Japanese Rice (1908)

 365 Foreign Dishes: A foreign dish for every day in the year

15.—Japanese Rice.

Boil 1 cup of rice; add 3 chopped shallots, 1 teaspoonful of soy and salt to taste. Place on a platter, cover with chopped hard-boiled eggs, sprinkle with salt, paprica and chopped parsley. Garnish with some thin slices of smoked salmon.

Since I am not an expert in Japanese cuisine, I crowdsourced opinions on how close this was to Japanese. The general opinion was that it was possibly trying to be salmon donburi or tamago gohan, except substituting Japanese ingredients with ingredients that were visually similar,available in Philadelphia in 1908, and appealing to western cooks. Hard boiled eggs=raw egg or soft boiled, parsley=mitsuba or shiso, shallots=green onion, paprika=shichimi or ichimi togarashi, and smoked salmon=plain salmon, raw salmon, or katsuobushi? 

And yes, I did boil the rice. Sigh. 

Verdict: The temptation here is just to make fun of this.  But you know what?  Someone tried.  And with limited resources, I think the attempt is worth respect.  I personally love when different countries make a stab at American cuisine and end up with something only tangentially related.  That said, is this authentically Japanese?  No.  No it is not.  But is it delicious?  Also no.  I suspect by “shallot” the author meant scallions/green onions of some kind, because three scallions would be fine, but three shallots is A LOT OF SHALLOTS.  It’s almost equal volume shallots to rice.  

So very, very much shallot.  Everyone ate around the shallots, and everything around the shallots was fine.  The smoked salmon was spectacular, and when I granted permission to just pick the good bits out, the kids fought over it to the last shred. 

You deserved better. 

So if you wish to make a turn of the century Americanized Japanese dish, this is not a bad way to go!  If you are, in fact, Japanese, make this just for the giggles.  Just make sure to use scallions, not shallots!  

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. 

Good Mincemeat Without Intoxicants

The Good Housekeeping Woman's Home Cookbook [1909]

Whenever mincemeat pie appears, which is rarely, there is some amount of confusion.  Is there meat in it or not?  Nowadays, if you come across a mincemeat pie, it will almost never have meat in it.  Your modern mincemeat recipe features apples, raisins, cloves, and probably rum.  But travel back in time just a very little bit... and yes.  There's a pretty self-explanatory reason for the name.

Good Mincemeat Without Intoxicants

Five pounds of beef boiled until tender (it should be salted when partly done). Let cool in liquor, remove fat, chop very fine and measure. Use twice as much finely chopped apple, which should be tart, as meat. To the apple and meat then add the liquor in which the meat was boiled; also the fat which has been removed, and one quart of boiled cider. If there was a scant amount of fat, add also half a cup of butter. Jelly or candied fruit will improve the pies, if wanted richer. Add also three teaspoons of cloves, two of cinnamon, same of mace, and three pounds of seeded raisins. No definite rule can be given for sugar, as more or less is required, according to acidity of apples. Sweeten to taste with brown sugar. After all the ingredients have been put together, warm, and if found too thick for use, thin with cider or unfermented grape juice. When hot this can be put up as fruit and kept indefinitely.--Mrs E. M. Widdicomb.

Verdict: I cut down the recipe significantly, from five pounds of beef to one.  This made two pies, which was 1.5 more pies than we needed.  It was nice, just kind of baffling to the tongue.  Whereas the few modern mincemeat pie recipes that still contain meat use just a hint of beef (or just a little bit of beef suet or broth), this was probably fully 1/3 beef.  I finished my slice, and found it agreeable.  The husband and the kids ate a few bites and didn't finish.  The  neighbors that I convinced to take the other pie said it was fun to try, but not something they'd want again.  My mother in law loved it and ate almost half a pie.  The last slice desiccated in the fridge until I threw it out.  

