Yep, I have another receipt for New Year’s Cake. It’s from the manuscript
cookbook of Elizabeth Ellicott Lea, which she most likely began in 1821
and completed in 1842. It was eventually published as a book in 1845.*
Now, it may look rather familiar. That’s because it’s nearly
the exact same receipt as the one in Eliza Leslie’s Seventy-five
Receipts (1836 edition) that I posted earlier (see 1/9/2010).
It calls for a little less butter and the use of saleratus instead
of pearl-ash, but other than that, it’s identical. Well, that, and
the addition of either grated nutmeg or lemon zest.
As with some of the other receipts we’ve seen, this one also
makes little cakes, or what we’d probably now call cookies.
_________________________
New Year Cake.
Mix together three pounds of flour,
a pound and a half of sugar, and
three-quarters of a pound of butter;
dissolve a tea-spoonful of saleratus
in enough new milk to wet the flour;
mix them together; grate in a nutmeg,
or the peel of a lemon; roll them out,
cut them in shapes, and bake.
_________________________
*Lea’s manuscript was re-published in 1982 as A Quaker Woman’s Cookbook,
The Domestic Cookery of Elizabeth Ellicott Lea, by William Woys Weaver.
A revised edition was issued in 2004.
