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Imperial Cookies
2½ cups flour 2 teaspoons baking powder ½ teaspoon lemon extract ½ teaspoon grated nutmeg Mix and bake same as Vanilla Wafers.
This is a variation entry, not a standalone recipe: it lists only the dry ingredients and flavourings, and sends you to the Vanilla Wafers recipe earlier in the same section for the butter, sugar, eggs and method. Read both before starting.
- Find the parent recipe firstThe fat, sugar, egg and mixing order all come from Vanilla Wafers; this entry only substitutes the flavouring and fixes the flour and baking powder. Without that page you have no proportions for the creamed base at all.
- The odd measurements"1½ teaspoon" appears twice where the same list writes "2 teaspoons" for the baking powder — read it as one and a half teaspoons of each. That is a lot of nutmeg by modern taste; half a teaspoon of freshly grated is closer to what most palates now want, with the lemon extract cut to a teaspoon.
- Lemon extract has changedPeriod extracts were commonly lemon oil in alcohol, and their strength varied. Modern commercial lemon extract is potent and can turn soapy in quantity; grated zest from one lemon is a cleaner substitute.
- NutmegGrate it yourself from the whole seed. Pre-ground nutmeg fades over a few months, and in a cookie with no other flavour to hide behind the difference is the whole point.
- OvenNeither this entry nor anything on the page gives a temperature; it depends entirely on the Vanilla Wafers page. Thin rolled wafers are usually baked hot and fast, and 375F for 6 to 8 minutes, until the edges just colour, is a reasonable modern starting point. They go from pale to burnt quickly, so watch the first tray and time the rest by it.
- RollingChill the dough thoroughly before rolling, and roll it thinner than feels right — an eighth of an inch. These are meant to snap, not to be soft, and thick rounds bake into something closer to a plain sugar cookie.
- Baking powderTwo teaspoons to 2½ cups flour is a normal modern ratio; today's double-acting powder works directly, no adjustment needed.
- YieldNot given. Rolled thin and cut to about two inches, this quantity of flour makes roughly four to five dozen wafers.
Short variation entries of this kind — one worked-out master formula followed by a run of entries that change a flavouring and reuse the method — were a common economy in printed cookbooks of the period. The name "Imperial" carries no fixed meaning here; names of this sort were applied loosely to cakes, biscuits and puddings as a mark of richness or refinement, much as "royal" and "queen's" were. Nutmeg and lemon extract were among the aromatics most likely to be on hand for plain baking.