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White Gingerbread
Ettie.
Rub half a pound of butter into one pound of flour, add half a pound of loaf sugar, which should be finely Rub half a pound of butter into one pound of flour, pounded and sifted, and the rind of one lemon very finely minced, one ounce of ground ginger and a nutmeg grated. Mix these well together; make one gill of milk just warm, stir in half a teaspoonful of carbonate of soda,. and work the whole into a smooth paste; roll it out into cakes, and bake in a moderate oven from fifteen to twenty minutes.
Lezgin Itay. Gemmene. Entend
A stiff, pale ginger biscuit dough rather than a soft cake — closer to shortbread in handling, with the sugar rubbed in dry and only a splash of warmed milk to bring it together.
- The hinge: keep it a paste, not a batterOne gill of milk to a pound of flour is barely enough to bind. Work it just until the crumbs cohere; adding more liquid to make it comfortable gives a spreading cookie instead of the crisp, pale cake intended.
- Weights in cupsOne pound of flour is roughly 3 1/2 cups; half a pound of butter is two sticks; half a pound of sugar is about 1 1/8 cups granulated.
- A gillHalf a cup (4 fl oz). If working from a British edition of the period, the imperial gill is 5 fl oz — start with the half cup and add the rest only if the dough will not come together.
- Loaf sugarSugar sold in cones and broken off as needed, then pounded and sifted. Ordinary granulated or superfine sugar replaces it directly; no pounding required.
- Carbonate of sodaPlain baking soda. There is no acid in the mix beyond the milk, so the lift is slight and mainly textural — dissolving it in the warm milk, as directed, matters so it disperses evenly and leaves no soapy specks.
- Moderate oven350F. Fifteen to twenty minutes suits cakes rolled about 1/4 inch thick; they should stay blonde, with only the edges taking colour. That pallor is the point of "white" gingerbread.
- Ginger and nutmegOne ounce of ground ginger is roughly four to five tablespoons -- assertive by modern habit, but correct here. Grate the nutmeg fresh; pre-ground has lost most of what it is doing in this dough.
- Lemon rindZest only, no white pith, minced very fine or grated on a rasp so it disappears into the dry mixture.
- YieldSeveral dozen two-inch cakes, depending how thin they are rolled. They keep well in a tin for a week and firm up further as they sit.
White gingerbread is the pale cousin of the dark treacle kind: no molasses, no brown sugar, so the spice carries the flavour and the crumb stays the colour of shortbread. Recipes of this shape appear in nineteenth-century English and American household books. Refined loaf sugar was bought as a hard cone, broken with sugar nippers, pounded in a mortar and sifted before it could be creamed or rubbed into anything.