Gingerbread
1/2 cupful sugar 1 egg ½ cupful molasses 1/2 cupful milk 1 1/3 cupfuls flour 1/4 cupful Crisco 1 teaspoonful salt 2 teaspoonfuls powdered ginger 1 teaspoonful powdered cinnamon ½ teaspoonful powdered cloves ½ teaspoonful baking soda or 2 teaspoonfuls baking powder 1 teaspoonful Crisco
A Crisco-era formula printed as a bare ingredient list, with no method and at least one number mangled in the original setting. Read the quantities carefully before you start.
- The flour is wrong as printed"1/3 cupfuls flour" cannot carry this much molasses plus milk and egg, and the plural "cupfuls" suggests a leading digit was lost in the setting. Something in the region of two to two and a half cupfuls is the likely intention, but the true figure cannot be recovered from this page; treat the printed number as a typesetting loss rather than a measurement.
- The cloves are probably a half1½ teaspoonfuls of ground cloves against 2 of ginger would swamp the cake. The same fraction glyph is used for the baking soda, where 1½ teaspoonfuls is plausible with this much molasses, so judge each line on its own; 1/2 teaspoonful of cloves is the sane reading.
- The last teaspoonful of CriscoThe trailing "1 teaspoonful Crisco" is not part of the batter. It is for greasing the pan, a recurring pattern in this book, which was published by the manufacturer to promote the product.
- Soda or baking powderThe choice is not arbitrary. Soda reacts with the acid in the molasses and gives the darker, softer crumb; baking powder gives a paler, more cake-like result. Do not use both.
- MolassesUse unsulphured cane molasses, not blackstrap and not treacle. Blackstrap is markedly more bitter.
- Method, since none is givenCream the Crisco with the sugar, beat in the egg, then the molasses, then the milk, and fold in the dry ingredients sifted together last. Molasses batters are thin and pourable; that is correct.
- OvenNone is given in the original. Bake at 350F for 30 to 40 minutes in a greased 8-inch square pan. Test with a skewer at the centre; molasses cakes look set at the edges long before the middle is done.
- YieldNine generous squares. It keeps better than most cakes, improving for a day or two under a cloth.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble to teach American cooks what to do with a wholly new product: hydrogenated cottonseed oil, sold as a shelf-stable, odourless substitute for lard and butter. Gingerbread was a shrewd recipe to include, being already in every household repertoire and forgiving of a fat swap, since the molasses and spice carry the flavour that butter would otherwise supply. Molasses-and-ginger cakes had been baked in English and American kitchens for centuries, the sweetener being cheaper than sugar and, in the colonial period, tied to the West Indies trade. What is new here is not the cake but the shortening, and the book's habit of naming its sponsor twice in a single ingredient list, once for the batter and once for the pan.