12 ounces of white sugar.
8 ounces of better.
8 eggs.
1 teacupful of milk-small.
2 ounces of ground ginger.
2 teaspoonfuls of baking powder.
11⁄2 pounds of flour.
Mix up in the usual way for cookies. Sift sugar over before cutting out the cakes.
It is generally best to make the dough for all kinds of cookies and sugar cake as soft as it can possibly be rolled out. Different persons make very different cakes of these sorts from the same receipts, and the common fault is too much flour in the dough. The baking powder too is responsible for some of the changes. With too much powder the cakes run into each other and lose the good round shape they ought to have.
Whitehead’s Family Cook Book, 1891