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Ginger Bread
One cupful of sugar, 1 cupful of molasses, 1 cupful of sour milk, 2½ cupfuls of flour, 1 teaspoonful of soda, 1 egg, 3 tablespoonfuls of melted butter and 1 tablespoonful of ginger.
A plain sour-milk gingerbread of the type printed without any baking directions at all — the book assumes the cook knows what to do with a batter. Here is what it leaves out.
- Oven and panBake at 350F in a greased 8- or 9-inch square pan for 30-40 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean; the book gives no temperature, time or pan, so this is a reconstruction. The batter is thin enough to pour, and a loaf pan will need longer.
- Sour milkThis means naturally soured raw milk, which pasteurised milk will not reliably become. Use buttermilk cup for cup, or stir 1 tablespoon of lemon juice or white vinegar into a cup of whole milk and let it stand 10 minutes.
- The soda is the leaveningThere is no baking powder here — the single teaspoon of soda works only against the acid in the sour milk and molasses. Mix it into the flour rather than the liquid, and get the batter into the oven promptly, since the lift begins as soon as the two meet.
- MolassesUse unsulphured dark molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and harsher than what was sold as plain molasses. Golden syrup or light treacle gives a milder, sweeter crumb.
- A tablespoon of gingerNot a misprint; large spice measures are common in period gingerbreads. With fresh, potent ground ginger, 2 teaspoons is closer to a modern palate; a full tablespoon is assertive rather than wrong.
- Mixing orderBeat the egg with the sugar and molasses, add the melted butter and sour milk, then fold in the flour and soda. Overworking after the flour goes in toughens what should be a tender, slightly damp crumb.
- YieldOne 8-inch square pan, cut into nine or twelve squares. It keeps better than most cakes — wrapped, the flavour improves on the second day.
Sour-milk gingerbread belongs to the era before baking powder was cheap and universal, when milk soured on the shelf and molasses was a cheap household sweetener. Molasses was generally cheaper than refined sugar in nineteenth-century American kitchens, and gingerbread of this kind is common in economy cookery books: it is sweet, it is spiced, it uses little butter, and it does not depend on eggs for lift. The absence of baking instructions is itself a period detail — such books often gave only the proportions and left the method to the cook.