Anyone Familiar With This Word/Phrase?

rugcat said:

I was reading a kids' book from the forties, and someone on a trip packs a "double rule of molasses cookies she baked for them."

At first I thought it was something like an amount or portion, but I can't find it anywhere. Then I thought maybe it means two lines (rules) of cookies.

But later, someone gets sick because they ate the entire double rule of cookies that was sent to them.

A colloquialism? Any ideas?

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Could it mean a double recipe/batch? So if the recipe yields, say, 25 cookies, she doubled it?

rugcat said:

A colloquialism? Any ideas?

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I've got a pretty decent corpus for linguistic context data, and it goes back to the early 1800s.

I can't find a usage of the sort you mean in either my UK or U.S. corpora.

Nor can I find an instance in any of my dictionaries--including slang dictionaries, and the OED.

I suspect it's an authorial idiosyncrasy, derived from the use of "double rule" in terms of accounting and typesetting; two straight lines, fairly close together, of the same length.

So, like your hypothesis, two "rows" of cookies.

It's a very odd thing to write though--you have no real idea of quantity since you don't know the length of the rows, just that there are two of them.

Possibly means a dozen. 12 inches to a ruler?

absitinvidia said:

Could it mean a double recipe/batch? So if the recipe yields, say, 25 cookies, she doubled it?

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Yes. Exactly this when applied to a cooking recipe.

Authority: My German Grandmother in Illinois, by way of my mom.

I think it actually means double layered - like when you bake two halves of a sponge cake in separate tins and then squish them together with jam.

http://www.wordnik.com/words/double%20rule/examples

And it appears in the singular here for a single layer of sponge.

http://www.cookingchoice.com/htdoc/desserts/charlottes.shtml

It seems to mean two of whatever the recipe normally demands. "Rule" seems to be used sometimes as a synonym for "recipe".

Here are some lines from Della Lutes's books about her 19th Century Michigan childhood, written in the 1930's:

"Unfortunately, I can find no record of her exact rule..."
"A rule guaranteed by one who in her youth knew my Aunt Martha..."
(both from Home Grown)

"I guess we all know about your sour-cream cookies, Miz' Thompson. I wisht you'd give me the rule for 'em."
(from The Country Kitchen)

In every place, "rule" means "recipe," so I would guess that the "double batch" people are right.

bonitakale said:

Here are some lines from Della Lutes's books about her 19th Century Michigan childhood, written in the 1930's:

"Unfortunately, I can find no record of her exact rule..."
"A rule guaranteed by one who in her youth knew my Aunt Martha..."
(both from Home Grown)

"I guess we all know about your sour-cream cookies, Miz' Thompson. I wisht you'd give me the rule for 'em."
(from The Country Kitchen)

In every place, "rule" means "recipe," so I would guess that the "double batch" people are right.

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Ha!

You lot are friggin' brilliant. Rule for "recipe; receipt" is a dialect marker for west of the Mississippi, and--this part confuses me, though I admit my geography is weak--the Ozarks?

That seems well, odd, to me. That's two very separate regions.

Medievalist said:

Ha!

You lot are friggin' brilliant. Rule for "recipe; receipt" is a dialect marker for west of the Mississippi, and--this part confuses me, though I admit my geography is weak--the Ozarks?

That seems well, odd, to me. That's two very separate regions.

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Well, Michigan is east of the Mississippi, and that's where Della Lutes grew up. Sounds more generally 'country' and/or 'old-fashioned' to me.

Medievalist said:

Nor can I find an instance in any of my dictionaries--including slang dictionaries, and the OED.

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Do you have Green, by the way?