Cookie of the Month - First American Cookies

Yesterday, Matt and I took a super-fun field trip to Old Sturbridge Village, an 1830s re-enactment town about 50 miles southwest of Boston.  We went for my new favorite holiday, Tomato Day, where heirloom tomato plants are given to visitors as part of the entrance fees.  Matt and I are newbie gardeners, but our garden is growing pretty well so far, so we figured we'd supplement it with a tomato plant.  Matt's not even big on tomatoes, but I love them enough for the both of us.  And they're free!  Ahh, America.  Unfortunately, when we got there, we were told at the door that they were out of tomato plants.  That was discouraging, but we had a great time exploring the village anyway.  While there, we saw re-enacters making shoes, carding wool, throwing pots, making barrels, printing leaflets, forging iron, and making candles, as well as an old-fashioned baseball demonstration (they run to third base first!  What is that about?!).  Maybe most fascinating was the hearth cooking re-enactment with a woman baking bread and a pumpkin pie from dehydrated pumpkin, as well as making soup with dumplings.  Keep in mind that it was about 80 degrees out yesterday, and she was wearing a full 1830s respectable woman outfit - including long sleeves and a bonnet.
  

Look at this little guy!  What a cutie!

When we were walking towards the exit, we found out that they were not out of tomato plants after all!  Huzzah!  And so we picked up Tommy, the newest of our anthropomorphized household objects.  Tommy is a an heirloom Large Red tomato, a variety that dates back to the 1830s and would have been available Sturbridge.  He is currently getting along well with our other plants, and I have big dreams for him (and his tomatoes).  I think he'll go in a large pot on the deck, where he'll get the most sun. 

You could buy saleratus in the general store.  Baking soda didn't hit the big time til the 1840s.

Anyway, we also bought the Old Sturbridge Village cookbook.  The thing I really like about this cookbook is that it translates old recipes (from Amelia Simmons, among others) into modern recipes, but also provides instructions for those wishing to make the recipes the old fashioned way, in a hearth kitchen.  Reading through how they've changed and updated recipes has given me a bit more confidence in doing the same with both Amelia Simmons' and Susannah Carter's books.  Which leads me to this...

It's Cookie of the Month time again!  Martha Stewart's assigned cookies for May are French macaroons.  I've tried these before, and while they taste really good, they never look the way they're supposed to.  I am particularly looking forward to trying them again after a trip to Le Petit Parisien in Montclair, New Jersey, last week.  But while I've been on a quest to figure out how to make these perfectly, this is not the month.  Brother thumbs his nose at les macarons, and asked instead for some old-timey cookies.  Yesterday's trip - and my renewed confidence in translating historic recipes to modern day kitchens - has resulted in today's baking adventure, where I translate Amelia Simmons' cookie recipe into a modern day delight (hopefully).   I'm calling these the First American cookies since her cookbook is the first American cookbook, and this is the first (of two) cookie recipes in it.  The other one appears pretty similar to speculuus or springerle, some kind of aged spice cookie made for dunking.  Anyway, here's her recipe:

Cookies

One pound fugar boiled flowly in half pint water, fcum well and cool, add two teafpoons pearl afh diffolved in milk, then two and half pounds flour, rub in four ounces butter, and two large fpoons of finely powdered coriander feed, wet with above; make roles half an inch thick and cut to the fhape you pleafe; bake fifteen or twenty minutes in a flack oven - good three weeks.

Matt's mom sent us some cookie cutters - time to try them out!

Here's what I'm thinking.  Amelia Simmons' cookie recipe depends on a few teaspoons of pearl ash dissolved in milk for its leavening.  Based on this guy's experiment with chemical leaveners (which I linked to in my biscuit entry), I know that I cannot use pearl ash and baking soda interchangeably.  Baking soda has a little more than twice the amount of available carbon dioxide per teaspoon as pearl ash does, so it seems to me that substituting the proportionate amount of baking soda will result in a close approximation of the original cookie.  Dividing the volume of pearlash in half means using one teaspoon of baking soda to the two and a half pounds of flour - which would be about 9 cups of flour - which is the same ratio as my regular cut-out cookie recipe.  So at least I've got that going for me.  I'm worried that 9 cups of flour is going to make waaaay more cookies than we (or Brother) need, so I think I'll halve the recipe. 

I don't think I've ever put coriander in a cookie before.

However, Amelia's recipe differs from the ratios in my cut-out cookie recipe in a few other ways.  Hers uses much less butter per flour, much more sugar, and has no eggs.  The overall liquid/dry ratio seems pretty similar to my recipe, but I think these will be a bit stiffer than the normal cut-out cookies.  I'm also going to add a teensy bit of salt, I think.  The Shrewsbury Cakes had no salt in them and I the texture of the cookies changed quite a bit over the course of a few days (although, if you're eating them as ice cream sandwiches, it kind of doesn't matter).  Since salt is a known preservative, I'm thinking a pinch of salt might help stabilize the cookies and help them stay fresh a little longer. 

Brown sugar syrup.  Tastes like molasses.  Unsurprisingly.

I didn't have much of the evaporated cane sugar left, so I supplemented it with brown sugar to reach the whole half pound.  I also decided to switch up Amelia's process a little bit.  From what I can tell (although this could be wrong - she strings a lot of clauses together), she calls for rubbing the butter into the flour and then adding the sugar syrup.  At first I thought she meant adding everything to the sugar, but on second reading that's not what I get.  Anyway, since I think it's easier to mix dry ingredients into the wet ones, I creamed the butter, added the soda dissolved in milk (just to make sure there's enough acid in there to work right), sugar syrup, and coriander before adding the flour with a pinch of salt.

The finished dough - it is really stiff.

The dough is really stiff - I didn't use all of the flour (probably used 1/2 cup less than it calls for), and I ended up kneading the last bit of the flour in since it was so stiff.  Since it was so stiff, it was hard to roll out really thin, but I think that's okay.  I baked them in a 325 oven for 10-12 minutes, until the bottoms were slightly browned and the cookies had puffed up a bit but were not brown.  They have a nice spicy flavor to them thanks to the coriander, but are definitely pretty dense.  They're made for dunking, I think, so get your beverage of choice ready! 

Kitty cats!

This is what you'll be getting soon, Brother!

First American Cookies

1 generous cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup butter
1 Tbsp ground coriander
pinch salt
1/2 tsp baking soda, dissolved in about a tsp of milk
4 3/4 cup flour (I used a little less)


Heat the sugar and water in a saucepan until the sugar is dissolved; let cool.  Cream butter, add soda, coriander, and pinch salt.  Beat in about 1/2 cup flour, then add sugar syrup.  Stir in the rest of the flour, you might need to knead it in towards the end.  Roll out to about 1/4 inch thick, bake 10-12 minutes in 325 degree oven.  Makes about 5 dozen.