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Molasses Cake
One cup each of butter, sugar, sour milk and molasses, five cups flour, two eggs, one table-spoon soda, one of ginger. - Mrs. A. J. Palmes.
For creams and custards eggs should never be beaten in tin, b always in stone or earthen ware, as there is some chemical influence about tin which prevents their attaining that creamy lightness so desirable. Beat quickly and sharply right through the eggs, beating whites and yolks separately. When gelatine is used for creams, it is better to soak it for an hour in a little cold water or milk, set in a warm place; (it is convenient to place in a bowl set in the top of the boiling tea-kettle to dissolve;) when dissolved, pour into the hot custard just after removing from the stove. For custards the common rule is four eggs, one cup sugar, and one small half tea-spoon salt to each quart of milk. Bake in a baking-dish until firm in the center, taking care that the heat is moderate or the custard will turn in part to whey. The delicacy of the custard depends on its being baked slowly. It is much nicer to strain the yolks, after they are beaten, through a small wire strainer kept for this purpose by every good housekeeper. For boiled custards or floats the yolks alone may be used, or for economy's sake the entire eggs. Always place the milk to boil in a custard-kettle (made of iron with another iron kettle inside, the latter lined with tin), or, in a pan or pail set within a kettle of boiling water; when the milk reaches the boiling point, which is shown by a slight foam rising on top, add the sugar, which cools it so that the eggs will not curdle when added. Or, another convenient way is to mix the beaten and strained yolks with the sugar in a bowl, then add gradually several spoons of the boiling milk, until the eggs and sugar are (102) heated through, when they may be slowly stirred into the boiling milk. Let remain a few moments, stirring constantly until it thickens a little, but not long enough to curdle, then either set the pail immediately in cold water or turn out into a cold dish, as it curdles if allowed to remain in a hot basin; add flavoring extracts after removing from the stove. Peach leaves or vanilla beans give a fine flavor, but must be boiled in the milk and then taken out before the other ingredients are added. Boiled custards are very difficult to make, and must have the closest attention until they are finished. The custards may be prepared as above, mixing the milk, eggs and sugar, and then placing in pan to steam instead of boiling.
In making charlotte-russe it is not necessary to add gelatine. The filling may be made of well-whipped cream, flavored and sweetened, using a "whip-churn" or the "Dover Egg-beater" to do the whipping. Fill the mold (which should be first wet with cold water for charlotte-russe and blanc mange, and all creams) and set on ice to harden. If preferred, it may be made up in several small molds, one for each person. In the use of spices it is well to remember that allspice and cloves are used with meats, and nutmegs and cinnamon in combination with sugar. The white part of lemon rind is exceedingly bitter, and the outer peel only should be used for grating. A better way is to rub the rind off with hard lumps of sugar. The sugar thus saturated with the oil of the lemon is called "zest," and is used, pounded fine, for creams, etc.
The cake itself is four lines; everything after Mrs. Palmes's name is the book's general chapter on custards and creams, which has nothing to do with the batter. Treat the recipe as a large, old-fashioned molasses loaf that assumes the cook already knows how to mix and bake one.
- No oven temperature or time is givenA cake of this size wants a moderate oven, 350F. In two 9-inch round pans expect 30-35 minutes; in a 9x13 pan or a large loaf, 45-55 minutes, tested with a skewer in the center.
- Sour milk means clabbered milk, not spoiled milkIt is the acid that reacts with the soda. Buttermilk is the direct modern substitute; failing that, a cup of whole milk with a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar stirred in and left ten minutes.
- A tablespoon of soda sounds enormous but is close to rightThere are two acids here, the sour milk and the molasses, and five cups of flour to lift. Measure it level and sift it with the flour, or the cake will bake with brown bitter streaks.
- MolassesUse unsulphured light or dark molasses, not blackstrap, which is far more bitter than the period product and will dominate the ginger.
- "One of ginger"The parallel construction means one tablespoon of ground ginger, matching the tablespoon of soda. That is assertive by modern standards; a cook who wants a milder cake can drop to two teaspoons.
- Mixing is left unsaidCream the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs, then add the molasses and sour milk alternately with the sifted flour, soda and ginger. Stop as soon as the flour disappears.
- YieldFive cups of flour makes a substantial cake, roughly 16 to 20 servings. It keeps well wrapped for several days and improves on the second day, as molasses cakes generally do.
- The custard notes are period advice, and one line is obsoletePeach leaves, recommended for flavoring boiled milk, contain cyanogenic compounds and are no longer used in cooking; vanilla does the same work. The claim that tin bowls prevent eggs from whipping is folklore, though copper and glass do beat whites better than plastic, which holds fat.
Molasses gingerbread was the everyday cake of nineteenth-century America, cheaper than a butter-and-white-sugar cake because molasses was the common sweetener long after refined sugar became available, and because sour milk and soda cost nothing to a household that kept a cow. The Dixie Cook-Book (1883) belongs to the family of compiled community cookbooks that grew out of Estelle Woods Wilcox's Buckeye Cookery, and its recipes carry contributors' names the way a church supper book does; Mrs. A. J. Palmes is one of dozens of women credited for a few lines apiece. The long custard essay printed underneath is typical of the format: a four-line cake sits above a small treatise on curdling, gelatine and the Dover egg-beater.