Mmmmmm, It’s coming into winter here in the Midwest and that means BAKING or making cookies…wait…cookies? You bake them right? Shouldn’t they be bakies?
This was just a random smartass post I made on Facebook. You’ll realize as time goes by that I spend a LOT of time on Facebook and many of my random thoughts make their way to my profile.
So after I made the comment I decided to go and check it out. A quick little search through a basic search engine(BTW I HATE BING) brought me to an answer page. As it turns out that the origin of the word “cookie” is actually the Dutch word “koekje”. I don’t speak Dutch….so , how in the world did that end up as cookie? Looking at the pronunciation the Dutch “oe” sounds like the “oo” in English, so Koek is pretty simply; cook. The latter part is a little more difficult, the e at the end is like the e in butter and the j is more like the consonant letter y. So the “je” is like “yuh”. When you put it together you get Cook-Yuh.
So that’s the basics, but that’s not all. There’s more. The word “koekje” actually means small cake. Cookies are NOT cakes, the texture is different, the flavors are different. They aren’t cakes. I’m fat, I know this. Small Cakes? They would put a small amount of cake batter in an oven to test the oven temperature. So these small cakes that were made to test the oven temps were called Koekjes…Cookies.
In earlier American cookbooks, cookies were given no space of their own but were listed at the end of the cake chapter. They were called by such names as Jumbles, Plunkets, and Cry Babies. The names were extremely puzzling and whimsical
1796 - . In the 1796 cookbook American Cookery: or, The Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry and Vegetables, and the Best Modes of Making Puff-pastes, Pies, Tarts, Puddings, Custards and Preserves, and all kinds of Cakes, from the Imperial Plumb to plain Cake by Amelia Simmons, she includes two recipes for cookies. One simply called "Cookies" and the other called "Chriftmas Cookey.' This was the first cookbook authored by an American and published in the United States.
Cookies - One pound fugar boiled flowly in half pint of water, fcum well and cool, add 1 tea fpoon perlafh, diffolved in milk, then two and a half pounds of four, rub in 4 ounces of butter, and two large fpoons of finely powdered coriander feed, wet with above; make rolls half an inch thick and cut to the fhape of pleafe; bake fifteen or twenty minutes in a flack oven - good three weeks.
Chriftmas Cookery - To three pound of flour, fprinkle a tea cup of fine powdered coriander feef, rub in one pound of butter, and one and half pound fugar, diffolve one tea fpoonful of pearlath in a tea cup of milk, kneed all together well, roll three quarter of an inch thick, and cut or ftamp into fhape and fize you pleafe, bake flowly fifteen or twenty minutes; tho' hard and dry at firft, if put in an earthern pot, and dry cellar, or damp room, they will be finer, fofter and better when fix months old…….Taken from Whatscookingamerica.com
So technically they are “Bakies” since cookies are koekjes.
This was just a random smartass post I made on Facebook. You’ll realize as time goes by that I spend a LOT of time on Facebook and many of my random thoughts make their way to my profile.
So after I made the comment I decided to go and check it out. A quick little search through a basic search engine(BTW I HATE BING) brought me to an answer page. As it turns out that the origin of the word “cookie” is actually the Dutch word “koekje”. I don’t speak Dutch….so , how in the world did that end up as cookie? Looking at the pronunciation the Dutch “oe” sounds like the “oo” in English, so Koek is pretty simply; cook. The latter part is a little more difficult, the e at the end is like the e in butter and the j is more like the consonant letter y. So the “je” is like “yuh”. When you put it together you get Cook-Yuh.
So that’s the basics, but that’s not all. There’s more. The word “koekje” actually means small cake. Cookies are NOT cakes, the texture is different, the flavors are different. They aren’t cakes. I’m fat, I know this. Small Cakes? They would put a small amount of cake batter in an oven to test the oven temperature. So these small cakes that were made to test the oven temps were called Koekjes…Cookies.
In earlier American cookbooks, cookies were given no space of their own but were listed at the end of the cake chapter. They were called by such names as Jumbles, Plunkets, and Cry Babies. The names were extremely puzzling and whimsical
1796 - . In the 1796 cookbook American Cookery: or, The Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry and Vegetables, and the Best Modes of Making Puff-pastes, Pies, Tarts, Puddings, Custards and Preserves, and all kinds of Cakes, from the Imperial Plumb to plain Cake by Amelia Simmons, she includes two recipes for cookies. One simply called "Cookies" and the other called "Chriftmas Cookey.' This was the first cookbook authored by an American and published in the United States.
Cookies - One pound fugar boiled flowly in half pint of water, fcum well and cool, add 1 tea fpoon perlafh, diffolved in milk, then two and a half pounds of four, rub in 4 ounces of butter, and two large fpoons of finely powdered coriander feed, wet with above; make rolls half an inch thick and cut to the fhape of pleafe; bake fifteen or twenty minutes in a flack oven - good three weeks.
Chriftmas Cookery - To three pound of flour, fprinkle a tea cup of fine powdered coriander feef, rub in one pound of butter, and one and half pound fugar, diffolve one tea fpoonful of pearlath in a tea cup of milk, kneed all together well, roll three quarter of an inch thick, and cut or ftamp into fhape and fize you pleafe, bake flowly fifteen or twenty minutes; tho' hard and dry at firft, if put in an earthern pot, and dry cellar, or damp room, they will be finer, fofter and better when fix months old…….Taken from Whatscookingamerica.com
So technically they are “Bakies” since cookies are koekjes.
More posts!!!!
ReplyDeleteJust a little note that I learned while reading Primary Sources in a history class: once upon a time, the letter "S" was written differently, depending on whether it was in the middle of a word or at the end (thought of this when you mentioned the Chriftmas cookies). Oddly enough, if it was at the end, it was a normal s like we see today, but if it was in the middle or at the beginning of the word, it was written like an f, but without the cross in the middle.
ReplyDeletestill, I giggled while reading the recipe :D
~Cara