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Almond Cookies-Icebox
1 lb. butter or oleo. 1 C light brown sugar 1 C granulated sugar 3 eggs well beaten 1 t soda 1 t cinnamon 4½ C flour Mrs. Geo. Ives.
Mix Mix 1/4 lb. chopped almonds (scant cup) Salt Mix and form into sausage-shaped rolls and keep cold over night. In morning slice thin and bake. ar ege Mrs. Geo. Ives.
Note:-Mrs. E. Quenten uses 5 C flour, 2 t soda, 1 T cinnamon and either peanuts or walnuts.
A classic refrigerator cookie: a stiff, high-butter dough rolled into logs, chilled, then sliced and baked as needed. The original assumes a cook who knows her own oven, so the two things it omits — temperature and time — are the two worth settling first.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Thin icebox slices want a moderately hot oven, 375F, for 8-10 minutes, until the edges brown and the centres are just set. They firm as they cool.
- The flour figureThe quantity printed as "42 C" is not a usable number, most likely a mangled 4 or 4 1/2. Mrs. Quenten's variant note, with 5 cups of flour to the pound of butter, is the only sound proportion the page actually supplies; short of that, judge by feel — stiff enough to roll into a firm log that holds its shape.
- OleoOleomargarine, the period's butter substitute. Butter gives better flavour and a crisper snap; modern stick margarine will work but soft tub spreads have too much water and the logs will not slice cleanly.
- AbbreviationsC is cup, t is teaspoon, T is tablespoon. "Soda" is baking soda, not baking powder — there is no acid ingredient here beyond the brown sugar, so the soda mainly promotes browning and spread rather than lift.
- SaltListed without any quantity. Use about 1/2 to 1 teaspoon, less if the butter or oleo is salted.
- Chilling and slicingOvernight in the refrigerator is the hinge of the recipe. A log that is merely cool will smear under the knife; one that is thoroughly cold slices to an even 1/8 inch. Wrap the rolls so they do not dry or take on odours, and slice with a thin sharp blade, rotating the log a quarter turn every few cuts to keep it round.
- YieldA pound of butter makes a very large batch, many dozen thin cookies across several logs. The logs can be kept chilled and sliced as wanted, which is the point of the form.
- The variationMrs. Quenten's version raises the flour, doubles the soda and trebles the cinnamon, producing a drier, spicier, more snap-like cookie. Peanuts or walnuts stand in for the almonds; chop them fine so the slices do not crumble.
Icebox or refrigerator cookies belong to the first half of the twentieth century, when mechanical refrigeration and, before it, the insulated ice chest made a reliably cold shelf a fixture of the ordinary kitchen. The appeal was scheduling: a cook could make a large batch of dough on baking day, hold it in logs, and cut off only as many cookies as were wanted, which is why community cookbooks of this era carry so many of them under names like "icebox," "refrigerator" and "sliced" cookies. Church and parish collections such as this one typically credited the contributor by her husband's name, and the appended note from a second cook — offering different proportions and cheaper nuts — is characteristic of how these books were assembled: not edited into one authoritative version, but printed with the congregation's disagreements intact.