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Ginger Cake
Put into a basin a breakfast cupful each of sugar, butter and molasses, with three eggs, a tablespoonful of ground ginger, a saltspoonful of bicarbonate of soda dissolved in one tablespoonful of buttermilk and mix in two and a half breakfast cupfuls of flour. Add a little allspice if desired. Pour the mixture into a mould, and bake in a moderate oven.
A plain molasses gingerbread written in the shorthand a professional kitchen could take for granted. Two things need attention before you start: the vague cup and the very small quantity of leavening.
- Breakfast cupfulNot a standardized measure; breakfast cups were generally larger than teacups and are variously reckoned at roughly 8 to 10 oz. The ratio matters more than the absolute figure: equal volumes of sugar, butter and molasses to two and a half of flour. Using an 8 oz cup throughout will give a workable batter, about 1 cup each of sugar, butter and molasses to 2 1/2 cups flour.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. That is markedly less soda than a modern cake with a full cup of molasses would carry, and the crumb will be dense and close rather than airy. Anyone wanting a lighter cake should look to a current gingerbread formula rather than guessing upward here.
- The tablespoon of buttermilkIt is a dissolving medium, not an ingredient in its own right. The soda does its real work against the acidity of the molasses, so the cake still rises even though a single tablespoon of buttermilk contributes nothing to the batter's moisture.
- Moderate ovenConventionally taken as about 350F, though the book itself gives no temperatures. In a loaf or tube pan expect roughly 45 to 55 minutes; a shallow sheet will be done nearer 30. Molasses browns early and deceptively, so judge by a skewer in the centre rather than by colour.
- MouldAny deep tin: a 9-inch square, a 2 lb loaf pan, or a plain ring mould. Butter and flour it well, since the sugar and molasses make this batter a determined sticker.
- Butter and mixingThe instruction to "put into a basin" and mix assumes soft butter. Cream the butter and sugar first, then beat in molasses and eggs, then fold the flour and spice in last so the gluten stays slack.
- Ginger and allspiceA tablespoon of ground ginger is a strong, frankly hot dose by modern habit and depends on the spice being fresh. The optional allspice suits a teaspoon or less; ground cloves or cinnamon fit the same slot.
- YieldAbout 12 to 16 squares from a 9-inch pan. Ginger cake improves after a day wrapped, when the molasses moisture redistributes and the spice settles.
Ginger cake of this type belongs to the long Anglo-American gingerbread tradition that molasses made possible: cheap, dark, acidic syrup from the Caribbean trade paired with alkaline soda, which over the course of the nineteenth century is generally said to have displaced yeast and pearlash in home baking. Its presence in Oscar Tschirky's collection is a reminder that The Cook Book by "Oscar" of the Waldorf (1896) was not purely a record of hotel cookery; Oscar gathered thousands of receipts, plain domestic ones among them, and a keeping cake made in a mould is among them. The measurement in "breakfast cupfuls" rather than ounces places the recipe firmly in the era before standardized cups, when a cook was expected to know her own crockery.