Home › Doughnuts and Cookies › Date Rocks
Date Rocks
1 cup butter 1 tsp. Slade's cinnamon 1½ cups sugar 3 eggs 1/4 cup water 1 cup dates 3 cups flour 1 cup nuts 1 tsp. soda Mix in order given and drop by teaspoonfuls on greased pan and bake.
— Mrs. Joseph Legg
A plain drop cookie of the type New England cooks called "rocks" — craggy rather than hard. The recipe gives neither temperature, time, nor yield, which is normal for a church cookbook written for people who already knew.
- OvenThe recipe gives no temperature; 350F is a safe modern choice for a drop cookie this rich, though period rock recipes are sometimes baked hotter.
- Time and donenessTeaspoon-sized mounds need about 12 to 15 minutes, until the edges are set and lightly browned but the tops still look soft. They firm as they cool.
- Slade's cinnamonD. & L. Slade Co. of Boston was a spice packer whose name appears in fundraiser cookbooks of the period; such brand mentions may reflect a firm's support for the printing, though that is not documented here. Any ground cinnamon does the job; use a teaspoon.
- The sodaThere is no sour milk, molasses or cream of tartar here, so the soda has little acid to work with beyond the fruit. Dissolve it in the quarter cup of water before it goes in, or you will taste it in bitter pockets.
- Dates and nutsBuy pitted dates and chop them; dates of the period were often sold unpitted. Walnuts are a common choice. Tossing both with a spoonful of the measured flour keeps them from sinking into one clump.
- Butter and saltCream the butter with the sugar rather than simply stirring. The recipe calls for no salt; salted butter may have been assumed, but many recipes of the period simply omit it — if using unsalted, add half a teaspoon.
- Dough consistencyWith a cup of butter and only three cups of flour this is a soft, sticky dough. Chilling it 30 minutes makes it drop cleanly and spread less.
- YieldSix dozen or more small cookies from teaspoonfuls. Space them two inches apart; they spread.
"Rocks" were a fixture of American home baking from the 1880s through the 1920s — a spiced drop cookie stiff with dates, raisins or currants and nuts, the name often said to come from the rough, lumpy shape rather than any claim about texture. They travelled well and kept for weeks in a tin, which made them a standard for lunch pails, church suppers and packages sent to soldiers in both world wars. The Philathea Cook Book comes out of the Philathea movement, adult Bible classes for young women organised within Baptist and other Protestant Sunday schools from the 1890s onwards; the classes commonly raised money by collecting members' recipes and selling the printed result, which is why the contributors are named. Brand names such as Slade's appear in the ingredient lists alongside the local advertisements.