Temperance Drinks ... 1850

It's Dry January, so here are over 25 drinks from Miss Beecher’s Domestic Receipt Book. NY: 1850. Image (click to enlarge) of coffee urn cart with free bread, from a temperance group. Harper's Weekly. NY: 1880.

Tidal mills videos

Mills run on tidal movements are described in several taped talks and animation.

Upcoming - 5 hours on watermills this Saturday; and talk on MLK day on Georgia Gilmore who cooked to raise money for the civil rights movement.

Twelfth Night Cake period images

Queen Victoria's 30 inch-diameter "Twelfth Cake," 1849, is the first of many images of Twelfth Night cakes, other food/drinks and activities for Twelfth Night (Jan 6). Click images to enlarge.

New Year’s Day in New Amsterdam

This 1870 artwork by George Henry Boughton depicts the visits on New Year's day - with no "wines, brandy wines, or beers" and ... no shooting guns or beating drums.

Holiday spirits and Christmas taped talks

"Merry Christmas to All!!"
Image from Clement Moore's A Visit from Saint Nicholas. 1862

Christmas taped talks: Tudor; Victorian; Wartime - Am Rev, Civil War, WWII; PA German; how slaves were really treated on Christmas; 400 years at sea, many more.

Marking King George II dishes with the cook's name

This story from 1827, in The Table Book, was copied for years.

Ice Box Cookies or Refrigerator Cookies

During the 1920s, dough was chilled in rolls or logs in the ice boxes, then sliced and baked. With more electric refrigerators, the variety increased. Links to other historic cookies are below.

Stir-up Sunday; also Christmas talks and tapes 2022

Everyone took a turn to stir the Plum Pudding for Christmas. More on Stir up Sunday on blog post HERE many posts on Plum Pudding HERE

Many upcoming talks on Christmas (over 30), Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. Variety of taped Christmas talks since 2020.

Coffee and other intoxicants (1600-1850) virtual exhibition and talk

From 1600-1850, new intoxicants included sugar, coffee, tea, chocolate, opiates and tobacco. A talk on the Intoxicating Spaces: The Impact of New Intoxicants on Urban Spaces in Europe website is on Nv 16.

Image of an "Ottoman coffee house in Istambul" from 1819. 

Revolutionary War comes to the Tatnall and Lea mills in Delaware

During the Revolutionary War the Tatnall and Lea flour mills of Brandywine, by Wilmington, Delaware furnished flour to the American army. Washington and Lafayette visited Joseph Tatnall. Before the battle of the Brandywine, Washington ordered the top grinding stones of the mills to be removed and hidden from the British troops.

Candies of old Salem - Gibralter & Black Jack

Salem Gibralters, created early 1800s, still sold today. Hawthorne wrote about them - rock hard, white and wrapped in white paper. Black Jacks were a deliberately burnt mixture of maple syrup, butter, brown sugar and molasses.
This week's talks.

The hard life of bakers in Victorian London

Starting at 11pm to make the dough, nap on flour sack over the kneading board (on the trough). wake at 2am, start kneeding and forming the dough then bake loaves in oven. When all that was done (in extreme heat), the bakers had to change clothes and go out on the street to sell the bread.

This week's talks including several on Halloween foods.

Muffin Man in Philadelphia 1850

October 15 was the traditional start to selling muffins on the streets of London (past post and the small bell HERE). This image and the writer's memories of buying from the muffin-man in the afternoon is from City Cries.

Dog wheel for butter churn

Dog powered wheels are different enough that I have written about turnspits HERE and treadmill to churn butter HERE. This excerpt shows the mechanism of the tread-wheel.

Mr. Borden's concentrated and condensed milk

In 1856, Gail Borden (1801-1874) patented a Vacuum Pan "for the Concentration and Preservation of Milk."

Barbados deforested due to sugar production, Beekeeping in Bhutan, Jacques Pépin (artist, chef), British Saffron and other talks.

Windsor Castle Great Kitchen

Rest in peace Queen Elizabeth.

Well pump or bucket

This 1865 article described the modern options to get water from a small well.
September talks are now up, and the first week's talks are below. As usual, there are some interesting talks this month, including a Medieval Feast Symposium.

Barn-door Fowl and Dunghill Fowl - Chickens

There were many breeds of chickens but the 'plain' common ones around the farm were termed Dunghill fowl (Markham 1614) and Barn door fowl.
A concise, clever description and the image is from 1900. Recipe from 1829 and other excerpts, below.

Articles found in a Kitchen Drawer 1824

Like now, a variety of useful and useless items were tossed into drawers of the kichen table and dresser, making them "untidy hidingplaces." "A grater and nutmeg— the key of the jack" to "a pen without ink" and a "lump of old suet" were items from the 1824 humorous poem. More organized suggestions were listed in a book from 1867. Painting with a drawer, 1738

Recipe manuscript - school project at a woman's college c1831

Ann Augusta Forman Cooley (1810-1890) filled this composition book with recipes, possibly started as a school project. Raised a Quaker in NJ, then from 1828 to 1831 she attended Van Doren's Collegiate Institute for Young Ladies in Brooklyn Heights, perhaps the first woman's college. Click images to enlarge.