spreading off the spoon.
- No liquid, and that is deliberateNo liquid is given -- The only moisture in the list is two eggs. The dough will look dry and crumbly before it comes together. If it refuses to bind, add a tablespoon or two of milk rather than another egg.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none. Bake at 350F for 10 to 12 minutes, until the edges are set and the centres still look slightly underdone. Hermits firm up considerably as they cool.
- Hickory nutsShagbark hickory is still gathered in the American Midwest and East but is rare in shops. Pecans are the closest relative and the standard substitute; walnuts work and are sharper in flavour.
- Buttered tinsMeans a greased flat baking sheet. Parchment is easier and gives a paler, more even bottom.
- YieldAbout three dozen cookies dropped by rounded tablespoon. They keep well in a tin for a week and improve after a day, which is the point of the style.
Hermits are a New England spice cookie, traditionally associated with the coastal towns of Massachusetts, though printed recipes are documented only from the later nineteenth century, from the 1870s onward -- a hard, well-spiced, fruit-and-nut drop cookie that travelled well and kept for weeks. The name is often said to come from their keeping quality, hidden away in a tin like a hermit in a cell, though no one has ever documented the origin. What is documented is the commercial frame around this particular version: the Larkin Company sold soap by mail from Buffalo and also sold spices, baking powder and extracts as its merchandise through its soap clubs, with premiums given in return, then published recipe booklets in which every branded item was named in the ingredient list. The result is a genuine household recipe with advertising copy stitched through it, and a set of instructions so compressed that the sugar fell out along the way -- a reminder that these pamphlets were written for cooks who already knew how a cookie was made and needed only to be told which tin to reach for.