Cooking With Historic Recipes
By Sherril Steele Carlin
If you enjoy experimenting with historic recipes you find in old cookbooks, you may run into some trouble when you attempt to add some ingredients to your old-time recipes. Foods available in the home were a little different then, so you'll need to apply some basic rules to old recipes when using them in the modern kitchen. Use these substitutions and definitions to decode old recipes, and you'll have a lot more fun cooking up a batch of old-fashioned food and fun!
Some Common Substitutions
Eggs were not as large as they are today, and when you try a historic recipe, you should always use small eggs.
Likewise, when a recipe calls for "butter the size of an egg," think of a small egg, or use about 2 Tablespoons of butter.
Sugar was not refined as we know it today. It came in "cones" or "loaves" resembling our modern light brown sugar, so substitute light brown sugar in most historic recipes, unless they specifically call for white sugar.
Old cookery books are often pretty sketchy about how long you have to cook things, how much to use, and what heat you should use to bake. Sometimes it's simply a matter of guesswork and testing to get the right amount of ingredients. Other times, it's just fun to read the recipes, and wonder just how women managed to really cook anything edible with some of these books!
Some Common Terms in Old Cookery Books
Often you'll see the term "Saleratus." It's just baking soda, so use the same amount of soda called for in the recipe.
"Paste" is a term for dough, especially pie dough.
"Emptins" is a semi-liquid prepared yeast.
Measurements were not standardized until Fannie Farmer wrote her famous "Boston Cooking School Cookbook" in 1896. Up until then most measurements were listed in informal terms, such as a "teacup of flour," which could be just about anything.
A Few Historic Recipes:
- Amber Soup – Slice a medium-sized onion, carrot, and half a white turnip, and fry with some ham or salt pork, cut in dice, fifteen minutes; put in soup kettle, add a bunch of sweet herbs and a gallon of any stock made without vegetables. Cook 3/4 of an hour, strain, clarify, reheat, add teaspoon caramel, season to taste, and serve.
- To Stuff a Turkey – Grate a wheat loaf, one quarter of a pound of butter, one quarter of a pound salt pork finely chopped, 2 eggs, and a little sweet marjoram, summer savory, parsley, sage, pepper and salt. Fill the bird and sew up. The same will answer for all Wild Fowl. Water Fowls require onions.
- Another Plain Cake – Two quarts milk, 3 pounds of sugar, 3 pounds of shortening warmed hot, add a quart of sweet cyder, this curdle. Add 18 eggs, allspice, and orange to your taste, or fennel carroway or coriander seeds. Put into 9 pounds of flour, 3 pints emptins, and bake well.
Trying historical recipes is fun and enlightening. Perhaps you'll try one or two, and become addicted to historic cookbooks, as I have!
