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Fourth Day: Vernon
Vernon. "You must have been snowballing, or doing something of that kind." "Give you three guesses to find out, Papa," said Grace, "and if you don't guess rightly you can't have any breakfast." "Jumping two hundred and fifty times from the roof of the coal-shed down to the ground," said her father. "No, not that. Oh, how far off you are! You're not even warm." "Running races with the steam-cars, to see which could travel a mile in the shortest time." "Wrong again! Why papa, you're perfectly freezing." "Well, as my breakfast is to depend on it," said her father, "I think it won't be safe for me to risk another guess. I'll turn over my third one to mamma."
It is to be feared that mamma may have received a hint from a glance of Aunt Jane's eyes, for she suggested quite promptly:
B "Cooking the breakfast." "Right at last! And what do you think of it, now you know who did it?" "I think it looks superior to any thing they have at Delmonico's, but you don't mean to say you made this coffee?" "Yes we did every drop of it! Ask Aunt Jane if we didn't." "I'll tell you what it is," said Mr. Vernon, "I believe there's some hocus-pocus about this matter. Your Aunt Jane gets behind you some how or other, and takes hold of your hands, just as we do of baby's when we make her write a letter; and you get the idea that you have done the whole thing yourselves." "No, no, no! It's all honest Indian. She doesn't come near us. She just sits at one end of the table and tells us what to do, and we do it. She never touches a thing." "I think Aunt Jane deserves a gold medal," said Mr.
Vernon. "I wish we could do something by ourselves this afternoon, without troubling her," said Grace. "Don't you think we are enough advanced now, mamma?" "I suppose you might make something very simple.
How would ginger-snaps do, for instance?" "We "Oh, that would be capital!" exclaimed Grace. haven't had any ginger-snaps in an age. Are they hard to make, Aunty?" "Not at all hard to mix up, but they require a good deal of patience to roll and cut out. However, I don't suppose you would mind that." "Oh, the longer it took the better I should like it! I want to make a good large panful. Please give me the receipt." And Grace drew out her note-book and pencil, which, with a variety of other stores, she always kept at hand in her pocket. "Do let your aunt finish her breakfast in peace!" said Mr. Vernon. "I won't have her plagued all the time.
By and by, Grace, you can attack her again, but now let us think of something else."
Aunt Jane did not wait to be attacked. After breakfast she gave the girls, of her own accord, the recipes which follow.
No. 32-GINGER SNAPS.
One cup butter or lard; if only lard is used add a little salt. One and a half cups molasses, one cup sugar, a quarter of a cup sour milk, two teaspoonfuls soda, two do. ginger, flour enough to roll easily.
No. 33-GERMAN PUFFS.
Take six eggs, leaving out three whites, one pint milk, five tablespoonfuls flour, one of softened butter. Bake in gem pans. Whip the whites of the eggs; afterward stir in the juice of six oranges and half a pound powdered sugar. When the puffs are done, pour the frosting all over them.
No. 34-DOVER CAKE.
One pound sugar, one do. flour, one-half do. butter, six eggs, half cup milk, half teaspoonful soda.
No. 35-HENRY CLAY CAKE.
One pound flour, one do. sugar, one ounce butter, onehalf pint cream, one teaspoon soda, juice and rind of one lemon, one-third of a grated nutmeg. For some tastes the nutmeg is better omitted.
No. 36-LEMON CAKE.
One pound flour, one do. sugar, one-half do. butter, one small teacup milk, small teaspoonful soda, four eggs, mix as usual; the last thing before putting in the oven, stir in the juice of a large fresh lemon.
No. 37-TUDOR CAKE.
Two cups sugar, one-half cup butter, one cup milk, three cups flour, three eggs, one teaspoon soda, two cream tartar.
Six recipes are buried in the breakfast-table dialogue, and none of them gives an oven temperature, a pan size or a time. Here is what a modern cook needs to fill in.
- "do." means dittoIn these lists "one do." repeats the unit just given: in the Dover Cake, "One pound sugar, one do. flour, one-half do. butter" is 1 lb sugar, 1 lb flour, 8 oz butter. The same shorthand runs through the Henry Clay and Lemon cakes.
- Weights into cupsA pound of granulated sugar is about 2¼ cups; a pound of flour is roughly 4 cups sifted. Nineteenth-century flour was generally softer than modern all-purpose, which will behave a little stronger, so measure by weight if you can. Half a pound of butter is two sticks.
- Oven temperatures, since none are givenNo oven term appears in these receipts. As a modern starting point, bake the butter cakes (Dover, Lemon, Tudor) at 350F, in two 8-inch layers or a tube pan, 30-45 minutes depending on depth; ginger snaps at 350F for 8-10 minutes, finishing crisping as they cool.
- Gem pans and the German PuffsGem pans are heavy cast-iron muffin pans. The batter — six eggs, a pint of milk, five tablespoons of flour — is very thin, with much less flour than a popover or Yorkshire batter, so it will set more custardy than a true popover. If you want it to rise, a hot pan and a hot oven (in the region of 425-450F) is the usual modern treatment; avoid opening the door while they are rising.
- Sour milk and sodaThe quarter-cup of sour milk gives the two teaspoons of soda an acid to react with; the cup and a half of molasses is acidic too and does much of that work. Use cultured buttermilk rather than milk gone off in a modern refrigerator. The Henry Clay Cake's 'half pint cream' may have been sour cream, but the recipe does not say so, and the lemon juice is also present to react with the soda.
- "Flour enough to roll easily"“Flour enough to roll easily” -- Add flour until the dough is firm but not dry; with this much molasses, fat and sugar it will take a great deal. Chill it before rolling; roll it very thin, which is the patience Aunt Jane warns about, and the thinner it goes the snappier the result.
- Soda and cream of tartar in the Tudor CakeOne teaspoon soda with two of cream of tartar is homemade baking powder, roughly equivalent to about 3 teaspoons of modern double-acting powder. Mixed dry it acts the moment liquid hits it, so get the batter into the oven promptly.
- The German Puff frosting is raw egg whiteThree whipped whites, orange juice and half a pound of powdered sugar poured over the hot puffs will not cook through. Uncooked egg white carries a salmonella risk that the 1870s did not reckon with; if you want this topping, take a cooked meringue or pasteurized-white icing from a current source.
- YieldGrace's "good large panful" of ginger snaps is a substantial batch — a cup of fat and a cup and a half of molasses will give five or six dozen thin snaps. The German Puff batter fills about a dozen gem cups; each pound-cake formula serves 10-12.
Six Little Cooks (1877), generally attributed to Elizabeth Stansbury Kirkland and published in Chicago, teaches cookery through a story: Aunt Jane dictates, the children write in pocket note-books, and the reader collects the numbered receipts as they go. The cakes on this page carry the sort of proper names — Dover, Tudor, Henry Clay — that mid-century American cake titles often took; Henry Clay was the Kentucky senator, who had died in 1852, though what the other two names refer to is not clear from the book. Cakes raised with soda and cream of tartar rather than beaten eggs alone were already well established by the 1870s, chemical leavening having become cheap and widely sold over the preceding decades. Mr. Vernon's compliment that the breakfast "looks superior to any thing they have at Delmonico's" invokes Delmonico's as the byword for restaurant cooking in America; the text does not say where the Vernons live.