Hermit Cookies

Hermit cookies today are soft, square molasses cookies with raisins, especially popular in New England. Perhaps they resemble the brown robes of a hermit. But the earliest printed recipes, in the late 1870s, are for round, white, spiced teacakes with chopped raisins. Mary E. Gage (www.newenglandrecipes.com) has pointed out an 1880 recipe in the third edition of the Champlain Balley Book of Recipes (Plattsburgh, N.Y.: 1880) contributed by Miss Hattie Elkins, which uses brown sugar, raisins, and a quantity of lard to approximate the modern style.