Good White Cake with Gelatine Frosting (1893, 1900)

 Cooking for Profit: a new American cookbook adapted for the use of all who serve meals for a price, by Jessup Whitehead (1893)

The White House cookbook : a comprehensive cyclopedia of information for the home; containing cooking, toilet, and household recipes, menus, dinner-giving, table etiquette, care of the sick, health suggestions, facts worth knowing, etc. (1900)

The first of these books is unique because it is not intended for private homes, but people who are trying to make a living. As such, it suggests sneaky tricks to maximize profit while maintaining customer health and happiness. Think if you have seen any of these nowadays….  Examples: 

1.) Lots of fish have a whole bunch of names. Collect these, and when you have a glut of one particular sort, just pick a different one of its names for the menu every day, so people think they are getting something new and fancy. 

2.) Do not skimp on bread!  Always make really good bread no matter what, because then people will fill up on bread, which is cheap, and not eat lots of the expensive stuff. 

3.) When using expensive fruit like berries for fillings, use mostly apple cut with just enough juice and berries to make it colored and flavored. 

The real best part of the book is the running account of the author’s feud with her neighbor Mrs. Tingee, a rival and frenemy. 

My custard pies are big and fat — three big cups of custard in each one, and there is room to dive down deep in them; but this! Oh, Mrs. Tingee how could you! It is only the ghost, the shadow, the skeleton of a custard pie. […]Her custard pie is primped and crimped around the edges, but there is nothing of it. It consists of a sheet of bottom crust about as thin as paper, with a yellow layer of custard about as deep as a sheet of blotting paper upon it.

Mrs. Tingee also has something against Italians. 

 “I never could understand,”said Mrs. Tingee, one day, "how the Italians can be so poor, as the papers say they are, and yet eat so much macaroni as the papers tell us they do : I should think it would break them up buying eggs to cook it with.”

How dare they eat pasta!  They are too poor to eat pasta, even homemade! They are probably just pretending to be poor, to trick decent people, when here they are splashing out on a couple eggs shared between the whole family!  OUTRAGEOUS.

I had 5 egg whites leftover from when my daughter made ice cream, so a no-fuss white cake recipe (that doesn’t mind a little bit of egg yolk contamination) seemed just the ticket!  I put in some raspberry flavoring and the last little bit of raspberry jam in the jar.  The #1 most common cake frosting in cookbooks of this era is raw egg white with powdered sugar, or a couple variations of the same.  As raw eggs are not quite The Thing nowadays for safety reasons, I was glad to see the author recommend an alternative gelatin recipe.  It was kind of chonky and gelatinous (which…makes sense), but her recommendation of putting it in a warm place (in this case, a microwave for about a minute and a half) worked like a charm.  This coating should prevent the cake getting hard and gross for a few days!  

 609— Good White Cake.

A great deal of the fuss and labor some people go through every time a white cake is to be made is altogether needless : to prove it try this easy cake and be surprised that it can be put together so quickly. 

2 cups sugar — a pound.

1 cup melted butter— 1/2 pound.

10 whites of eggs.

1 cup milk.

2 teaspoons baking powder.

1 teaspoon cream tartar.

6 cups flour — 1 1/2 pounds.

Put the sugar and melted butter into the mixing pan along with the whites, not whipped, then take the wire egg beater and beat them together a minute or two; add the milk, powder, cream tartar and flour and some flavoring extract if you choose, and beat it up with a spoon thoroughly. The more it is beaten the whiter and finer the cake. If there is no cream tartar handy use the juice of a lemon. Makes nearly 4 pounds; costs 34 cents. Ought to be frosted the easy way. No. 3; or, with frosting that will slice without breaking. No. 635.

635— Cake Frosting without Eggs.

It is not necessary to have white of eggs to make cake icing or frosting. A better kind of frosting that will not break when the cake is sliced, is made of either dissolved gelatine or powdered gum arabic. They need only be dissolved in boiling water to make a mucilage like the common bottle mucilage in thickness, then beat up sugar in it just the same as with white of eggs. It is quicker to make than the egg kind and is extremely white. If too thick on the cakes, set them in a warm place and this kind of frosting will run down smooth and flossy. There is a powdered kind of gelatin called granulated, that is very good for this purpose.

GELATINE FROSTING. [White House Cookbook]

Soak one teaspoonful of gelatine in one tablespoonful of cold water half an hour, dissolve in two tablespoonfuls of hot water; add one cup of powdered sugar and stir until smooth.

