1912 Mary Frances Cook Book: Adventures among the Kitchen People (children’s audio cookbook)
We’re experimenting with internet radio on blogtalkradio today. The show is broadcast on Thursdays at 3:30-4:00 PM central time. Join me for a reading from the 1912 children’s cookbook The Mary Frances Cook Book: Adventures of the Kitchen People.
– Rena Goff
Cook Books
Oysters were popular in the 1800s. What happened? According to The Independent in the UK, oysters were popular in the 1860s because they were affordable, and bulked up expensive dishes, such as meat pies. By the late 1800s oysters were more expensive and popular. Meat was now the ingredient bulking oyster pies. People consumed oysters that should have been used to re-seed oysters beds, and during war, oyster-beds were neglected. Here is an oyster cookbook from 1913 on facebook claiming that oysters weren’t as expensive as they seemed.
Because they take on the taste of the water whence they’ve come, oysters are the perfect vehicle for reflecting the ocean quality. Drew Smith wrote a guide to tastes of oysters from different locations in Europe, located at the end of The Independent‘s informative oyster article. And a quick google search pulls up a company who ships fresh oysters overnight.
3 helpful videos to watch before ordering your fresh oysters:
Dr Mile’s Candy Cook Book was published circa 1911, no later than 1914. It has recipes for Salted Almonds, Candy Eggs for Easter, Cocoanut Taffy, Popcorn Balls, Cough Candy, Coffee Fudge, Popcorn Fudge, Maple Wax (made with snow or ice), Rose Drops and Jujube Paste (both recipes call for cochineal to color), and more. Much of the text is a call to try Dr Mile’s medicines.
Dr Franklin Miles was born in 1845 and graduated from Rush Medical College in 1874, and Chicago Medical College in 1875. He practiced medicine for ten years and in c. 1885 established the “Miles Medical Company” in Elkhart, Indiana to make and distribute his patent medicines.
Mary Beth White received her grandmother’s cooking school textbook, Austin’s Domestic Science. In her blog at Oklahoma Pastry Cloth™ she cooks from the recipes in the book, and illustrates the process with photos. Very readable.
“Some call it “pretending” but I like to call it “supposin’ ” when, every so often, I whisk myself back (in my mind of course) to the late 1800′s and early 1900′s wondering what it would be like to…”
Chris Kimball took two years planning this one reenactment dinner proposed in an 1896 book by Fannie Farmer, legendary cook book writer and cooking instructor and principal of the Boston Cooking School. Farmer opened her own school, Miss Farmer’s School of Cookery in 1902. The reenactment dinner was held at Kimball’s home in the same area of Boston where Fannie Farmer had lived over 100 years earlier. His preparations started from the ground up, supplying his kitchen with a built-in wood-burning range built into the fireplace. Kimball lived to write about it in his book, Fannie’s Last Supper: Re-creating One Amazing Meal from Fannie Farmer’s 1896 Cookbook. The dinner was also filmed, click here for the trailer.
Tributes to Fannie Farmer
What Fannie Farmer Means to Me from In Our Grandmothers’ Kitchens
Was it Prohibition that created the craze for soda fountains in the early 1900s? People did need a place to socialize instead of bars! The natural location for soda fountains were in a drug stores, and even Walgreens had a soda fountain and luncheonette. It was the drugstores that started the tradition in the early 1800s by serving “tonics” to relieve illnesses, but the revival fountains in the 1900s made sure people knew that medicines weren’t served in the soda, as before. Visit the online Drugstore Museum for more soda fountain history.
Buster Keaton at the Soda Fountain
Vintage Ice Cream Fountain and Luncheonette Manual
Swifts Ice Cream Fountain and Luncheonette Manual
no date
Sold
This is a typewritten manual duplicated for luncheonette owners written about merchandising ideas, instructions on how to store stock, how to care for your ice cream fountain, which type of dishes to use with which ice cream dishes, which dishes to use for sandwiches and hot drinks in a luncheonette, Also How to Make Hot Drinks (Ovaltine, Coffee, etc.), How to Make Cold Drinks (Iced Coffee, Coffee Ginger, Flavored Milk Shakes, Malted Milk, etc.) Cold Plate Lunches, How to Serve Salads, How to Make Sandwiches, behavior of staff, cost and profit numbers of the dishes including from each scoop of ice cream to each piece of American cheese with pickle, and directions for building about 50 of their ice cream dishes!
Black and White Special
One No. 20 dipper of chocolate ice cream, on No. 20 dipper of both, cover this with marshmallow syrup, decorate with whipped cream and cherries. Serve on a banana split dish.
Hot Lunches
…Also serve sauces with plates that might fall short without them. For instance, meat loaf, fish, etc.
For Meat Loaf: Spanish Sauce
1/4 lb. butter
1/3 cup diced green pepper
1/3 cup dices onion
1/2 cup diced celery
1 #2 can tomatoes.
How to Serve Fountain Drinks (including Coca-Cola)
Coca-Cola
Use 1 oz. of coco cola syrup in regular coco cola glass. Use 1 oz. finely chopped ice, fill with carbonated water, taking care to hold glass directly under spout in slanting position allowing carbonated water to run down side of glass, stir only three or four times with spoon. A common fault in making a carbonated drink is to allow it to sit on a drain pan under draft arm, running water the 10 or 12 inches into the glass. This allows the gas to escape from the water resulting in a drink that is flat and lifeless.
Flickr groups present a great opportunity to display your colorful or otherwise intriguing cookbook collections and resulting recipes. There are groups ranging from Community & Advertising Cooking Booklets, vintage recipe re-creations at the Mid-Century Supper Club, to the popular Vintage Cookbooks. Browse all the flickr cook book groups.
See our Flickr Vintage Aprons post. Like
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Good Bread: This Book Tells How To Make Good Bread from 1900. Pages from the cook book pamphlet are on Flickr, including the old advertisement and testimonials for “Vinol, The Delicious Cod Liver Oil.” How is their bread? White Raised Bread — >
Huckle-My-Butt is an old-timer New England drink recipe from the 1920s book, Here’s How: Mixed Drinks from the 1941 edition. CNN article brought to our attention by Cindy Traynor.
New Year’s
Dinner Party
with
Punch
Recipes
$4.99
Old-fashion cranberry sauce recipe handwritten in the 1880s.
Cranberry Jelly
1/2 as much sugar as cranberries
1/2 as much water as sugar
Cook cranberries fast till they
stop popping — Rub through sieve –
Add sugar — Just let boil up &
pour in molds.
Refrigerate or freeze the cranberry sauce in mold. An old fashion method of releasing the cranberry sauce is to dip the metal mold into hot water before release, if necessary.
Music from wikipedia VocalLessonNumber51910_64kb
The Bride’s 1880s Handwritten Cook Book
An ebook of Ella’s other recipes in her own handwriting when she was a newly married in Fairfield Iowa in 1881 is available here alongside a transcription for easy reading.
eBook (Adobe PDF) Instant Download
$3.88
Instant Download
6 cookbooks for or by historic cooking-school teachers:
