Bake Like It's 1908

It was time for this recipe mostly because ham was on sale for Easter. I am nothing if not a cook of cheap convenience. So if your local grocery has some leftover ham on sale but is completely out of aluminum foil then I have a recipe for you! Let's break this down into ingredients: For Ham Medium sized ham Pot of Water Flour More water For Glaze Dijon Mustard Honey Brown Sugar Here's how I'm going to tackle this This recipe is more affected than some by the changes to foodstuffs in the last 100+ years. Ham used to be cured using a whole lot more salt than is used now. Some ham is still cured using the salt method but often modern techniques are used in combination. I'm worried that if I soak the ham for ten hours, presumably to reduce the saltiness I will just end up with water logged ham. So I mostly skipped the soaking part, but in the spirit of following the instructions I filled a pot with water and set the ham in for an hour. Nai...

I'm travelling this week and away from kitchen. To make up for the lack of new recipe, here is some info on a historic site I explored and the food finds I found there. Wormsloe National Park, south east of Savannah, is the family home of one of Georgia's original settlers. Noble Jones travelled from England with the original settlers of Georgia hoping to make it big. Back in England he had been a carpenter. In the States he was a carpenter, surveyor, constable, and whole host of other things. He made his money, and lots of it, and his descendants still live in a manor house on his land today. Back in the 1930's the owner of the house saw the new Clark Gable movie Gone with the Wind and was so taken with it she decided to remodel the manor house in the style of Tara, the plantation house in the movie. Quaint After comparing the cost of the renovations to the bank account the family decided to open up their driveway to the public for a fee. You might be asking how ...

If we know each other personally and you knew about boiled icing and didn't tell me about it we are now officially unofficially feuding. Boiled icing is super cool and you should have known that I would want to know about it. It's white, glossy, and tastes like marshmallows. AND no one ever told me about it before. I asked my Mom and Grandma about this icing before I made it and they both said the same thing, my Great Grandma used to make this icing and the whole family loved it. When I talked to my Grandpa about it he said his mom used to make it. I don't know when boiled icing went out of style, or why, but I think it's time for a comeback. Let's break this down into ingredients  1 1/2 cups Sugar 1/2 cup Boiling Water 2 Egg Whites 1/3 teaspoon Cream of Tarta Vanilla to taste (1 capful) Here's how I'm going to tackle this Step one is going to be putting the sugar and water into a pot and giving it a stir.  Stir before tur...

I was flipping through my book trying to find a recipe that would work well to take to my Grandma's house for Easter. I, mostly randomly, chose snow cake. I liked that there were multiple component's, cake and icing, and that I could choose my own flavor. Something I think we've lost in the world of boxed cake (and I love a boxed cake) is customizing cakes and desserts to seasonal ingredients. So for this post I am going to go through the cake making process, including my adventures in whipping egg whites by hand, and then in two days I'll post the icing and filling portion of the recipe. The separation is in part to keep the post length reasonable and in part because the icing recipe needs to be made the day it is eaten. Let's break this down into ingredients  1 1/2 cups Sugar 2/3 cup Butter 1 cup Milk (split) Flavor (aka 1 teaspoon Vanilla extract) 3 cups flour 2 teaspoons Baking Powder Pinch of Salt 5 Egg Whites 1/8 tsp Cream of ...

I decided to start with oatmeal bread for a few reasons. The first is that I thought it sounded good, which is always important in a new bake. The second is that I think this recipe is a great example of the kind of instructions this recipe book provides, namely just vague enough to be fun. So to start, here is the original recipe, as written in the book, and then my initial reaction to it. Let's break this down into ingredients  1 pint Oatmeal 1 quart Boiling Water 1 cup Molasses 1/4 teaspoon Baking Soda 8 grams yeast 1 teaspoon Salt 2 quarts flour Baking pans Here's how I'm going to tackle this Alright, I've read the ingredients and made some guesses on what they might actually mean. Now I want to lay out my plan for how it's going to go together. This is all written before starting and then the colorful text is updates as I work . Put one quart of water in a pot and wait until it boils. I like this part because it's hard to mess up b...

The Cincinnati Cookbook was printed in 1908 and distributed, for free, to Cincinnati housewives. In it's pages are advertisements from 72 sponsors and benefactors of the book either hawking products or donating money to the worthy cause of helping wives keep good homes and please their husbands. The book doesn't specify which housewives were chosen for this gift or how, but I do know, at least some of them had it. Here is a blurry photo of the cover. One thing I learned quickly when flipping through this book is that cookbooks were not just for cooking, they were for teaching a woman how to wife. The book ranges on tips on how to keep a husband content, namely always smiling and never starting an argument, how to make your own cleaning products, how to manage a house, and more. In a lot of ways this book is a veritable treasure trove of all the things about the past that made me cringe, but in one very important way it is wonderful, the recipes. The recipes in t...