I talked to someone else who had made meated mincemeat pie, who had a lot of trouble with the meat part being tough.  Note: the recipe doesn't say "boil until cooked," but "boil until tender."  That is going to take a long time.  That meat is going to go from raw to shoe leather with no stop in between. Keep going.  Stay the course.  Eventually, it will break down and get chewable again.  The lower and slower, the better.  A slow cooker would work admirably for this.  I used a pressure cooker, which was much faster.   Then, either run it through the food processor, a sausage grinder, or go crazy with your knife.  A cut of meat with lots of marbling will work best.  

Curried Chicken

Today I cooked chicken by leaving it on the counter for six hours.  And no puke resulted!  That is pretty well my only standard when it comes to historical recipes.  Actually, that rule is flexible*.

Thermal cooking is the historical equivalent of the electric slow cooker.  They were particularly in vogue during WWII, as a means to save fuel.  Simply heat a pot of food up to boiling, then insulate to keep the temperature stable to finish the cooking.

This model from 1926-1930

This hay-based model from the late 19th Century

My new toy has insulating foam instead of hay, but the principle is the same.  As a bonus, it actually stays a bit warmer than a slow cooker for up to eight hours.

For its maiden voyage, I chose a recipe from Margaret Mitchell's classic work that so perfectly and nostalgically captures a bygone era of grace, abundance, and perserverence: The Fireless Cookbook.  She also wrote some book about the American Civil War that did quite well, I believe.

Stewed Chicken 
Draw and cut up a fowl. Put it, with the 
giblets, in enough boiling salted water (one 
teaspoonful of salt to each quart of water) to 
cover it. Let it boil for ten minutes and put 
it into a cooker for ten hours or more. If not 
quite tender, bring it again to a boil and cook 
it for from six to eight hours, depending upon 
its toughness. Skim off as much as possible of 
the fat from the liquor, pour off some of the 
liquor and save it to use as soup or stock, and 
thicken the remainder with two tablespoonfuls 
of flour for each cup of liquid, mixed to a paste 
with an equal quantity of water. A beaten 
egg or two, stirred into the gravy just before 
serving, improves it. Add pepper and salt 
to, taste, and serve the chicken on a hot platter 
with the gravy poured around it. The platter 
may be garnished with boiled rice piled about 
the chicken. 

Curried Chicken 

Prepare and cook one fowl as for stewed chick- 
en, adding two onions, pared and cut into slices. 
Add one tablespoonful of curry powder to the flour 
when thickening the gravy. Or the chicken may 
be rolled in flour and browned in butter, and the 
curry powder added before putting it into the 
cooker. It is served with a border of boiled rice. 

Verdict: Not terribly photogenic.  I did try.  Chicken is kind of tricky to get just right; it is tricky to hit that sweet spot between chewy and dropping off the bones so you look like an idiot when you eat it.  This had the most perfect, tender texture.  The seasoning was reminiscent of the hospital, but what do you expect for 1909?  I ended up dumping a... generous amount of extra curry powder in after tasting, and it was much improved.  

I love my new toy forever and ever and next time we go camping it will be my bosom friend.  But probably with a different recipe.  

*There is a rule about mayonnaise not being used with Jello, though.  

Picnics and Luncheons.

Woman's Favorite Cook Book [1900's]


Some of these foods look tasty. Some do not. Pressed beef... and eggs. Jellied veal. I... I... look how happy that family is in the top left-hand corner! I want to live in that picture.

Food Furnished by the Sea, Lakes, and Rivers

Woman's Favorite Cook Book [1900's]

All right, I'm usually first in line to say how fab these pictures are... but... I'm just not feeling it on this one. I'm just happy for the urchin brat at the top. She looks really pleased that she gets fed tonight.

Delights For the Old and Young

Woman's Favorite Cook Book [1900's]


Look at this! Oh my golly but these pictures are beautiful. Even the jelly mold that suspends what appears to be a whole cluster of grapes looks appetizing. What I really really want, though, is the cornstarch pudding with candied cherries. The little girl in the top left corner has been left on her own, and has therefore determined that of all the sneaky, naughty things she could do, she shall make a pastry.

