Baked Alaska - Alaska Bake, "Alaska, Florida," Baked ice-cream, Hot Ice Cream, Roasted ice, and Glace meringue au four

Alaska, a state for 60 years (Jan. 3) - only 60?! - was bought from Russia in 1867.  Soyer's may have been the first recipe in English, Delmonico's in NYC the first to use "Alaska" as it's name, "Alaska Bake" appeared in a Phila. cookbook in 1886, "Baked Alaska" 1896 and Thomas Jefferson...

Farmer Giles's Establishment - Christmas Day 1800, 1829

Printed in 1830, the image shows a well fed farmer, whose wife is slicing the plum pudding for dessert.  The children sit at a stool, while one is standing on a bellows with the dog waiting for a slice. The hearth mantle is decorated with greens.

18th & 19th century Christmas decorating with holly and mistletoe

Holly and other greens not only festooned homes, taverns, churches and "Christmas sports," they also decorated plum puddings, boar's heads and other food items. Hundreds of men gathered the greens - "a-Christmasing" - often trespassing.

Selling Oysters

Oysters were sold on the streets 'on the half shell' and served with vinegar, salt, pepper, and/or cracknels.  The following images are from Cries of London, New York and Philadelphia from the late 1500s and 1688 through the 18th and 19th centuries. Click to enlarge. 

Jewish cookery books

"American Foodways: The Jewish Contribution" was an exhibit at the Longone Culinary Archive, University of Michigan Library.  This fine online exhibit contains images and information about each book and author; menus, markets, and food festivals.  It may be viewed HERE and HERE

Pickled Pumpkin using honey

Pumpkin chips using vinegar, sugar or honey, cinnamon, mace and cloves are pictured, left.   The darker chips on the left were made with honey, those on the right with sugar. The honey ones are more mellow, covering the vinegar tang found in the sugared ones.

Turkeys for Thanksgiving

In 1878, three farms in CT raised 10,000 turkeys each year!  The following article described how turkeys were raised on a farm in "Washington Hollow" NY then slaughtered to be sold in the famed Washington Market and Fulton Market in New York City for Thanksgiving. Turkeys fed on grasshoppers and cracked corn, laid fifteen eggs which hatched in May and roosted for the night on an apple tree, left. Other images from the same time are listed below.

Happy 300th New Orleans - 1800s beignets, coffee and the French Market

After her husband traveled to New Orleans in 1850 (he missed Cafe du Monde, 1861), Jane Gilmor Howard (Mrs. B.C. Howard) included a recipe for "beignets souffles" or "Balloon Fritters", deep fried in lard, in her Fifty years in a Maryland Kitchen cookbook, 1873. 

World War I - 100 years ago - rolling kitchen

This year is the 100th anniversary of the end of The Great War.  The photograph shows a World War I rolling kitchen from 1918.  Library of Congress: "Machine Gun Battalion, Company G, Second Brigade, rolling kitchen. Hermitage, France. March 11, 1918."

Buckwheat Honey for Honey Gingerbread

Dijon, France produced 60,000 pounds of buckwheat honey - very dark and too strong for "table use" but perfect for gingerbread, according to The British Bee Journal of 1906.  Other types of honey would sink after the gingerbread had risen.  However, a British author in 1848 wrote that the "French, whose gingerbread is vile stuff, use honey instead of treacle."  Recipes for honey gingerbread - medieval to early 20th - near end of post.

Milk cellars in 1840s Delaware and 1870s NC

By the 1840s  "cellars under houses... are coming to be preferred for the purpose of keeping milk to either milk-houses, milk-vaults, or even spring-houses."  In Delaware "dairymen charged higher price for 'cellar butter.'"  The picture is from 1873 North Carolina.

English store-room

The storeroom described in the 1835 book The English Housekeeper was to be kept dry by a flue from the kitchen fire.  Open shelves for preserves, flour, rice, "jars with closely fitting lids, for tea, sugar, coffee, cocoa, mustard, pepper, spices", hanging shelf, linen press, candles and soap...

Curiously, peas, gooseberries and dried fruit filled bottles were placed "with their necks downwards" in holes cut into shelves to exclude air.  Anyone heard of this before?

Selling cook stoves was like selling... new and used cars

"Horse trading is not to be compared to it" was how an 1888 article in a trade journal described closing the deal on a new stove where dealers were forced to buy the old one.

Which to buy... each family member wants something different. Yearly new features and "the neighbors' stoves are brought up for comparison."

The Farm - plowing, sowing, reaping, thrashing, winnowing and milling

This interesting farm image with tools is from a book published in London by 1844. Closeup of the sketches (click to enlarge) and description follow...

Wafers, Gaufres, Cornets, Cones & wafer irons on a stove

1630s thin "wafer biscuits" (left), "Fine French Wafers", "gaufres Cigarettes,"  Cornet (cone) or Horn Gaufres were baked in thin wafer irons and eaten flat or rolled. 

Fortune Cookies and Eliza Leslie's 'Secrets' with hidden messages

Kata irons made a 19th century Japanese cookie, a precursor to the Fortune Cookie.  More information - including a nice slide show -  available at the links below.  Thin wafers rolled into cylinders or cones.

And the Secrets?  Wrap nuts or sweets with a verse on a paper in colorful glazed paper.

Cheese Toaster for Welsh Rarebit ... or Rabbit

"Cheese Toaster with double bottom for hot water" image from Bishop, 1852. 

A Toasted Cheese or Scotch sandwich, when mustard was added, became a Welsh-rabbit (described in 1827 book). 

Shoo fly! Protecting food on the table - Punkhas, fly covers, meat safes

Flies were a nuisance and a danger, such as "fly blown" - flies leaving eggs on meat which turned into maggots.  Punkas - large fans suspended from the ceiling moved by a cord - were popular in India and the American South.  Other methods described below included meat safes, dish (fly) covers, cloth over milk, meat or windows; spices or chemicals.  Painting from 1637 depicts a fly on the bread.

Cavendish bananas, the Duke of Devonshire & Sir Joseph Paxton

Sir Joseph Paxton (1803-1865) was the gardener at Chatsworth House for 30+ years, built it’s Great Conservatory (left, 1830s) and later built the famed Crystal Palace in 1851. He named this variety of banana after his employer, William Cavendish, 6^th Duke of Devonshire (1790-1858). Queen Victoria visited...

Neapolitan Cakes

While people may know about the tri-colored Neapolitan ice cream (past post HERE) there once was a notable layer cake.  Neapolitan Cakes were showy multilayer cakes of bright colors, different flavors and icings for each layer. Same name, but an 1846 cake of 12 thin layers with whipped cream up the center was created by Queen Victoria's chef Francatelli, left.