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Ginger Loaf
Rub six ounces of butter or dripping into one pound of flour, put it in a basin and add a quarter of a pound of sugar, half an ounce of ground ginger and half the latter quantity of mixed spice, or a little powdered cloves and nutmeg. When it is well-mixed, add three well-beaten eggs and three-quarters of a pound of treacle Work this vigorously, add one teaspoonful of bicarbondate of soda dissolved in a wineglassful of warm water, and turn it into a well-buttered, shallow, square tin, only half filling it to allow for rising; two ounces of candied peel, finely minced, or half an ounce of caraway seeds may be added if desired. Put the tin in a moderate oven and bake slowly until done.
An English-style treacle gingerbread scaled by weight, which is how it should still be made. A kitchen scale removes every ambiguity in this recipe except the oven.
- Weights in cups1 lb flour is about 3 1/2 cups, 6 oz butter is 1 1/2 sticks, 1/4 lb sugar is 1/2 cup, and 3/4 lb treacle is roughly 1 cup. Weigh if you can; the treacle in particular is easy to misjudge by volume.
- TreacleBritish black treacle is the intended sweetener; unsulphured molasses is the closest supermarket equivalent. Golden syrup will work but gives a pale, much milder loaf with none of the bitter edge that carries the ginger.
- DrippingBeef or bacon dripping was the cheap alternative to butter and gives a savoury edge. It is worth trying if you render your own; otherwise butter.
- Mixed spiceA British blend leaning on cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, coriander and clove. The recipe already offers the substitute: a little powdered clove and nutmeg. The quarter-ounce called for is roughly 2 to 3 teaspoons of ground spice, though the recipe's own 'a little' is looser than that.
- WineglassfulIn this period a wineglass is about 2 fl oz, or 1/4 cup. Dissolve the soda in warm water and add it last, then get the batter into the tin promptly, since the soda begins reacting with the acidic treacle at once.
- Rubbing in, then workingThe butter is rubbed into the flour as for pastry before anything wet is added. The later instruction to work it vigorously applies to the eggs and treacle, which need to be thoroughly amalgamated with the heavy syrup.
- The oven'Moderate' conventionally corresponds to somewhere around 350F, but 'bake slowly' points lower: try 325F for a treacle batter, which scorches on top before the middle sets. Expect roughly 50 to 70 minutes in a shallow 8- or 9-inch square tin, filled only halfway as directed; a skewer should come out clean and the top should spring back.
- Yield and keepingOne square tin, cut into 12 to 16 pieces. Like most treacle gingerbreads it improves after a day or two wrapped tightly, as the crumb takes up moisture from the syrup.
This is an English gingerbread rather than an American one: treacle, mixed spice, candied peel and caraway all point to the northern loaf-and-parkin tradition, in which molasses does most of the sweetening and the fat is rubbed in like pastry. The mention of dripping as an equal option to butter is a survival from thrifty domestic cooking. Caraway in sweet baking, which reads oddly now, was common in British cakes and seed loaves well into the nineteenth century and was still being offered as a variation, as here, when the taste for it had largely passed.