This is a much better idea than playing with matches. She probably read this cautionary tale and found pastry a wiser alternative.

Die gar traurige Geschichte mit dem Feuerzeug
The Dreadful Story of Harriet and the Matches

Victorians didn't mess around with cautionary tales.

Fresh Fruits and How to Serve Them

Woman's Favorite Cook Book [1900]

Click to embiggen

Do you remember that part of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory where they see the beautifully colored wallpaper that you can lick and it tastes like fruit? One of my sisters has a thing for a particular shade of yellow paint. It makes her think of lemon pudding and she wants to lick it. This is how I feel about this page. I want to lick it.

I also like to think about how in 5 seconds, this little girl is going to cram that banana into the doll baby's face.

Something New in Cake Making

Woman's Favorite Cook Book [1900's]

Click to enbiggen

So gorgeous. No idea what that little girl is pouring on the cake "just like Mamma." Hopefully it is not the demon rum. The marguerites are suspiciously colored, but the orange vol-au-vent, perfection cake, and strawberry souffle look mouthwatering. I don't even know what the little boy is chowing down on, but I want some.

The Delights of Christmas Time

This is from A Woman's Favorite Cook Book [1890's-1900's] , which I have made food from before. Isn't this gorgeous?

Click to enbiggen

I mean, I never thought I'd want to dig into a whole pig, but suddenly it looks so festive and enticing! I also love the little boy's sailor suit, the long baby dress, the candles on the tree... although that little girl should probably watch where that baby's hands are reaching. This could end in tears.

Look at that selection of gorgeous, beautiful food though!

Halloween Party: Bouillon de Jolly Boys, Celery, Crackers, Turtle Sandwiches, Orange Jelly, Olives a la Natural History, Lemonade

Are there not many cooks who act upon the supposition that the greater the number of ingredients crowded into one dish, the more remarkable the achievement and the more creditable the ingenuity displayed? This is plainly an error, for all right-thinking persons must admit that the cook deserving the highest praise is the one who can prepare the most appetizing, and at the same time, the most wholesome and nourishing dishes from the scantiest and plainest material.

Now that is a woman. Beefy biceps, fluttery apron, no-nonsense expression, and a jaunty bow tie. Bow ties are cool.

My friends, Halloween is coming up! It is one of my most favorite holidays, because there is the opportunity for dressing up. If you are lucky, you may see our costumes for this year.

Click to enbiggen

The cookbook guarantees that if one makes these foods, boys will not carry off the clothes-posts, unhinge the gates, and make night hideous upon Halloween. Consequently, you should give due consideration to the menu, so you may prevent these occurrences. As a bonus, it will apparently please your African-American hired help . . . less said about that, the better.



Jolly Boys [served with bouillon, I guess?]
Mix together thoroughly while dry one and one-half pints of rye-meal, one-half of a pint of flour, one-half of a teacupful of corn-meal, two pinches of cinnamon, a little salt and two teaspoonfuls of baking-powder. Add one egg, well beaten; two tablespoonfuls each of molasses and sugar, and cold water enough to make a thick batter. Fry in hot lard a heaping tablespoonful at a time and cook until well browned. -Anna Bigsby.

Kindergarten Crackers
I have no idea what these are. There was no recipe for them. Frustrating. We ate saltines.






Turtle Sandwiches (For Halloween and Children's parties).
Cut as many thin slices of brown and white bread as are desired for sandwiches, trim off the crust and shape into three and one-half inch squares. Butter lightly and spread carefully between two slices any filling desired--meat, cheese, nut or fruit. Now slice lengthwise into halfs some small cucumber pickles (sweet or sour), and stick one of these in each cormer of the sandwich for the feet of the turtle, and a tiny one for the tail. Run a toothpick through a narrow and short piece of bread and stick it on the opposite end of the sandwich from the tail. On the end of the toothpick put a thin piece of a small carrot cut crosswise. Behold! you have the turtle. Serve singly on individual plates with olives made after the fashion of Natural History Objects. -Mrs. A.E. Fowler.