Before heating: clumpy and mucusy

Verdict: Not a bad cake at all!  Kind of dense, more so than than when one whips the egg whites separately to stiff peaks, but not a problem.  It rose a lot in the middle, which made it donut shaped in the Bundt pan, so possibly better in a loaf pan. I made half the recipe and baked it at 350 F. for 45 minutes. All agreed the frosting was better than the stuff from a jar from the store, but not as good as say, buttercream. It’s somewhere between a powdered sugar/water glaze and a frosting, and it does give a beautiful glossy sheen. 

Scalloped Turkey, Brown Bread Sandwiches, Lettuce Salad, Cheese Straws

Boston Cooking School Cook-Book [1896]

With the progress of knowledge the needs of the human body have not been forgotten. During the last decade much time has been given by scientists to the study of foods and their dietetic value, and it is a subject which rightfully should demand much consideration from all. I certainly feel that the time is not far distant when a knowledge of the principles of diet will be an essential part of one's education. Then mankind will eat to live, will be able to do better mental and physical work, and disease will be less frequent. -Fannie Farmer



From the quote above, you may be thinking, "Ha! We have learned nothing and we eat more terribly now than ever before!" We certainly do eat terribly, which is why there is so much obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. However, there are now far fewer cases of rickets, scurvy, and general malnutrition because of the year-round availability of vegetables and increased knowledge of nutrition. So that's something. Furthermore, nowadays you can get gout even if you are not filthy rich! Viva la Revolucion!

Discuss: How do you feel about that quote? In what ways have we gotten better, and what ways have we gotten worse? How would Fannie Farmer feel about eating habits and nutritional education today?

Wow, that sounds just like a writing prompt I would have been given in 9th grade English. Maybe it is the inner need for responsibility and organization after having just been through the 60's and 70's. Come to think of it, that explains a lot about my English teacher as well.



Scalloped Turkey.
Make one cup of sauce, using two tablespoons butter, two tablespoons flour, one-fourth teaspoon salt, few grains of pepper, and one cup stock (obtained by cooking in water bones and skin of a roast turkey). Cut remnants of cold roast turkey in small pieces; there should be one and one-half cups. Sprinkle bottom of buttered baking-dish with seasoned cracker crumbs, add turkey meat, pour over sauce, and sprinkle with buttered cracker crumbs. Bake in a hot oven until crumbs are brown. Turkey, chicken, or veal may be used separately or in combination.



Brown Bread Sandwiches.
Brown Bread to be used for sandwiches is best steamed in one-pound baking-powder boxes. Spread and cut bread as for other sandwiches. Put between layers finely chopped peanuts seasoned with salt; or grated cheese mixed with chopped English walnut meat and seasoned with salt.



Cheese Straws.
Roll puff or plain paste one-fourth inch thick, sprinkle one-half with grated cheese to which has been added few grains of salt and cayenne. Fold, press edges firmly together, fold again, pat and roll out one-fourth inch thick. Sprinkle with cheese and proceed as before; repeat twice. Cut in strips five inches long and one-fourth inch wide. Bake eight minutes in hot oven. Parmesan cheese or equal parts of Parmesan and Edam cheese may be used. Cheese straws are piled log cabin fashion and served with cheese or salad course.


Verdict:

Scalloped Turkey: It is turkey bits, in gravy, with cracker crumbs surrounding it. That's... pretty much it. I ate a few bites and really didn't feel like finishing it. Husband ate all of his and the rest of mine, declaring it to be the perfect soup. ("But it isn't soup!" "It is like stew with all meat. And crackers!") He found it even better when saturated with cheese straws. ("What... what..." "It is like stew with all meat, and crackers, and cheese straws!")



Brown Bread Sandwiches: Another example of sandwiches having fillings before a certain point in time rather than ingredients. Tell a person in the 1890's that you want a ham sandwich with cheese, pickles, and lettuce, and they will look at you oddly, chop them all up into a paste and spread it on. It is frustrating. Anyway, the key to getting the filling to stick the sandwich together is to mash down the cheese really well. It tastes of cheese and walnuts. Not altogether displeasing, but not something I shall ever crave. Husband thought it was good, and said he'd prefer it grilled. Grilled cheese sandwiches are fantastically delicious. Try one with walnuts, why not.

Lettuce Salad: I made lettuce into a salad. Hooray!

Cheese Straws: Why has no one told me about these before? First of all, "paste" here means "pastry." Puff paste, in historical cookbooks, can either mean "puff pastry" or "pie crust", but more usually the latter. I made pie crust and used Parmesan cheese. They were delicious. Pie crust + Cheese = Awesome. As it is written, you can use cheese straws to build a little corral for your salad. So festive!

