Food History

Today a friend gave me a late Christmas present of a type of Polish cake I’ve not had in years. It’s a very fine cake, with an even grain and many spices. It has ground almonds and walnuts, but not enough honey to make it a honey cake. It sits on a bed of wafer. She always makes it this time of year and gives it to friends.

This is a lovely foodway and I’d really like to know more of it. I’d especially like some cake recipes to share with you, of course. Alas, this isn’t my area and (despite my surname) I don’t read Polish. Can anyone help?

Everyone I know seems to be cooking up a storm for holiday guests. In a couple of days holidays will be over for most people. In the meantime, you might want a few biscuit and scone recipes. Handy for the collection I’m making on this blog, and handy for your store cupboard.

There’s always a guest who comes just after the holidays and who deserves home made biscuits. These ones are particularly sound in a political sense*. They may delight the heart of your after-holiday visitor or they may lure them to great wrath (”Women? Voting? Preposterous!!”) in which case you get to finish the plate in comfort after they’ve stormed off in high dudgeon.

Cookies

One cupful sour rich cream, one cupful white sugar, one-half teaspoonful soda, flour enough for a soft dough-only enough to roll out easily; salt and nutmeg if desired.
MRS. SARA T. L. ROBINSON.

Cream Cookies

Two cupfuls of sugar, one cupful of butter, one-half cupful of sour cream, one level teaspoonful of soda dissolved in a little hot water, enough flour to roll out as soft as possible.
EMILY S. BOUTON.

Fruit Cookies

One and one-half cupfuls sugar, one-half cupful butter, five tablespoonfuls milk, one teaspoonful soda, spice of all kinds, one cupful currants or raisins, chopped, flour to roll out thin.
MRS. L. W. JONES.

Lep Cookies

One gallon molasses, two pounds lard, one pound citron, one teacupful each of cinnamon and spice, one-half teacupful cloves, four or six nutmegs, two pounds picked nuts (hickory or pecans), flour to make a stiff dough; roll thin, and bake quickly; ice, and dry well before putting away.
MRS. JESSIE F. A. BANKS.

Molasses Cookies

Put into a large coffee-cup one teaspoonful of soda, two tablespoonfuls of hot water and three tablespoonfuls of melted butter. Fill the cup with molasses, add a little ginger if liked. Two cups are enough for one baking. Mix soft and bake quickly.
LOUISA G. ALDRICH.

Molasses Cookies

One egg, one cup molasses, one-half cup of sugar, one teaspoonful each of salt, soda and ginger; flour enough to roll easily. This receipt calls for neither milk or shortening, and makes very nice cookies. Bake in quick oven.
MRS. ELLIE A. HILL.

New Bedford Cookies

Two cups of sugar, one cup of sour milk with half a teaspoonful of soda dissolved in it, one cup of butter. Flour to roll not too stiff, and bake quickly.
EMILY A. FIFIELD.

Spiced Cookies

One cup of sugar, two cups of molasses, two-thirds of a cup of butter, one cup of milk, one teaspoonful of soda, one small teaspoonful of cloves, and one small teaspoonful of cinnamon, two eggs, one-half a nutmeg, and five cups of flour.
LOUISA G. ALDRICH.

Sugar Cookies

One egg, one cup of sugar, half a cup (scant) of butter, half a cup of milk, nutmeg to taste, two teaspoonfuls of cream of tartar, one of soda. Make soft dough as can be handled; roll thin and bake in quick oven.
MRS. ELLIE A. HILL.

Sugar Cookies

Two eggs, one cup sugar, two thirds cup of butter and lard, one teaspoonful cream-tartar, one scant teaspoonful soda, two tablespoonfuls cold water. Flavor with lemon; flour to roll. Roll thin. Bake in quick oven.
MRS. M. A. EVERETT.

*They come from the 2nd edition of The Woman Suffrage Cook Book, 1890.

Happy New Year, everyone. May you all have beautiful and delightful years, full of everything you want and need and missing all misery.

My New Year’s Eve dinner was a traditional Aussie BBQ (in more than traditional Aussie heat). We ate early, because even a medium dinner in thirty-three degree heat requires the fullness of the evening to digest.

Why on earth do we do this to ourselves? Why don’t we simply live on leafy greens and slivers of ice for a month instead of eating full meals? It’s food history, of course. Australia was settled by the British and every time we eat a meal full of meat and bread and potato, we’re remembering our past, even when we don’t quite realise it.

What was wonderful about my New Year’s Eve barbecue was the way it summed up my Old Year. We had hamburgers with beetroot and accompanied by potato salad.. The small sausages were from my favourite local farm and we ate them with home made Southern ketchup, preserved in my mother’s forty-five year old Fowler’s Vacola kit. The dessert was raspberry icecream cooked to a 1920s recipe by Kate. It’s perfect on a hot day - the ideal summer icecream, light and with a flavour that fills the mouth.

I didn’t want to share it, but my freezer bulged prior to dismantlement. My New year present to myself is a new secondhand refrigerator big enough to deal with my lifestyle – my current one is 270 litres, 1/3 of which is unusable and which is patently just not working and which I equally patently dying of old age. From tomorrow I shall have enough space for all the homemade icecream my friends give me!

One very important bit of New Year’s Day was also to do with food memories. I had black eyed peas and broccolini to toast my best friend, who is from Arkansas. The broccolini was because Southern greens are just not that easy to come by in Australia in midsummer. I made a rather yummy sauce for this dish and it made a delightful small dinner for a very hot day.

I celebrated a number of friends and some family and remembered foodways through my meals. That’s why they were perfect. The flavours were pretty perfect too, but flavours without meaning are far less vivid.

