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Belgian Gingerbread
1/2 pound cornflour 1/4 pound butter 1/4 pound white sugar 1 or 2 eggs 1/2 ounce ginger powder.
Work all the ingredients together on a marble slab, to get the paste all of the same consistency. Make it into balls as big as walnuts, flattening them slightly before putting them into the oven. This sort of gingerbread keeps very well.
A short, buttery ginger biscuit rather than a loaf: there is no leavening, no honey and no liquid, so the dough is worked like shortbread and the result is crisp. The original gives no oven heat and no time, so both need supplying.
- "Cornflour" is ambiguous hereIn the British English of this book cornflour means cornstarch, and half a pound of it with butter and sugar gives a very short, sandy, almost melting biscuit. A Belgian original may well have meant maize flour (cornmeal), which behaves quite differently and bakes gritty. If you want a predictable result, cornstarch is the reading that matches the phrasing and the era.
- Weights in cups1/2 lb cornstarch is about 1 3/4 to 2 cups; 1/4 lb butter is 1 stick, that is 1/2 cup or 8 tablespoons; 1/4 lb sugar is a generous 1/2 cup.
- The ginger is very assertiveHalf an ounce of ground ginger is roughly 2 1/2 tablespoons, and against only a quarter pound of sugar it is fierce by modern taste. Starting at 1 to 2 tablespoons and tasting the raw paste is reasonable; the spice does not mellow much in so short a bake.
- One egg or twoWith cornstarch and no wheat gluten, the egg is the only binder. Begin with one; add the second only if the paste will not come together into a smooth ball on the slab.
- The marble slabMarble is specified because it stays cool and keeps the butter from smearing. A cold countertop works; so does mixing in a bowl and then kneading briefly. Do not warm the dough or the balls will spread flat.
- OvenBake at 325-350F. Because there is no flour to set, these colour at the edges rather than browning all over: 12-15 minutes for walnut-sized balls, and they firm up considerably as they cool.
- Yield and keepingExpect 24 to 30 biscuits. The claim that they keep well is sound, since there is almost no moisture in them; an airtight tin holds them a couple of weeks.
The Belgian Cook Book was put together by Mrs. Brian Luck in 1915 from recipes given by Belgian refugees who had come to Britain after the German invasion, and sold in aid of relief work. That origin may explain the terseness of pages like this one: quantities arrive without oven heats or times. Belgium has a deep spiced-biscuit tradition, from the honey-and-rye peperkoek associated with Antwerp and with Belgium generally to the brown-sugar speculoos baked for St. Nicholas, and "gingerbread" in an English translation of this period covers all of it. This particular version, with butter, sugar and no honey or leavening, belongs to the biscuit end of that family rather than the keeping-loaf end, and the note that it keeps well points to the same purpose spiced biscuits have always served in the Low Countries: something baked in quantity and kept in a tin against visitors and feast days.