If you make these, grate your own Parmesan cheese, moisten the surface you are going to put cheese on slightly for better sticking, and don't use store bought pie crust. 1.) Store bought pie crust is terrible 2.) Making pie crust is easier than you think and 3.) The more pie crust dough is handled, the more the gluten develops. The more the gluten develops, the stiffer and harder to work with the dough becomes, thus making it really difficult to roll out thinly. This particular recipe, because of all the folding, re-rolling, and laminating with cheese, makes the dough pretty stiff to roll out by the end, and that was using dough I had handled as gently as if it were a basket of kittens. Store-bought dough comes to you already sharing many characteristics with cardboard.

Fresh Fruits, Rolled Oats in Cream, Baked Sweet Apples, Macaroni with Cream Sauce, Whole-Wheat Puffs, Stewed Peaches, Caramel Coffee

Once upon a time, there was a man named John Harvey Kellogg. He was a big fan of vegetarianism. He ran the Battle Creek Sanitarium, where one of the treatment methods was feeding patients an all-vegetarian diet. Another method was giving patients yogurt enemas. But let us dwell instead on the fact that he invented Kellogg's Cornflakes there. Meanwhile, his wife wrote a whole cookbook based on the foods they served to the patients.



SCIENCE IN THE KITCHEN.
A Scientific Treatise on Food Substances and their Dietetic Properties, Together with a Practical Explanation of the Principles of Healthful Cookery, and a Large Number of Original, Palatable, and Wholesome Recipes, by Mrs. E[lla]. E[rvilla]. Kellogg, A.M. [1893], Superintendent of the Sanitarium School of Cookery and of the Bay View Assembly School of Cookery, and Chairman of the World's Fair Committee on Food Supplies, for Michigan

Her titles, they could be a little more snappy.

A little less than ten years ago the Sanitarium at Battle Creek Mich., established an experimental kitchen and a school of cookery under the supervision of Mrs. Dr. Kellogg, since which time, researches in the various lines of cookery and dietetics have been in constant progress in the experimental kitchen, and regular sessions of the school of cookery have been held. . . . During this time, Mrs. Kellogg has had constant oversight of the cuisine of both the Sanitarium and the Sanitarium Hospital, preparing bills of fare for the general and diet tables, and supplying constantly new methods and original recipes to meet the changing and growing demands of an institution numbering always from 500 to 700 inmates.

Baked Sweet Apple Dessert.—Wash and remove the cores from a dozen medium-sized sweet apples, and one third as many sour ones, and bake until well done. Mash through a colander to make smooth and remove the skins. Put into a granite-ware dish, smooth the top with a knife, return to the oven and bake very slowly until dry enough to keep its shape when cut. Add if desired a meringue made by beating the white of one egg with a tablespoonful of sugar. Cut into squares, and serve in individual dishes. The meringue may be flavored with lemon or dotted with bits of colored sugar.



Macaroni with Cream Sauce.—Cook the macaroni as directed in the proceeding [1 C. macaroni] , and serve with a cream sauce prepared by heating a scant pint of rich milk to boiling, in a double boiler. When boiling, add a heaping tablespoonful of flour, rubbed smoothed in a little milk and one fourth teaspoonful of salt. If desired, the sauce may be flavored by steeping in the milk before thickening for ten or fifteen minutes, a slice of onion or a few bits of celery, and then removing with a fork.




Whole-Wheat Puffs.—Put the yolk of an egg into a basin, and beat the white in a separate dish to a stiff froth. Add to the yolk, one half a cupful of rather thin sweet cream and one cupful of skim milk. Beat the egg, cream, and milk together until perfectly mingled and foamy with air bubbles; then add, gradually, beating well at the same time, one pint of wheat berry flour. Continue the beating vigorously and without interruption for eight or ten minutes; then stir in, lightly, the white of the egg. Do not beat again after the white of the egg is added, but turn at once into heated, shallow irons, and bake for an hour in a moderately quick oven. If properly made and carefully baked, these puffs will be of a fine, even texture throughout, and as light as bread raised by fermentation.




Caramel Coffee.—Take three quarts best bran, one quart corn meal, three tablespoonfuls of molasses; mix and brown in the oven like ordinary coffee. For every cup of coffee required, use one heaping tablespoonful of the caramel. Pour boiling water over it, and steep, not boil, for fifteen or twenty minutes.


Verdict:

Fresh Fruits: They were pears.

Baked Sweet Apples: Gahhhhhhh. It is like eating leathery gloop. It was almost inedible. Eventually, we discovered that the trick to eating it is to put a massive scoop of ice cream on top that completely overshadows the apple gloop.

