Raising Christmas cookies - the 1845 method
You don’t have nearly enough cookie recipes yet. I’m assuming this because all my friends who do that mysterious and little-known festival called Christmas are baking and baking and baking. Slices and biscuits and every kind of cake, as well as identifiable recipes such as plum pudding and Christmas cake.
Me? I’m taking pasta with avocado and macadamia cream sauce (maybe also artichokes in the sauce – I need to think about this) to Christmas lunch at a friends, and that’s really all the cooking I have to do.
Today’s recipes are from 1845, from The American Economical Housekeeper, and Family Receipt Book. by Mrs. E. A. Howland.
One reason I chose cookies is the usual reason – make my list of biscuits and scones ever larger. The other was so that you could meet saleratus. The funny thing is that quite a few of us have saleratus in our cupboards. We call it things like sodium bicarb or baking soda. It has also been called ‘aerated salt’ and was often used with sour milk for baking in nineteenth century US. Baking powder ie sodium bicarb and tartaric acid started to appear in the US round the mid nineteenth century (earlier in Britain). Can you see now why Dr Price amused me the other day?
Cookies, No. 1.
Five cups of flour, two of sugar, one of butter, one egg, one tea-spoonful of saleratus, and cut it with a tin into small cakes.
Cookies, No. 2.
One cup of butter, well mixed with two and a half cups of sugar, three eggs, one cup of milk, one tea-spoonful of saleratus, salt and spice to your taste, flour enough to mould it.
Christmas Cookies, No. 3.
Take one pound and a half of flour, three quarters of a pound of sugar, half a pound of butter, half a cup of milk, and two spoonfuls of caraway seeds; melt the butter before you put it in. It is rather difficult to knead, but it can be done. Roll it out and cut it in hearts and diamonds, and bake it on buttered tins.
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