Albany Cakes
1 1/2 pound flour. 1 1/2 pound brown sugar. 1 1/2 pound butter. 1 tablespoonful lard. 4 tablespoonfuls powdered cinnamon. 1 teaspoonful soda, dissolved in a cup of milk.
Roll on extra flour very thin. Dip the face of each cake in granulated sugar. Bake slowly in greased pans.--Mrs. R.R.
SCOTCH CAKES. (Very nice.) 2 pounds flour. 1 1/2 pound sugar. 1 pound butter. 6 eggs, beaten together. 3 nutmegs.--Mrs. P. McG.
Two rolled cookie doughs run together in one entry, both given as bare ingredient lists in the old style that assumed the cook knew what to do with them. The Albany cakes are a thin cinnamon wafer; the Scotch cakes are a shortbread-type dough with no liquid at all.
- Two recipes, not oneEverything through "Mrs. R.R." is the Albany cakes. "Scotch Cakes" is a separate receipt from a different contributor, with its own five-ingredient list and no instructions of its own.
- Weights into cups1 1/2 lb flour is about 5 1/2 cups; 1 1/2 lb brown sugar about 3 1/2 cups packed; 1 1/2 lb butter is six sticks. The Scotch cakes want about 7 cups flour, 3 1/2 cups sugar and four sticks of butter. Both make enormous batches — plan on eight to ten dozen thin cakes — and both halve or quarter without trouble.
- "Bake slowly"A slow oven, conventionally read as roughly 300 to 325F. Rolled this thin, the cakes should be done in about 8 to 12 minutes; watch the edges rather than the clock, since brown sugar hides colour change.
- SodaPlain baking soda (the book's period also called it saleratus). Dissolving it in milk is the standard old method for dispersing it evenly. The acidity here comes from the molasses in the brown sugar, so use a dark brown sugar rather than a pale one if you want any lift at all.
- The hinge: chill before rollingWith that much butter the dough is unmanageable at room temperature. Refrigerate it firm, roll thin on a floured board in batches, and keep the rest cold. The recipe itself says only to roll very thin using extra flour.
- Cinnamon and nutmeg quantitiesFour tablespoons of cinnamon in the Albany cakes reads as intentional rather than a slip, though there is no way to confirm it; these are strongly spiced either way. Three whole nutmegs grated come to roughly 2 to 3 tablespoons -- assertive by modern taste, and worth starting at half if you are unsure.
- Sugaring the topsDipping the face of each cut cake in granulated sugar before baking gives a crisp sugared top. Press the cut rounds sugar-side down into a shallow dish of sugar, then lay them sugar-side up in the pan.
- Pans"Greased pans" means flat baking sheets. Parchment does the job better and prevents the sugared faces from sticking.
- Scotch cakes methodThe list gives no procedure: cream the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs and nutmeg, work in the flour, chill, roll thin and bake at the same slow heat. There is no leavening, so they will stay flat and crisp.
Albany, New York, was the inland stronghold of Dutch Hudson Valley cooking, and it is to Dutch settlement in New York generally that English-speaking America owes both the word "cookie" (from Dutch koekje) and the habit of heavily spiced, thin, rolled sugar wafers in the manner of speculaas. A cinnamon-loaded cake named for the town is often said to descend from that tradition, though the connection is traditional rather than documented in the book itself. What is more telling is how the recipe reached Virginia: Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878) was assembled by Marion Cabell Tyree from receipts contributed by named Southern housekeepers, initialled here as Mrs. R.R. and Mrs. P. McG., and a Northern city's cookie sits beside a Scotch shortbread. The pound-based proportions and the instruction to bake "slowly" also date the pages: these are quantities suited to a wood range whose heat you judged by hand rather than by dial.