Bake Like It's 1908: The Cincinnati Cookbook Project
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.
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 this book are vague, strangely worded, and altogether nearly foreign to me in some cases. I want nothing more than to try my hand at figuring out what in the world these people were talking about when they said to "add five cents of mustard" to recipe entitled "Cucumber Catsup".
The first recipe to really catch my attention was for (Mega) Fruit Cake. The book just calls it fruit cake, but the recipe calls for roughly fifteen pounds of ingredients. I was tempted to dive right into this recipe in all it's ridiculous glory, but instead I am going to pace myself. I'm going to cook my way through this book and when I feel ready I am going to tackle the mega fruit cake.
The plan is to read each recipe and come up with an idea for how I'm going to accomplish making it. This will involve reading the original recipe, making some notes, writing a long form recipe, and then executing that. I will let you know how well I do and add updates to my long form recipe as I go. Each post will end with a non cooking related wifely tip that I will edit for accuracy.
This project brings together many things that are near and dear to my heart. Cooking is one, but more accurately cooking for others, all this food means there are some family dinners in my future. Another is history, I love reading and learning about history and especially Cincinnati history. I research my families genealogy and I wonder if at any point my Great Great Grandma was given this book. The third is problem solving, these recipes are scant on directions but I still want them to turn out well so how do I figure out the mustard exchange rate?
The first recipe post will directly follow this post. I hope you enjoy!
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| 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 this book are vague, strangely worded, and altogether nearly foreign to me in some cases. I want nothing more than to try my hand at figuring out what in the world these people were talking about when they said to "add five cents of mustard" to recipe entitled "Cucumber Catsup".
The first recipe to really catch my attention was for (Mega) Fruit Cake. The book just calls it fruit cake, but the recipe calls for roughly fifteen pounds of ingredients. I was tempted to dive right into this recipe in all it's ridiculous glory, but instead I am going to pace myself. I'm going to cook my way through this book and when I feel ready I am going to tackle the mega fruit cake.
 |
| As a teaser, here is the recipe with my notes |
The plan is to read each recipe and come up with an idea for how I'm going to accomplish making it. This will involve reading the original recipe, making some notes, writing a long form recipe, and then executing that. I will let you know how well I do and add updates to my long form recipe as I go. Each post will end with a non cooking related wifely tip that I will edit for accuracy.
This project brings together many things that are near and dear to my heart. Cooking is one, but more accurately cooking for others, all this food means there are some family dinners in my future. Another is history, I love reading and learning about history and especially Cincinnati history. I research my families genealogy and I wonder if at any point my Great Great Grandma was given this book. The third is problem solving, these recipes are scant on directions but I still want them to turn out well so how do I figure out the mustard exchange rate?
The first recipe post will directly follow this post. I hope you enjoy!
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