Hermits
cup butter 2 cups flour 1 cup brown sugar 2 eggs teaspoon soda 1 tablespoon hot water 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon each, clove, mace and nutmeg 1 cup raisins Mix ingredients in order given. Roll mixture one quarter inch thick. Shape with cooky cutter. Put one raisin in center of each round. Bake in moderate oven twelve to fifteen minutes. ½ cup butter 1 cup sugar 2 eggs
A plain rolled spice cookie of the sort that turns up in nearly every New England community cookbook of the period. It is stiff dough handled like pastry, not a drop cookie.
- Oven"Moderate" in books of this period is usually taken as somewhere around 350-375F; the recipe gives no temperature. Twelve to fifteen minutes at that heat gives a firm, dry cookie; pull them at twelve if you want any chew.
- Butter and soda quantitiesThe butter and soda measures have lost their fractions in this printing. Half a cup of butter is a reasonable reading for a two-cup-flour rolled cookie; the soda could as easily have been a whole teaspoon as a half.
- Soda in hot waterThe tablespoon of hot water is only there to dissolve the soda so it disperses evenly. Mix it in last and get the dough onto the sheet reasonably promptly.
- MaceStill sold, but stocked less often than the other three. It is the aril of the nutmeg, milder and more floral; nutmeg alone at the same total quantity is an acceptable substitute.
- RaisinsA cup of raisins chopped fine works better than whole ones in dough rolled a quarter inch thick, which whole fruit tends to tear. The single raisin pressed into each round is decorative and marks the top.
- RollingChill the dough at least an hour before rolling. Brown sugar and butter make a soft, sticky mass that is unpleasant to handle warm.
- YieldAbout three dozen cookies from a two-inch cutter. Rolled thin like this they keep well in a tin and will dry out somewhat as they sit.
Hermits are associated with New England and are commonly said to have come from the coastal towns of Massachusetts, where they were reputedly valued for keeping well on long voyages -- a tradition rather than a documented origin. The name's origin is not documented; the frequently repeated explanation that the dark, wrinkled cookies resembled a hermit's brown robe is folk etymology rather than fact. Lowney's, a Boston chocolate firm, issued its cook book to promote cocoa and chocolate, but filled out the dessert chapter with standard household baking of the region, which is why an unchocolated spice cookie sits here at all. A heavy hand with clove, mace and nutmeg is typical of the period's spice cookies.