Did any of you have good food memories in your end-of-year or beginning-of-year meals?

When people tell a group “Merry Christmas everyone” I always have to bite my tongue to avoid adding “And well over the Fast.” It’s because Christmas is very closely linked to New Year in general Aussie culture and of course, one of the new years in my branch of Aussie culture is followed by a fast. This is pure culture confusion added to a little mild frustration that the person giving such generous wishes kind of forgets that not all of us share Christmas.

This would normally be the start of a big grouch. It isn’t. It’s the start of a bit of food history wonderment. (more…)

Welcome everyone to the Carnival of the Recipes #174. I’m sorry this is a bit more disorderly than my posts normally are, but it’s Christmas Eve Downunder and – though it ought not touch me at all (since I’m Jewish) I’ve been invited to a friend’s place for the whole shebang, including a full day’s preparations. I’ve tried to make up for lack of editing time with some bad jokes. Think of them as fine seasoning, since I can’t plate the meal beautifully. (more…)

You don’t have nearly enough cookie recipes yet. I’m assuming this because all my friends who do that mysterious and little-known festival called Christmas are baking and baking and baking. Slices and biscuits and every kind of cake, as well as identifiable recipes such as plum pudding and Christmas cake.

Me? I’m taking pasta with avocado and macadamia cream sauce (maybe also artichokes in the sauce – I need to think about this) to Christmas lunch at a friends, and that’s really all the cooking I have to do.

Today’s recipes are from 1845, (more…)

What do American Orphans recommend for Christmas? Especially what did they recommend in 1798? Amelia Simmons in her American Cookery, gave us two cookie recipes, which means I get to add to my biscuit recipes and you get something a bit different to all the pudding variants. (more…)

The elegance of the moustache cup made me think of India in the late nineteenth century. This means – naturally – that you get some Christmas recipes from there. We are still in a stormy zone, so I’m going to keep the introduction and explanations down to a minimum. These recipes come from The Indian Cookery Book, Calcutta.

Christmas Plum Pudding (Indian Way) (more…)

I’m sneaking this post in before the thunderstorm hits. A recipe from The New Dr. Price Cook Book, 1921.

I’ve just rediscovered that glace ginger is really good to help prevent the summer thunderstorm aches. Doesn’t solve them all, but it makes me feel all kinds of warm inside. I’m trying to make you feel all kinds of warm inside, too.

A couple of you were fretted by the amount of suet (more…)

All around me people are panicking and making pronouncements and cooking and creating plum puddings and cakes. To celebrate the vast amount of festive fare being created in the Christmassy hemisphere (as opposed to the places the rest of us live, which presumably are lacking in reindeer and elves) I’m going to give you a bunch of plum puddings, from The complete cook by J. M. Sanderson, 1864. No history lessons today – these plum puddings will leave you too full to think.

Plum Pudding Sauce. (more…)

On the 2nd day of Christmas recipes I bring you lots of plum pudding from Ideas for refreshment rooms (more…)

I promised you recipes from quite a different source. From teaching women how to be traditional, we have traditional women who demand their rights.

They proved they can cook by giving us volume after volume of fabulous recipes. They proved their politics in the title and the subtext of the books. The US was much later than Australia in getting the vote to women at the Federal level. This is rather odd, because US women were politicised early and actually had a significant amount of power at the time the US broke away from Britain.

Then it changed. From being ahead of the world, the US took a step back. (more…)

Are you entirely fed up with posts about fried food? I hope not, because I really want to do two more. I have lots more recipes, for one thing. For the other thing, there’s information in those recipes and it needs extracting.

Yes, you guessed it - I’m in educational mode. Almost direly educational, at that.

This post is all about a particular cookbook that was targetted at young women who had to learn their housewifely skills. The sort you get as an engagement present by well-meaning cousins who hardly know you. The next is the other end of the spectrum. You’ll understand why I feel so learning-inclined when you see the second post. (I feel like saying “Trust me, I’m a doctor” but, really, “Trust me, I vote” is more appropriate.)

The educational book is rather straightforward. It’s really just a cookbook, but it’s marketed quite narrowly. It reminds me of the Pollyanna book where she gets married and becomes sad and serious and housewifely and boring. I used to call that one (privately, where Pollyanna lovers could not be offended) (more…)

So, what are the new ingedients that people fried with, and why am I so excited? (it’s my second post today and I’m excited - that says a lot)

In older cookbooks the raising agent is yeast or other substances (I’ll introduce you to the other substances one day, I promise - they’re fascinating). Today I’m introducing you to that extraordinary new stuff, baking powder.

It really is surprisingly recent and it has definitely changed the taste of our food and how we cook. I ought to do a special post about it one day. Too much food history and only 24 hours in a day: that’s my problem.

Baking powder had really good advertising. Tonight’s recipes come from The New Dr. Price Cook Book for use with Dr. Price’s phosphate baking powder, Chicago, Royal Baking Powder Co. 1921, and gives you a bit of the newness, the advertorialness and just how recently it came into our lives. Actually, Dr Price’s book is a bit deceptive, as you’ll see by the second book from tonight. Baking powder was in common use by World War I. This gives you the real Educational Stuff - never trust one source! (more…)

Yesterday I read a cookbook that, although the right date for my Prohibition banquet, was entirely the wrong food. It was home cooking and a lot of the recipes looked really scrummy, so I thought you might like an extract for the first of the fried food posts today. The book is The Perry Home Cook Book, by the Ladies of Perry, Kansas, and Vicinity 1920. One day I might have to get hold of a modern community cookbook from Perry, just to compare Perry food over time. Today is not that day, however: today is the day for joyous fried food. (more…)