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Plain Cookies
Eight tablespoons of sugar; six tablespoons of melted butter; four tablespoons of milk; two eggs; two teaspoons of baking powder; flour to thicken. Stir the butter into the sugar; beat the eggs lightly, add them to the butter and sugar, stirring well; and then add the milk. Sift the powder with a little flour, stir it in, and add enough more flour to admit of rolling out. Place the dough on a well-floured board, roll it thin, cut the cookies out, dip each in granulated sugar as soon as cut, and bake in a quick oven.
A very plain rolled sugar cookie, given in the old tablespoon idiom with no flour quantity at all. The dough is stiff and short, so the main decisions are how much flour to add and how briefly to bake.
- The measurements in cupsEight tablespoons of sugar is 1/2 cup, six tablespoons of melted butter is 3/4 stick, four tablespoons of milk is 1/4 cup. Two teaspoons of baking powder for that quantity is generous by modern standards but works with a low-liquid dough.
- "Flour to thicken"Expect roughly 2 to 2 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour, added a half cup at a time until the dough just stops sticking to the board. Stop at the point where it can be rolled; every extra spoonful past that makes the cookie drier and harder, since there is very little liquid to carry it.
- A quick ovenPeriod sources vary, but a quick oven is usually reckoned somewhere around 400-425F. The sugar coating will scorch at the top of that range, so bake at 400F and start checking at 6 minutes; they are done when the edges are set and barely coloured.
- Roll it thinThin means about 1/8 inch. This is a crisp cookie, not a soft one, and rolled thicker it bakes into something closer to a biscuit with a raw-tasting centre.
- The sugar dipDipping the cut rounds in granulated sugar immediately, before the surface dries, is what makes the sugar stick without egg wash. Press the cut side lightly into a saucer of sugar and lift straight onto the sheet, sugared face up.
- Chilling helpsWith melted butter and a warm modern kitchen, the dough handles far better after 30 minutes in the refrigerator, and the cookies hold their cut edges.
- YieldDepends on how much flour goes in, but expect three dozen or more cut at 2 inches. Ungreased or parchment-lined sheets are fine; there is enough butter in the dough that they will not stick.
Butterick, the dress-pattern company, also published cook books as part of a broader line of household manuals aimed at the same middle-class woman who bought its paper patterns, and the recipes share the patterns' character: economical, standardised, and assuming a reader with a kitchen but not a cook. "Plain" here seems to be doing more work than an apology: in turn-of-the-century usage it generally marked a recipe as unspiced, unfruited and unfrosted, the everyday version, as against the caraway, currant or seed cookies that took a little more trouble. The instruction to measure in tablespoons rather than cups reflects a period still transitioning to standardised measurement, a shift generally credited to the Boston Cooking School writers of the 1890s and not yet complete when this book appeared.