Then, you scrape the ice cream to the side and eat the ice cream, then skoosh the apple flavored leather gloop a little bit so the melted on ice cream drips off and eat that, then toss the apple gloop in the garbage.

After scraping the excess leathery apple gloop up, we then timed it to see how long it would cling to the spatula. It was a full minute and a half. How we laughed! Ladies, gentlemen, this is how we spent Friday night. Donations of moving picture tickets accepted.

Macaroni with Cream Sauce: SO BLAND. Notice there is no salt or seasoning of any kind, just milk (with a bit of onion simmered in it and then removed because that might have flavor), then flavored with paste. And put on another flavorless thing. So... bland blandy bland blanding bland bland blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand.

Whole-Wheat Puffs: In theory, these work kind of like whole wheat cream puffs. In practice... let me illustrate this with an informational picture.



We tipped them in the garbage. They clanked.

Stewed Peaches: Well, canned peaches.

Caramel Coffee: I don't drink coffee, so I have no basis of comparison. So, if coffee smells of burned popcorn and tastes like licking rusty iron bars, it's perfect!

All together: Husband feels that, contrary to Mrs. E.E. Kellogg's claims, this menu was specifically formulated to make him insane. He rated this meal as the worst ever. He was right. There is something terribly, terribly wrong with a meal in which you carefully hoard your last bite of oatmeal.

Oatmeal Mush with Apples, Hamburg Steaks, Creamed Potatoes, White Corn Cake

Cookery means the knowledge of Medea and of Circe and of Helen and of the Queen of Sheba. It means the knowledge of all herbs and fruits and balms and spices, and all that is healing and sweet in the fields and groves and savory in meals. It means carefulness and inventiveness and willingness and readiness of appliances. It means the economy of your grandmothers and the science of the modern chemist: it means much testing and no wasting; it means English thoroughness and French art and Arabian hospitality; and, in fine, it means that you are to be perfectly and always ladies--loaf givers.--RUSKIN.



Fannie Farmer once again provides us with a menu, this time from her Boston Cooking-School Cookbook [1896]. Thankfully, it does not include bread ice cream or egg sauce.




Oatmeal Mush with Apples.
Core apples, leaving large cavities; pare, and cook until soft in syrup made by boiling sugar and water together. Fill cavities with oatmeal mush; serve with sugar and cream. The syrup should be saved and re-used.



Hamburg Steaks.
Chop finely one pound lean raw beef; season highly with salt, pepper, and a few drops onion juice or one-half shallot finely chopped. Shape, cook, and serve as Meat Cakes. A few gratings of nutmeg and one egg slightly beaten may be added.



I didn't want to do creamed potatoes for the third time, so this picture is of Spry oven-creamed potatoes.

Creamed Potatoes.
Reheat two cups cold boiled potatoes, cut in dice, in one and one-fourth cups White Sauce I.

White Sauce I.
2 tablespoons butter.
2 tablespoons flour.
1 cup milk.
1/4 teaspoon salt.
Few grains pepper.

Make same as Thin White Sauce.



White Corn Cake.
1/4 cup butter.
1/2 cup sugar.
1 1/3 cups milk.
Whites 3 eggs.
1 1/4 cups white corn meal.
1 1/4 cups flour.
4 teaspoons baking powder.
1 teaspoon salt.
Cream the butter; add sugar gradually; add milk, alternating with dry ingredients, mixed and sifted. Beat thoroughly; add whites of eggs beaten stiff. Bake in buttered cake pan thirty minutes.

Verdict:

Oatmeal Mush with Apples: These were super tasty! Much like apple crisp with melted ice cream on top. Have I told you how much I love cream? I love cream. I filled it with microwaved homemade strawberry oatmeal. Yum. While thinking about how I could reuse the syrup as the recipe suggests, I thought you could use the syrup from canned fruit. That would be delicious! Raspberry would be fantastic, and would make the apples attractively rosy.

Hamburg Steaks: I think Fannie Farmer was afraid of onions, much like Aunt Jenny, with her "few drops onion juice." To obtain onion juice, cut the onion in half along the equator, then use your knife to scrape across the surface. I will be honest, I put more than a few drops in. I am a rebel in this way. They were a little bland, but fine.

White Corn Cake: Dryyyyy. So very dry. Apricot-nutmeg jam was helpful to fix this problem. Still not my favorite cornbread recipe.

