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Eighth Day: Gingerbread
No. 101-FRUIT GINGERBREAD.
Two lbs. flour, three-quarters do. butter, one do. coffee-sugar, one do. raisins, one do. currants, two cups molasses, one-half do. sour cream (or milk, if you cannot get cream), six eggs beaten separately, one heaping teapoonful soda, two tablespoonfuls ginger, one teaspoonful cinnamon and one of cloves. Cream the butter and sugar, warm the molasses a little and add to them; next the beaten yolks, then the the milk and spice, soda, flour and whites, well beaten; last, the fruit, which must be dredged with flour. Beat all together well, the last thing before baking. Bake in two loaves, in a moderate oven. This cake will keep a long time.
No. 102-PLAIN GINGERBREAD.
One cup butter, one do. sugar, one do. molasses, one do. sour milk, two eggs, one teaspoonful soda, one of cinnamon, and one tablespoonful ginger, nearly five cups of flour. Be careful not to get it too hard; it should be about as thick as cup-cake batter.
No. 103-SPONGE GINGERBREAD, WITHOUT EGGS.
Three cups flour, one of molasses, one of sugar, one of milk (sour is best), one heaping tablespoonful butter, two teaspoons saleratus (not soda), two do. ginger, one do. cinnamon. Mix the molasses, sugar, butter and spice together; warm them a little and beat until they are very light in color; then add the milk, the saleratus, and lastly, the flour. Beat hard five minutes and bake in shallow pans, or, if preferred, in small cake-tins.
No. 104-TEA-BISCUIT.
One quart flour, two heaping tablespoonfuls lard, two cups milk (new milk, if you can get it), one teaspoonful soda and two of cream tartar, one saltspoon salt. Sift the cream tartar into the flour, then put in the salt, then the lard, rubbed lightly through the flour with the hands, next the soda, dissolved in a little of the milk, then, as rapidly as possible, the rest of the milk. Knead all together as fast as you can, roll out lightly and cut into cakes at least half an inch thick. Bake in a quick oven. "Now, I believe I have given you all the receipts we shall need," said Mrs. King, "besides a good many others. You know we have a pretty large party to provide for; eight from here, three from Mrs. Lane's, and five from Aunt Carroll's-sixteen hungry people! Here is our bill of fare, that she and I made out together. "Veal loaf, ham-sandwiches, potato salad, buttered biscuit, short-cakes, black cap and huckleberry pies, loaf cake, soft gingerbread, iced tea and coffee for the grown folks." "And what shall we have to drink, Aunt Jane?" "Oh, I think little folks can get on very well with icewater. However, there is a very nice preparation called lemon sugar, that makes a pleasant drink when mixed with water, and we'll take along a bottle of that. I advised Mrs. Lane against lemonade, it is so troublesome and hard to manage." "Are we going to make every thing to-morrow?" "Mrs. Lane will have the veal and pork weighed and chopped up at the butcher's, and the ham boiled to-day for the sandwiches, and as her cook is going to bake bread to-morrow, we shall have some light dough ready for the loaf-cake; every thing else I think we can prepare ourselves." The next morning saw a busy scene at Mrs. Lane's.
Six clean-aproned little girls bustled about the kitchen, like peas on a hot shovel, somebody said; Ellen, the cook, had to be on hand to give out materials and utensils. Mrs. Lane said she could not keep out of the kitchen, it was so delightful to watch them, and Aunt Jane sat by a corner of the table up against the wall, in the character of the Genius of the place, inspiring every one with the power suited to the occasion. "The dough will be ready for your loaf-cake very soon, Edith; you must be ready for it. Take your recipe and put the materials together just as we always do, and Mabel and Amy will stone the raisins." "Shall we weigh them first, Aunt Jane?" "No, raisins musn't be weighed until after the seeds are taken out. Rose, you may set about the veal loaf; the meat is all ready, mixed by the butcher; Ellen will give you some bread to crumb up, and you can see by your recipe what else you will want." "I'm waiting patiently for my turn, Aunt Jane," said Grace. "Yes, I see. You may have either the soft gingerbread or the pies for your share. Which will you take?" "Oh, the pies, if I may make them all alone! May I go into the cellar and do it all by myself?" "Yes, if you want to," said Mrs. King. "But wouldn't you rather have a little oversight and advice?" "No, I just want to take all the responsibility myself. I don't want anybody to see them until they go into the oven." "Very well, just as you like. The berries are all nicely looked over and clean; all you have to do is to be careful not to put in too much sugar, as they are both so sweet." "I wish pie-crust could be measured instead of weighed," sighed Grace. "It's so much trouble." "Oh, I can give you a nice receipt for measuring if you are not afraid to try it for the first time by yourself. Here it is:" No. 105-CUP PIE-CRUST.
