Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches

sweet; if it is in the least sour, use sugar house molasses instead. Warm it slightly, just enough to melt the butter. Crush with the rolling-pin, on the paste-board, half a pound of brown sugar, and add it by degrees to the molasses and butter; then stir in a tea-cup full of powdered ginger, a large tea-spoonful of powdered cloves, and a table-spoonful of powdered cinnamon. Add gradually sufficient flour to make a dough stiff enough to roll out easily; and lastly, a small tea-spoonful of pearl-ash melted in a little warm water. Mix and stir the dough very hard with a spaddle, or a wooden spoon; but do not knead it. Then divide it with a knife into equal portions; and, having floured your hands, roll it out on the paste-board into long even strips. Place them in shallow tin pans, that have been buttered; either laying the strips side by side in straight round sticks, (uniting them at both ends,) or coil them into rings one within another, as you see them at the cake shops. Bake them in a brisk oven, taking care that they do not burn; gingerbread scorching sooner than any other cake. To save time and trouble, you may roll out the dough into a sheet near an inch thick, and cut it into round flat cakes with a tin cutter, or with the edge of a tumbler. Ground ginger loses much of its strength by keeping. Therefore it will be frequently found necessary to put in more than the quantity given in the receipt. GINGERBREAD NUTS. Rub half a pound of butter into a pound and a half of sifted flour; and mix in half a pound of brown sugar, crushed fine with the rolling-pin. Add two large table-spoonfuls of ginger, a tea-spoonful of powdered cloves, and a tea-spoonful of powdered cinnamon. Stir in a pint of molasses, and the grated peel of a large lemon, but not the juice, as you must add at the last, a very small tea-spoonful of pearl-ash dissolved in a little lukewarm water, and pearl-ash entirely destroys