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Ambrosia
Did you know ambrosia has two meanings? It is the food of the gods and a popular 20th century
American
dessert. Some history on both:
FOOD OF THE GODS
"Ambrosia. The food of the gods in classical mythology. The term may mean food in the narrow
sense of eatables, in which case it is the counterpart of nectar, the drink of the gods; or it may
mean food in the wider sense of sustenance, when it embraces drink also. What the gods were
actually supposed to eat is a matter of conjecture. In the English language any especially delicious
food may be called ambrosia; but this usage has become uncommon."
"Nectar and ambrosia, in the myths, were the foods of the gods, foods that preserved their
immortality and that flowed miraculously in some mythical paradise. Oftentimes, world trees grew
in paradise and produced these divine foods. The supernatural Tree of Buddha, the haoma tree (a
sacred vine of the Zoroastrians), and the Tree of Life in many lands all produced immortal
sustenance.
People in many early cultures believed that their deities ate special foods unknown to humans:
The gods were immortal, and they must have consumed something that made them so...Some
writers described nectar as a drink made of honey and fruit, and ambrosia as a kind of porridge
made from honey, fruit, olive oil, cheese, barley, and water. Others described ambrosia as an herb
that grew on earth (some identified it as parsley or wild sage), an herb they believed prolonged
human life just as the ambrosia of the gods preserved their immortality. But it was generally
believed that mortals would suffer deadly consequences if they ate the gods' ambrosia or drank
the gods' nectar, whatever those divine foods might be..."
"Ambrosia and nectar, food, drink and other supplies of the gods. In the Iliad the gods use
ambrosia as soap and perfume, and fed their horses ambrosia eidar ambrosial (or perhaps
immortal) food'. It is by means of nektar and desired ambrosia', distilled into his breast, that
Achilles is protected from exhaustion by Athene, at Zeus's urging. It is with ambrosia and red
nektar that Patroclus' and Achilles' bodies are preserved from decay after their death. According
to Hesiod the gods eat nektar and ambrosia. Sappho tells of the gods' mixing-bowl, krater, filled
with ambrosia to drink. Other early poets, too, seem to regard ambrosia as the liquid or nektar as
the solid or simply do not specify."
AMERICAN DESSERT
"Ambrosia. A dessert made from fruits, sugar and grated coconut, most popular in the
South.."
Culinary evidence confirms three points:
[1877]
[1904]
[1905]
[1913]
[1930]
[1931]
[1949]
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p.
14)
---Nectar and Ambrosia: An Encyclopedia of Food in World Mythology, Tamra Andrews
[ABC-CLIO:Santa Barbara] 2000 (p. 158)
[NOTE: this book contains far more information than can be paraphrased. Your librarian can help
you find a copy]
---Food in the Ancient World From A to Z, Andrew Dalby [Routledge:London] 2003 (p.
7)
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New
York] 1999 (p. 5)
Sample recipes:
"Six sweet oranges, peeled and sliced (seeds and as much of the core as possible taken out), one
pine-apple peeled and sliced (the canned is equally good), and one large cocoa-nut grated; alternate
the layers of orange and pine-apple with grated cocoa-nut, and sprinkle pulverized sugar over
each layer. Or, use six oranges, six lemons and two cocoa-nuts, or only oranges and cocoa-nuts,
prepared as above."
---Buckeye Cookery, Estelle Wood Wilcox [Buckeye Publishing:Minneapolis] 1877 (p.
135)
"Oranges, bananas, cocoanut, pineapple, Malaga grapes, dates, nuts.
Slice bananas and cut in small pieces the other fruits, removing the seeds from grapes. Put a layer
of each until the dish is filled. Then cover the top well with grated cocoanut, and a few nut
meats."
---Uncooked Foods, Eugene Christian (p. 185)
[NOTE: this author was a major health food proponent in his day]
"Peel and slice a dozen tart oranges, and grate cocoanut; put a layer of oranges in the bottom of
a large glass dish, sprinkle thickly with powdererd sugar, then scatter a layer of cocoanut, another
layer of oranges, sugar and cocoanut until your dish is full; cover the top with cocoanut, ornament
the dish by putting leaf-shaped sections of the peel round the edge; put them on before the last
layer of the orange so that they will be held in their place, and let them curl over the side of the
dish; sprinkly a little sugar over the top layer of cocoanut."
