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Ginger Cake (II)
Mrs. H. Baird.
One cup of molasses, half a cup of butter, two-thirds of a cup of water, one teaspoon almost full of ginger, two teaspoons of soda; mix in flour enough to let it drop off the spoon; bake in a tin about two inches deep.
A plain molasses gingerbread of the drop-batter type: no eggs, no milk, no spice but ginger. The recipe assumes you know what the batter should look like, so the flour is left to your judgement.
- Flour quantity"Flour enough to let it drop off the spoon" is left to your judgement; against this much liquid it is likely to run to something like 2 1/2 to 3 cups. Add it in stages and stop as soon as the batter falls from the spoon in a lump rather than pouring; molasses cakes toughen quickly with extra flour and beating.
- The soda is highTwo teaspoons of soda to one cup of molasses is double the usual period rule of thumb of a teaspoon per cup, and more than the molasses is likely to neutralize. Molasses of the day varied and could be considerably more acidic than what is sold now; with modern unsulphured molasses one teaspoon is nearer the mark, and the full two may leave a soapy or faintly metallic edge and a very dark crumb.
- Sift the sodaNineteenth-century saleratus was often lumpy. Sift or whisk the soda thoroughly through the flour, or dissolve it in the water; undispersed pockets give bitter yellow-brown spots in the finished cake.
- Molasses, not blackstrapUse mild or full-flavour unsulphured molasses. Blackstrap is a different product, far more bitter, and will dominate the single teaspoon of ginger.
- Melt the butterHalf a cup is one stick. Warm it with the molasses and water rather than creaming it — there is no egg or sugar here to hold air, and the leavening is entirely chemical.
- Oven and panThe recipe gives no oven heat or time at all; around 350F is a reasonable modern setting. "A tin about two inches deep" fixes only the depth, so any pan of roughly that depth, such as an 8-inch square or 9-inch round, will do; fill it no more than two-thirds. Bake 25 to 35 minutes, until the centre springs back and the edges pull from the sides.
- YieldAbout nine servings if baked in an 8-inch square tin. It is a homely everyday cake, best warm with butter, and it keeps well wrapped.
The Home Cook Book was assembled in 1870s Chicago from recipes contributed by local housewives and sold for charity, and it is generally credited as one of the earliest American charitable community cookbooks — the format that would produce thousands of church and club compilations over the next century. That origin explains the form of this entry: a name at the top, a single unpunctuated string of quantities, and no oven time, because Mrs. Baird was writing for neighbours who had baked gingerbread all their lives. Molasses gingerbread was a cheap everyday cake of the period, sweetened with the byproduct of sugar refining rather than with refined sugar itself, and leavened with saleratus, the alkali that preceded modern baking soda and whose acrid taste when overused is a recurring complaint in cookery writing of the day.