Boy's Coffee

Mrs. Beecher's Domestic Receipt Book [1850]

I am sure that, like me, you are fascinated by temperance beverages and children's drinks, as you do not drink alcohol, tea, or coffee. No? Well tough cookies to you! It is time for some Boy's Coffee.

Green tea and coffee, as ordinarily used, are very injurious to very many constitutions. They contain but very little nourishment, except what is added by the milk and sugar, and training a family of children to love them (for no child loves them till trained to do it) is making it probable that all of them will be less healthful and comfortable, and certain that some will be great sufferers. Training children to drink tea and coffee is as unreasonable and unchristian, as training them to drink foxglove and opium would be--the only difference is, that in one case it is customary, and the other it is not; and custom makes a practice appear less foolish and sinful.

There is no need, at this period of the world, to point out the wickedness and folly of training children to love alcoholic drinks.

Boy's Coffee.

Crumb bread, or dry toast, into a bowl. Put on a plenty of sugar, or molasses. Put in one half milk and one half boiling water. To be eaten with a spoon, or drank if preferred. Molasses for sweetening is preferred by most children.


Verdict: Meh. It's basically cambric tea, but with molasses (sorghum, of course) and bits of bread. Not bad, really, but not very good, either. Much like a bland breakfast cereal. It reminds me of that (very) old breakfast classic, warm milk poured over bread. I'm fairly certain that most modern children would just look at you incredulously if you served this to them, but that theory remains to be tested.*

*on unsuspecting nieces and nephews. Ah ha ha ha ha ha.

Effervescing Jelly Drink

Mrs. Beecher's Domestic Receipt Book [1850]

I am on a roll! Let us try again at effervescing beverages.



Effervescing Jelly Drinks.
When jams or jellies are too old to be good for table use, mix them with good vinegar, and then use them with soda, or saleratus*, as directed above.


Verdict: While better than the Effervescing Fruit Drink, still not great. The sugar in the strawberry jam helped somewhat, as did my adding of much, much less vinegar. It does fizz entertainingly, though. I shall experiment sometime with some sort of fruity syrup in a last attempt to make this tasty.


*The naturally occurring form of baking soda.

Effervescing Fruit Drinks

Mrs. Beecher's Domestic Receipt Book [1850]

Another temperance beverage!

Effervescing Fruit Drinks.
Very fine drinks for summer are prepared by putting strawberries, raspberries, or blackberries into good vinegar and then straining it off, and adding a new supply of fruit till enough flavor is secured, as directed in Strawberry Vinegar. Keep the vinegar bottled, and in hot weather use it thus. Dissolve half a teaspoonful or less of saleratus*, or soda in a tumbler, very little water till the lumps are all out. Then fill the tumbler two-thirds full of water, and then add the fruit vinegar. If several are to drink, put the soda, or saleratus into the pitcher, and then put the fruit vinegar into each tumbler, and pour the alkali water from the pitcher into each tumbler, as each person is all ready to drink, as delay spoils it.


Verdict: GET IT OUT OF MY MOUTH GET IT OUT GET IT OUT AUGHHHHHHHHH

Brrrrrrrrr. All right, have rinsed my mouth out now. But it lingers. Oh, how it lingers. Did you notice the lack of sugar? Because I didn't, until I actually started making the recipe. I was concerned, but thought the strawberry might somehow take the edge off, or that the alkalinity of the baking soda would nullify the acid. Not so. Not so. Also, that's a full 1:3 ratio of vinegar to water. I was also silly and added the vinegar to the glass while at my kitchen table. A quick sprint to the sink while yelling, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" was necessary when strawberry vinegar-y foam started pouring over my hand in a seemingly never-ending cascade.

So, the taste. It is like chugging a mouthful of burning, fiery vinegar that is also alive, like some sort of shrieking monster clawing its way down your throat. Have a lemon shrub instead.

*Salaratus is the naturally occurring form of baking soda.

Cambric Tea/White Tea

Being a Temperance supporter as I am, I am pleased to recommend Miss Beecher's Domestic Receipt Book [1850]. Miss Beecher has devoted a whole section of her book to temperance drinks that all may avail themselves of without being subject to the Demon Liquor.

Children's Drinks.
There are drinks easily prepared for children, which they love much better than tea and coffee, for no child at first loves these drinks till trained to it. As their older friends are served with green and black tea, there is a white tea to offer them, which they will always prefer, if properly trained, and it is always healthful.

White Tea.

Put two teaspoonfuls of sugar into half a cup of good milk, and fill it with boiling water.