---Economical Cook Book, Sara T. Paul (p. 262)
"One pineapple chopped quite fine, one-half box strawberries, six bananas sliced and the slices
quartered, six oranges sliced and the slices quartered; one lemon cut fine; sweeten to taste. Add
one wineglassful sherry and set away until cold."
---American Home Cook Book, Grace E. Denison (p. 229)
"Ambrosia. Equal quantities of fresh grated cocoanut and sliced oranges. You must not use
canned cocoanut, and the oranges must be carefully peeled and cut across, not up and down.
Sweeten to taste."
---Old Southern Recipes, Mary D. Pretlow (p. 135)
"Fill a glass with alternate layers of sliced orange and cocoanut; cover with powdered sugar and
place a marashino cherry on the top of each."
---Jewish Cook Book, Florence Kreisler Greenbaum (p. 5)
"Ambrosia. Combine sliced oranges segments with sugar to taste and grated coconut. The moist
canned coconut is the best for this."
---Fireside Cook Book, James Beard (p. 213)
Ants on a log
The classic American recipe for ants on a log calls for celery, peanut butter and raisins: Ants on a log (& other "buggy" recipes). Some recipe variations substitute cream cheese or some a commercial cheese spread for the peanut butter.
Who invented "Ants on a log" and when? Excellent questions!
Celery and raisins were eaten (but not necessarily together!) by people living in ancient times.
Peanut butter was invented at the very end of the 19th century. Each of these foods [alone or
combined] are considered healthy.
Celery, raisin, and nut salads were brought to our country from Germany. These were very
popular in the late 19th century (the famous Waldorf Salad). They were mixed with mayonnaise.
Small, bite-sized stuffed vegetables became very popular in America at the same time. Stuffing
was usually some type of cheese, but could also be anchovy paste and other *exotic* fillings. You
will find more details in The American Century Cookbook, Jean Anderson [Clarkson
Potter:New
York] 1997 (p. 17). Dr. George Washington Carver combined peanuts and celery in the 1940s,
though his recipes were limited to soup &
salad
---use your browser's "find" feature to locate recipes that include celery
Historic American cookbooks confirm the American practice of stuffing celery began in the early 20th century. It remained popular through the 1960s. Most of these celery stuffings were soft cheese (cream cheese, soft cheddar) topped with spices (paprika, curry). Some old recipes include nuts and raisins, though none quite describe the finished "ants on a log" we know today. Peanutbutter fillings surface in the early 1960s.
According to the old cookbooks, stuffed celery was served as an appetizer (or hors d'oeuvre) at the beginning of a meal. People of all ages enjoyed this food at dinner parties, family get togethers, and holiday meals. Stuffed celery was also served as to children as snacks. Why? It was healthy and easy to prepare.
Where does ants on a log fit in? Truth is, we don't exactly know. Some magazine and newspaper articles from the 1980s attribute this food to the Girl Scouts, but they don't give a year or publication. Dozens of Web sites confirm this recipe is popular with Girl Scouts, but provide no history. We asked the Girl Scouts of America to confirm. This is what they said:
" That recipe is indeed found in Girl Scout cookbooks as far back as 1946. However, there is no mention of raisins in any of the cookbooks. The recipe is called "celery sticks." I found no mention of it being called "Ants on a Log." "
A SURVEY OF STUFFED AMERICAN CELERY RECIPES
[1911]
"Celery with Roquefort.
Select short tender stalks of celery, leaving on leaves, wash and chill thoroughly. Work three-fourths tablespoon butter until creamy and add one and one-half tablepoons Roquefort cheese. Season with salt, pepper, and paprika and spread on inside of celery stalks. Serve on crushed ice."
---Catering for Special Occasions with Menus and Recipes, Fannie Merritt Farmer [David McKay:Philadelphia] 1911 (p. 179)[1944]
"Stuffed Celery Stalks
Select crisp celery stalks about 2 1/2" to 3" long and stuff them with any of the following mixtures:
1. Blend 1 3 oz pkg. cream cheese with 1/4 c. Canned crushed pineapple and 1 tablesp. Canned pimiento.
2. Lay seedless raisins end to end in celery stalks. Fill with a mixture made by blending 1 3 oz pkg. Cream cheese with 1 tablsp. Top milk, spec pepper, and 1/8 teasp. Paprika [EDITORS NOTE: THIS US "UPSIDE DOWN" ANTS ON A LOG!]