Fruit, Escaloped meat, Dropped eggs, Raised muffins

Ah, my lovelies! As you may know, husband is out of town and I felt disinclined to cook. However, three of my nieces were in town for me to inflict dinner on. Well, breakfast in this case.



They ate pretty good breakfasts in Ye Oldeny Tymes, yes? Miss Parloa is the author of the cookbook from which this meal comes, entitled Miss Parloa's New Cook Book [1890's at best guess]. This meal is supposed to have corn cakes with it as well, as there is no such thing in the 1800's as too much bread. Unfortunately that recipe takes overnight, and I did not plan ahead. Maybe some other time.




Escaloped Meat
Chop the meat rather coarse. Season with salt and pepper. For one pint
of meat use half a cupful of gravy and a heaping cupful of bread
crumbs. Put a layer of the meat in an escalop dish, then gravy, then a
thin layer of crumbs; and continue this until the dish is full. The
last layer should be a thick one of crumbs. Cook in a hot oven from
fifteen to twenty minutes. All kinds of cold meat can be escaloped,
but beef is so dry that it is not so good as mutton, veal, etc,




Dropped Eggs
Have one quart of boiling water and one table-spoonful of salt in a
frying-pan. Break the eggs, one by one, into a saucer, and slide
carefully into the salted water. Cook until the white is firm, and
lift out with a griddle-cake turner and place on toasted bread. Serve
immediately.



Raised Muffins.

One pint of warm milk, half a cake [I used abt. 1.5 t.] of compressed yeast, or half a
cupful of liquid yeast [sourdough starter]; one quart of flour, one table-spoonful of
butter. Beat two eggs well, and add them and the salt, butter and
yeast to the milk. Stir gradually into the flour. Beat until the
batter is light and smooth. Let it rise four hours in a warm place.
Fill buttered muffin pans two-thirds to the top with the batter, and
let them stand until the batter has risen to the brim. Bake half an
hour.


Verdict:

Fruit: Watermelon. Mmmmmm. Nice change of color from brown and white.

Escaloped meat: Really good! I plan on making it again. I used discount $.59/lb pork chops for the meat and used the drippings for gravy. I didn't actually measure the bread crumbs and gravy. I think it was about 2 cups of meat and a cup of gravy, then Italian bread crumbs on the top until it looked good. This was everyone's favorite. My mom had second helpings, and the kids finished it off piece by piece after they finished their ice cream. They deserved a reward for putting up with their aunt's abnormal hobbies. ;)

Dropped eggs: The picture above was an egg made by my mother. This is mine.



I maintain it is the direction's fault. I did not look up modern directions for poached eggs beforehand, and apparently the water is supposed to be at a gentle bare simmer, not a full rolling boil. This will tear the egg white to shreds, as you see. I fished out the shreds with a slotted spoon and said, "The heck with it. It will taste the same anyway."

Those who liked eggs liked this. I prefer my eggs with crispy edges from frying in butter, but I don't think you can justly compare these. They are just different. This is a smooth, silky egg that is also tasty.

For those who do not like eggs, I can see how this would be an application that would be near the bottom of their list of egg dishes to try. One niece is such a person.



This is her caught in the moment of being nice and polite, but filled with inner turmoil at the thought of having to either gag the egg down or hurt my feelings. Upon being told that time travel dinners are free game not to like because sometimes people in Ye Oldeny Tymes were nuts, she gamely tried a bite just to say she'd done it. What a good sport!

She is still not a fan. ;)

Raised muffins: They were okay. A little heavy, but that may have been my fault. I didn't let them rise for 4 hours, just half an hour. I bet they'd be really good with sourdough starter. They were an excellent conveyance for peach nutmeg freezer jam. One of the nieces helped me, and she did a great job. They were really easy and quick to make, as the dough is thin enough not to require kneading. I think this one is worth trying if you are in need of yeast rolls but do not want to mess up many dishes or spend a lot of time on them.

And a good time was had by all. They knew it was so, for Jana's blog said so.

Cracker-ball Soup, Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding, Creamed Potatoes, Celery, Mince Pie, Apricot Ice Cream, Cheese

The Presbyterian ladies of Recipes Tried and True, [1894], they certainly knew how to put on a spread. Lands! This is the second meal outline of theirs that I have followed, and I am again over-full and satisfied.

I felt like Husband deserved a cracking good meal for putting up with some of the things I have put on the table recently *cough*chicken Jello*cough*, and every time we pass the meat bins in the grocery store, he tries to get roast beef and Yorkshire pudding on the menu. I felt like a super virtuous wife when he came home and exclaimed, "Wow! It smells great in here! Like... like..." "Beef?" "YES." "I'm making Yorkshire pudding." "Really? Sweet! But it also smells like something else... something desserty..." "I also made a pie." "....!!!!"