Little Pigs in Blankets
(Try them.) [It actually says this, this isn't an insert of mine. I didn't make these because I don't like whole oysters.]
Take one quart of good-sized oysters, wash and drain. Now beat up an egg, add to it a little milk and salt. Dip each oyster separately into the egg and roll in cracker or bread crumbs, then roll up in a thin slice of bacon. Hold in shape by sticking a toothpick through it. Drop in hot pan and fry brown. (Fine for special suppers.) -Mrs. A. E. Fowler



Orange Jelly
No recipe. But when they say jelly, they mean gelatin. I got some Knox gelatin and followed the directions using orange juice.


This is an ant-eater. ???

Olives a la Natural History
Take the desired number of olives and into one side stick four cloves and at the end another and you have a partially constructed animal representing an ant-eater. Now add another clove for the head, and on the end put a bit of another olive, and you have the animal complete and standing on his feet. The back can be decorated as fancy dictates. According to the arrangement and length of the feet, head and tail, other animals, and even birds, can be made. (Fine for children's parties.) -Mrs. A.E. Fowler

Sugar-off, with Maple Syrup
This is making maple syrup out of sap. I have no sugar maple trees, alas.


These are not mine. I did not make these cute Nut Cartoons. There were no nuts. And also I didn't want to.

Nut Cartoons
Take the desired number of English walnuts, Brazilian nuts, hickory nuts and peanuts and with gold and colored paints decorate the shells in fantastic styles. With a little color they can be converted into all sorts of men and women--white, black and mongolian, wearing all sorts of costumes, from gold lace, beads and jewels, to silks, feathers, furs, etc. (Very pretty for parties. -Mrs. D.Z. Brooks



Lemonade
Lemonade should be made in the proportion of one lemon to each large goblet. Squeeze the lemons and take out any seeds. If you do not like the pulp strain the juice. Sweeten the drink well though that is a matter of taste. The pleasant tart taste should be preserved. Add water to the juice and when serving put cracked ice and a think slice of lemon into each glass. -E.J.C.

Phew.

Verdict:

Bouillon de Jolly Boys: There was no recipe for Bouillon de Jolly Boys, just for Jolly Boys. They came out like tasty small donuts. Husband ate most of the entire batch, and seemed jolly. He remarked that if I made these every day, he would be as jolly as Santa. They were really good! For an imprecise recipe, these were pretty easy to figure out. As for eating them with bouillon...? No idea what is going on there.

Turtle Sandwiches: Ha ha, you thought it'd be made of turtles, didn't you? I took a stab at following the directions but... read those directions again. Can you get a solid handle on what it is supposed to look like? I only figured out the carrot bit (I hope) by looking at the fairly inaccurate little illustration on the page. I also did not trim the crusts, nor did I cut the bread to a precise 3.5" square. Also, more evidence that sandwich recipes until fairly recently were made with pastes instead of chunks of stuff in the middle. "Spread carefully between two slices any filling desired--meat, cheese, nut or fruit." See?

Do you have an idea of how this sandwich is supposed to work?

Orange Jelly: It tasted just like solidified orange juice. Not in a bad way. Or a good way. It was fine.

Olives a la Natural History: Okay, so, olives made "after the manner of Natural History objects." What... what is a natural history object? What does that mean? And why on earth did she choose an ant-eater? Again, some slightly shaky directions. I did my best, but my Natural History Object remains looking rather markedly not like an ant-eater. Failure! Can you think of a way this would be more ant-eatery?

For reference, here is an ant-eater.


Aaaaaaaand here is my olive ant-eater.


Yeah.

Lemonade: Lemonade is tasty!


Happy Halloween, everybody!

