Happy Pie Day (3/14)!

It’s March 14, and that can only mean one thing: It’s Pie Day! (3.14… and all that). While you may not know it, librarians and archivists, in addition to enjoying food ourselves and managing food collections, can get equally caught up in MAKING food. This year, a bunch of us just might be making pies from recipes in our collection. I missed out last year, but I wasn’t missing out this year! If you want to see what others are doing, I recommend checking out #PieDay2022 and #GLPBO2022. As for me? Well, it all starts with Nancy (Nannie) Godwin Figgat and her 1860s handwritten recipe book (see Southwest Virginia Counties Collection, Ms2000-092). No contemporary recipes for me, y’all–bring on a challenge! (Although we’ll talk about some…minor changes I made along the way in a bit.)

Nannie’s receipt book had more than one pie recipe, but let’s be honest about 19th receipts: Directions can be a bit sparse an a lot of assumptions are made on the part of the baker about their knowledge. I have SOME skills, but I wasn’t about to take on the “Molasses Pie” recipe that had only three lines of directions. Besides, then I found chocolate. “Chocolate Pie,” that is. Here’s the recipe (I can’t say for sure this is “her” recipe, but if she didn’t create it, at least she seemed to have wanted to make it):

Scrape three tablespoons full of Chocolate, put it on the Stove with a teacup of sweet milk, or cream, one tablespoon full of butter, one teacup of Sugar, let it come to a boil, take the yolks of three eggs, beat them hard+ pour them into the mixture of Chocolate, make a rich pastry + put it in the pie plate + pour in the mixture, season with vanilla, put into the stove + bake. When done beat the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth with half a teacup of white sugar + a little vanilla + spread it on the pudding, return to the oven + bake a few minutes. This makes three pies.

Before I could even get to baking (let’s also be honest that while I am a good baker, pies are not my forte), I had to a) think about a few things and b) consider what accommodations I might afford myself. I was up to the challenge of an 1860s filling. I was not up to the challenge of an 1860s “rich pastry,” too. So, in the spirit of honesty, two things: 1. I used a store bought crust (no regrets) and 2. standardized measurements were still almost 40 years away in 1860 and part of my work was guessing. But here’s the journey:

Ingredients!

Pre-baking my pie crust

What I affectionally dubbed “chocolate goo” (aka the first stage of the filling)

Filling cooking + waiting egg yolks

Post-egg-addition, with pie crust waiting

Making merginue (yes, I cheated and used a hand mixer)

Partially baked pie filling and meringue, waiting on assembly

Assembled at last, right before the final bake

1860s Chocolate Pie (reviews pending!)

A couple of notes about process:

• I absolutely loved doing this! I have made an 18th century gingerbread before, and challenges aside, it was super tasty. Historic baking can be tricky, but also delightful!
• I 100% panicked when it felt like the mix on the stove was not thickening and I put a small amount cornstarch in, which seemed to do the trick. This is a common ingredient in modern chocolate (and other pudding) meringue pies, so I didn’t feel like I was cheating. Also I really didn’t want to serve my coworkers chocolate goo under meringue.
• A “teacup” in 1860s terms was likely to be between 4-6 ounces (maybe as much as 8, if you had a giant one!). I erred on the side of 4 and calculated from there.
• A tablespoon could be as equally random, so I went with the standard contemporary measurement, with some bonus chocolate (I tried three different methods for grating as I went from unnecessarily fine to still unnecessarily course to shaving/chopping it with a serrated knife, then threw it all in because chocolate, amiright?).
• Egg sizes were not graded and separated as they are today, so I went with large eggs.
• From the get-go this didn’t seem like enough for three large pies, so I assumed this meant three small, individual pies. I did make a singe large pie, so I do expect that my crust-filling-meringue ratio is not ideal.
• Since I was using a store bought crust, I did pre-bake it for about 10 min in a hot oven (or what would have been called a “quick” oven) before turning the temperature down to bake the filling and finished pie(no regrets there!). Again, this can be a fairly standard contemporary practice and I hoped Nannie wouldn’t mind.
• I 100% tempered my egg yolks, rather than just throwing them in. It could be that the recipe assumes the baker knows to do this,

I plan to post an update/part 2 to this post after we’ve had an opportunity to taste the results in Special Collections and University Archives, so stay tuned for some reviews!

