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Plain Cookies
1/3 cup butter or shortening 1/2 cup sugar 1 egg 2 teaspoons baking-powder 2 cups flour 1/8 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup milk 1/2 teaspoon vanilla Cream together thoroughly the butter or shortening and the sugar. Add the slightly beaten egg. Mix and sift the dry ingredients and add alternately with the milk to the first mixture. Add flavoring. Toss on lightly floured board, roll thin, cut and place on a greased baking-sheet. Bake in a moderate oven (35 degrees F.) twelve to fifteen minutes.
A plain rolled cookie of the 1920s: sweet enough to notice, sturdy enough to cut into shapes and stack. The dough is soft, so temperature control at the rolling stage is what determines whether it works.
- OvenThe recipe prints "a moderate oven (35 degrees F.)", an obvious misprint; a moderate oven in period usage is around 350F. Twelve to fifteen minutes at that heat suits a thin cookie; pull them when the edges are just colored and the centers still look pale.
- Chill before rollingWith half a cup of milk in it, this dough is slack and will stick badly if handled warm. Wrap and refrigerate an hour, then roll a portion at a time and keep the rest cold.
- Roll thin means thinAbout 1/8 inch. Thicker and the cookie turns cakey rather than crisp, and the modest sugar leaves it tasting flat.
- Shortening versus butterButter gives flavor and more spread; modern all-vegetable shortening holds a cut shape better but tastes of nothing. Half and half is a reasonable compromise.
- Baking-powderTwo teaspoons to two cups of flour works out to a teaspoon per cup, at the upper end of ordinary practice for a rolled cookie. Use a fresh can and level the spoons.
- Baking sheetGreasing is no longer necessary or desirable; parchment on a heavy, light-colored sheet prevents the bottoms from darkening before the tops set.
- SugarHalf a cup for two cups of flour makes these barely sweet by modern taste. The plain base takes jam or icing well.
- YieldDepends on how thin you roll and how much you re-roll; a 2-inch cutter will give several dozen. They keep about a week in a tin and firm up as they sit.
Recipes titled simply "Plain Cookies" run through American cookbooks from the mid-nineteenth century onward, and the word itself is a New World survival of the Dutch koekje, a little cake, carried into English through New York. "Plain" was a category rather than an apology: it marked a dough with no fruit, nuts, spice or costly flavoring beyond a half teaspoon of vanilla, cheap enough to make in quantity and neutral enough to be dressed up with sugar sprinkled before baking or frosting after. The New Delineator Recipes came out of the Delineator, a Butterick magazine aimed at women who sewed their own clothes and ran their own kitchens, and a recipe like this one is the house style exactly: short ingredient list, standardized cups and spoons, and a base a cook could vary a dozen ways without buying anything new.