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Ye Ancient Gingerbread
One pint of sorghum molasses, one cup (genuine ) sour buttermilk, one cup home-made leaf lard, one level tablespoon soda, three-quarters tablespoon ginger, one teaspoon each allspice, cinnamon, one-quarter teaspoon salt, two eggs and flour to make a soft dough.
Mix lard and molasses, add beaten eggs, then add spice, salt and soda sifted with about one cup flour and alternate with the milk, beating all well together. Finally add flour enough to make a soft dough. Roll rather thick, cut in fantastic shapes, "little gingerbread men," to please the little folks, or any desired shape. Have a moderate heat only, as bread should not be baked too quickly.
A rolled molasses cookie dough scaled for a farm household: the pint of sorghum alone is two cups, and the finished dough will take somewhere near two pounds of flour. Halve everything unless you want five or six dozen cookies.
- A pint of sorghumThat is two cups of syrup, which sets the scale of the whole recipe. Sorghum is thinner and tangier than cane molasses; true sorghum syrup is still sold, but unsulphured cane molasses works and gives a darker, slightly more bitter cookie.
- "Genuine" sour buttermilkThe author means the acidic liquid left from churning, not the thick cultured buttermilk on supermarket shelves. Cultured buttermilk is the closest substitute and supplies the acid the soda needs; plain milk will leave the dough flat and soapy-tasting.
- Leaf lardThe soft fat from around the pig's kidneys, rendered at home and mild-flavoured. Rendered leaf lard is sold by butchers and online; shortening or unsalted butter both work, though butter will spread more and brown faster.
- A level tablespoon of sodaThree teaspoons of baking soda is a great deal, but it is roughly in proportion to two cups of sorghum plus a cup of sour milk. Sift it thoroughly with the first cup of flour, as recommended, or you will get bitter yellow streaks.
- "Flour enough"Expect around seven to eight cups of all-purpose flour for the full batch. Stop while the dough is still soft and tacky and chill it an hour before rolling; adding flour until it handles easily at room temperature will give hard, dry cookies.
- Moderate heatThe recipe gives no temperature; a 'moderate' oven is conventionally reckoned somewhere around 350F. The warning against baking too quickly is the hinge of the recipe: sorghum and soda both brown fast, and a hot oven will scorch the bottoms before the thick centres set. Roll about a quarter-inch thick and start checking at 10 to 12 minutes.
- YieldThe full quantity should make something like five to six dozen medium gingerbread men. The dough keeps well wrapped in the refrigerator for several days.
Sorghum syrup, pressed from cane sorghum and boiled down in open pans, was an everyday sweetener across much of the American South and lower Midwest in the decades after its introduction in the 1850s, cheaper and more locally available than cane molasses or refined sugar. A molasses gingerbread stiff enough to roll and cut is one of the oldest forms of the sweet in English-language cookery, and the shaped gingerbread man is generally traced to earlier European fairground and Christmas baking rather than to any single kitchen. The "Ye Ancient" of the title is the affectionate antiquarian tone that Victorian and Edwardian cookbooks liked to put on old-fashioned recipes; the instruction to please the little folks tells you the compiler expected this to be a family baking day rather than company fare. The parenthetical insistence on genuine sour buttermilk and home-made leaf lard points the same way: both were things a housekeeper might otherwise be tempted to buy in inferior form.