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Rocks
1 C butter or other shortening 1½ C sugar 3 eggs 3 C flour 1 t allspice or cinnamon 1 t soda 2 T hot water 1 lb. dates (cut) 1 C walnut meats Salt Cream shortening, add sugar, well beaten eggs, flour sifted with spice; dissolve the soda in hot water and add to the mixture. Finally add the dates and nuts. Drop on buttered sheets and bake in moderate oven.
Mrs. Luella Ray.
Mrs. Bert Steir.
Note: Mrs. Alma Timmerman uses raisins in place of dates.
A plain drop cookie of the fruit-and-nut type, written in the shorthand church-supper cooks took for granted. Two things need filling in: the oven number and the salt, neither of which the original bothers to state.
- The abbreviationsC is a cup, T a tablespoon, t a teaspoon. So: 1 cup fat, 1½ cups sugar, 3 cups flour, 1 teaspoon spice, 1 teaspoon soda, 2 tablespoons hot water.
- Moderate oven350°F. For drop cookies this size, 10 to 12 minutes, until the edges are set and lightly coloured but the centres still look soft.
- SaltListed with no quantity, which was normal when cooks salted by pinch. Half a teaspoon suits three cups of flour; use a scant ¼ teaspoon if the butter is salted.
- Soda and hot waterDissolving the soda before it goes in prevents brown specks and bitter pockets. Add it near the end and mix only until it disappears — the batter is stiff and overworking it toughens the cookies.
- A pound of datesRoughly 2½ to 3 cups once pitted and cut. Modern pitted dates tend to be softer and stickier than the pressed block dates sold in the period; toss the cut pieces in a spoonful of the measured flour so they separate in the dough.
- "Other shortening"In a kitchen of this period this would have meant lard or a lard-and-butter mix. Butter gives the better flavour; solid vegetable shortening gives a taller, paler cookie that spreads less.
- Walnut meatsSimply shelled walnuts, about 1 cup, chopped coarse. Toasting them first is not in the original but costs nothing and helps against the sweetness of a pound of dates.
- YieldA large batch, several dozen at least from teaspoon-sized drops, spaced two inches apart. They spread modestly and keep well in a tin.
"Rocks" is a common American name for a stiff, craggy fruit-and-spice drop cookie; the name is usually taken to describe the lumpy shape rather than the texture, which should be soft. Recipes under that title appear widely in community and church cookbooks from the turn of the century onward, usually with dates, raisins or currants, walnuts or hickory nuts, and a single warm spice; the version here, credited jointly to two contributors with a third offering a raisin substitution, shows how such recipes circulated, passed hand to hand with small household variations attached. Dried dates were by then cheap and widely stocked, and cookbooks of the era put them into everything from puddings to bread. Cookies like these were made for keeping -- sturdy enough for a lunch pail, a church social, or a tin sent through the post.