Picnic! Deviled eggs, ham and pickle sandwiches, cream puffs, Saratoga potatoes, Fruit

Pack provision basket as full as the law allows, or as the nature of the occasion and the elasticity of the appetites demand. One piece of good advice to picnickers is to try to get under the wing of some good farm-house, where coffee may be boiled, and nice rich cream, green corn, good water, etc., may be readily foraged; and for a Fourth of July picnic, nothing will taste better than a dish of new potatoes, nicely prepared at the farm-house. -Buckeye Cookery



Since it was a fine day, it seemed like an appropriate occasion for a picnic! There's no place for a picnic like the past, as you may guess from the quote above. I gathered my menu from The Los Angeles Times Cookbook--No. 2: One Thousand Toothsome Cooking and Other Recipes Including Seventy-Nine Old-Time California, Spanish and Mexican Dishes Recipes of Famous Pioneer Spanish Settlers [1906] and made and packed the food carefully, as per instructions: "The basket must be packed very carefully, especially the cream puffs."

Then off we went to Los Angeles in 1906. Unfortunately, I misjudged the calibrations and we ended up in the Utah Territory in 1862. Whoops. Time travel can be tricky. Good thing we invested in the automatic wardrobe adjustment circuit.



Still! The 1860's are also fine. We just hoped our anachronistic food would not cause trouble.





Deviled Eggs
Boil 6 eggs hard, drop them into cold water for a minute, and then carefully remove the shells; cut them in half with a sharp knife, and gently remove the yolks; mash and mix them with a dash of pepper salt, a tablespoonful of olive oil, a teaspoonful of vinegar and a little chopped pickle or parsley. Mold this mixture into balls and replace in the whites. Put the two halves of the egg together and tie with baby ribbon.




Ham and Pickle Sandwiches
Chop cold, boiled ham quite fine, mix with a little melted butter and made mustard, add some finely-chopped cucumber pickles and spread between thin slices of bread and butter.




Cream Puffs
Boil 1 cupful hot water and 1/2 cupful of butter together, and while boiling stir in 1 cup of dry sifted flour. Take from the fire and stir to a thin paste, and after this cools stir in 3 eggs. Stir 5 minutes. Drop in tablespoonfuls on a buttered tin, and bake in a quick oven 25 minutes.
CREAM FOR ABOVE. One cup milk, 1 cup sugar, 1 egg, 3 tablespoonfuls flour, vanilla to flavor; stir the flour in a little of the milk; boil the rest; stir this in, and stir until the whole thickens; when both this and the puffs are cool, open the puffs with a sharp knife, and fill them with the cream.




Saratoga Potatoes
Slice the potatoes very thin into cold water, drain them thoroughly. Drop into boiling lard and fry a few at a time. Drop into boiling lard and fry a few at a time. Drain, salt and put them in a dry place.

Fruit: Mangoes.

Just as we were finishing, we were spotted by the locals. Luckily, they were easily bribed with cream puffs. Sugar is scarce and expensive in their time and place.



We noticed they had a tiny kitten.



In gratitude for the precious cream puffs, they let us hold it. Hooray! A day well spent.



Verdict:

Deviled eggs: A bit different from your regular mayo/Miracle Whip variety, but tasty. These would be good for people with milk allergies or intolerances. I also like the idea of sandwiching two halves together and tying them with cute ribbon. This keeps the tops from getting all crusty, makes it cute, and encourages people to take one bundle instead of just-one-more-half until they have eaten a ton and a half of deviled eggs. I have to restrain myself from doing just that.

Ham and pickle sandwiches: Hammy! And pickley. It tastes just like what it sounds like. This would be good for leftover ham. If you're not going to eat the sandwich right away, I'd actually recommend filling the sandwich before refrigeration, rather than refrigerating the filling. The hardened butter makes it sort of crumbly on the bread.

Cream Puffs: For other time travelers, these are excellent for getting in with the locals. They were really good. Baking them in muffin tins made them super tall and puffy, which is nice. The filling could use about half the amount of sugar called for. It's good as is, just too sweet for my tastes.

Saratoga Potatoes: I imagined these would be like potato chips, but they were not thin enough. Still tasty though. I recommend eating these right after you make them, though. After chilling overnight, they weren't nearly as good as when they were hot and sizzling.

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.