A few other notes:

• Nannie’s receipt book is digitized and online if you want to read more (or cook more!): http://digitalsc.lib.vt.edu/Ms2000_092_SWVACounties/Ms2000_092_Figgat
• We have several other manuscript collections, mostly letters between Nannie and her husband, Charles, in our holdings, if you want to know more about her.
• Also, there’s a book about her!
• If you want to find more pie recipes, you can learn more about our collections online OR visit foodtimeline.org, which is also part of SCUA!

It’s National Pumpkin Month!

October is National Pumpkin Month! If you are not sick of pumpkin flavored everything by now, how about you try your hand at a few pumpkin recipes from the stacks here at Special Collections and University Archives.

Recipe 1 – Pompkin

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  Cover of American Cookery

• 

  First Version for Pompkin on pg. 34

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  Second Version for Pompkin on pg. 35

If you are feeling slightly adventurous, try out one of the earliest ways to make pumpkin “pie.” When the first pumpkins appeared in European and American cookbooks, a common way to prepare them was hollowing out the pumpkin, filling it with a sweet, spiced milk mixture, and then baking the pumpkin. This recipe is from the first American cookbook, America Cookery, by Amelia Simmons in 1796.

Recipe 2 – Betty Crocker’s Pumpkin Pie

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  Cover of Betty Crocker’s Pie Parade featuring Gold Medal Flour

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  Recipe for Pumpkin pie on pg. 22
  Also includes other pie recipes

Still don’t know how to make this classic American holiday dessert? Well Betty Crocker has you covered. Known for her Picture Cook Book, this 1957 pamphlet features the best of Betty’s pie recipes.

Recipe 3 – Pumpkin Chiffon Pie

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  Spine of Culinary Arts Institute Encyclopedic Cookbook

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  Recipe for Chiffon Pumpkin Pie on pg. 585

Wanna feel fancy with your pumpkin pie? Upgrade it to a chiffon pie! This Encyclopedic Cookbook from the Culinary Arts Institute from 1948 will help make a fancy pie in no time.

Recipe 4 – Pumpkin Cake

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  Cover of Easy Homemade Desserts with Jell-O Pudding

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  Base recipe for Pumpkin Cake

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  Pumpkin Cake version recipe from the Base Recipe

Are you a lazy cook but still like delicious treats? Then grab a boxed mix of yellow cake and butterscotch pudding to add to your canned pumpkin for a delicious Pumpkin Cake from this 1979 Jell-O recipe book.

There are countless more cookbooks and pamphlets here in SCUA that have all sorts of pumpkin goodies! You can also learn more about the history of pumpkin pie through the Food Timeline! If you want to try something new at Thanksgiving or Christmas, come check them out!

Tea Room Recipes for Hot Tea Month

During the fall, I wrote a series of posts about processing the Education Cookery Collection (#1, #2, and #3). That collection also includes a bunch of associated books and publications. Although those titles haven’t been cataloged yet, I pulled one of them to write about today. January is National Hot Tea Month and while it’s actually supposed to be around 60 degrees in Blacksburg today, that doesn’t mean we can’t talk tea-related food!

Tea-Room Recipes: A Book for Home Makers and Tea-Room Managers was written in by Lenore Richards and Nola Treat in 1925.  As the subtitle suggests, its purpose was two-fold: recipes for the home and recipes for food-serving businesses. Richards and Treat, it seems, ran a cafeteria, and in their previous lives, were on the faculty of the College of Agriculture, University of Minnesota. So, they probably both had an extension service background.

