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Ginger Bread (T cloves C sour milk t soda)
1½ t cloves 1/2 C sour milk ½ t soda dissolved in sour milk ½ C flour Pinch salt Walnut meats may be added if desired. 1/2 C sugar 1 C molasses
This is one of the many quick molasses gingerbreads that fill church cookbooks of the period, given as an ingredient list with the method assumed. A competent baker can work from it, but a few of the terms and proportions need translating.
- Sour milkSour milk here means raw milk that has clabbered naturally and turned acidic, not spoiled pasteurized milk. Use buttermilk, or half a cup of whole milk with a teaspoon and a half of lemon juice or vinegar stirred in and left ten minutes.
- The soda is the leaveningThere is no baking powder. The soda dissolved in the sour milk reacts with both the acid milk and the molasses, so the batter should go into the pan and into the oven promptly once combined.
- MolassesUse unsulphured light or dark molasses, not blackstrap, which is far more bitter than the table molasses of the period and will overwhelm a batter this size.
- SpiceClove is the only spice named, and the printed page gives 1½ t cloves as our text now reads. Many gingerbread recipes pair ginger and cinnamon with clove, and a teaspoon of ground ginger with half a teaspoon of cinnamon would bring it in line with the name without altering the structure.
- No fat listedThe ingredients as given include no butter, shortening or egg, which makes for a lean, chewy, slightly sticky cake rather than a tender one. Many gingerbread recipes do include some butter or lard; this one does not.
- OvenNo oven direction is given. A gingerbread of this size bakes well at 350F.
- Pan and yieldThe quantities fill an 8-inch square pan to a shallow depth; 25 to 30 minutes, until the center springs back. It cuts into about nine squares.
- WalnutsIf adding nuts, use about half a cup, chopped and tossed in a spoonful of the measured flour so they do not sink through the thin batter.
Molasses gingerbread was an everyday sweet of the American kitchen, and recipes like this one survived because they needed no eggs, little sugar and no creaming. The soda-and-sour-milk pairing belongs to the era when households commonly had milk turning in a crock and saleratus or baking soda in a tin. Recipes contributed to community collections were often set down in the shorthand one cook would use writing to another: a list of what goes in, with the mixing and baking left to common knowledge.