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Bread (Small nutmeg grated teaspoon)
1 pound powdered sugar. 4 eggs. 1/4 pound chopped almonds. 1/4 pound chopped citron. 1 small nutmeg grated 1/4 teaspoon cloves 1/4 teaspoon powdered hartshorn Sufficient flour to make dough Beat the eggs and sugar together; add the almonds, citron and spices; then add the flour gradually. Take one-fourth of the dough; roll it out on a board well dusted with flour; cut into diamond-shaped pieces; place half an almond or pecan in the center of each, and paint with egg, using a small stiff brush. Bake on greased tins in a hot oven.
This page has come down to us as a fragment: the list begins mid-stream, so the eggs, sugar, almonds and citron are named in the method but their quantities are lost. What survives is enough to tell you what kind of cookie this is — a stiff, rolled, heavily spiced almond dough of the Lebkuchen family — but not enough to bake from without borrowing proportions from a complete version.
- The missing amountsOnly the spices and "sufficient flour" are quantified; the eggs, sugar, almonds and citron are named in the method but never measured. One plausible reconstruction would be about 4 eggs to 1 lb sugar, 1/2 lb ground almonds and 1/4 lb finely chopped citron, with flour worked in until the dough is stiff enough to roll. That is a guess for the cook's convenience, not the book's own figures and not a documented period ratio.
- Powdered hartshornThis is ammonium carbonate, sold now as baker's ammonia or hartshorn salt. It is still made for exactly this kind of dry, crisp spice cookie, where its sharp ammoniacal smell bakes off completely. It is not interchangeable with baking powder by volume, and in a moist batter the smell will not clear.
- A small nutmegWhole nutmegs vary; a small one grates out to about 1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons. Grate it fresh, since the point of the mix is that the nutmeg carries it and pre-ground nutmeg has usually lost most of its oil.
- CitronCandied citron peel, the thick pale-green preserved rind sold at Christmas. Chop it very fine or the pieces will tear the thin rolled dough. Candied lemon peel is the closest substitute.
- "A hot oven"400 to 425F. These are thin, sugar-heavy diamonds and they colour fast: 8 to 12 minutes depending on thickness, out when the edges are set and the tops are dry.
- Rolling a quarter at a timeThe instruction to take one-fourth of the dough is a practical one: a stiff dough is easier to handle in portions. Keep the rest covered while you work so it does not dry out.
- The egg washThe recipe calls for a small stiff brush, which suits a dry, floury dough surface. Beat the egg with a few drops of water so it flows rather than pooling, and press the almond or pecan half in firmly before glazing so it does not lift off in the oven.
- KeepingHartshorn cookies bake hard and keep well in a tin; spiced doughs of this kind are generally reckoned to soften a little and settle over a week or two. Yield cannot be given, since the batch quantities are lost.
Diamond-shaped, almond-studded, nutmeg-and-clove spice cookies raised with hartshorn belong to the broad German baking tradition that reached American kitchens through Pennsylvania German and German-Jewish households, and that survives in Lebkuchen, Pfeffernüsse and the various "honey cakes" and "spice breads" of nineteenth-century manuscript books. The odd placement under "Bread" reflects an older looseness of category. Hartshorn itself takes its name from its original source, the shavings of deer antler from which the ammonia salt was distilled; by the time this book was compiled it was a manufactured chemical, but the old name stuck and is still printed on packets of baker's ammonia sold for holiday baking.