Hildegard von Bingen’s Nerve Cookies
When the world crumbles, we retreat to our kitchens to pull ourselves together: tend to your sourdough, the internet coos. Mash some bananas into bread, recycle your pét nat bottles! We are told it is not the loaf itself that saves us, but the process, the act of applying force to butter and sugar, the submission to heat and time, that delivers us back into our bodies. For a few years, I subscribed to this ideology, probably because I needed a spiritual practice and it was convenient that the main ingredient this one required was flour. Then I encountered this line of poetry by patron saint of disenchantment, John Ashbery: “We bake a dozen kinds of muffins every day / yet we are cold and disquieting at heart.” The truth at last. A pastry chef, I was literally baking a dozen iterations of muffins each day and feeling more despondent than ever.
Hildegard von Bingen might have blamed my mistemper on black bile. I became obsessed with her—a 12th-century mystic, abbess, composer, philosopher and perhaps the original “multi-hyphenate,” who offers something less sentimental and more pharmacological to cure a bad mood: “nerve cookies.” Throughout her spectacular oeuvre of medical and theological writings, she describes food as a means of governing the humors, of tempering black bile, that ancient root of melancholia. To control it, she insists, we must eat. I was struck by the sweetness of her prescription: pastry as medicine. No vacuous promises about process restoring me “back to myself,” just a handful of ingredients and their effects: cinnamon and cloves calm and stimulate. Spelt, that “hot, rich, and powerful” grain, “creates a happy mind and puts joy in the human disposition.”
“When the world crumbles, we retreat to our kitchens to pull ourselves together: tend to your sourdough, the internet coos. Mash some bananas into bread, recycle your pét nat bottles! We are told it is not the loaf itself that saves us, but the process, the act of applying force to butter and sugar, the submission to heat and time, that delivers us back into our bodies.”
As a third-generation depressive and veteran consumer of basically every SSRI on the market, I am perpetually trying to “drive away all the bitterness of [my] heart…” Hildegard is not saying the process is the point, a fabulous distraction. She’s offering a formula, a material intervention, to help us keep our eyes open and our bodies ready through these disastrous times. Here’s my own rendition, with a few departures from Hildegard’s recipe. I bloomed the spices in butter and had a pleasant time doing it, but really I was after the ends, not the means. The cookies are excellent. I have not been saved, but perhaps I am carrying, if only fractionally, less black bile.
Nerve Cookies
Makes 20
240 g (1 cup plus 1 Tbsp) unsalted butter, plus more as needed, cut into 1-inch (2.5 cm) pieces
220 g (1¾ cups plus 1 heaping Tbsp) all-purpose flour
70 g (½ cup plus 1 Tbsp) spelt flour
1 tsp baking soda
230 g (1 cup plus 1 Tbsp plus 1 tsp) light brown sugar
175 g (¾ cup plus 1 Tbsps) granulated sugar
1¼ tsps kosher salt
2 large eggs, at room temperature
2 tsps vanilla extract
2 tsps cinnamon
1 tsp ground cardamom
½ tsp ground nutmeg
Pinch of cloves
Flaky sea salt (such as Maldon), for sprinkling
1. In a small pot over medium heat, melt the butter. Cook, stirring occasionally, until fragrant and the milk solids are browned, 5 to 7 minutes. Place the bowl of a stand mixer (or a large bowl) on a scale and tare it. Transfer the melted butter to the bowl and weigh it to make sure you have exactly 200 grams / 7oz. If you are short, add more butter and stir to melt. Whisk in the cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, and cloves. Let the butter mixture cool for 10 minutes.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the all-purpose flour, spelt flour, and baking soda.
3. Place the bowl with the brown butter on a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or use a handheld mixer) and add the brown sugar, granulated sugar, and kosher salt. Beat on medium speed until combined, about 2 minutes.
4. Add the eggs and vanilla and beat until smooth and well incorporated, about 2 minutes.
5. With the mixer on low speed, in two additions, add the flour mixture and mix until smooth.
6. Using a large cookie scoop or a ¼-cup measuring cup, scoop the dough into about twenty 60-gram balls and place them on two quarter-sheet pans. Place the dough balls in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes or up to 3 hours. Hildegard von Bingen obviously didn’t do this. Perhaps she left them on a cold stone escarpment? (Alternatively, the dough balls can be stored in an airtight container in the freezer for up to 3 months before baking.)
7. Position racks in the lower and upper thirds of the oven and preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C). Line two half-sheet pans with parchment paper.
8. Place the chilled cookies on the prepared half-sheet pans 3 inches (7.5 cm) apart, about six cookies per pan. (You may need to bake the cookies in batches if they don’t all fit on two pans.) Flatten the balls with your palm to about 2½ inches (6 cm) in diameter. Sprinkle the cookies with sea salt.
9. Bake for 6 minutes. Working one at a time, remove the sheet pans from the oven and bang them on a sturdy heatproof surface. The domed cookies will collapse and crinkle. Switch racks and rotate the sheet pans front to back when you return the cookies to the oven. Continue baking the cookies until the centers are set and the edges are browned, 3 to 5 minutes more.
Tanya Bush is a baker and writer in Brooklyn. She is the author of the narrative cookbook Will This Make You Happy, the co-founder of Cake Zine, and the pastry chef at Little Egg. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, The New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, and elsewhere.