Then I nudged the laptop upon which I had been watching Hulu.com for the last three hours under the couch with my foot. Shhhh.



A Ms. Ozella Seffner gives us a list of "Plain Family Dinners for a Week in Winter", one of which is as follows:

Cracker-ball Soup
Roast Beef
Yorkshire Pudding
Creamed Potatoes
Celery [didn't have any, used a green apple instead]
Mince Pie
Apricot Ice Cream
Cheese
Coffee or chocolate [We don't drink coffee, drew the line at hot chocolate today. You know. In July.]

Please keep the word "plain" at the forefront of your mind while you peruse the rest of this post.



A FINE SOUP. MRS. W. H. ECKHART. [Cracker-ball soup, presumably]

Take good soup stock and strain it. When it boils add cracker balls, made thus: To one pint of cracker crumbs [I used saltines] add a pinch of salt [omitted because of the SALTines] and pepper, one teaspoonful parsley, cut fine, one teaspoonful baking powder, mixed with the crumbs, one small dessert spoon of butter, one egg; stir all together;

make into balls size of a marble; place on platter to dry for about two hours; when ready to serve your soup put them into the stock; boil five minutes.







Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding
The cookbook with the menu did not provide recipes for all the foods listed, so here is one from my family. For the rest, I used The Boston Cooking School Cook Book [1896].

4 eggs
3 C. milk
1 1/2 t. salt
2 C. flour

Partially cook roast in large dripper pan. A 9x13 also works fine. Standing rib roast is traditional, but other roasts are good too. Beat eggs really well. They should be lemon-colored and foamy. Pour in milk and salt and mix together. Add in flour gradually until it is a smooth batter. Refrigerate until the roast is as partially cooked as you want it to be. Pour pudding mixture over roast. Right over, not around the sides. Bake 10 minutes at 400 degrees F. and then 50 minutes at 350 degrees F. Serve with beef broth. You can either pour the broth over the pudding and beef, or put it in a little cup and dip bites in for maximum broth absorption.




Creamed Potatoes.
Reheat two cups cold boiled potatoes, cut in dice, in one and one-fourth cups White Sauce I.

White Sauce I.
2 tablespoons butter.
2 tablespoons flour.
1 cup milk.
1/4 teaspoon salt.
Few grains pepper.

Put butter in saucepan, stir until melted and bubbling; add flour mixed with seasonings, and stir until thoroughly blended. Pour on gradually the milk, adding about one-third at a time, stirring until well mixed, then beating until smooth and glossy. If a wire whisk is used, all the milk may be added at once; and although more quickly made if milk is scalded, it is not necessary.




Mock Mince Pie.
4 common crackers rolled. [I used 8 saltines]
1 1/2 cups sugar.
1 cup molasses.
1/3 cup lemon juice or vinegar.
1 cup raisins seeded and chopped.
1/2 cup butter.
2 eggs well beaten.
Spices. [cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger. A little clove would be nice.]

Mix ingredients in order given, adding spices to taste. Bake between crusts. This quantity will make two pies. [Wrong, it will make one. Unless you have one of those really petite antique pie pans that actually hold exactly one can of pie filling.]

Lattice-top leaf-wreathed sparkle-top pie crust close up!

I like making pie crusts.


Verdict:

Cracker-ball soup: Really nice! Like a lovely dumpling/noodle type thing, with good flavor and texture. I liked these a lot.

Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding: Not my best Yorkshire pudding, but I have picky standards regarding Yorkshire pudding. Maybe by the time I'm 80, I'll have accomplished Yorkshire pudding as crusty and delicious as my grandma's. Still tasty though! Yorkshire pudding is, for most people in my experience, much like bagpipes or cats. They either love it or hate it. Most imports to my family think it is nasty. When Husband and I were dating, I was worried the first time it appeared at a family dinner. I was pretty sure he'd hate it. He ate about half of a pan of it in one go, claiming it was the perfect combination of two of his favorite foods: beef and bread. And I knew it was meant to be.

Creamed Potatoes: A darn sight better than the Spry ones! Mainly because they were a.) made with butter and b.) did not involve the curious addition of horseradish. They begged for some shredded cheddar added to the sauce, but I resisted. I did eat them with the pieces of Monterey Jack that filled the "cheese" slot in the menu though.

Mince Pie: Surprisingly good! I was worried it would be overwhelming, but the lemon juice cut the sweetness pretty well. I also used sorghum molasses, which is much smoother than sugar cane molasses. I talked about sorghum back here. I liked it better than any mince pie I've ever had. It was kind of like a liquid melty gooey gingersnap.

