Cookies

History

Amelia Simmons's cookie is a rolled sugar biscuit built on a boiled syrup. A pound of sugar is simmered slowly in half a pint of water, skimmed and cooled, then worked together with pearl ash dissolved in milk, flour, butter, and two large spoons of finely powdered coriander seed. The dough is rolled half an inch thick, cut to whatever shape you please, and baked fifteen or twenty minutes in a slack — gently heated — oven; Simmons adds that they keep good three weeks. It is coriander, not the vanilla or cinnamon of later cookies, that gives this one its aroma. The leavening is pearl ash, or potassium carbonate, an early chemical leavener that American Cookery was among the first printed books to call for.

The name is the remarkable thing. "Cookie" descends from the Dutch koekje, "little cake," a diminutive of koek — a word that entered American English through Dutch-settled communities rather than from British baking, which spoke of small cakes and biscuits. Simmons's 1796 book is where the North American style of cookie is attested by the close of the century, placing this recipe among the earliest printed cookie recipes in an American cookbook.

What the record does not keep is the path from a Dutch koekje to Simmons's Hartford page: whether she drew the recipe from a Dutch-American household, why coriander anchors it rather than some other spice, or how closely her rolled, long-keeping cookie tracked what home bakers were already making. The book preserves the recipe, not its lineage.

Ingredients

• 1 pound sugar
• 0.5 pint water
• 2 tea spoons pearl ash
• milk
• 2.5 pounds flour
• 4 ounces butter
• 2 large spoons coriander seed

Instructions

1. Boil one pound of sugar slowly in half a pint of water, skim well and cool.
2. Add two teaspoons of pearl ash dissolved in milk, then two and a half pounds of flour.
3. Rub in four ounces of butter and two large spoons of finely powdered coriander seed.
4. Wet with the cooled sugar mixture above.
5. Make rolls half an inch thick and cut to the shape you please.
6. Bake fifteen or twenty minutes in a slack oven; they keep good three weeks.