Hermits
6 tablespoons shortening 1 cup brown sugar 1 egg 1/2 cup milk 1 1/2 cups flour 2 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon cloves 1 teaspoon allspice 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 cup seeded raisins 2 tablespoons citron Cream shortening, add sugar and beaten egg; mix well; add milk very slowly; sift flour, baking powder, salt and spices together and add slowly; chop the fruit, dredge with flour and add. Drop from spoon on greased tins and bake in moderate oven 15 minutes.
A soft drop cookie from one of the Royal Baking Powder promotional books, where the leavening quantity is deliberately generous. A few notes on the vintage measures and the dough's behaviour.
- OvenA moderate oven here means 350–375F. At 350F the cookies stay pale and cakey; 375F gives a little more colour at the edges in the same 15 minutes.
- ShorteningIn Royal books of this period, shortening means lard or a hydrogenated vegetable fat such as Crisco. Six tablespoons is about 3 oz, roughly 80-85 g. Butter works and tastes better, though it spreads slightly more.
- Baking powderTwo teaspoons for 1 1/2 cups flour is on the high side by current standards, and the book was published to sell the stuff. Cut to 1 1/4 teaspoons if you find the crumb soapy or overly puffed.
- CitronCandied citron peel, sold in blocks and a common holiday baking ingredient. Candied orange or lemon peel substitutes directly; two tablespoons is a small handful, chopped fine.
- Seeded raisins"Seeded" means the seeds have been removed, not that seeds were added — muscat raisins were sold both ways. Any modern seedless raisin is already what is wanted.
- Dredging the fruitTossing the chopped raisins and citron in flour before folding them in keeps them suspended in a slack batter rather than sinking. Take the flour from the measured 1 1/2 cups so the dough is not stiffened.
- ConsistencyThis is a soft drop batter, not a rolled dough. Add the milk slowly as written, so the creamed mixture does not curdle.
- Yield and keepingAbout 30 cookies from tablespoon-sized drops, spaced 2 inches apart. They firm as they cool and are better on the second day, once the spices have settled; store airtight.
Hermits are a New England drop cookie, in print under that name since the nineteenth century, and usually built around brown sugar, warm spices, and dried fruit, though recipes vary widely — molasses versions, bar versions, nut versions. The name is unexplained — one traditional story holds the dark, lumpy cookies looked like a hermit's brown robe, another that they keep so well they could be stored away and forgotten, and neither is documented. The keeping quality is real, and hermits are often said to have travelled well in lunch pails and sailors' chests and later in packages sent overseas. This version comes from a Royal Baking Powder booklet, one of a long line of free cookbooks issued by leavening and flour companies to teach American housewives to bake with chemical leaveners instead of yeast or hand-beaten eggs, which is why the baking powder measure runs high and the brand name is spelled out in the ingredient list.