Title page, Tea-Room Recipes by Lenore Richards and Nola Treat, 1925

Table of contents page

Entrees and Sauces recipes, including: Broiled Pork Tenderloin with Apple Rings, Lamb Chops and Peas, and Beef Biscuit Roll

Sandwich recipes: Club Sandwich, Toasted Cheese Sandwiches with Bacon, Toasted Chocolate Sandwich

Pie recipes: Butterscotch Pie Filling, Cheese Pie Filling, Lemon Fluff Pie Filling

Suggested luncheon menus

Suggested afternoon tea, reception, and dinner menus

From the preface:

This book contains what the authors have come to call tea-room recipes. These recipes are richer, more expensive and designed to server fewer people that those in “Quantity Cookery.” [more on that in a moment] They are especially for the use of home makers entertaining at luncheon, tea and dinner, and for the use of managers of tea rooms, clubs and similar institutions.

Tea-Room Recipes is about half desserts, so we can see the distinct emphasis on the “entertaining” element. There are a sea of pies, cakes (with icings and fillings), cookies, ice creams, puddings, torts, and gelatins. But before you get to those treats (unless you’re hosting an event that goes straight for the good stuff), there are several chapters on the more savory side. These sections cover soups, some surprisingly hefty entrees (lamb chops, nut loafs, macaroni bakes), a few quick-and-easy to prepare vegetables sides, salads (with dressings and garnishes like cheese balls), and one of my favorite topics, sandwiches. The sandwich chapter begins with something called the “Tombeche,” which took a moment to decipher, but makes sense when you see the ingredient list: tomato, dried beef, and cheese. Plus, there are some strange ground/melted chocolate or orange fillings, lots of cream cheese/nut combinations, and a hefty dose of olives. A bread chapter covers the savory (including a bacon bread!) and the sweet (muffins and other breakfast sweets).

In addition to this book, Richards and Treat also wrote Quantity Cookery, which seems like a logical companion piece to this one. Tea-Room Recipes can be used to feed a family of, say 4-6, but it can also be used to feed a restaurant full of people. A book like Quantity Cookery takes that to the next level (though it has a more specific, commercial audience).

Oh, and in case you’re curious, since I started this post talking about Hot Tea Month? Tea-Room Recipes does not contain any recipes for tea. I guess the assumption is you can handle that part on your own…

Putting the “Umble” in “Humble Pie?”

To conclude, and that I may not trespass too far on your Patience and good Nature, or take up too much of your Time from the more important Affairs of your Families, I hereby ingenuously acknowledge, that I have exerted all the Art and Industry I can boast of, in compleating this Pocket-Book, complied for your Service, and intended as your daily Remembrancer; and that I an not conscious to myself of having omitted one Article of any real Importance to be further known…

This morning, I had a plan.  A really good plan for today’s post and the idea to also prep one for next week (and see if I can get back on a weekly posting schedule after a busy last few months). While scanning materials for the second post, I discovered some new culinary history tidbits that were too good not to share today. So next week, I’ll tell you about our new agricultural ephemera collection. This week, we’re going back to the mid-18th century, to Sarah Harrison’s The house-keeper’s pocket-book, and compleat family cook : containing above twelve hundred curious and uncommon receipts in cookery, pastry, preserving, pickling, candying, collaring, &c., with plain and easy instructions for preparing and dressing every thing suitable for an elegant entertainment, from two dishes to five or ten, &c., and directions for ranging them in their proper order. First published somewhere in the late 1730s (probably, our recently acquired copy is the later 7th edition from 1760. The quote at the above comes from Harrison’s own introduction to the book.

Yes, another one of those books with a lengthy title that takes a whole page. (I”ll stick with The House-Keeper’s Pocket-Book for the sake of my typing skills today.) Mrs. Harrison manages to pack of lot of information into 215 pages (plus another 36 for the added Every One Their Own Physician by Mary Morris).

Primarily, she provides recipes and suggested menus (bills of fare) for a year. Then, toward the end, we get a some of the more “housekeeping” or “household recipe” side of things: directions for removing stains, cleaning dishes, managing animals and livestock, and even a bit of distilling/brewing. Much in the British style, there is a significant section in the book on pies (not just the sweet, but the savory). And as chance would have it, I stumbled on to page 60 and the word “umbles.”