One cup butter, one of lard, four cups flour. "Is that all?" said Grace. "What a comical little recipe!" "Of course it is understood that you know how to put it together, and also that you will add about half a teaspoonful of salt on account of the lard, and make it up with ice-water. Don't forget, too, after the under crust is on and the fruit in, to wet the margin of paste that will be touched by the upper crust, so as to make it keep together, and as we don't want very rich paste, make your cups of flour rather large, and those of butter and lard rather small."
Four related recipes plus a pie-crust formula, all written for a cook who already knows the motions. The measurements are a mix of weights, ditto marks and volume, and the leavening language is period-specific.
- Reading the ditto marksIn No. 101, "do." repeats the unit of the line before it, so the list is 2 lb flour, ¾ lb butter, 1 lb coffee-sugar, 1 lb raisins, 1 lb currants. Two pounds of flour is roughly 7 cups; the fruit alone is 2 lb, which is why the batter takes six eggs to carry it.
- Coffee-sugarA coarse-grained sugar sold as a grade suited to sweetening coffee. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct replacement.
- Saleratus is not the same as soda, in this bookNo. 103 insists on "saleratus (not soda)," a distinction that mattered when saleratus commonly meant potassium bicarbonate and "soda" the sodium version. Modern baking soda is sodium bicarbonate; used one for one it will leaven the batter fine, though a scant measure avoids the soapy note the two teaspoons called for can leave.
- Sour milk and sour creamThese mean naturally soured milk or cream, the acid that sets off the soda. Cultured buttermilk is the reliable stand-in; sweet milk with a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice per cup works, though it is thinner than the original cream.
- Oven numbersA moderate oven for the fruit gingerbread loaves is 350F; expect 45 to 60 minutes for two loaves in standard loaf pans, tested with a skewer. The tea-biscuits want a quick oven, 425 to 450F, for about 10 to 12 minutes.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is about a quarter teaspoon. In the biscuit dough that is a light hand with the salt by current taste; a half teaspoon per quart of flour is not out of line.
- Dredging the fruitThe flour coating on the raisins and currants is what keeps them suspended rather than sunk in a wet molasses batter. It is the one step in No. 101 worth not skipping; the beaten whites go in with the flour, just before the fruit.
- Stoning raisinsNineteenth-century raisins came with seeds, hence Aunt Jane's rule about weighing only after the seeds are out. Modern seedless raisins can be weighed as bought.
- The cup pie-crustOne cup butter, one cup lard, four cups flour, half a teaspoon salt, bound with ice water, gives enough pastry for two double-crust pies. The advice to measure the flour generously and the fats scantly is a way of dialling back the richness without a scale; all butter works in place of the mixed fats.
Six Little Cooks, generally credited to Elizabeth S. Kirkland and published in Chicago in the 1870s, teaches by narrative: Aunt Jane's class of girls works through a real menu, and the recipes are embedded in the story of a picnic for sixteen. Gingerbread earns a whole day because it was the workhorse sweet of the American household kitchen, cheap in molasses, forgiving of sour milk that would otherwise be wasted, and keeping for weeks in a tin. The three versions here show the range the term covered: a rich fruited loaf closer to a keeping cake, a plain soft gingerbread baked as batter, and an eggless "sponge" gingerbread leavened entirely by saleratus against the acid of the molasses and sour milk. The surrounding chatter is its own record of the period's kitchen economy, with the butcher chopping the veal and pork, the ham boiled the day before, bread dough borrowed from the cook's baking to start the loaf-cake, and lemonade rejected as too troublesome in favour of bottled lemon sugar.