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Ginger Cakes
☑ One quart Orleans molasses, pint lard or butter, pint buttermilk, two table-spoons soda, two table-spoons ginger, flour enough to make a stiff batter; pour the molasses and milk boiling hot into a large tin bread-pan in which have been placed the ginger and soda (the pan must be large enough to prevent running over); stir in all the flour possible, after which stir in the lard or butter; when cold, mold with flour and cut in cakes. Care must be taken to follow these directions implicitly or the cakes will not be good; remember to add the lard or butter last, and buttermilk, not sour milk, must be used; boil the molasses in a skillet, and pouring it into the pan, put the buttermilk in the same skillet, boil and pour it over the molasses, ginger and soda. This excellent recipe was kept as a secret for a long time by a professional baker. - Mrs. R. M. Henderson.
A rolled-and-cut molasses cookie in the old style, built on a very large scale and on a specific order of operations that the writer insists on twice. Read the sequence through before starting, because the batter is assembled hot and cannot be reworked once it stiffens.
- The hinge: fat goes in lastThe boiling molasses and buttermilk are poured over the ginger and soda so the soda reacts and foams immediately, then flour is worked in while the mass is hot. The recipe insists twice that the fat go in last, though it does not say why; adding it earlier would coat the flour.
- ScaleA quart of molasses, a pint of fat and a pint of buttermilk with "flour enough" will take several pounds of flour, perhaps 4 to 6, and yields a very large batch of cakes. Quartering the recipe gives a manageable amount; the proportions hold.
- Orleans molassesNew Orleans cane molasses, of the lighter to medium sort rather than blackstrap. Blackstrap is far more bitter and will overpower the ginger.
- Two tablespoons of sodaNot a misprint at this scale. Molasses and buttermilk together supply plenty of acid, and the soda also darkens and tenderizes the dough. Scale it down proportionally with everything else and sift it with the ginger so it does not streak.
- Buttermilk, not sour milkIn nineteenth-century usage "sour milk" generally meant sweet milk left to clabber, while buttermilk was the liquid left from churning. Why the writer insists on the latter is not stated. Cultured buttermilk from a carton is the usual modern substitute.
- Boiling the buttermilkIt will curdle and separate in the skillet. That is expected here; it is poured straight over the molasses and soda and the flour absorbs everything.
- OvenNo temperature is given because none could be. Bake rolled cakes at 350-375F, about 8 to 12 minutes depending on thickness, until set at the edges and just firm in the center.
- Molding and cuttingThe dough must be fully cold before it is molded with flour and cut, or it will slump and stick. An overnight rest in a cool place makes it much easier to handle, and use a light hand with the bench flour.
Ginger cakes of this type — molasses, soda, a bold hand with ginger, rolled thin and cut — were a staple of Southern and Midwestern baking through the nineteenth century, and gingerbread recipes of the period rest on cane molasses being a cheap sweetener. "Orleans molasses" identified the New Orleans product, as distinct from West Indian sorts. The scale here — a quart of molasses at a time — reads as commercial rather than domestic, which fits the closing note that the formula came from a professional baker who had kept it secret; contributed recipes carrying their donor's name were a common feature of nineteenth-century compiled cookbooks. The insistence on scalding the liquids over the soda is emphatic, and the double warning in Mrs. Henderson's text reads as a hard-won procedure being handed over intact.