Pound Cake

Why is pound cake called pound cake? Because the traditional recipe for pound cake is very, very simple. This is one such recipe in its entirety.

Pound Cakes
One pound of flour, one of sugar, one of butter, ten eggs.

Simple. A pound each of flour, sugar, butter, and eggs. Yes, a full pound of eggs. Modern pound cake only contains a couple eggs and usually less butter. Wussy.


Here is the recipe I followed, from The Good Housekeeping Woman's Home Cook Book [1909].

Pound Cake as Our Mothers Made It
One pound of flour, one pound of butter, one pound of sugar, ten large eggs and about one-fourth of a nutmeg. Cream the butter and sugar together well (our mothers' rolled and sifted loaf sugar is better, but granulated sugar will answer the purpose), then add the well-beaten yolks of the eggs, and add the flour, a little at a time, beating very thoroughly all the while, lastly add the whites of the eggs which have been beaten to a stiff froth that can be cut with a knife, or that will adhere to the vessel in which it has been beaten, being careful not to beat the cake after the whites have been added, but merely to fold in the puff. Flavor with one-fourth of a grated nutmeg, which should be put in before the whites of eggs. Bake in a very moderate oven for one hour. The only improvement that could be made on this recipe would be to use pastry flour (which was not used in mother's time). The best authorities on cake baking declare that good results cannot be obtained without the use of pastry flour.--Mrs P. L. Sherman, Chicago.


Verdict: Yum. Another example of simple ingredients yielding tasty results. It helps if one of the simple ingredients is butter. I also added a li'l orange blossom water, which was very nice. I actually quartered the recipe, so technically I suppose it is Quarter Pound Cake. Nonetheless.

If you ever find yourself with a desperate need for cake, but with absolutely no access to recipes, this is the cake for you!

For funsies, let us compare this traditional cake recipe to a recipe list of one of Martha Stewart's.

Cardamom Pound Cake
2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for pans
3/4 cup almond flour
3/4 cup semolina flour
1 1/4 teaspoons coarse salt
3/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 sticks (16 tablespoons) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pans
3 cups granulated sugar
6 large eggs, room temperature
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup plain yogurt, preferably Greek
1 tablespoon sanding sugar

Yikes. So needlessly fussy! Butter, flour, sugar, eggs. Done. You do not have to live under the tyranny of needless complication!

Invalid muffins, baked fillets of halibut, cheese salad, peach tapioca

Invalid Cookery should form the basis of every trained nurse's education. A good sick cook will save the digestion half its work. ~Florence Nightingale

Today's food comes from Fannie Farmer's lesser known book, Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent. This is apparently the cookbook that she was most proud of, and wanted to be known for this one more than, say, The Fannie Farmer Cookbook. Oh, Fannie. What did the sick and convalescent ever do to you, that you should make it your life's work to treat them like this?




Fannie Farmer reminds us of these important things to consider in feeding the sick:
1. Appeal to the sense of sight.
2. Appeal to the sense of taste.
3. Consider temperature.
4. Digestibility.
5. Nutritive value.
6. Economy.


Invalid Muffins.
1 cup bread flour.
1 teaspoon baking powder.
1/2 teaspoon salt.
1/2 cup milk.
Whites 2 eggs.
2 tablespoons melted butter.
Mix and sift dry ingredients, add milk gradually, eggs well beaten, and melted butter. Bake in moderate oven in buttered gem pans. Let stand in oven, after baking, with door ajar, that crust may be dry and crisp. To be eaten hot or cold.



Invalid Muffins (modernized)
Makes 6 muffins. Bake at 350 F. for 15 minutes.

Baked Fillets of Halibut.
Remove skin and bones from one-half slice of halibut, leaving two fillets. Fasten in shape with small wooden skewers, sprinkle with salt, brush over with lemon juice, cover, and let stand twenty minutes. Put in pan, brush over with melted butter, cover with buttered paper, and bake twelve minutes in a hot oven. Remove to hot serving-dish, garnish with yolk of "hard boiled" egg, forced through a strainer, and white of egg cut in rings, strips, or fancy shapes. Serve with Egg Sauce, to which is added a few drops lemon juice.