While working this this culinary history materials here has provided this archivist quite an education, I, too, get stumped on occasion. For those of you who already know the word, kudos! For those of you bit less acquainted with the term, “umbles” refers to the organ meats of deer (and comes from the French “noumbles”). In this case, we have a recipe for “Umble Pie.” This recipe for “umble pie,” with its humble ingredients of deer innards, very likely led to the phrase “humble pie.” From dinner recipe to idiomatic expression in a single bound!

The House-Keeper’s Pocket-Book also includes a few illustrations, like these plans for placing parts of a dinner course:

 (The small “L2” at the bottom of the page was used to help construct the book, whose pages would have been printed in large sheets, then folded, cut, and sewn together.)

It wouldn’t be culinary history if we didn’t talk about one of our favorite topics: pickling. In 1760 (and when the earlier editions of the book were written), this was a main method of preservation. So, you could (and would!) pickle just about everything. Below is one of the page spreads on the subject and includes some items we recognize today, as well as a couple of ingredients (or at least terms) that are a bit less so. “Codlins” (also codlings) refers to a family of apples with a particular shape, usually use for cooking. “Samphire” is a plant that grows on rocks near the sea. Its leaves were often used pickling.

Sarah Harrison’s book would go on to have several other editions after this 7th one, but eventually, it was a cookbook that became more rare or unique to collectors and collections. We were lucky and happy to acquire this copy several months ago and we hope some one of you take the opportunity to come use it, too! Sadly, it hasn’t been scanned in its entirety for public viewing, but that may be a future task for us to undertake. In the meantime, you can always send us your (h)umble queries on Mrs. Harrison’s work.

Very (Cran)berry Goodness!

With Thanksgiving around the corner, it’s a good time to talk about a favorite seasonal berry: The Cranberry! Underrated and sometimes forgotten, it’s more versatile than it’s typical jellied or un-jellied sauce or relish. And we have the pamphlets to prove it! Two different folders in the Culinary Pamphlet Collection (Ms2011-002) have booklets from cranberry-centric companies. First, there’s “Cranberries and How to Cook Them” (1938) from the American Cranberry Exchange:

This pamphlet for “Eatmor Cranberries” (seriously!) puts cranberries in baked goods, sauces, salads, relishes and even–yup, you guess it–gelatin! It has tips for using cranberries as a meat tenderizer and a recipe for cranberries as an omelet filling. It also includes a little bit of detail about where the berries come from and how they are harvested. Although our last example (below) contains a lot more detail on the history of cranberries. But first, “Cape Cod’s Famous Cranberry Recipes” (1941) from the National Cranberry Association. This organization was also known early on as the Cranberry Canners, Inc., but most of you will probably recognize it by the company’s current name:  Ocean Spray Cranberry, Inc.

This pamphlet presents the clever idea of using cookie cutters to produce shaped decorations for a surprising number of holiday meals–not just Thanksgiving, but also Valentine’s Day, Easter, and even Halloween (cranberry-sauce shaped turkeys, hearts, bunnies, and pumpkins respectively). In addition, of course, it’s full of recipes…including some meat dishes with cranberry accompaniments and a few interesting desserts (Cranberry Nogg?). Lastly, also from the National Cranberry Association, there’s “101 All-Time Favorite Cranberry Recipes.” (That’s a lot of cranberries!)

 This pamphlet includes many of the expected items, but it also has “Cranburgers” (hamburgers with a cranberry sauce), a range of desserts, and some punches and cocktails. At this rate, you could work cranberries into every course of your Thanksgiving meal. Or your everyday meals, really. So, however you enjoy them, sneak some cranberries into your holiday. You won’t regret it!

