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Halfpenny Gingerbread Squares (No. 49)

Three ounces of alum and three of pearlash per eight pounds of flour, cut into halfpenny squares for children.

From
The Bread and Biscuit Baker's and Sugar-Boiler's Assistant
Published
1890
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Exactly as printed, 1890

made with potash, says Dr. Colquhoun, gives the bread a disagreeable alkaline flavour, unless disguised with some aromatic ingredient, and is likely to prove injurious to delicate persons. Italian Jumbles, or Brandy Snaps (No. 48). 6 lbs. of flour, 7 lbs. of good rich sugar, 1 lb. of butter or lard, 2 ozs. of ginger or mixed spice, 6 lbs. of raw syrup. Make the whole into a moderately stiff paste or dough, roll out into sheets fully an eighth of an inch thick, cut them with a plain round cutter of 3 inches diameter, put them on tins well greased, and bake in a moderate oven. When baked cut them from the tin and lay them on the peel-shaft till they are hard. If they should get too cold to turn, put them in the oven to warm. Brandy snaps are the same as above, without being turned.

NOTE. For cakes, spice nuts, or biscuits of a small size, that require washing on top, use a piece of linen the size of the tin, dip it in water, squeeze it, and spread it on top of the snaps or biscuits and gently press your hand over it. This will prevent them from running together on the tins. Halfpenny Gingerbread Squares (No. 49). 8 lbs. of flour, 4 lbs. of treacle, 3 ozs. of pearlash, 3 ozs. of alum, and 1 oz. of carbonate of soda. Make a bay, put in the treacle, add the soda, dissolve the pearlash in 1 gill of cold water and pour it on the treacle; put another gill of water in a small pan, add the alum, and let it boil till it is dissolved; then pour it on the other ingredients. Mix all together, put into two tins about 24 inches by 18 inches with an edge 1 inch high. Cut out of each tin 25. 3d. worth. This mixture is for wholesale purposes, and pays well.

NOTE.-Nearly all mixtures made in this way are best made the day before.


The Bread and Biscuit Baker's and Sugar-Boiler's Assistant, 1890. Public domain; transcription unaltered.

So what happens if I make it?

Three ounces of potassium aluminium sulphate in one batch, in a cheap sweet made in quantity and sold by the halfpenny to children. The alum is there to firm the crumb and stretch the mix.

The candour of “pays well” is the thing. This is not a household receipt that went wrong; it is a trade formula optimised for margin.

Notes from the 21st century

  • Alum in bread was a Victorian scandal. It whitened cheap flour and bulked the loaf, and it was one of the abuses that drove the first food adulteration acts.
  • Hunting Nuts, next door, does the same. Receipt No. 50 also takes three ounces of alum. The pattern runs through the whole cheap-biscuit section.
  • Pearlash is potassium carbonate. The book's own opening criticises it for a disagreeable alkaline flavour, then uses it by the pound.

Also in this book

  • Soda Biscuits (No. 65) — Three drachms of muriatic acid in the dough, from a book that quotes Liebig on how impure muriatic acid is.

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