Apricot Ice Cream: I used leftover Apricot Ice.


Note about mincemeat pie: Some people will tell you that mincemeat does not have meat in it, despite the name. Traditional mincemeat pies really do have meat and/or suet chopped up alongside the dried fruit. And it is fine. Honestly.

Apricot Ice and Cocoanut Cream Cookies

Sometimes, just sometimes, this hobby of mine rewards me with new and delicious treasures. Today, I have two recipes that are fantastic! Hurray!



Apricot Ice
Ice Creams, Water Ices, Frozen Puddings Together With Refreshments for All Social Affairs [1900's?]

1 quart can of apricots
1/2 cupful of sugar
1 pint of water
Juice of one lemon

Press the apricots through a sieve [or, you know, a blender.], add all the other ingredients, and
serve. This is nice served in lemonade glasses for afternoon tea. Pass sweet wafers. [Freeze like ice cream. All the other recipes for fruit ices in this book state this step, this one does not for some reason.]

This will serve eight persons.

***
Important Note:: When I say here "freeze like ice cream", I mean "freeze in an ice cream maker", not "put it into the freezer as if it were a carton of Haagen Daaz." Not that anyone made that mistake. You know who you are.

***



Cocoanut Cream Cookies
The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book [1896]

2 eggs.
1 cup sugar.
1 cup thick cream.
1/2 cup shredded cocoanut.
3 1/2 cups flour.
3 teaspoons baking powder.
1 teaspoon salt.
[extra coconut for sprinkling on top of the dough]

Beat eggs until light, add sugar gradually, cocoanut, cream, and flour mixed and sifted with baking powder. Chill, toss on a floured board, pat and roll one-half inch thick. Sprinkle with cocoanut, roll one-fourth inch thick, and shape with a small round cutter, first dipped in flour. Bake on a buttered sheet. [app. 325 degrees for 10 minutes]


Verdict:

Apricot Ice: Yum. The apricot ice has a clean, crisp, refreshing flavor, perfect for a hot summer day. It also makes use of one of my least favorite fruit applications, canned apricots. I'm not a fan of apricots to begin with, but when they are canned they are like dollops of slimy fur. Here, however, they are transformed into something cloying and slithering to something pure and good.

Also a plus, this recipe just requires things from your pantry, and could be easily adapted to other fruits. Other, similar fruit ice recipes are even in the cookbook, but it isn't that hard. No ice cream? Have a need for ice cream but no dollars? Blend up that mysterious can of fruit in the back of your pantry with water, sugar, and possibly lemon juice. Nice.


Cocoanut cream cookies: Also delicious. They are not heavily sweet like a lot of modern cookies that make your teeth hurt biting into them, they are just exactly sweet enough. No more, no less. Perfect. You can eat them with lemonade or apricot ice without wincing as you go back and forth between teeth-aching frosting and sharp citrus. The texture is sort of like a soft sugar cookie, like a much better version of those pink-frosting sugar cookies you get in grocery stores. I imagine these would work really well at a wedding reception, baby/bridal shower, etc.

As a bonus, by convenient happenstance they are low fat! "But Jana!" you say. "They clearly have cream in them! And cream is fattening!" Well, yes, yes it is. But less fattening then butter. Butter is all the fat and a few of the milk solids from cream. Ninety-eight percent of the cookie recipes I can think of off the top of my head use some sort of solid fat, be it butter or shortening (Spry shortening, of course!). This one, however, uses only cream. Therefore, it is low fat. Go. Make. Eat. Feel not thou guilty.

Brown Bread Ice Cream

I took a challenge to recreate a historical ice cream recipe. Of course I couldn't do something like vanilla or strawberry! No.



Brown Bread Ice Cream.
3 pints cream.
1 1/4 cups dried brown bread crumbs.
7/8 cup sugar.
1/4 teaspoon salt.

Soak crumbs in one quart cream, let stand fifteen minutes, rub through sieve, add sugar, salt, and remaining cream; then freeze.



Fannie Farmer again! She is weird.


Verdict:
This was reeeeeeaaaally creamy. Really, really, really creamy. It takes forever to melt! Usually ice cream recipes cut the cream with half-and-half or milk. Not this one, man, not this one. In the U.S., ice cream must have no less than 10% milkfat to be labelled ice cream. Some really super premium kinds have 20% milkfat. Heavy cream, which is what I used, must have no less than 36% milkfat.

Yikes.