Summer (Cooking) School, Part 6: British Baking at Home, Abroad, and in the Trade

This week, many of our staff are at the Society of American Archivists annual conference. This includes me, your usual archivist/blogger Kira who is, quite excitedly, presenting on a panel this year. “What panel?” you ask. Why, one about food collections and outreach! So, while I’m off definitely learning from others and hopefully inspiring a few colleagues, too, we’ve got another culinary lesson here on the blog. Despite the high temps in Blacksburg the last couple of weeks, I went a little crazy and was baking last week. For the library’s annual summer picnic, I whipped up a couple of cobblers (thanks to a very simple, 6 ingredient recipe!): blackberry peach and strawberry blueberry. While it may not have been the smartest move, turning on the oven and all, the summer smacks of cobbler to me and I hadn’t made one in a long time. Which also has me thinking about baking. I respect the fact that  baking is a precise and scientific art, but I’ve never been good at that in the kitchen. And, I’ve gone this long with any major baking disasters in my life (we’ll save tales of cooking and candy-making disasters for another day). Still, there’s plenty to learn from our historic resources, like The Pastrycook and Confectioner’s Guide for Hotels, Restaurants, and the Trade in General, Adapted Also for Family Use, Including a Large Variety of Modern Recipes. The title actually goes on, but we’ll take a break there. (You can see the rest of it on the title page below.)

Written by Robert Wells in 1889, this is a short, but detailed, British guide to baking, confectionery (including sugar-work), meat pies, ornamental butter, and more. Since this is a British book, you’ll notice a few differences, but nothing that can’t be overcome in the historic or modern American kitchen. Castor (aka caster) sugar, for example, isn’t that common in the U.S. These days, though, it can found in some stores, most definitely online, and, with modern kitchen technology (a coffee/spice grinder or a food processor), you can make it yourself!

While, at first glance, this book may seem like a strange conglomerate of recipes–I can see including meat pies in a book on pastry–there is a theme here. The sections on cooking meat and poultry may seem a bit out of place, but if you can’t cook them properly, they aren’t going to make for a good meat pie. The one thing that is really lacking, especially since this is designed to be a manual not only for other professionals, but for the home cook, was pictures. I, for one, would love to see #294: To Ornament a Tongue as a Dolphin. This seems like the kind of manual that would benefit from a bit more visual content, but perhaps the lack thereof gives the home and professional the freedom to be creative rather than match a certain image.

The entirety of The Pastrycook and Confectioner’s Guide can be found on Special Collections Online, our digital platform: http://digitalsc.lib.vt.edu/HFDBooks/TX773.W4457_1889. You can read it online or download the pdf for later if you’re interested. Take a moment to learn something new about culinary history this week, even it’s just a little fact. I know I’m looking forward to finding out what my colleagues are doing with food history collection and outreach. I might even have some tidbits to share when I get back! Until then, good eating (though if your summer is as hot as our in Blacksburg, you might want to take a word of advice from me and skip the baking for now)!

 

 

A Monday Morning Recipe (#2)

Good morning! It’s post #2 in our new “Monday Morning Recipe” series. This week, it’s all about the mince pies:

From: Rundell, Maria Eliza Keelby. A New System of Domestic Cookery: Formed Upon Principles of Economy. London: John Murray, 1816. Full text available online: https://digitalsc.lib.vt.edu/HFDBooks/TX715.R94_1816.

Women’s History Month, Part 11: Malinda Russell (b. abt. 1822?)

This week, I want to talk a little bit about Malinda Russell. I say “a little bit” quite intentionally, as that’s about all anyone knows. In May of 1866, Malinda Russell self-published a cookbook in Paw Paw, Michigan, the first known cookbook by an African-American. In fact, most of what we know of her comes from the introduction to A Domestic Cook Book Containing a Careful Selection of Useful Receipts for the Kitchen, which includes “A Short History of the Author.” She was born free in Tennessee, possibly around 1820 or 1822. From her account, we can surmise that she lived a challenging life:

My mother being born after the emancipation of my grandmother, her children are by law free…At the age of nineteen, I set out for Liberia; but being robbed by some member of the party with whom I was traveling, I was obliged to stop at Lynchburg, Virginia…Anderson Vaughan, my husband, lived only four years…I am still a widow, with one child, a son, who is crippled…I kept a pastry shop for about six years, and, by hard labor and economy, saved a considerable sum of money for the support of myself and my son, which was taken from me on the 16th of January, 1864, by a guerilla party…Hearing that Michigan was the Garden of the West, I resolved to make that my home…This is one reason why I publish my Cook Book, hoping to receive enough from the sale of it to enable me to return home [Greenville, TN]…

From what else we do know, she worked as a cook, a nurse, and a wash-woman in Virginia and Tennessee. She owned a boarding-house, then a pastry shop before moving to Michigan, where she seems to have been a cook again at the time the book was published.

