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Rose Drops
Three and one-half cups flour, one and one-half cups sugar, one-half cup butter, five eggs, yolks and whites beaten separately, three tablespoons sweet cream, two of rose water, two teaspoonfuls of baking powder. Drop on buttered tins and when partly baked, sprinkle sugar over them. Any other flavoring can be substituted.
A plain drop cookie flavored with rose water, from an era when rose and orange-flower waters sat on the spice shelf beside vanilla. The proportions are sound but the method assumes you know what a drop cookie should look like going into the oven.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Bake at 350F; the cookies want 10-14 minutes, and the sugar goes on at roughly the 6- to 8-minute mark, when the tops have set but not colored.
- "Sweet cream"Simply fresh cream rather than the soured or ripened cream also common in period baking. Heavy or whipping cream works; the three tablespoons, together with the rose water, are the only liquid besides the eggs.
- Rose waterModern culinary rose water varies widely in strength. Two tablespoons suits a mild distilled rose water; with a concentrated Middle Eastern brand, start with two teaspoons and taste the dough, since too much reads as soap.
- Baking powderTwo teaspoons for three and a half cups of flour is on the light side by current practice. Measure level and mix the dough just until combined.
- Beating the eggs separatelyThe recipe does not say when the whites go in; standard practice is to whip them and fold them in last. Fold gently and get the trays into the oven promptly.
- Dough consistencyWith this much flour the dough is stiff, closer to a soft paste than a batter. Drop rounded teaspoonfuls two inches apart; they spread modestly.
- "Buttered tins"Parchment on a heavy sheet is an easier route to a pale, tender bottom than butter on a bare sheet.
- YieldSeveral dozen small drops, depending on how large you make them. They keep about a week in a tin.
Rose water was the standard perfume of English and American baking long before vanilla extract became cheap and universal; distilled from rose petals, it came into European kitchens by way of Persian and Arab confectionery and stayed in cookbooks well into the nineteenth century. The recipe ends by allowing that "any other flavoring can be substituted."