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Oatmeal Drop Cookies (Beaten eggs T molasses Salt t)
1 C sugar. 3/4 C shortening. 2 beaten eggs 1 T molasses Salt 1 t cinnamon Drop on greased pans and bake.
Mrs. F. J. Wagner. 1 t baking powder 1 scantt soda 1 C raisins 1 C flour 3 C oatmeal 2 t sweet milk
A church-supper ingredient list set in type without much care: the quantities are scrambled, the mixing order is missing, and the instruction line sits in the middle of the ingredients. Read the whole thing before you start, and expect to make judgment calls.
- The list is incompleteThere is no sugar and no butter, lard or other fat. Comparable oatmeal drop cookies of the period carry roughly 1 cup sugar and 1/2 cup shortening; without them this bakes into a dry oat cake rather than a cookie. Treat the printed list as a skeleton.
- "2 t sweet milk"Two teaspoons of milk will not moisten 3 cups of oatmeal and 1 cup of flour. It may be a misprint for tablespoons or a larger measure, or simply another casualty of the scrambled setting; either way, add milk by eye until the dough just holds together in a spoonful.
- AbbreviationsT is tablespoon, t is teaspoon, C is cup. "Scant t soda" means a slightly under-filled teaspoon of baking soda — called saleratus in older books, though that term first meant potassium bicarbonate before it came to stand for the sodium bicarbonate sold today.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh milk, named to distinguish it from the soured or buttermilk that many recipes of the era called for. Whole milk is the closest match.
- OatmealIn an American community cookbook of this kind this almost always means rolled oats, not steel-cut. Old-fashioned rolled oats give the right texture; three cups is a high proportion, so the dough will be stiff and clumpy rather than smooth.
- Both leavenersBaking powder alongside soda turns up often in recipes of this kind, the soda presumably there to work against the acidity of the molasses. Do not double either; the quantities given are already generous for one cup of flour.
- Oven and timeNo temperature is given. Drop cookies of this type bake at 350–375F for 10–12 minutes, until the edges are set and lightly browned. They firm as they cool, so pull them while the centers still look soft.
- YieldWith the fat and sugar restored, expect about three dozen cookies from tablespoon-sized drops, spaced two inches apart.
Fundraising cookbooks of this kind were compiled from handwritten cards submitted by contributors and then set in type by a local printer working fast and cheap — which is one way a recipe ends up with its baking instruction wedged between the cinnamon and the baking powder, and its sugar lost altogether. Rolled oats in such quantity suggest a date after large-scale oat milling had made packaged rolled oats a cheap pantry staple in American kitchens, and molasses in a single-tablespoon dose reads as colour and a faint darkness of flavour rather than as the main sweetener.