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Lemon-Flavored Crackers
Mix one and a quarter pounds of butter with about thirteen pounds of flour, make a bay, and stir in two and one-fourth pounds of sugar, one ounce of ammonia, one-fourth ounce of essence of lemon, and three pints of water. Work well together, roll out the paste, cut it into small rounds, put them on a baking-sheet, and bake in a moderate oven. Remove when done, and use when cold. The quantity given is useful for confectioners.
A confectioner's batch scaled for a hotel bakeshop: thirteen pounds of flour will give several hundred crackers. The proportions work perfectly well divided down, but two things need translating first — the "ammonia" and the "essence of lemon."
- The ammonia is baker's ammoniaThis means ammonium carbonate, also sold as hartshorn or hirschhornsalz — a dry, lump or powdered leavener, still available from baking suppliers. It is emphatically not household ammonia solution, which is a cleaning product and not food. If you cannot source it, a hard cracker of this type takes baking powder at roughly 2 teaspoons per pound of flour, though the snap will be softer.
- Why ammonia and not sodaAmmonium carbonate breaks down entirely into gas at oven heat, leaving no salty residue, which is why it gives crackers and thin biscuits their dry, shattering crispness. It only works in thin, low-moisture goods: the gas must escape completely. In anything thick or moist the ammonia stays behind and the finished piece smells of it.
- Scaling downDivide everything by eight for a domestic batch: 1 lb 10 oz (about 6 cups) flour, 2.5 oz butter, 4.5 oz sugar, a scant 1/8 oz baker's ammonia (about 1 teaspoon, crushed fine), a few drops of lemon oil, and 6 fl oz water. Dissolve the ammonia in the water before it goes into the flour.
- "Make a bay"Bakery-trade phrasing for mounding the flour and butter and hollowing out a well in the centre, into which the wet ingredients go. The flour is drawn in from the walls of the well by degrees.
- Essence of lemonA quarter ounce against thirteen pounds of flour indicates lemon oil, not the diluted alcohol-based extract sold today. Lemon oil is roughly three to four times stronger; at the scaled-down quantity, count drops rather than measure spoonfuls, or use about three times as much modern extract.
- OvenA moderate oven is usually taken as somewhere around 350°F. Roll the rounds thin — an eighth of an inch or less — and dock them with a fork. Ten to twelve minutes is usually enough; they should be pale gold, not browned.
- Cooling"Use when cold" is not a formality. Crackers leavened with ammonia can carry a faint ammoniacal smell straight out of the oven that disappears entirely as they cool and dry on a rack. Store airtight once fully cold.
Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maître d'hôtel, compiled his 1896 Cook Book from the hotel's own working kitchens, and the seams show: alongside recipes for a family dinner sit batches like this one, sized for the pastry department and frankly labelled "useful for confectioners." Baker's ammonia was then the standard leavener for hard, dry biscuits and crackers throughout European and American professional baking, long predating chemical baking powders and still preferred for anything meant to snap; it survives today chiefly in Northern European Christmas baking and in springerle and speculaas. Lemon oil, pressed from the peel, was the usual flavouring in the trade because it stood up to oven heat better than juice.