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Christmas Cookies
2 C.sugar 4 egg yolks Mrs. R. Folger. 2 t baking powder 1 t anise Mix well and put in a cool place over night and roll out next day. 2 C sugar ½ C melted lard 12 C molasses 1 T soda 2/3 C boiling water
This page has clearly been transcribed from a typewritten community cookbook, and two separate cookie recipes have run together with their fraction marks flattened. Read it as a set of proportions rather than a procedure, and expect to supply the flour yourself.
- The two recipesEverything from "2 C. sugar" through "roll out next day" is one anise cookie; the second block beginning "2 C sugar" with molasses and soda is a separate molasses cookie. Neither is complete on its own.
- Broken fractions"112 C melted lard" most likely stands for 1 1/2 cups and "12 C molasses" for 1/2 cup, the fraction marks having dropped out somewhere between the contributor's card and this transcription. "2/3 C boiling water" has survived intact, so whatever went wrong was not consistent.
- No flour is givenThis is the real gap. A rolled cookie on 2 cups sugar and 4 yolks needs roughly 4 to 4 1/2 cups flour; the molasses dough, with that much lard and liquid, wants closer to 6. Add flour gradually until the dough just stops sticking to the board.
- Measure abbreviations"t" is conventionally teaspoon and "T" tablespoon in books of this kind, though this page supplies no key. 1 tablespoon of soda is a lot by modern taste but not unusual in a large molasses batch; presumably it was meant to be dissolved in the boiling water, though the recipe does not say so.
- Anise1 teaspoon most likely means anise extract or oil, not seed. If you use crushed anise seed instead, 2 to 3 teaspoons gives a comparable flavour.
- LardRendered leaf lard gives a short, crisp crumb, though the page does not say which lard was meant. Modern shelf-stable lard is usually hydrogenated and works; butter substitutes one for one but spreads more and browns faster.
- The overnight restThe recipe calls for it explicitly, so treat it as part of the method. Note that the first block lists neither fat nor flour, so any explanation of what the rest was for is guesswork.
- OvenThe page gives no oven direction at all. As a modern starting point, roll thin and bake at 350F for 8 to 10 minutes, until the edges just colour. Check the first tray early, since molasses doughs give little visual warning.
- YieldUnstated, and not calculable without knowing the flour. Rolled about 1/4 inch thick, a batch of this size would plausibly give five or six dozen cookies of two to two and a half inches.
Church and ladies' aid cookbooks of the early twentieth century were compiled from cards and scraps handed in by members, and a page like this can end up with two contributors' Christmas doughs sharing a heading and a single name. Both are recognisable types: an anise-scented rolled cookie, and the big molasses-and-lard batch that a household could cut into shapes for weeks of holiday baking. The proportions rather than the method were the point, since the contributor assumed any reader knew to add flour enough to roll and to judge the oven by hand. Anise was a common Christmas flavouring in such collections, and lard was simply the fat on hand.