Middlesex Gingerbread
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Original Receipt from 'Pot-luck; or, The British home cookery book' by May Byron (Byron 1914)777. GINGERBREAD (Middlesex)
Three pounds of treacle are to be mixed with three pounds and a half of good flour, a pound of fresh butter, and a pound of brown sugar, five ounces of caraway seeds, six ounces of candied orange and lemon peel, cut very small, a quarter of a pound of powdered ginger, five eggs, and rather more than half an ounce of pearl-ashes: the butter is mixed with the other ingredients by being beaten to a cream. The mixture must stand for twenty-four hours, and on the following day is to be worked up like bread, and baked into a cake, of about an inch thick, in a slow oven. The same mixture, made more liquid, and without the pearlashes, the butter being melted instead of beaten, dropped with a spoon upon a buttered tin, makes gingerbread nuts; but it is usual to put a larger quantity of ginger. Gingerbread nuts are also made by rubbing up a pound of butter with two pounds of flour, a pound of brown sugar, and rather more than an ounce of powdered ginger. These are mixed together with as much treacle as will form them into the consistency of dough: it is then made into the form of nuts, and baked upon tins. In order to make them richer, a little powdered allspice and powdered cinnamon may be added. Nutmeg and crushed or powdered almonds may be added either to gingerbread or gingerbread nuts.