Verdict: Really nice! It sounds bland and watery, I know, and two teaspoons does not sound like very much. But, surprisingly it is... nice. Just sweet enough, and incredibly soothing, much like feeling a warm tabby cat curl up on your stomach. The first time I used skim milk, and that was lovely. The second time I added a shot of half-and-half, and that was even lovelier. The third time I used honey instead of milk, but it just wasn't the same. Perfect for a soothing warm drink, a means to decrease your tea consumption, or a tea party with children.

***
Cambric tea and white tea are the same thing. A splash of actual tea is optional, as in the following:

The cold crept in from the corners of the shanty, closer and closer to the stove. Icy-cold breezes sucked and fluttered the curtains around the beds. The little shanty quivered in the storm. But the steamy smell of boiling beans was good and seemed to make the air warmer.

At noon Ma sliced bread and filled bowls with the hot bean broth and they all ate where they were, close to the stove. They all drank cups of strong, hot tea. Ma even gave Grace a cup of cambric tea. Cambric tea was hot water and milk, with only a taste of tea in it, but little girls felt grown-up when their mothers let them drink cambric tea. ~The Long Winter, by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Cocky Leeky... soup?

A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Poor [1852]

Ah, Charles Elme Francatelli, LATE MAÎTRE D'HÔTEL AND CHIEF COOK TO HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN. He had such good intentions. He was so concerned for the welfare of the poor people, he wrote them a whole cookbook. His Yorkshire Pie-Clates were quite tasty. His No. 3 Economical Pot Liquor Soup, less so. Which dish shall break the tie, perhaps redeeming his cookbook for the deserving poor on this, Christmas Day?



Oh. Oh dear.

Cocky Leeky.
I hope that at some odd times you may afford yourselves an old hen or cock; and when this occurs, this is the way in which I recommend that it be cooked, viz.:—First pluck, draw, singe off the hairs, and tie the fowl up in a plump shape; next, put it into a boiling-pot with a gallon of water, and a pound of Patna rice, a dozen leeks cut in pieces, some peppercorns and salt to season; boil the whole very gently for three hours, and divide the fowl to be eaten with the soup, which will prove not only nourishing but invigorating to the system.

Verdict: Just... just give me a moment. Okay. All right. Don't make this. Really, really don't make this. Rice... was not meant to be boiled for 3 hours. It is an abomination. There was too much stuff for it to be a soup, so instead it is a mucusy sludge. It is a strange, squiggly feeling, watching it slither off one's flatware. The rice/leek mucus does not taste very much like chicken, more of faintly onioned watery rice.

The chicken was just fine, but had the distressing tendency to sink beneath the surface of the rice/leek mucus like an alligator in a swamp. Every time I tried to get a good bite of chicken, it was sucked into the mucus and slimed.

Now that that's over with, hey! Look at this cool leek!



It's curly inside! Neato! Have you ever seen a leek do this?

Now go. Enjoy Christmas! And if you don't celebrate Christmas, celebrate the 25th of December by not making this.

Borden's Meat Biscuits

******This just in from:

New Article of Food - Meat Biscuit.

Some time since we noticed a new kind of Meat Biscuit, or “Portable Desiccated Soup Bread,” invented by Mr. Gail Borden, Jr., a highly respectable citizen of Galveston, Texas. The discovery being fully secured by a patent recently granted, we will give a brief but clear description of it, as it is an invention of the first importance, both to our own country, and it may be said, to the whole human race. The nature of this discovery consists in preserving the concentrated nutritious properties of flesh meat of any kind, combining it with flour and baking it into biscuits. One pound of this bread contains the extract of more than five pounds of the best meat—(containing its usual proportion of bone)—and one ounce of it will make a pint of rich soup. Biscuits by Mr. Borden’s process may be made of beef, veal, fowl's flesh, oysters, &c., and thus in a compact form the very essence of agricultural products, fitted for the traveller or mariner, or for the dwellers in distant cities, may be transported by sea or land, from distant rural districts, where flesh meat is comparatively cheap.



In a letter to Dr. Ashbel Smith, Mr. Borden thus relates the way he made this discovery:

"I was endeavoring to make some portable meat glue (the common kind known) for some friends who were going to California—I had set up a large kettle and evaporating pan, and after two days labour I reduced one hundred and twenty pounds of veal to ten pounds of extract, of a consistence like melted glue and molasses; the weather was warm and rainy, it being the middle of July. I could not dry it either in or out of the house, and unwilling to lose my labour, it occured to me, after various expedients, to mix the article with good flour and bake it. To my great satisfaction, the bread was found to contain all the primary principles of meat, and with a better flavor than simple veal soup, thickened with flour in the ordinary method.

