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Molasses Cookies
Four eggs, two cupfuls of sugar, two cupfuls of New Orleans molasses, one large teaspoonful of soda, one teaspoonful of ginger, a little salt.
This is a period ingredient list rather than a method, and it is missing the two things that make it a cookie: flour and fat. Nineteenth-century cooks were expected to add flour "enough to roll" and to know the rest, so treat the list below as a framework rather than a complete formula.
- The missing flourFour eggs, two cups of sugar and two cups of molasses make a very wet, very sweet base that will take a great deal of flour -- several cups at least -- to reach a stiff rolling dough. The original genuinely does not say, and any figure given here is guesswork; add flour gradually until the dough just holds together and stops sticking.
- The missing fatMolasses cookie recipes of the period commonly include butter, lard or shortening, and without it these will bake hard and dry rather than short and chewy. The original specifies none; about a cup of softened butter would suit this quantity, but the amount is a guess.
- New Orleans molassesThis meant Louisiana cane molasses, unsulphured, and period writers generally rated it milder and cleaner-tasting than West India molasses. It was not blackstrap. Ordinary dark or full-flavour unsulphured molasses is the closest match; blackstrap is too bitter here.
- Soda, not baking powderThe soda is doing double duty, leavening the dough and neutralising the acid in the molasses, which is why the cookies brown deeply and taste round rather than sharp. A "large teaspoonful" means a heaping one, so figure about 1½ teaspoons. Do not substitute baking powder.
- Cup measuresA period cupful is close enough to the modern 8 fl oz cup for baking purposes. Two cups of molasses is about 24 oz by weight; it pours more accurately from a cup greased first.
- OvenThe original gives no oven direction of any kind. Around 350°F for 8 to 12 minutes depending on thickness works. Molasses doughs scorch on the underside before the tops look done, so pull them when the edges are set and the centres still look soft.
- Handling the doughChill it at least an hour before rolling. Warm molasses dough is slack and sticky, and rolling it cold on a lightly floured board is the difference between a clean cut and a smear.
- YieldThis is a large batch by modern standards. The original gives no yield; rolled thin and cut at about 2½ inches it should run to several dozen cookies. Halving it is reasonable for a home kitchen.
Molasses was the everyday sweetener of American baking well into the nineteenth century, cheaper than refined sugar. "New Orleans" on a recipe line signalled Louisiana cane molasses as distinct from imported West Indian molasses, and from the sulphured grades that came in later. The pairing with soda was chemical as much as culinary, since molasses is acidic and a spoonful of soda both raised the dough and softened its flavour, a trick carried over from the saleratus era. That this entry gives only the wet ingredients and the seasoning is typical of household books of the period, which assumed a cook already knew that flour went in until the dough would roll and that shortening was a matter of what was in the crock.