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Cake Mixtures and Puddings: Cookies
Note. This will make enough icing for a two layer cake. Oatflake Cookies. t. soda C. shortening 1 t. cinnamon 1 C. sugar 34 1/2 eggs 14 C. flour 1/4 t. salt 1. Wash and chop raisins. 2. Grease baking sheet. 1 C. oatflake (rolled oats) C. sour milk 1 C. chopped raisins 3. Sift flour, soda, salt and cinnamon together. 4. Cream shortening and add sugar and beaten egg alternately. 5. Mix one-third of flour with raisins. 6. Add rest of flour and part of milk to sugar and eggs. 7. Add oatflake and raisins and enough milk to make a stiff drop batter. 8. Drop by teaspoonfuls on greased baking sheet, keeping cookies one inch apart. 9. Bake in hot oven about fifteen minutes. 10. Remove from baking sheet as soon as baked.
Eggless Cookies. 3 T. shortening 4 t. baking powder C. sugar t. salt C. (?) milk 1 t. cinnamon 2 C. flour 1/4 t. allspice 1. Grease and flour baking sheet. 2. Mix and sift flour, baking powder, salt and spice. 3. Cream shortening and add sugar. Moisten with part of the milk while creaming. 4. Add flour and milk alternately until all the flour has been added and enough milk to make a soft dough. 5.
Turn onto a floured board and roll one-fourth inch thick. 6. Cut with floured cookie cutter and bake in hot oven about fifteen minutes.
Note. One t. vanilla may be used instead of the spice. The biscuit method of mixing may be used.
Peanut Cookies. 4 T. butter C. sugar 2 eggs 2 C. flour 3 t. baking powder 2 t. salt 1/4 C. milk 1 t. lemon juice 1 C. chopped peanuts 1. Mix by cake method of mixing. Mixture should be a stiff drop batter. 2. Drop by teaspoonfuls on greased baking sheet, keeping cookies one inch apart. 3. Place one-half of a peanut on top of each and bake in a moderate oven about fifteen minutes.
Note. Three cups of peanuts in the shell will make about one cupful of shelled peanuts.
Scottish Macaroons. 2 eggs 1/2 C. sugar 1 C. rolled oats 1/3 C. cream of wheat or fine bread crumbs t. salt 1 t. baking powder T. butter (melted) 1/3 C. shredded cocoanut 1. Beat eggs and add sugar gradually. 2. Add remaining ingredients and drop mixture by teaspoonfuls one inch apart on greased baking sheet. 3. Bake in moderate oven until brown. 4. Remove from baking sheet as soon as they come from the oven.
Four drop-and-rolled cookie formulas from a school cookery text, written in the shorthand of a classroom where the teacher supplied the missing detail out loud. Several quantities are incomplete as printed, so treat the proportions below as guidance rather than gospel.
- Oven temperaturesA "hot oven" in this period was generally reckoned at roughly 400-450F, and "moderate" at about 350-375F; for cookies of this size the lower end of the hot range is the practical reading, and fifteen minutes is about the outside limit at that heat.
- OatflakeSimply rolled oats, as the text itself glosses. Old-fashioned rolled oats give the texture intended; quick oats will work but produce a softer, more uniform cookie.
- Sour milk and sodaThe oatflake cookies rely on sour milk to activate the soda. Buttermilk is the direct modern equivalent; failing that, a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar stirred into a cup of whole milk and left ten minutes. Sweet milk with soda alone will taste soapy.
- ShorteningIn a school kitchen of this period this meant lard, a lard-and-butter mix, or one of the newer hydrogenated vegetable fats. Butter is the easiest substitute and improves the flavour; the dough will spread slightly more.
- Salt in the peanut cookiesThe printed "2 t. salt" is far out of proportion for two cups of flour, especially alongside a cup of chopped peanuts. A quarter teaspoon is the sensible amount if the peanuts are salted, half a teaspoon if they are not.
- The two mixing methods"Cake method" means creaming fat and sugar, adding egg, then flour and liquid alternately. "Biscuit method" means cutting the fat into the dry ingredients and adding liquid all at once, which gives the eggless cookies a shorter, more shortbread-like crumb.
- Stiff drop batterThe hinge for the two recipes that call for it. The dough should hold its shape on the spoon and fall reluctantly; if it slumps, the cookies run together and bake thin and crisp rather than soft. Add the milk in small amounts at the end, not all at once.
- Lifting them offTwo of the recipes insist on removing the cookies from the sheet immediately, and it matters. Sugar-heavy drop cookies weld themselves to a bare sheet as they cool. Parchment removes the problem entirely.
- YieldWith several quantities missing from the printed text any figure is an estimate; teaspoon-dropped cookies of this sort would run to something like three dozen, fewer and larger with a modern tablespoon scoop and a few minutes more in the oven.
These pages come from a students' manual, a genre of textbook that flourished in American and Canadian schools from the 1890s through the interwar years, when domestic science entered the public curriculum as a formal subject with examinations. The style tells you as much: numbered steps, ingredients listed as abbreviations, a single method named once ("mix by cake method") and expected to be recalled from an earlier lesson. The recipes themselves reflect thrift as a teaching value. Oats and cream of wheat stretch flour and eggs; the eggless cookie is an economy formula. "Scottish Macaroons" appears to be a loose borrowing of the name rather than a Scottish recipe: an oat-based drop cookie standing in for the almond macaroon, with coconut for richness. The note that three cups of peanuts in the shell yield one cup shelled is a reminder that pupils were expected to buy unshelled and do the work themselves.