...


“The nutritive portions of beef or other meat, immediately on its being slaughtered, are, by long boiling, separated from the bones and fibrous and cartilaginous matters: the water holding the nutritious matters in solution, is evaporated to a considerable degree of spissitude—this is then made into a dough with firm wheaten flour, the dough rolled and cut into a form of biscuits, is then desiccated, or baked in an oven at a moderate heat. The cooking, both of the flour and the animal food, is thus complete. The meat biscuits thus prepared have the appearance and firmness of the nicest crackers or navy bread, being as dry, and breaking or pulverizing as readily as the most carefully made table crackers. It is preserved in the form of biscuit, or reduced to coarse flour or meal. It is best kept in tin cases hermetically soldered up ; the exclusion of air is not important, humidity alone is to be guarded against.

For making soup of the meat biscuit, a batter is first made of the pulverized biscuit and cold water—this is stirred into boiling water—the boiling is continued some ten or twenty minutes—salt, pepper, and other condiments are added to suit the taste, and the soup is ready for the table.

I have eaten the soup several times,—it has the fresh, lively, clean, and thoroughly done or cooked flavor that used to form the charm of the soups of the Rocher de Cancale. It is perfectly free from that vapid unctuous stale taste which characterizes all prepared soups I have heretofore tried at sea and elsewhere. Those chemical changes in food which, in common language, we denominate cooking, have been perfectly effected in Mr. Borden’s biscuit by the long continued boiling at first, and the subsequent baking or roasting. The soup prepared of it is thus ready to be absorbed into the system without loss, and without tedious digestion in the alimentary canal, and is in the highest degree nutritious and invigorating. [March 23, 1850]*****

For those who are not culinary chronaviatrices, as I am, here's how to do it for yourself! We're basically going to make meat-flavored hardtack.

Homemade Meat Biscuits
Beef bouillon
Flour
Water

1. Mix flour with bouillon. If it is the paste kind, which is my personal favorite, mash it together with your spoon until it is completely mixed together and looks like whole wheat flour because of all the speckles in the flour. Do not use too much flour, you are not making a bread, you are making a stabilizer for the bouillon.
2. Add just enough cold water to make a very, very stiff dough. It should hold together, but not be sticky.
3. Roll out quite thinly, and cut into pieces.
4. Bake at 300 degrees F. for 30 minutes, or until completely dry and hard.
5. To make into soup, smash it up in cold water with something heavy, like a meat tenderizer, then boil in more water.

Verdict: It was okay! The broth was pretty weak in the end, but more biscuits would have helped that. I thought the flour would thicken the soup, but instead it made little crumbly sediment at the bottom, which is fine. I can see how this would be a useful addition to a wagon headed west. These meat biscuits never got truly popular, but more than one wagon included a barrel of them amongst their supplies. "But Jana!" I hear you say. "Isn't it easier just to have bouillon?" Yes. Yes it is. But this is the 1850's. If you want bouillon, I will provide you with another recipe from this time:

1. Make beef stock.
2. Boil forever.
3. Pour into shallow pans and leave in the sun.
4. Leave it there until it is dry.

I had the chance to let husband think these were cookies, but did not take it. I am such a nice wife.

I feel like this product should have a jingle. Can you think of something?

Resources:
Today in Science History: Borden's Meat Biscuit
Wagon Wheel Kitchens: Food on the Oregon Trail

Yorkshire Pie-Clates

Remember No. 3 Economical Pot Liquor Soup? This is from the same cookbook, A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes [1852], by Charles Elme Francatelli.

He looks sad. Maybe he's been living on No. 3 Economical Pot Liquor Soup for a while. Anyway, this recipe is a lot better.

Yorkshire Pie-clates [pikelets] for Tea.
Ingredients, one pound of flour, two ounces of grocer's currants, three gills* of milk, and a pinch of baking-powder. Mix the above ingredients together in a pan into a firm, smooth, compact paste. Divide this into eight equal parts, roll each into a ball with the hand previously dipped in flour, then roll them out with a rolling-pin, with a little flour shaken on the table to prevent the paste from sticking, to the size of a tea-saucer, and bake the pie-clates upon a griddle-iron fixed over a clear fire to the upper bar of the grate. In about two or three minutes' time they will be done on the underside; they must then be turned over that they may be also baked on the other side, then taken off the griddle-iron, placed on a plate, and a little butter spread upon each as they are done out of hand.