The creaminess of it was actually the most remarkable part, rather than the bread crumbs. The bread crumbs dissolved into almost nothing. Pointless!

It tasted of very little. Like really bland, solid whipped cream. I may or may not even finish the rest of the batch. I know! Tossing ice cream!

Melon or Fruit, Graham Cakes, Maple Syrup, New Pickles, Broiled Steak, Corn Oysters, and Cocoa

There can never be too many helps for those who, three times a day, must meet and answer the imperative question, "What shall we eat?" -Recipes Tried and True, by the Presbyterian Ladies' Aid [1894].

The first meal of the day is breakfast. And what a breakfast this is! After eating all of this, I felt ready to go work in the fields for several hours. Unfortunately, I have no fields. Alas. The cookbook was also short on the recipes for the menu items, so I drew from our old friend Fannie Farmer, whose cookbook came out two years later.

I visited my parents and made this meal there, and was granted access to Great-Grandma's Really Sweet China.


The plate is not part of Great-Grandma's Really Sweet China. It is part of Mom's Adequate Correlle.

Melon or Fruit


Graham Cakes/Entire Wheat Griddle-Cakes
1/2 cup entire wheat flour.
1 cup flour.
3 teaspoons baking powder.
1/2 teaspoon salt.
3 tablespoons sugar.
1 egg.
1 1/4 cups milk.
1 tablespoon melted butter.

Prepare and cook as Sweet Milk Griddle-Cakes.*




*Sweet Milk Griddle-Cakes ...Mix and sift dry ingredients; beat egg, add milk, and pour slowly on first mixture. Beat thoroughly, and add butter. Cook as Sour Milk Griddle-Cakes.**

**Sour Milk Griddle-Cakes ...Drop by spoonfuls on a greased hot griddle; cook on one side. When puffed, full of bubbles, and cooked on edges, turn, and cook other side. Serve with butter and maple syrup.


New Pickles
No recipe for this one in either cookbook, so I went with the one in my family for fresh pickles. It is as follows:

Fresh Cucumber Pickles
sliced cucumber
sliced onion
white vinegar
water
sugar
salt

Make a solution of one part vinegar, one part water. Add a couple teaspoons of sugar and one of salt. Do not worry. More or less will be fine. Put in the cucumbers and onions and refrigerate for an hour or two. Or 15 minutes. I don't care. Eat them.



If you want to be fancy, score the sides of the cucumber with a fork before you cut it. Then when you slice it, the slices will have an attractive edge like these ones. If you use red onions, after a couple days the solution will turn an attractive pink. You can also reuse the vinegar/water stuff, just throw in more cucumbers.

Broiled Steak


Corn Oysters
Grate raw corn from cobs. To one cup pulp add one well beaten egg, one-fourth cup flour, and season highly with salt and pepper. Drop by spoonfuls and fry in deep fat, or cook on a hot, well greased griddle. They should be made about the size of large oyster.



Breakfast Cocoa
1 1/2 tablespoons prepared cocoa.
2 tablespoons sugar.
2 cups boiling water.
2 cups milk.
Few grains salt.

Scald milk. Mix cocoa, sugar, and salt, dilute with one-half cup boiling water to make smooth paste, add remaining water and boil one minute; turn into scalded milk and beat two minutes, using Dover egg-beater.



Verdict:

Melon or Fruit: It is cantaloupe. And cherries. These and the new pickles really went well with the other, heavier items. This meal had a good contrast of flavors and textures.



Graham Cakes: The batter for these was reeeeeeeeeeaaaally thick. We had to add more milk so it would come off the spoon. Much like partially set concrete. We didn't add too much though, so as to be true to the recipe. As a result, these turned out medium-rare, with a seared outside and raw middle. The middle bite of mine oozed onto the plate. My dad said he liked them...

New Pickles: These are always good. They're a good old-fashioned recipe that is easy and refreshing. Try it out this summer!

Broiled Steak: You may notice the timing of steak being on the menu this week happens to coincide with the day I have access to my parent's freezer. Take no notice.

Corn Oysters: I thought these actually were oddly fishy. Which is weird, because there is no fish. Perhaps I was thinking too hard about the name as I was eating them. My mom liked them, and might make them again, although she likes regular corn better. She also hates seafood and doesn't think these taste anything like fish, so go figure.

Cocoa: I believe "prepared cocoa" here means baking cocoa. This was a lot less sweet and chocolaty than modern hot chocolate. It is more a light chocolate flavored beverage than liquid chocolate. Once you get past the fact that it is different, it is good. I think this would be less cloying in the morning than Swiss Miss.