Take a half-pint or a tumbler full of cold water, and mix it with
half a pound of powdered white sugar. Sift three pounds of flour
into a large pan and cut up in it a pound of butter; rub the
butter very fine into the flour. Add a grated nutmeg, and a tea-spoonful
of powdered cinnamon, with a wine glass of rose water.
Work in the sugar, and make the whole into a stiff dough, adding,
if necessary, a little cold water. Dissolve a tea-spoonful of
pearl-ash in just enough of warm water to cover it, and mix it in
at the last. Take the lump of dough out of the pan, and knead it
on the paste-board till it becomes quite light. Then roll it out
rather more than half an inch thick, and cut it into square cakes
with a jagging iron or with a sharp knife. Stamp the surface of
each with a cake print. Lay them in buttered pans, and bake them
of a light brown in a brisk oven.
They are similar to what are called New Year's cakes, and will
keep two or three weeks.
In mixing the dough, you may add three table-spoonfuls of carraway
seeds.