HFF 6.21: Comfort Food

 

The Challenge: Comfort Food. The opposite of challenge #20. Try a historic version of your favorite comfort food, or a new receipt that uses techniques/tools/ingredients that you are comfortable working with.

The Recipe: Gingerbread. I've made different versions for many, many HFF challenges (including my first ever, and last year's "comfort food" challenge), but this year decided to improve my historic technique while also making a classic treat for the holidays.

I used the "all at once" Gingerbread V recipe from The Dictionary of Practical Receipts:

 V. Flour and treacle, of each 1 lb., butter 1 oz., carbonate of magnesia 1 oz., powdered ginger and cinnamon, of each 1 drachm, grated nutmeg 1/2 oz., let it be baked after having been made about four hours. This is for thin gingerbread; if for thick you must add more flour so as to make the paste stiffer.

Since I'm working on the method and shape here, I also consulted with The Complete Biscuit and Gingerbread Baker's Assistant (1854)

The Date/Year and Region: 1857, London

How Did You Make It: I started by weighing out 1 lb of molasses (substituting for treacle), which amounted to 8-10 fl oz judging by the apparent volume left in the container. I mixed this with 1 lb of all purpose flour, while adding the spices (1.5 tsp each of ginger and cinnamon, 2 tsp nutmeg). I then dissolved 1 oz of baker's ammonia aka hartshorn aka ammonium carbonate (substituting for the magnesium carbonate in the menu, since that's one of the few old-style chemical leaveners I didn't have on hand) in a cup of cold water, and added it to the dough. I set the mixed dough in the refrigerator for about 12 hours (not 4, since I had to go to work); later, I rolled it out to ~3/16" thick with just enough flour to keep it from sticking, then stamped and cut into small cakes, pricked with a fork, brushed with melted butter, and baked at 350F for 10 minutes.

 

[Powdered spices tend to run about 4-5 Tbsp per oz. Here I used 4 Tbsp/oz, so 1 drachm = 1/8 oz ~ 1.5 tsp ginger & cinnamon; 1/2 oz= 2 tbsp nutmeg

 

Time to Complete: About 15 minutes to mix up, another 10 to prep, and 30 minutes to bake the three pans, in addition to the hours of waiting-time.

 

Total Cost: I spent about $3 on the molasses, though I actually had everything else on hand.

 

How Successful Was It?: Softer than the other batch of molasses gingerbread that I made with pearlash. The reproduction stamp I used didn't give as clear as a picture as I'd hoped (weirdly enough, the forks holes that was almost invisible when made stood out after baking, while the stamped design flattened to almost nothing). I noticed a bitter aftertaste which I attributed to the hartshorn, though everyone else who tried it either denied the taste or attributed it to the molasses (in which case I would have expected it in the pearlash batch as well, where I didn't notice it). I was actually worried that the texture and bitterness would make these unsuitable, but three people still voluntarily asked to try it, and then proceeded to take the extras home. Apparently, it tastes a lot like various grandmothers' German cookies.

How Accurate Is It? I switched the leavener, though at least to one that was available (if falling rapidly out of fashion) at the time; the extra waiting time was another intentional departure, which doesn't appear to have hurt the final result. I used a replica resin springerle mold (a sleigh scene, allegedly copied from an 1830s original) and a tin cutter sized to it. Letting the dough rest was the real important part of this experiment: it transformed the sticky batter into a very familiar kind of cookie dough, and rolling it thin produced a far superior (as well as better documented) final product. As embarrassing as it is to admit, I've basically been making gingerbread wrong for years, because the waiting/rolling/cutting steps were not spelled out in the first recipes I tried.

Also, I've now got a group that wants to run some parallel experiments comparing early chemical leaveners, which sounds like a lot of fun.

Not sure why the photo rotated like that...