Egg Sauce I. To White Sauce I. add one-half "hard boiled" egg thinly sliced or chopped.

White Sauce I. (For Vegetables).
1/2 tablespoon butter.
2/3 tablespoon flour.
1/3 cup milk.
Few grains salt.
Melt butter, add flour, and when well mixed pour on gradually, while stirring constantly, milk. Bring to boiling-point, then season.



Cheese Salad.
Mash Neufchâtel cheese and shape in form of robin's eggs. Roll in parsley that has been dried in cheese cloth, then very finely chopped.



Arrange three eggs on lettuce leaves and serve with French Dressing.
If the cheese crumbles and cannot be readily shaped, moisten with cream.

This was pretty hard. I got some fat-free cream cheese for free, so I used that, and kind of smooshed it with two spoons, kind of like cookie dough. Neufchatel is sold right by the cream cheese, sometimes marketed as "1/3 less fat cream cheese."



French Dressing.
1/2 tablespoon vinegar.
1 tablespoon olive oil.
1/8 teaspoon salt.
Few grains pepper.

Mix ingredients and stir, using a silver fork, until well blended. French dressing should always be added to salad greens just before serving. If allowed to stand in dressing they will quickly wilt.



I used strawberry infused apple cider vinegar.

Apple Tapioca.
2 tablespoons Minute Tapioca.
1/8 teaspoon salt.
2/3 cup boiling water.
1 apple, pared, cored, and cut in eighths.
1 tablespoon sugar.

Mix tapioca and salt and add to boiling water placed on front of range. Boil two minutes, then steam in double boiler fifteen minutes. Butter an individual baking-dish, cover bottom of dish with tapioca, spread over one-half the apples and sprinkle with one-half the sugar; repeat. Cover with remaining tapioca, and bake in a moderate oven until apples are soft. Serve with sugar and cream.


Peach Tapioca.
Make same as Apple Tapioca, substituting sliced peaches, either canned or fresh, in place of apples.

Verdict:

Invalid muffins: Bland. Blandy bland bland. Not too bad when you drench them with honey. Ron suggests they would be really good covered in sausage gravy. He is not wrong. We had a debate over whether they were invalid/(sickie) muffins or invalid/(based on a logical fallacy) muffins. We have not as yet reached a conclusion.

Baked fillets of halibut: I actually used tilapia, because halibut is expensive. It tasted of nothing. The fish tasted of fish, and the egg sauce tasted of eggs, but together, they tasted neither of fish nor eggs. This may be a miracle. Putting the egg yolk through the sieve was oddly satisfying though, and made entertaining little floofs of egg yolk bits. Ron said he had had worse.

Cheese salad: I can only say this, that Neufchatel does not taste the same as fat-free cream cheese. I erred. Fat-free cream cheese rolled in parsley is horrid. Horrid, horrid, horrid. Neufchatel may well be better. The dressing was fine though. I mean, it's pretty basic, isn't it? However, Fannie Farmer says that vegetables, especially greens, have no nutritive value and thus should only be given to sickies if they are actually well, and then only if they specifically request them. Apparently, sickies occasionally need a change from gruel and Things With White Sauces or they can go bonkers. She is not wrong. About that last bit, anyway.

Peach tapioca: I refer you to the above picture.

1. Appeal to the sense of sight: The floofy bits of egg yolk are nice, aren't they? But the tapioca... it... no. I... I... can't... ladies who are into NFP may know my thoughts here. I cannot voice them though. I just... I can't.

2. Appeal to the sense of taste.: This food, it tasted of nothing.

3. Consider temperature: Warm, pretty much.

4. Digestibility: I'll let you know in a couple days.

5. Nutritive value: Unfortunately this meal included leafy greens, which as we know contain no nutritive value.

6. Economy: Pretty cheap. I actually only had to buy parsley and tilapia, so that was nice.