The Waring Blender and cocktails

Fred Waring (1900-1984) was a popular band and choral leader (The Pennsylvanians). He invested in Fred Osius's blender and changed the name to “Waring Blender.” Although it could be used to make many things, the blender became very popular to make cocktails, rather than using the shaker, then straining the ice.

Candling, Egg testing

Holding an egg up to the light was one way to determine if it was newly laid as described by Hieronymus Fabricius of Aquapendente (died 1619). Candling could also show if the egg was fertilized; or black spots ment the egg was bad. New eggs floated. Glass eggs and rounded egg baskets.

Pepper Slaw, Pickled Cabbage

The sugar and vinegar makes this a sweet and sour side dish that was found in Pennsylvania Dutch and German meals. It is different from creamy coleslaw.

A few new talks have been added, including Saturday, so I am putting out a fast post before Sunday.

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.

Barrel butter churns 1758-1805

It is spring, so time for another post on butter. Over the years I have covered butter types and shapes, and a wide variety of churns. HERE. Instead of plunger churns, with the up and down motion, the barrel churns used a circular motion. Pictured is a c1900 churn of my great grandmother from an eastern PA farm.

Passing on your family recipes

It's Family Stories Month, so talks on kitchen tales (show and tell), share family traditions and recipes, Holiday Foods and Your Family History, Christmas festivities and family traditions, and talks on doing your family history. Its never too late to start collecting recipes and stories from relatives and writing them down.

Cast iron and metal pot

This unusual cooking pot is not entirely cast iron. It has a cast iron bottom which extends 3/4" up the thinner metal body. Both sections feel and sound different, and are probably from a three part mold. My great grandmother used it on her wood stove or at the large stone hearth in an outbuilding on their eastern Penn. farm. Perhaps it's a transitional iron pot from hearth to cookstove?

Rice puddings

My grandmother's recipe, baked in her rice pudding bowl (left). Another baked for 4 hours adding milk every half hour until extremely thick. Or boiled around an apple in a cloth. Or a c1800 MD manuscript recipe boiled with suet. Or used rice flour. Or burnt rice...

Ice harvesting in 19th and 20th century America

Early 1900s films, recent tapes and zoom talk tapes show the various processes of ice harvesting on lakes and rivers: horse teams to plow the snow, score then saw the ice, then send the 'cakes' of ice up a conveyor into huge ice houses. It was done by small farmers to large scale operators, such as Bostonian Frederic Tudor the "Ice King" who shipped the New England ice to India.

Notice to Milkman!

Quarantine sign tacked to the front door during the Typhoid Fever epidemic of 1911, ordered that the milk bottles were not to be exchanged or the milkman would be fined $5 to $100 (currently $75 to $1500). 

Chickens roosting in trees

Although there are many images of chicken ladders in Germany through the centuries, HERE I haven’t seen a chicken ladder going into a tree...until recently.  The photo was taken the first two decades of the 1900s on a farm in southern Monroe County, Pa.  In the few writings about the pros and cons of chickens in trees, only one mentioned to "place something" for the chickens to get to the branches.

Dolly Varden Cake - Doll Cake

This cake was named for a Dickens character in an 1839 novel and the ensuing 1870s dress style.  The earliest recipe, in 1877, had four layers - chocolate, white (egg whites), rose (cochineal), and yellow (egg yolks) - with frosting.  The new cake had appeared in several state fair lists in 1876.

Dandelion wine and dandelion salad with hot bacon dressing

Anyone tired of seeing the sunny yellow flowers in their lawn?  If you have a big yard with dandelions away from a road... and don't use chemicals... you can eat the leaves you weed (or just buy from store). My grandmother made  bacon salad dressing on dandelion leaves.  Tom Martin, who was at Landis Valley museum for years, HERE made a terrific version, which is in the cookbook and below.  Recently someone made dandelion wine, which was very sweet... so yes it was a good cordial.

Syringes and presses for fancy cookies

The familiar aluminum Mirro cookie press of the 1960s was preceded by Swedish sprutas, syringes, biscuit forcers & presses.  The dough is forced out as a long "ornamental" ribbon, then cut into individual cookies.

S'mores

For Girl Scouts, and now most campers, s'mores are THE summer campfire treat.  And no, you can't eat just one.  From the 1965 official GS calendar - "'S'mores'... that favorite campfire dessert."  The recipe "Some More" is from a 1927 GS book, and "S'mores" started appearing by the 1940s.  

Tom Martin and The Landis Valley Cookbook

Last month Tom passed away, and on August 17th, Landis Valley Museum, where he worked for over 30 years, will host a celebration of his life. He knew so much about brick bake ovens and Pa. Dutch foods, and was always willing to share, and yet always researching to learn more.

Oh baby! - babies in the kitchen from 1650 to 1803

Paintings of babies kept warm in the kitchen... for Emilia Elizabeth...

Kentucky Derby Benedictines

The Kentucky Derby is run this Saturday.  Benedictines - green cucumber sandwiches with cream cheese and onions - were created in the 1890s by Jennie C. Benedict, a caterer in Louisville.  Although she wrote two cookbooks, neither contained her famous recipe.

Mint Juleps for the Kentucky Derby

The drink of the Kentucky Derby is the sweet refreshing Mint Julep.  If you go to Churchill Downs, the Mint Juleps are served in yearly glass glasses.  More Derby dishes HERE. A British visitor in 1839 described the drink. 

Eggs and onion skins

The marvelous mahogany hues of hard-boiled eggs boiled in onion skins make a wonderful backdrop to etch with a needle or knife, as seen in the eggs done by Tom Martin at Landis Valley Museum in Lancaster, Pa.  1826 and 1876 directions...