One of my favorite pastimes is researching old cookbooks and recipes. I could spend hours just reading them and hopefully trying some of them out.

One thing you run into is that a lot of the cooks from days long gone didn’t write down the whole recipe. They had a lot of “butter the size of a small hen egg” or a pinch of this or that. Or they might have said, “build a large fire in the stove and heat oven hot.”

Later in the recipe you were to “lessen the wood in the stove and make it a moderate oven by using greener wood.”
It is always fun to decipher their meaning and try the recipe.

Some of their methods are amazing.

For instance, if you had to guess the size of your turkey and wasn’t sure how long to roast it, one long-ago cook writes, “Did you know there was a simple method of determining how long it would take to cook a turkey? Just simmer the giblets the day before, note how long the gizzard takes to become tender, and add one hour — that’s the length of time it will take to cook the turkey in the oven.”

I’m not even going to go into what you had to do to get the turkey ready for the oven. However, I have been there and done that!

I was raised on a farm and we sold turkey and chicken for holida use. And, believe me they had to be ready to go into the oven. There better not be a “pin hair” or anything else that was not suppose to be there.

You can find out a lot of interesting facts in old cookbooks. For instance, do you know that in 1887, good store teeth sold for $4 and a pretty French corset for $1?

That is what it says in my White House Cookbook, by Janet Halliday Ervin.

Mrs. Fanny Gillette, an authority in domestic science, and Hugo Ziemann, a steward at the White House, printed the first White House Cookbook in 1887.

The one I have was reprinted in 1964.

Of course the 1887 one says, “Every recipe has been tried and tested.”
Here is an old recipe from the 1964 cookbook, it was revised from the earlier one.

POMPEY’S HEAD
1 lb. Sausage meat
1 lb. Ground beef
1 tsp. salt
sprinkle of pepper
2 c. tomatoes
1 c. finely chopped celery
1 tbl. chopped onion
1⁄2 c. sliced green pepper
Combine meats and seasoning; make into a roll. Flour the outside well and put into a pan and brown in a hot oven (450 degrees).
When nicely browned, add the vegetables over and around the meat roll. Bake covered in 350 oven for one and a half-hours.
Baste the meat with the mixture several times during the cooking period.
When roll is finished, pour sauce over. Remove cover from roaster during last 10 min. of
baking so roll will brown.

ABE LINCOLN’S PECAN PIE
3 eggs, beaten
1⁄2 c. dark brown sugar
1 c. light corn syrup
3 tbl. butter
1 1⁄2 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp salt
1 1⁄2 c. chopped pecans
1 tbl. flour
1 9” unbaked pie shell
whipped cream for garnish
pecan halves for garnish
Preheat oven to 375. Combine eggs and brown sugar. Blend in corn syrup. Melt butter and add along with vanilla and salt.
Blend chopped pecans with flour and stir into the mixture. Pour into a nine-inch pastry lined pie plate.
Bake at 375 oven forty minutes or until firm. Garnish if desired. Makes 8 servings.
Thought for the Week: “The greatest tragedy of life is not unanswered prayer, but unoffered prayer.” — Philip Melancthon
….till next week.