Grandma’s “Every-Day Cook-Book” #7: HAM PICKLE

 (Smith-Post)

Pressed between the pages of my grandmother’s 1892 copy of the Every-Day Cook-Book are wonderful hand-written artifacts from my family’s past. These scraps of paper from well over a century ago provide a peek into the typical household preparation and storage of foods prior to the advent of modern refrigerators (or, as my grandmother Smith used to call them, “ice-boxes.”)

Although the canning, preserving and drying of garden-harvested produce were common ways to stock the pantries and root cellars of yore, meat preservation required some extra efforts to ensure its freshness and safety throughout the long Great Lakes winter months.

As shown in the previous post, I am beginning to recognize the handwriting on some of the recipes found tucked into this turn-of-the-century cook book. With nothing more than a hunch, I am attributing the tell-tale “e’s” to my great-grandmother, Emma (Emerine) Smith.

This recipe was placed in the cookbook for safekeeping long before her namesake, my mother, was born. And what it suggests is that Emma was a busy homemaker tasked with preparing and preserving meat for her family’s dinner table. Her recipe (as shown above) is transcribed below:

Ham Pickle

To every 100 lbs. meat, take 7 lbs. salt, 2 oz. salt peter, 1 oz. cayenne pepper, 5 lbs. brown sugar or 2 qts. molasses. In packing hams, use ½ the salt. The rest of the salt with the other ingredients should be put in water enough to cover the meat. Boil, skim, let stand until cool then pour over hams. Let remain in brine five or six weeks, rinse + smoke.

Apparently, pork was a popular staple in the Smith house since Emma also included the following recipe, written on the back of a blue envelope postmarked “Detroit, Mich. 1906." This impromptu recipe appears to be jotted down in the no-nonsense scrawl of a "Wm Robbins" of Milan, Michigan:

“Pickle for hams A strong brine to hold up a potato one cup of sugar for two hams and a small tablespoon of saltpeter”

Although Emma’s recipe is a bit more helpful in detail than his pithy version, the Every-Day Cook-Book itself provides a fuller sense of the time and efforts that were required to properly “pickle” a ham:

from The Every-Day Cook-Book, page 92

 

Grandma’s “Every-Day Cook-Book” #6: DROP FRIED CAKES

(Smith-Post)

Google “Old-Fashioned Drop Fried Cakes” and, like me, you will likely only find recipes for deep-fried donuts or fritters. Even grandma’s “Every-Day Cook-Book” features a short recipe on page 192 for fried cakes, aka donuts:

“FRIED CAKES. One cup of sugar, two eggs, half a cup of shortening, one teaspoon of soda, one cup of sour-milk, cut in rings; have your lard very hot, in which place a peeled potato to keep lard from burning, and drop in your cakes; they will come to the top of lard when light; fry a dark brown; when taken out sprinkle sugar over them.”

Let me first say, I am a once-in-a-blue-moon “from scratch” baker so I find that the recipes from this practical 1892 recipe book appear to have been written under the assumption that the user already knew her way around the kitchen. I make no such claim. However, even my limited expertise suggests that there might be a critical ingredient missing from the recipe above. What do you think?

I only ask that because, slipped between pages 36 and 37, is a single sheet of ruled stationery upon which is recorded two recipes for “Drop Fried Cakes”—one using applesauce and the other using sweet milk or cream.

The hand-written lists of ingredients are very similar to those listed for Miss E. Neil’s fried cakes except that they, unlike hers, include a goodly amount of flour to combine with the sugar, eggs, baking soda and milk in order to form a thick batter. I’m pretty sure that, had I dutifully followed the book’s original recipe, I would have found it impossible to “cut in rings” the gooey mixture as directed.

So I’m glad I found the inserted recipe sheet, even though it was also written with the assumption that the reader would know what she was doing over a dangerously hot pot of lard, with or without a peeled potato. For example, the hand-written recipe that begins mid-page simply provides the final steps:

“Flour salt + seasoning

Stir thick enough so the spoon will stand up and

drop in hot lard” 

(Okay. I almost put “lard” on my shopping list. Instead, I wrote “donut holes.”)

NOTE: If you look closely at the lettering, you’ll notice that the person who copied the recipe shown above was also the author of the recipe for “Plum Pudding” written on the back of the book’s brittle title page. I’d like to think that my great-grandmother Emma (Emerine) Smith recorded them both as her small home-made contributions to future generations.

Grandma's "Every-Day Cook-Book" #5: THE INVENTOR'S WIFE

 (Smith/Post)

At the time that my grandmother’s The Every-Day Cook-Book was published in 1892 by “Miss E. Neil,” another woman writer was already a popular and widely-published author. Her name was “Mrs. E. T. Corbett.” A copy of one of her poems, written out in long-hand, was folded and tucked between pages 38 and 39 of the cookbook.

At first, I planned to write about the lost “art” of penmanship, so well-demonstrated with the beautifully hand-written artifact found within the book, but there seemed to be more of a story in the poem itself. So, forget my research on the history of fine penmanship. Farewell, antique cursive handwriting. Hello, old-fashioned elocution, extensive memorization, and long-forgotten women authors who, quite literally, provided their “ten-cents-worth” to the American popular culture of the mid-nineteenth century.

Although this antique, handwritten version of The Inventor’s Wife was likely meant to demonstrate the “handsome hand” of the person copying the poem, it should be noted that the poem itself was already a familiar selection for memorized recitation by the late-1800s. And, once you read it, you’ll understand why.

But, before you do, here’s a little background on the poem’s creator:  

Mrs. Elizabeth T. Corbett, author of The Inventor’s Wife, was born in 1830 in New York City. At a time in American history when women were increasingly contributing by-lines in popular print, Mrs. Corbett was publishing her work as poems, plays and stories, including children’s books such as Three Wise Old Women, still in print.

Humorous poems like The Inventor’s Wife soon became staples for recitation and copying out in longhand in order to read and share in classrooms, on stage or to parlor room audiences long before the advent of home radios or televisions.

Corbett’s published pieces can be found in anthologies cheek-by-jowl with the work of other writers of the day such as Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Henry Ward Beecher, as well as the ever-popular Joe Jot, Jr. and Anon. One such anthology, the 1882 edition of Beadle’s Dime Readings and Recitations defines itself as “a very choice collection of the most ‘taking’ things for the Stage, Platform and School. Humorous, Vernacular, Pathetic, Eloquent and Forensic.”

From the archived selections of Mrs. Corbett’s published work that I’ve uncovered, I’d say she was a well-rounded writer who ticked many of Beadle’s boxes for popular humor, poignancy, and drama by employing familiar, homey dialects that her readers enjoyed and audiences loved to hear, examples of which are evident in the handwritten copy shown above. [Note: for our ‘woke’ friends who will be reading Mrs. Corbett’s 150-year-old poem, please know that “vernacular spelling” is a valid, time-honored literary device used to provide insight into regional accents, not make judgment on the characters. Just sayin'.]

And with that I present Mrs. Elizabeth T. Corbett’s poem: The Inventor’s Wife

 

(Back in my high school days I competed in Forensics -public speech recitations- and would have enjoyed performing "The Inventor's Wife"!)