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Cheese Gingerbread No. 1
1 cup of molasses 4 ounces of cheese 1 teaspoon of soda 2 cups of flour 2 teaspoons of ginger 1/2 teaspoon of salt 1/2 cup of water Heat the molasses and cheese in a double boiler until the cheese is melted. Add the soda, and stir vigorously. Mix, and sift dry ingredients, and add them to the molasses and cheese alternately with the water. Bake fifteen minutes in small buttered tins. It may be baked in a large pan but must be broken when cooked, not cut.
A gingerbread that uses melted cheese in place of butter or shortening — a fat-and-protein economy typical of meatless wartime cookery. It behaves like a thin batter bread rather than a cake, and it is unusually short-baked.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none. Fifteen minutes in small tins points to a moderate oven, in the region of 350F; a large shallow pan will need appreciably longer, so test it rather than trusting a fixed time.
- The cheeseFour ounces of a firm, plain cooking cheese is what is wanted here, something closer to a mild block cheddar than to anything wrapped in plastic. Grate it (4 oz is roughly a cup, loosely packed) so it melts evenly in the double boiler.
- Why the double boilerDirect heat will make the cheese seize into strings and weep oil into the molasses. Gentle indirect heat keeps the fat emulsified in the syrup, which is the whole point of the method.
- Adding the sodaA teaspoon of soda hitting hot molasses foams immediately and irreversibly. Stir it in off the heat, work quickly through the rest of the mixing, and get the batter into the tins while it is still lively.
- MolassesUse unsulphured molasses rather than blackstrap, which is bitter and overpowering here. Light or dark cooking molasses both work; dark gives a stronger ginger-and-treacle flavour.
- "Small buttered tins"Standard muffin tins are the nearest modern equivalent; the batter is loose enough to pour. Butter them properly — the only fat in the batter is what comes out of the cheese, and it sticks.
- Break, do not cutThe instruction is not decorative. Cheese gingerbread sets soft and slightly gummy while warm, and a knife will drag and compress it. Cool it fully in the pan and pull it apart along its own lines.
- Yield and keepingAbout a dozen small cakes. Like most molasses gingerbreads it should keep moist for a couple of days in a tin, and the ginger may well taste more settled the next day.
Meatless Cookery belongs to a run of American cookbooks in which cheese does the work of butter, quietly adding protein while it does — meatless cooking of the period being driven variously by thrift and by dietary and vegetarian arguments. The pairing itself is older than any of those books — cheese eaten alongside gingerbread and parkin is a long-standing habit in the north of England, generally traced to Yorkshire, and the numbering of this recipe as "No. 1" suggests the author expected readers to want more than one version. What is unusual is folding the cheese into the batter rather than serving it beside the slice, an inversion that reads as strange now and evidently read as sensible then.