A Sailor's Favorite Cookie: Bringing Black History into the Kitchen

What's cookin'? How about Joe Frogger cookies?

While developing content for our new special exhibit, "From Sea To Shining Sea: Whalers of the African Diaspora," museum staff came across a recipe for for an oversized ginger cookie dating back to colonial times -- the Joe Frogger Cookie. 

​The cookie's creation is attributed to Lucretia Young, who was born in 1772 to two formerly enslaved people in Marblehead, Massachusetts, a seaport. She married Joseph Brown,  the son of an African American mother and Wampanoag Nation father, and who had been born into slavery to Rhode Island sheriff slaveowner Beriah Brown II. Little is known of Joe's early years, but he enlisted as a soldier in the Revolutionary war to take the place of his enslaver's son, who Joe said "left the company to go privateering." Beriah promised his liberty if he would serve out his son's time. Joe completed his enlistment in 10 months and 20 days, serving with 60 other men, and left the war a free man. 

During a time when unemployed freed Black people had to leave Marblehead, Lucretia and Joe operated a successful and busy tavern serving sailors. The building still stands today. 

There, Lucretia mixed sea water, rum, molasses, and spices to create a large, gingerbread-like cookie which sailors bought by the barrel - The Joe Frogger. While the exact origin of the name is unclear, as legend has it, she named the cookie after her husband and the nearby pond's wide, flat lily pads. Because the cookies lacked milk or eggs, the rum-preserved cookies had a long shelf life suitable for sea voyages, and were popular with fishermen and sailors.  
 
Joe and Lucretia were free people and property owners in a time when most African Americans were enslaved, yet its star ingredients— rum and molasses—are inextricably tied to the brutality of slavery.    

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Recipe: Joe Frogger Cookies

3½ c flour  |  1½ tsp sea salt
1½ tsp ground ginger  | ½ tsp ground cloves
½ tsp grated nutmeg
¼ tsp allspice  |  1 tsp baking soda
1 c molasses  |   1 packed cup brown sugar
2 tbsp white sugar
½ c room temp butter, margarine, or shortening
2 tbsp dark rum
1/3 c hot water

Mix dry ingredients; set aside. Beat together the molasses, brown sugar, and your chosen fat until fluffy. In separate bowl, combine hot water and rum.  Stirring continuously, alternate adding the dry ingredients and the water-and-rum mixture to the sugar-and-molasses mixture. Continue stirring as the mixture coheres into a dough.  Cover and refrigerate for at least two hours and up to a day.
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Preheat oven to 375. Roll out the dough on parchment paper sprinkled with sugar until it’s about ¼ of an inch. Use an empty coffee can or a wide jar to cut out circles in the dough (traditional Joe Froggers are large, like lily pads). Bake on greased or parchment paper–lined baking trays for 10 to 12 minutes until beginning to brown on the edges, and are still slightly soft in the center. 

Share your pics @ cshwhalingmuseum!

Find out more about Joe and Lucretia's life, including archival materials, from a post by the Marblehead Museum. 

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"Joe's Tavern," still standing today, and under private ownership.