Gingerbread

[JPK Huson 1863]

I still make this Gingerbread, since I've never found a recipe I like better, although I make more. You can't triple it, since there's no baking powder, boy would it be flat! The instructions are also rather bare. It's from a very old family cook book, and I am sure the old folks pretty much assumed everyone else would know their way around a kitchen.

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup lard
1/2 cup molasses
1 1/2 cup flour
1 egg
1 tsp. ginger, 1 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. soda in 2/3 cup boiling water

Mix wet ingredients, add egg, mix dry, add dry to wet, mix well. Add soda to boiling water, add to mixture, mix well. Bake in small pan, medium oven, until knife inserted in middle comes clean.

* 'Soda' would be baking soda, thought I'd state the obvious, sorry!

* I realize this seems sparse, but I always go look up another recipe to compare what must be going on when I need to 'translate' one of these. I also personally like a little extra ginger so tend to be kind of heavy-handed with it. This recipe is really good with 'real' applesauce.

 

[donna]

Gingerbread was one of Abraham Lincoln's favorite foods. His Mother made it and was one of treats he enjoyed as a boy.. I did a thread on it and will bump up.

 

[diane]

Thanks for this recipe. One of my happy childhood memories of winter was warm gingerbread with butter! Once when I made it for my family, I used Chinese ginger and found out the difference.

 

[jessgettysburg1863]

Sounds yummy.

 

[JPK Huson 1863]

I've never tried it with butter- sounds amazing! Mom always used applesauce, then later whipped cream although I'm not crazy about that.

 

[diane]

Ooh, yes! You just warm it up nice, then slice it into layers and slather on the butter. Add some hot cider and it's comfort food time!

 

[kholland]

Ooh, yes! You just warm it up nice, then slice it into layers and slather on the butter. Add some hot cider and it's comfort food time!

Now that sounds good but possibly when it gets a little cooler.

 

[diane]

Mom learned it from Dad but I don't know where it came from in his family. My hubby's Amish relations love to do it - it may come from their neck of the woods. (They also put raisins in their brownies but that's another post! )

 

[Littlestown]

I love gingerbread! My Mom always served it with either a lemon or an orange sauce.
LEMON SAUCE:
1/2 c. sugar
2 tbsp. cornstarch
1/4 tsp. salt
2 c. water
1/4 c. butter
1 tbsp. grated lemon rind
3 tbsp. lemon juice
Lemon Sauce: Mix sugar, cornstarch and salt in saucepan. Gradually stir in water. Cook, stirring constantly, until it thickens and boils. Boil and stir 1 minute. Remove from heat. Stir in rest of ingredients. Serve over gingerbread.

 

[Littlestown]

"Baked goods were another treat for sick soldiers. It was not uncommon for volunteer nurses to stay up late at night baking for their charges. Gingerbread was considered nourishing and easy to digest; it was often given as a comfort Civil War food to hospital patients. If we went back in time to the Civil War, we would enjoy some of the still familiar foods, like gingerbread, that the soldiers enjoyed, but we would also find some of the food, like hardtack, rather strange."
from ...http://www.civilwaracademy.com/civil-war-food.html

 

[PartywithArty]

i love ginger bread.

 

[Littlestown]

"Gingerbread making in North America has its origins in the traditions of the many settlers from all parts of Northern Europe who brought with them family recipes and customs. By the nineteenth century, America had been baking gingerbread for decades." http://gingerbreadblog.com/2010/11/tips/ ...hey, who knew there's a blog about gingerbread? LOL

 

[donna]

I have always loved gingerbread and gingerbread men cookies.

Here is recipe for Common Ginger Bread from "The Kentucky Housewife" by Lettice Bryan first published in 1839.

Cut up half a pound of butter into a quart of West India molasses, make it a little warm, but by no means suffer it to get hot: add a tea-spoonful of pearlash, dissolved in a tea-cupful of boiling buttermilk, a tea-cupful of powdered ginger, and enough flour to make a common dough; knead it well, roll it into a sheet about three quarters of an inch thick, and cut it in long slim cakes; stamp them with a cake-print, brush over them the beaten yolk of egg and brown sugar; lay them in shallow iron pans, that are well buttered, and bake in rather a brisk oven.

 

[KenH]

Pearlash - now there's an ingredient I didn't know about until I went looking. Here's what I found:
Pearlash (Potassium Carbonate)

"On this side of the Atlantic the early colonists were blessed with hardwood forests as far as the eye could see. Aside from being a logical building material and fuel, hardwoods provided another important resource, ashes. Ashes were a major export two hundred years ago, both to Canada and Britain. They were valuable for sweetening gardens and providing lye for making soap. They were also a source of potash and its derivative, pearlash, another creative leavening agent.

To make pearlash, you first have to make potash which itself is made from lye. To make lye, you pass water through a barrel of hardwood ashes over and over until an egg can float on the residue. (To make soap you boil this "lye water" with lard or other fat until it is thick, pour it into molds and harden it into cakes.) To make potash, you evaporate lye water until you have a solid.

Pearlash is a purified version of potash. It is an alkaline compound which will react with an acidic ingredient such as sour milk, buttermilk or molasses to produce carbon dioxide bubbles, the very same thing that yeast produces. Pearlash was used primarily in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries but because of its bitter aftertaste, it not only did not replace yeast but was eventually replaced by "saleratus.""

 

[donna]

Thanks for researching pearlash. I was going to as knew that was one people would probably not know.

 

[donna]

Here is another thread on gingerbread worth reading.