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Frozen Cookies
1 cup brown sugar 1 cup white sugar 1 cup shortening 1 cup melted butter 3 eggs, beaten 4 3/4 cups flour 1/4 teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons soda 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1/2 pound almonds, blanched and chopped Mix sugar and rub into shortening, add melted butter, well beaten eggs and sifted dry ingredients. Knead in the ground almonds, and form into a roll and chill in the refrigerator for two hours. Slice thin and bake in a hot oven 12 minutes--until brown. This mixture is best kept for a day in the refrigerator. Makes five dozen 3-inch cookies.
A standard icebox cookie: a stiff, very rich dough rolled into a log, chilled firm, sliced and baked. Nothing here is obsolete, but the fat quantity and the leavening are both high by modern standards, and the oven direction needs a number.
- Hot ovenRead "a hot oven" as 400-425F. At that heat thin slices color fast; start checking at 8 minutes rather than trusting the full 12.
- The hinge is the chillThe dough must be genuinely cold and firm before slicing, or the slices tear and spread. Two hours is a minimum; the note about holding it a day is sound, and the log can sit wrapped for up to three days or be frozen.
- Two cups of fatA cup of shortening plus a cup of melted butter is a great deal of fat for 4 3/4 cups flour. All butter (2 cups, or 1 lb) works and tastes better; the shortening was presumably there for keeping quality and a crisper snap.
- Soda without much acidTwo teaspoons of soda is aggressive for this quantity of flour with only brown sugar as an acid source. Reducing to one teaspoon avoids the soapy aftertaste that excess soda gives; the cookies rise very little either way.
- Chopped or groundThe ingredient list says chopped, the method says ground. Finely chopped almonds give texture and slice cleanly; ground almonds behave as flour and make a shorter, sandier cookie. Choose one and be consistent.
- Slicing and sizeFor 3-inch rounds, form a log about 2 1/2 inches across and slice thin; note that to get only five dozen from this much dough the slices need to be nearer 1/4 inch than 1/8. A thin-bladed knife, wiped between cuts, keeps the almonds from dragging.
- YieldFive dozen as written, which is several baking sheets' worth in rotation. The dough halves without trouble if that is more than you want at once.
Refrigerator or "icebox" cookies became a fixture of American cookbooks in the 1920s and 1930s, when mechanical refrigeration moved from the ice-delivery box to an electric appliance in ordinary kitchens. The form suited the new machine: a cook could mix a stiff dough, park the log on a cold shelf, and bake a sheet at a time as company arrived. The heavy almond content recalls older Northern European sliced cookies, and the cinnamon and blanched almonds here sit in that line.