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Fruit Cookies (C shortening C sugar egg t)
1 1/4 C flour. 1/3 t salt. 1/3 C shortening 1½ C sugar 1 egg 1/3 t baking soda 1 T hot water 1 t cinnamon 1/2 C chopped nuts 1/2 C chopped raisins Mix in order given. Dissolve soda in water. Drop by spoonfuls onto a greased tin, one inch apart, and bake in a moderate oven. ½ C sugar 1 C shortening 1 egg 1/2 C sour milk Edith E. Smith.
East Orange, N. J.
A community-cookbook drop cookie, printed in the compressed shorthand these books favored — and, as set in type, incomplete. Read the notes on the missing flour before you start.
- The recipe is missing its flourNothing in the ingredient list gives structure: shortening, sugar, egg, soda, water, spice, nuts and raisins will spread into a puddle. A drop cookie built on this much shortening and sugar would need somewhere around a cup to a cup and a quarter of flour, plus a pinch of salt. The printed list simply does not contain it.
- The second list is a second recipeThe second list looks like a second recipe -- The trailing "1 1/2 C sugar, 1 C shortening, 1 egg, 1/2 C sour milk" appears to have run together with the first in the printing: it brings in sour milk, which the method above never uses, and only one egg. Note that its sugar and shortening are exactly three times those of the first list. Treat it as a fragment rather than as additions.
- AbbreviationsC is cup, T is tablespoon, t is teaspoon. The distinction between T and t is doing real work here: one tablespoon of hot water against one teaspoon of cinnamon.
- ShorteningIn a community cookbook of this kind this means lard, or hydrogenated vegetable shortening. Butter works and tastes better; expect slightly more spread.
- Soda in hot waterDissolving the baking soda before it goes in is the point of the step — undissolved soda leaves bitter yellow specks. There is no acid ingredient in the first list, so the soda mainly gives lift and browning rather than a full reaction.
- Sour milkIf you build a batter around the second fragment, sour milk means naturally soured milk. About 1 1/2 teaspoons of vinegar or lemon juice made up to half a cup with whole milk, left ten minutes, stands in.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350-375F. Small drop cookies take 10 to 12 minutes; pull them when the edges are set and the centers still look soft.
- Spacing and yieldOne inch apart is too close for a soft drop batter; allow two inches. Once flour is supplied, the quantities should make roughly two dozen small cookies.
Fundraising cookbooks compiled from the recipes of local contributors are among the most democratic and the most error-prone cooking literature America produced. Contributors wrote out what they made from memory and an editor set it in the tightest type the printer would allow -- which is how a cookie recipe can lose its flour and pick up the opening lines of the recipe that followed it. The out-of-state address under Edith E. Smith's name is worth noticing too: such books often carried contributions mailed in by former members and relatives who had moved away. The cookie itself is a plain sweet-spice drop with raisins and nuts, the sort of everyday baking that used pantry staples and no chocolate, and it belongs to the long tradition of "rocks" and hermits that filled American cookie jars before the drop cookie was reinvented around chocolate chips.