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Ball Cookies
Lillian Casey. 1 C sugar 2 C pastry flour 1 t baking powder 2 t cinnamon 14 t cloves 14 C chopped citron 14 t nutmeg 1½ grated orange rind 3 eggs 12 t salt Drop small portion on buttered cookie sheet; bake quickly. Mrs. Chas. Laycock. 12 t cloves
A spice-and-citron drop cookie with no butter and no liquid beyond the eggs, which do all the binding and leavening work. The printed fractions have lost their slashes in transcription, so read the quantities with that in mind.
- The mangled fractions"14 t cloves" is 1/4 teaspoon, "14 C chopped citron" is 1/4 cup, "14 t nutmeg" is 1/4 teaspoon and "12 t salt" is 1/2 teaspoon. The trailing line from Mrs. Chas. Laycock, "12 t cloves," is presumably 1/2 teaspoon of cloves; whether it is an amendment to Casey's recipe or the remnant of a separate contribution is not clear from the page.
- The orange rind"1½ grated orange rind" is genuinely ambiguous: it may mean the grated rind of one and a half oranges, or one and a half teaspoons of grated rind. The rind of a single medium orange yields roughly a tablespoon, which suits this quantity of dough either way.
- "Bake quickly"The recipe names no oven at all. Period tables put a quick oven at roughly 400-425F. For small drops of an eggy, sugary batter, 400F for 8-10 minutes gives the fast set the instruction is after without scorching the bottoms.
- No fat in the doughThere is no butter, shortening or milk here; the eggs supply the moisture and binding, with a teaspoon of baking powder for lift. Beating the eggs and sugar until pale and thick before folding in the dry ingredients will give a lighter cookie.
- Pastry flourPastry flour is lower in protein than all-purpose. Substitute by replacing two tablespoons of each cup of all-purpose flour with cornstarch, or accept slightly firmer cookies.
- CitronCandied citron peel, sold in tubs around the winter holidays and otherwise scarce. Candied orange peel or mixed candied peel works in its place. Chop it small so the drops hold together.
- Buttered sheetSugar-heavy, fat-free batters weld themselves to metal. Parchment is more reliable than butter alone, and lift the cookies off while still warm.
- YieldSmall teaspoon-sized drops from this quantity give about three to four dozen. They keep well in a tin and firm up as they cool.
Church and society cookbooks of the early twentieth century were compiled from contributors: each contributor sent in a favorite receipt over her own name, which is why this page carries two, Lillian Casey's and Mrs. Chas. Laycock's, printed one after the other rather than reconciled. The dough itself belongs to a large family of fat-free egg-and-sugar spice drops, relying on beaten eggs for lift and on citron, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg for flavor. Citron, the candied peel of a thick-rinded citrus grown chiefly in the Mediterranean, was a standard holiday grocery-store item then and is a seasonal specialty now, which is a fair measure of how much the baking calendar has narrowed.