Lady Baltimore Cake

Described in the novel Lady Baltimore (1906) as "all soft, and it's in layers, and it has nuts,"  the Lady Baltimore Cake has more to do with Philadelphia than Baltimore or even Charleston (before the book was published).   ...

Young cooks in a French kitchen, 1890s

Joseph Bail (French, 1862-1921) painted many views of kitchen helpers and young cooks. 

On this Labor Day, I’ve included some of his paintings depicting children working in a kitchen c.1893 ... a few of the scenes are playful, others poignant. 

Pickled and Stuffed Olives

Stuffing olives with capers or truffle pieces?  Yes, in 1818.  Grocery stores now sell all sorts of stuffed olives.

Cooking and Dining onboard 19th century railroad cars

Pullman "Hotel Cars" in 1882 contained many ingenious devices such as a compact kitchen range/oven and temporary dining tables from "well-polished mahogany planks."

Chiffon Cake - a new sponge cake in 1948

Savoy Cake, Elkridge Huckleberry Pudding, and Victoria Sponge Cake were just some types of sponge cake.... and then, in 1948 ... Betty Crocker's Chiffon Cake. 

Generally, sponge cakes were made with flour, sugar, and eggs - the whites beaten hard for leavening.  No butter, water or baking powder/soda.  The new Chiffon Cake had oil, water and baking powder.

Ice Tea, Sweet Tea history

Iced tea was given out free at a Tea Store in Macon, Ga, in August 1896 (ad below).  Ice or Iced tea in the second half of the 19th century was made with green or black tea, or both - blended.  Although generally brewed, there were early recipes for the tea made in cold water.

Early references to Ice Tea dealt with its immense popularity in Russia in the 1840s; and by 1860 it appeared in American books.  The Russian influence was noted in recipes labeled Russian Tea or Tea a la Russe.  

A northern cookbook contained the first recipe in a cookbook to brew sugar with the hot water – sweet tea – before the usually cited Old Virginia cookbook of 1877.  Another early sweet tea appeared in a medical recipe. ...

Butter shapes - 2

Continuing with Dutch, Flemish and French butter in paintings from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. 

The butter in a mound shape is from Pieter de Hooch's A Woman Preparing Bread, (Dutch c1660) in the Getty Museum.

Fried RED Tomatoes

For those of us who love green fried tomatoes, here is a delicious 1839 recipe for fried red ones with bread crumbs and fried minced onions...

Yorkshire Range video

“The Old Black Lead Range” a seven minute video of Peter Brears cooking on the range is on Youtube  HERE . The Yorkshire Range, popular in English kitchens from the 1850s, was an ‘open range.'

Cook Stove Videos

The two short videos below, show cooking on early cast iron cook stoves, bringing to life these 19th century images.  The first stove has an upper or step-up oven, while the second is a box stove with oven.

Butter Shapes

Have you ever wondered what these objects were in the Dutch market paintings?  Butter was sold in various shapes, sizes, weights and 'prints' over the centuries.  The following Dutch and Flemish butter images from the 16th and 17th century show imprinted oval shaped butter. 

Jefferson's Savoy Cakes

President Thomas Jefferson actually wrote this recipe.  And others, some written in French.  This recipe To make biscuit de Savoy includes an interesting step - "take care not to shut the oven till the biscuit begins to swell up, then close the oven."

Garlic Butter

Not for Italian bread...but when cows ate wild garlic in the spring, the flavor remained in the milk, and the cream was churned  into  garlic flavored butter.

Strawberry Cakes - Eliza Leslie

Probably the earliest Strawberry Shortcake recipe is by Eliza Leslie in 1847.  It is a crisp cookie/pie crust cake, made richer if you use the pint (4 sticks) rather than the half pound (2 sticks) of butter - Leslie mentions both.

HUGE fish smoker - 1779

This incredible kiln to smoke red herring is pictured in a French book published in 1779.  The fish were strung through sticks which were then passed up to be hung.  After being dried in the smoke, the fish were taken down, pulled off the sticks and put in barrels. While there are a couple women helping in the first image, all the workers in Figure 2 - even those climbing in their long dresses - are women. Click on the images for larger views.

Barding and Larding

How to bard, how to lard?  Images of larded and barded meat with instructions appeared in Miss Corson's Practical American Cookery in 1886...

Incorporators for Salad Dressing

Odd bottle #2.  Once the dressing for the salad was made, it was put in a bottle or poured down the side of the 'salad dish', to be mixed only when ready to eat, according to William Kitchiner.  He specified “an Ingredient Bottle, - These are sold at the Glass Shops, under the name of Incorporators,— we recommend the sauce to be mixed in these, and the Company can then take it, or leave it, as they like.”  [The Cook's Oracle by William Kitchiner.  London: 1822]

Codd Bottles

Marbles inside soda bottles??  This ingeneous replacement for the cork used the soda water's own pressure to keep the marble secured against a rubber ring just under the lip.  To release the seal, a special opener (see below) or finger pushed the marble ball away from the ring.

Here's Milk, ho!

Selling milk from 12 gallon cans, from the 1808 book The Cries of New-York with a description.  Also pictures from 1795 and 1805 Great Britain.

Spring Puddings and Rhubarb

Rhubarb, with its strikingly red stalks and large green leaves, became popular in Victorian England and by 1822 was the main ingredient in Spring Puddings.  The "pie-plant" was forced by the warmth of the waste water from the boilers of the factories... in Yorkshire...