Revised Yorkshire Pie-Clates [pikelets] for Tea
4 C. flour
1/2 C. currants (or raisins)
1 t. baking powder
15 oz. milk

Mix flour, currants, and baking powder together, then stir in milk until it is a doughy ball. Divide into eight pieces and roll out to... well, the size of a very small plate. Don't get fussy with me, precision is not called for. Cover the bottom of a frying pan with oil and fry on both sides, like a pancake. Rub or spread with butter. Sprinkle with sugar if you like as well, it is tasty.

Verdict:
These are much like Navajo tacos, only with raisins. It was fast, easy, cheap, didn't require very many ingredients, and tasted like fry bread. I call this one a victory. Mr. Francatelli has redeemed himself a little, although the soup wasn't that bad either. I made half a recipe, and we ate all of them right away. I imagine this would be smashing with jam as well.


Moo.


*1 gill = 5 oz.

No. 3 Economical Pot Liquor Soup

This is from A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes, by Charles Elme Francatelli, LATE MAÎTRE D'HÔTEL AND CHIEF COOK TO HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN [1852]. I don't make the capitalization, I just transcribe it. Well. Also I just copied and pasted. I didn't want to look up how to do all those dealies that go over the letters.

My object in writing this little book is to show you how you may prepare and cook your daily food, so as to obtain from it the greatest amount of nourishment at the least possible expense; and thus, by skill and economy, add, at the same time, to your comfort and to your comparatively slender means. The Recipes which it contains will afford sufficient variety, from the simple every-day fare to more tasty dishes for the birthday, Christmas-day, or other festive occasions.

So, what can we expect in the way of a nourishing, comforting meal on the cheap?

No. 3. Economical Pot Liquor Soup.
A thrifty housewife will not require that I should tell her to save the liquor in which the beef has been boiled; I will therefore take it for granted that the next day she carefully removes the grease, which will have become set firm on the top of the broth, into her fat pot; this must be kept to make a pie-crust, or to fry potatoes, or any remains of vegetables, onions, or fish. The liquor must be tasted, and if it is found to be too salt, some water must be added to lessen its saltness, and render it palatable. The pot containing the liquor must then be placed on the fire to boil, and when the scum rises to the surface it should be removed with a spoon. While the broth is boiling, put as many piled-up table-spoonfuls of oatmeal as you have pints of liquor into a basin; mix this with cold water into a smooth liquid batter, and then stir it into the boiling soup; season with some pepper and a good pinch of allspice, and continue stirring the soup with a stick or spoon on the fire for about twenty minutes; you will then be able to serve out a plentiful and nourishing meal to a large family at a cost of not more than the price of the oatmeal.




No. 3 Economical Pot Liquor Soup II
Boil some beef broth. For every 2 cups of broth, add 1 heaping tablespoon of oatmeal. Boil 20 minutes.

There, was that so hard, Charles Elme Francatelli, LATE MAÎTRE D'HÔTEL AND CHIEF COOK TO HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN?

Verdict:

It was fine. The oatmeal reminded me a lot of barley, actually, which was pleasantly surprising. The allspice was a little odd, but I didn't put in enough that you could tell that is what it was. It just added an interesting background flavor. This was preeeeeetty thin on the nourishing and comforting side though. I feel sorry for people who'd have to eat this and only this for dinner on a regular basis because they really could not afford anything more. Poor guys.



Rejected: This is my new section where I give you a recipe from the book that I did NOT make, for very good reasons.

No. 24. A Pudding made of Small Birds.
Industrious and intelligent boys who live in the country, are mostly well up in the cunning art of catching small birds at odd times during the winter months. So, my young friends, when you have been so fortunate as to succeed in making a good catch of a couple of dozen of birds, you must first pluck them free from feathers, cut off their heads and claws, and pick out their gizzards from their sides with the point of a small knife, and then hand the birds over to your mother, who, by following these instructions, will prepare a famous pudding for your dinner or supper. First, fry the birds whole with a little butter, shalot, parsley, thyme, and winter savory, all chopped small, pepper and salt to season; and when the birds are half done, shake in a small handful of flour, add rather better than a gill of water, stir the whole on the fire while boiling for ten minutes, and when the stew of birds is nearly cold, pour it all into a good-sized pudding basin, which has been ready-lined with either a suet and flour crust, or else a dripping-crust, cover the pudding in with a piece of the paste, and either bake or boil it for about an hour and-a-half.