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Hermit Cookies
2 level t cinnamon 1 C white sugar 1½ C lard 4 eggs 2 C currants 4 T sour milk Salt dough 2 level t soda 1 level t cloves ¼ level t nutmeg Flour to make not too soft Mrs. C. L. Thompson.
A community-cookbook ingredient list with the method left to the cook's judgment, as was common in 1900s church books. A few of the quantities need thought before you commit flour to bowl.
- Reading the abbreviationsC is cup, T is tablespoon, t is teaspoon. "Level" is worth noting: level measuring was being promoted in cookbooks from the 1890s in place of the older heaping spoonful, and the fact that this contributor spells it out suggests it still needed saying -- so take the leavening and spices at the flat edge of a knife.
- The nutmeg figure is unusable"14 level t nutmeg" cannot be right beside 2 teaspoons cinnamon and 1 of cloves. A fraction has been lost; a quarter to a half teaspoon of nutmeg is in keeping with the rest of the spicing.
- The fat is out of proportionOne and a half cups of lard against a single cup of sugar and only four tablespoons of liquid gives a dough richer than most hermit recipes of the period, which tend to run nearer a cup of fat to a larger quantity of sugar. A cook working from this page should treat the quantity as suspect rather than measure it out.
- Sour milk and sodaThe 2 teaspoons of soda are there to react with the acid in sour milk, not with anything else in the bowl. Modern pasteurised milk will not sour usefully; use buttermilk, or milk with a teaspoon of lemon juice or vinegar stirred in and left ten minutes.
- LardLard gives a short, tender crumb. Butter can be substituted, but the dough will spread more; chill it before baking.
- CurrantsZante currants, the small dried grape, not fresh red or black currants. Two cups is a heavy load of fruit; plump them briefly in hot water and dry them if they are stiff.
- "Flour to make not too soft"Aim for a dough that holds a spoonful without slumping, stiff enough to drop but not to roll. Add flour a half cup at a time and stop early, since the fruit will release moisture and slacken the dough as it stands.
- BakingDrop in mounds on a lined sheet and bake at 350-375F for about 10-12 minutes, until the edges set and the centres still look slightly underdone. Hermits are meant to stay chewy and will harden on the sheet.
- YieldAs written, with four eggs and two cups of fruit, this is a large batch, likely several dozen drop cookies depending on size. Hermits are traditionally said to keep well in a tin.
Hermits are a New England spice cookie that appears in American printed cookbooks from the later nineteenth century. The name is usually explained by the way the cookies keep -- the spiced, fruited dough survives storage well, and they are often said to have gone to sea and into lunch pails for that reason -- but this is traditional explanation rather than documented fact, and other accounts point to the cookies' sober brown colour instead. By the period of community cookbooks like this one, the hermit had travelled well out of New England and become a standard contributed recipe, submitted under a married name as here. The use of lard, sour milk and soda rather than baking powder and commercial shortening is characteristic of home baking of that era, though sour milk and soda remained in use long after baking powder was available.