I learned a fun fact about old recipes last night… There’s a new edition of a cookbook published in 1866:

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/20/nx-s1-5299983/first-cookbook-by-black-american-woman-malinda-russell

But the recipes are a little inscrutable:

“One pound flour. One ditto butter. Nine eggs. Two quarts milk. A little yeast mixed together warm.”

WTF is a “ditto”?

See also here from 1806:

https://www.tastinghistory.com/recipes/routcakes

“Rout Drop Cakes. Mix two pounds of flour, one ditto butter, one ditto sugar, one ditto currants, clean and dry; then wet into a stiff paste, with two eggs, a large spoon of orange-flower water, ditto rose-water, ditto sweet wine, ditto brandy, drop on a tin-plate floured; a very short time bakes them.”

It makes more sense if you lay it out like a modern recipe:

two pounds of flour
two pounds (one ditto) butter
two pounds (one ditto) sugar
two pounds (one ditto) currants
two eggs
a large spoon of orange-flower water
a large spoon of (ditto) rose-water
a large spoon of (ditto) sweet wine
a large spoon of (ditto) brandy