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Ginger Cake with Spice
Three eggs, one cup butter, two of flour, one of sugar, scant half cup molasses, with half a tea-spoon soda stirred in it until it foams, half a wine-glass of brandy, half a table-spoon of ginger, a half of cinnamon, and a half of cloves and allspice mixed. Mix ingredients, leaving whites of eggs until last; next to last, molasses. Fruit may be added.
A rich, butter-heavy ginger cake closer to a spiced pound cake than to a chewy gingerbread. The original gives no pan, no oven heat and no time, so those are the gaps to fill.
- Read the butter-to-flour ratio correctlyOne cup of butter to only two cups of flour is deliberate, not a misprint: this is a pound-cake style batter with molasses and spice, so expect a dense, moist, close crumb rather than a light one. Weigh the flour at about 250 g total if you want consistency.
- Wine-glassA wine-glass in nineteenth-century American cookbooks is reckoned at roughly 2 fluid ounces, so half a wine-glass of brandy is about 2 tablespoons.
- The soda and molasses stepStirring the soda into the molasses until it foams is the hinge of the recipe. The acid in old-style molasses reacts immediately, so mix it in at the point the recipe says and get the batter into the pan promptly; standing about kills the lift. Use unsulphured molasses, not blackstrap, which is more bitter and less sweet than what the book assumed.
- Whites of eggs"Leaving whites of eggs until last" implies the eggs are separated and the whites added at the end, presumably beaten first, though the recipe does not say so. With only half a teaspoon of soda in the batter, the whites may be contributing much of the lift.
- OvenNone is given. Bake at 325-350F. The high butter and sugar content browns fast, so the lower end is safer.
- Pan and timeThe batter suits a 9x5-inch loaf pan or an 8-inch square, buttered and floured. Reckon 45-55 minutes in a loaf, less in the square; test with a skewer at the centre.
- SpicesHalf a tablespoon of ginger is about 1½ teaspoons, and the same again of cinnamon; the cloves and allspice together make another 1½ teaspoons. Ground spice loses potency in the jar, so a tired tin of ginger will give a flat cake.
- "Fruit may be added"This means dried fruit, chiefly raisins and currants, and perhaps candied peel. About a cup is right for this quantity of batter; toss it in a spoonful of the measured flour so it does not sink.
- YieldOne loaf, twelve to sixteen slices. It keeps well wrapped for several days and improves on the second day as the spices settle.
Molasses and ginger were central to American home baking in the last quarter of the nineteenth century: molasses was cheap, shelf-stable and available where refined sugar was dear. This particular formula is a rich one: butter, brandy and four spices are not everyday-cake ingredients — and it shows the drift by which "gingerbread" in America came to cover everything from a hard rolled biscuit to a soft, sweet cake baked in a tin. The brandy may well do double duty as flavour and as a keeping agent, a habit often traced to English fruit and plum cakes, and the closing line "fruit may be added" is what turns it into a modest holiday cake without the cost of a full fruitcake.