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Ginger Snaps
1 cup molasses. 1/2 cup shortening. 3 1/4 cups flour. 1/2 teaspoon soda 1 tablespoon ginger 1½ teaspoons salt Heat molasses to boiling-point and pour over shortening. Add dry ingredients mixed and sifted. Chill thoroughly. Toss one-fourth of mixture on a floured board and roll as thinly as possible; shape with a small round cutter, first dipped in flour. Place near together on a buttered sheet and bake in a moderate oven. Gather up the trimmings and roll with another portion of dough. During rolling, the bowl containing mixture should be kept in a cool place, or it will be necessary to add more flour to dough, which makes cookies hard rather than crisp and short.
A thin, snapping molasses cookie of the classic Fannie Farmer type. Note that the ingredient list as printed here is incomplete — only the soda, ginger and salt survive, so the molasses, shortening and flour quantities have to come from elsewhere before you can bake it.
- Missing quantitiesThe method assumes a molasses-and-fat dough stiffened with flour, but the amounts of all three are absent from this text. Do not guess at them mid-mixing; work from a complete printing of the recipe or a comparable molasses snap formula.
- Moderate ovenBroadly 350-375°F. Rolled this thin the rounds bake fast, so watch them from a few minutes in; they firm as they cool, so pull them when the edges have set and darkened slightly rather than waiting for the centres to look crisp.
- ShorteningHere the word means a solid fat, typically butter, lard, or a mixture, not modern hydrogenated vegetable shortening. Butter gives more flavour; lard gives a shorter, sandier bite. The recipe itself asks only that the result be "crisp and short."
- The hinge is temperatureThe instruction about keeping the bowl cool is the whole recipe. Warm dough demands extra flour, and extra flour turns a short, crisp snap into a hard one. Roll one quarter at a time and return the rest to the refrigerator.
- Boiling molasses over the fatHeating the molasses and pouring it over the shortening melts the fat and disperses it through the mixture, which plausibly helps the dough roll very thin without tearing. The recipe then says only to "chill thoroughly"; it gives no time, and the dough needs to be genuinely cold and firm before rolling.
- Soda and molassesThe soda reacts with the acidity of the molasses, giving some lift and encouraging browning. Sulphured or blackstrap molasses will read harsher than the mild unsulphured kind sold today.
- Baking sheetA buttered sheet was standard; parchment is easier and prevents the sugary edges from welding to the pan. "Near together" is accurate — these spread very little.
- Yield and keepingKeeping -- store airtight once fully cold; they soften quickly in a humid kitchen and can be re-crisped in a low oven. No yield can be given, since the quantities are absent from this printing.
Ginger snaps belong to a long line of hard, keeping spice cookies that predate the American cookbook entirely — the German Pfeffernüsse and the English gingerbread nuts sold at fairs both work on the same principle of molasses or treacle, spice and very little liquid, producing a biscuit that travels and stores. Molasses did the sweetening in nineteenth-century New England because it was cheap, a byproduct of the Caribbean sugar trade that reached Boston by the barrel. The closing note about keeping the bowl cool is characteristic of instructional baking writing at its best: explain the reason, not just the step, so the cook understands why an extra handful of flour ruins the texture.