Emily Dickinson’s Gingerbread Recipe

Posted in Emily Dickinson, Holiday Train Show on January 6 2010, by Plant Talk

Celebrating the Season and Looking Ahead to Our Spring Exhibition

Carol Capobianco is Editorial Content Manager at The New York Botanical Garden.

Garden staff members have been busy learning all they can about Emily Dickinson and her poetry in advance of the Botanical Garden’s spring exhibition, Emily Dickinson’s Garden: The Poetry of Flowers, May 1–June 13, 2010. We take note wherever and whenever we see her name.

So when we saw in a datebook, by chance, a gingerbread recipe by Emily Dickinson, we decided to blog about it, since the Garden currently is presenting Gingerbread Adventures in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden as part of the Holiday Train Show.

With a little digging around I learned that Dickinson had a bit of a reputation as a baker in her hometown of Amherst, Massachusetts. In fact, she was particularly known for her gingerbread (and Rye and Indian bread), and would lower a basket of it to children below (photo by Lewis S. Mudge, courtesy of his estate), according to Emily Dickinson: Profile of the Poet as Cook, with Selected Recipes, by Nancy Harris Brose, Juliana McGovern Dupre, Wendy Tocher Kohler, and Jean McClure Mudge, and published in 1976. We have a copy of this 28-page booklet in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library, where in spring 60 objects that tell the story of Dickinson’s life will be on view in the Rondina and LoFaro Gallery. (Complementing this will be a re-creation of her garden in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory and a poetry walk throughout the Garden’s grounds.)

My intention was simply to post the recipe here, with permission from Jean Mudge, and let you try it out for yourself. However, I got caught up in the “everything Emily” mood, and to celebrate her 179th birthday (December 10), I decided to try making the recipe myself to share with co-workers.

I don’t often bake, but the recipe looked simple enough, and I had on hand all but one of the seven ingredients—for the missing cream I substituted milk.

From the selection of the baking pan—should I use a square glass Pyrex® or a metal pan—I found myself wondering what Dickinson would have used (metal, as Pyrex® wasn’t introduced until well after she died). With this thinking, I knew I wouldn’t use an electric mixer either.

The batter, mixed by hand, was dense and sticky, and even before entering the oven it looked like baked fudge brownies. I was surprised that an egg was not called for, and a quick Internet search shows that most old-fashioned gingerbread recipes, except Ina Garten’s, do use an egg. I suppose I was envisioning the very different look and texture of a gingerbread cookie.

The consistency made it difficult to tell when it was cooked through. The trusty toothpick test let me know that 25 minutes as the recipe called for was not enough in my oven. It needed 35 minutes.

The end result looked good, but the real trial would come when I offered it to colleagues at work. Would they try it? Would they like it? I’m sure the intrigue of sampling an Emily Dickinson baked good, and on her birthday, led many here to grab a piece—even over my tried-and-true cornbread, which I had also made as a backup.

The verdict? The basket was empty before day’s end. Please try the recipe yourself and tell us how you like it. We’re waiting to hear from you—and hope to see you at our Emily Dickinson exhibition later in the year. Sign up for Ticket Alert.

Emily Dickinson’s Recipe for Gingerbread:

1 quart flour
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup cream
1 tablespoon ginger
1 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon salt
Make up with molasses (a little more than a cup is about right)

Cream the butter and mix with lightly whipped cream. Sift dry ingredients together and combine with the other ingredients. The dough is stiff and needs to be pressed into whatever pan you choose. A round or small square pan is suitable. Bake at 350 degrees for 20–25 minutes.