Vintage Eats Recipe: 1905 Soft Ginger Bread

As we near the end of 2025, I’ll be sharing some of my favorite recipes from the year and what I love about them.

This is my favorite OLD recipe from 2025. In fact, it is the oldest recipe I’ve ever re-created with success.

It is delicious!

The recipe name labels it a ‘bread’, but I think it more closely resembles a cake. It is soft, fragrant, flavorful, and just the right item for a brunch, breakfast, dessert, or anytime snack!

But the uniqueness of the recipe’s age comes with challenges.

I have found that the older a recipe is, the briefer are its directions. For example, here is the recipe for Soft Ginger Bread as printed in the ‘Twentieth Century Cook Book, A Feast of Good Things– A Careful Compilation of Tried and Approved Recipes. It was published by The Ladies’ Aid Society of the United Brethren Church, Monroeville IN 1905:

“Half cup sugar, 1 cup molasses, ½ cup butter, 1 teaspoon each ginger, cinnamon, cloves, 2 teaspoons soda dissolved in 1 cup boiling water, 2-1/2 cups flour, add 2 well-beaten eggs the last thing before baking. This is excellent.”

If you notice, the entire recipe is one sentence – one LONG sentence.

But the last three words were what convinced me to try it—“This is excellent.”

If a baker from 1905 thought enough of her recipe to add these words, she must have the testimonies of eaters around her who have tasted and enjoyed it ringing in her ears.

So I tore the recipe apart and dug in.

It was not too hard to decipher the recipe as I’ve made dozens of coffeecakes and other baked items before. The ingredients all sounded good (you would not believe the number of recipes that leave out an important item like eggs). The areas I would have to experiment with were oven times and length of baking.

To begin I separated the ingredients, one per line.

Then I compared the amount of ingredients with other cakes in some church cookbooks and noted the possible temperature and baking times.

The first cake was tough from my leaving it in the oven too long. Cutting it back 10 minutes helped to create the perfect cake.

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This recipe was part of my program that I gave for a zoom talk recently on ‘Cooking Through the 20^th Century.’ I presented a recipe I had discovered in my research of vintage recipes from each decade of the 20^th century.

Of course, it was the first recipe since it was created in the first decade.

The inscriptions or dedications on title pages of old cookbooks always intrigue me. This one states:

“To all the housewives throughout the land who are aiming at greater perfection in the art of cooking. This little book is respectfully dedicated.”

I hope you enjoy it as much as we did. It’s simple to make and will fill you with warmth as befitting the upcoming holidays!

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My recipe for 1905 Soft Ginger Bread as re-written for 21^st century standards:

½ cup white sugar

1 cup molasses

½ cup butter, softened

2-1/2 cups flour

1 teaspoon ginger

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon cloves

2 eggs, well beaten

2 teaspoons baking soda

In large mixing bowl combine sugar, molasses, and butter until ingredients are thoroughly smooth.

In separate bowl stir flour, ginger, cinnamon, cloves.

Add seasonings to sugar mixture and stir well.

Bring 1 cup of water to boil—I boiled a cup in the microwave for 5 minutes.

Dissolve two teaspoons baking soda in the cup of boiling water and add to sugar mix.

Add two well-beaten eggs and mix well.

Pour into 9×9” glass baking dish, or if you prefer a thinner product, use a 10×16” dish. Cover the dish with parchment paper for easy removal and clean-up.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Yield: 16-20 servings