The original A Domestic Cook Book Containing a Careful Selection of Useful Receipts for the Kitchen was published in 1866. It was a 29 page pamphlet and very few copies still seem to exist. The one most well-known (if not the only one) is in the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive at the University of Michigan Special Collections. In 2007, they printed a small run of facsimiles, a copy of which we acquired not long after. Although the original item is out of copyright, the 2007 facsimile is not. As a result, I’m not posting images from the item itself, though I have included the front and back covers, and I’ll share some quotes below.

A Domestic Cook Book, 1866 (facsimile), front cover

A Domestic Cook Book, 1866 (facsimile), back cover

I first saw Malinda Russell’s name in 2013 while researching African-American culinary history for a talk I gave in our library. I was amazed at her story and excited to find our facsimile, which I quickly pulled from the shelf. After her brief autobiography is another introductory section, “Rules and Regulations of the Kitchen,” in which Russell provides an explanation of her culinary background. The last sentence of this page reads “I cook after the plan of the ‘Virginia Housewife.'” It seems, at times, we can’t escape Mary Randolph on the blog, can we? 🙂

Russell’s book doesn’t have a table of contents or index and, aside from loosely grouping like receipts, a structure, but for all its 30 pages, she shares plenty of receipts. You’ll find cakes, cordials, pies, cookies, gelatin desserts, pickled and preserved fruits and vegetables, breads/rolls, and custards/puddings. On the whole, there is an emphasis on sweet dishes and baked goods, but she finished with savory meat and poultry dishes, two fish recipes, and several handfuls of home remedies. Not one recipe has directions longer than about eight sentences (calf’s head soup and cream puffs are among the more complex, and all are written in paragraph form without a list of ingredients (characteristic of the era). Most are summed up in as little as 3-4 sentences (or less!), like Sally Lun:

Three tablespoons yeast, two do. butter, two do. sugar, two eggs, flour to make thick as cake. Let it rise six hours; bake quick.

Or “Baked Peach Cobbler”:

Scald and rub the peaches; stew until done; season with sugar to your taste. Paste your pans, put in the fruit, dropping small pieces of butter over it; cover with paste and bake. When done, float the pie with the syrup from the fruit.

Or “Fricaseed Catfish”:

Boil in water with a little salt until done, then drain off the water, and turn over the fish rich cream, butter, pepper, and a little flour, and simmer slowly.

I’m trying to keep my post from being too lengthy (too late, I know!), but for a women with only one publication there was a LOT to say for this week’s profile. Still, I do want to add a final side note or two. First, despite the dearth of information about Malinda Russell, she is no secret in the culinary world. You’ll find her and her book as the subject of news articles, blog posts, and culinary research, if you take a moment to search for her. Second, to date, A Domestic Cook Book Containing a Careful Selection of Useful Receipts for the Kitchen, is the first known cookbook by an African-American, woman or man, in the United States. Robert Roberts’ The House Servant’s Directory is the first book published by an African-American in 1827 and in 1848, Tunis Campbell published Hotel Keepers, Head Waiters and Housekeepers’ Guide. Malinda Russell’s book remains in good company, when it comes to African-American publishing history. And, perhaps more importantly,  she helped paved the way for the the next 149 years of African-American cookbook authors.

Join us again next week for our final Women’s History Month profile of 2015. We’ll look at some of the works of food author M. F. K. Fisher.

Cooking with Dromedary (NOT Camels, I promise!)

