Home › Cookies-Doughnuts › Ginger Drops
Ginger Drops
1 C brown sugar. 2/3 C butter. 1/2 C cold water. 1 egg. 1 large T ginger 1 large t soda 3 C flour (about) 2/3 C molasses Drop on greased tins. Makes about 4 or 5 dozen.
Mrs. Quentin. 2 C molases 1/2 C sour cream 1 C shortening 1 C sugar Mrs. R. F. Wright.
This page has collapsed two contributors' recipes into one block, and neither is complete on its own. Read the points below before you shop, because the ingredient list as printed is not a workable formula.
- Two recipes, one paragraphEverything up to "Mrs. Quentin" is one recipe; the four lines after it are a second, from Mrs. R. F. Wright. The two have run together on the page, and Mrs. Wright's flour, spice and method are missing — whether they were lost in printing or never submitted cannot be told from the text.
- What is missing from the firstMrs. Quentin's list gives ginger, soda, flour and molasses and nothing else — no fat, no egg, no liquid beyond the molasses. Two-thirds of a cup of molasses cannot wet three cups of flour, so at least one line has been lost in the printing. A modern molasses drop cookie recipe is the sensible substitute.
- T and tCapital T is a tablespoon, lowercase t a teaspoon. "Large" most likely means heaped rather than levelled, so the ginger may run somewhat over the three teaspoons in a level tablespoon — assertive, but not out of keeping with a ginger cookie.
- Sour cream meant souredMrs. Wright's half cup of sour cream was raw cream gone acid, thinner and sharper than the cultured tubs sold now. Full-fat cultured sour cream is the closest match; its acid is what activates the soda alongside the molasses.
- ShorteningIn a book of this kind shortening usually means lard or a hydrogenated vegetable fat, measured solid and creamed with the sugar. Butter works and tastes better, but spreads more, so chill the dough.
- Molasses, not blackstrapUse unsulphured light or medium molasses. Blackstrap is the last and most bitter run of sugar refining, and it will dominate a cookie built on two cups of the stuff.
- OvenNo temperature is given, which is common in books of this sort. Soft molasses drop cookies bake at 350F for 10 to 12 minutes, until the edges set and the centres still look slightly underdone.
- YieldFour to five dozen is stated for the first recipe. Mrs. Wright's proportions, with two cups of molasses, would clearly make a great deal more, but with the flour missing no figure can be put on it.
Ginger drops belong to the large family of soft molasses cookies that carried American home baking through the nineteenth century, when molasses was cheaper than refined sugar and ginger was among the spices most pantries were likely to keep. The "drop" name is literal: the batter is soft enough to fall from a spoon rather than be rolled and cut, which made it one of the quickest cookies in the repertoire. Community cookbooks of this kind were often assembled from recipes submitted by members and then set in type locally, the sort of process that can leave two women's recipes sharing a paragraph. Contributors also assumed a great deal of shared knowledge hat sooven should be moderate, that you bake until done — so the gaps here are as characteristic of the genre as the ginger.