…Although the idea of cooking with a camel in one’s kitchen (not as an ingredient, but as a helper) is worth a giggle. Rather, our feature this week is from the Hills Brothers Co. of New York. Dromedary was the label of a variety of products, includes dates, figs, coconut, fruit butters, and tapioca. This particular cookbook comes from 1914. At 100 years old, it needs a moment in the spotlight.

Front cover

Conserves and sandwiches

Cakes, cookies, sweet breads, and pies

Puddings

Gelatine and frozen desserts

Candies

“Dates Have Great Food Value” and Hills Bros. Buildings

Back cover

Not surprisingly, then, the recipes in this little volume tend to highlight dates, figs, and tapioca. But, we can’t escape without our share of unique fillings (“Sweet Green Peppers Stuffed with Figs” and “Thanksgiving Squash Pie”), fried goodies (date AND fig fritters, plus croquettes), and curiously named recipes (“Golf Balls,” “Camel Fig Mousse”–named after the brand, and “Masked Apples”). Still, there are LOTS of great ideas for dried fruit in here and the recipes are diverse. It wasn’t all desserts, as I expected. So go on, try a “Delicious Sandwich”– It’s camel approved. 🙂

Receipts, Remedies, and Testimonies

During last couple months of 2012 we acquired some exciting new finds for the History of Food & Drink Collection (though I think almost every item has something interesting about it!). Among them was a small publication from 1893, Household Receipts, published by Joseph Burnett & Co.

Cover, Household Receipts, 1893

Advertisement and Title page, Household Receipts, 1893

Pgs 4-5, Household Receipts, 1893

Pgs 28-29, Household Receipts, 1893

Pgs 36-37, Household Receipts, 1893

Pgs 56-57, Household Receipts, 1893

Pgs 66-67, Household Receipts, 1893

Before you even  make it to recipes, you might notice a surprise or two. Although primarily a recipe book, there are subtle and not-so-subtle ads for other Burnett & Co. products throughout, starting with the hair treatment featuring cocaine. Opiates have a long history in home remedies, from treating baldness to headaches to hysteria. (Widespread use of aspirin for pain relief wouldn’t take effect for another 6 or 7 years after this publication and patent medicines to treat all manner of problems were common well into the 20th century.)

The recipes exclusively feature Barnett’s extracts (mostly lemon or vanilla, but also some spices like nutmeg and cinnamon) in the variety of desserts that follow: puddings, pies, cakes, ice creams, preserves, and sauces. One can only assume that Barnett’s extracts were of the high quality so extolled to the “Mistress of the House.” In the spirit of economy (see the publication’s subtitle), there are a number of “mock” recipes that we see many times on this blog. In this case, it’s mock cream pie  and mock green apple pie (made with soda crackers and no fruit–think on that).

Toward the end of the publication, there’s a sudden recurrence of testimonials. And while advertising for other products your company sells in a recipe book makes sense at first, you may need to be careful exactly how you do that. Contemplating pudding sauce recipes is one thing. Contemplating pudding recipes only to be confronted with an unexpected note about the curative powers of “Burnett’s Kallison” in regards to “itching piles” is bound to give any housewife a moment’s pause. Still, it is certainly an attention-grabber…

Advertising in a pamphlet was nothing new by the 1890s. Our edition of Household Receipts in 1893 is already the 14th and we’ve had plenty of other examples on the blog to date. Household management guides and recipes books included ads, hints, and testimonies decades earlier. However, that may be the very point of acquiring items like for our collection: Recipes do not exist in a vacuum. They rely on ingredients, which makes cookbooks ideal for advertising food items. And the increasing 19th century interest in convenience at home makes these recipes books the perfect place to advertise ready-made products for the home or kitchen. Plus, the “how” and “why” of combining advertising and recipes was (and is) ever-changing. Our collection is just beginning to scratch that surface. 

Next week, we’ll look a little more at recipes for some not-so-ready-made “mock” dishes, with the exploration of an early 20th century vegetarian cookbook by a religious organization. (It may even turn into a two-part series, since we have similar cookbook by a different religious organization.) You may want to get your fill of meat before then…