3. Blend 1 3 oz pkg. Cream cheese with 1 tablesp. minced onion and 1 tablesp. Top milk. Partially fill each stalk with this mixture. Then arrange a path of caviar lengthwise through the center of each stalk.
4. Blend 1 3 oz pkg. Cream cheese with 1 teasp. Each of bottled horseradish and minced chives, and 1/4 teasp. Lemon juice.
5. To 3 oz of blue cheese mixed with 3 oz cream cheese, add 1 tablesp. Minced onion and 1/4 c. Top milk or cream.
6. Combine 1 c. Flaked canned salmon with 2 tablsp. Each of chopped ripe olives and green olives, 3 tablsp. Mayonnaise, 1/8 teasp. salt and a speck pepper.
7. Or any one of the canape spreads, p. 107-111, may be used as a filling for celery stalks."
---Good Housekeeping Cook Book, Completely Revised Edition [Farrar & Rinehart:New York] 1944 (p. 115-6)[1960]
"Celery Sticks.
2 bunches celery
2 oz 3 (8 oz) pkgs soft yellow cheese.
This may be varied by stuffing stalks with peanut butter."
---Cooking Out-of-Doors, Girl Scouts of America [GSA:New York] 1960 (p. 35)[1963]
"Stuffed Celery Plus.
For a special treat, stuff chilled crisp celery stalks with one of the following:
1. Combine 2 cup creamed cottage cheese with 1 tablespoon chopped stuffed olives. Makes 1 cup.
2. Combine 1 (3-oz) package soft cream cheese with 2 tablspoons drained crushed pioneapple. Makes 1/2 cup.
3. Mix 1/2 cup creamed cottage cheese with 1/4 cup grated raw carrot and 2 tablespoons seedless raisins. Makes 2/3 cup.
4. Blend 1/2 cup pasteruized process cheese spread with 2 teaspoons drained sweet-pickle relish. Makes 1/2 cup.
5. Or use crunch-style peanut butter."
---McCall's Cook Book [McCalls:New York] 1963 (p. 625)
Food historians tell us sauces made with apples and related recipes [stewed apples, apple pudding] were made by medieval European cooks. These sauces could be made from tart to sweet and were served as accompaniments to a variety of foods. In early times, they were called by different names, often with regards to its use as sauce for meat. The applesauce recipe in Elizabeth Raffald's Experienced English Housekeeper (London:1769) is titled "To make Sauce for a Goose." (See below for recipe). The Oxford English Dictionary traces the first use of the word applesause in print to Eliza Smith's Compleat Houswife, 9th edition, [London:1739]. Many 18th century British and American cookbooks contain recipes for applesause, confirming its popularity.
The practice of combining pork and apples dates back to ancient times. Hannah Glasse, an 18th century English cook book author, instructs her readers to serve roast pork with "some good apple-sauce."
"Most of the dishes made with apples that we know today are of early origin. For example, to
cook apples with fatty meats, so that their sharpness offsets the fat, is a practice which dates back
at least as far as classical times when Apicius gave a recipe for a dish of diced pork with
apples...the versatility of apples was already being exploited in medieval times; the Forme of
Cury and the Menagier de Paris (14th century cook books) give a range of recipes for
apple sauce, fritters, rissoles, and drinks."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p.
30-31)
"Apicius' [Roman, 1st century AD] recipe for 'minutal matianum', a ragout of pork, contains
apples...this is a kind of dish still made and eaten, particularly in Northern and Central Europe.
The acidity of apples helps the digestion of fat meat such as pork."
Applesause recipes throught time:
"This Middle Engish recipe might read something like this in modern English:
"Take apples and poach them. And let them cool and put them through a strainer. And on flesh
days, add good, rich beef broth and good white grease and sugar and saffron. On fish days, add
almond milk, olive oil and ground spices. And serve it forth."
[1475]
"To make an Apple Sauce. Get peeled apples, cut into pieces, then set to boil in puer fresh water.
When they are thoroughly cooked, drain off all of the water and sautee them in good fresh butter;
get fresh cream and well beaten egg yolks, and saffron, and salt judiciously. On dishing it up,
cinnamon and sugar generously over top."
[1769]
[1803]
[1877]
ABOUT APPLE BUTTER
"Apple butter, A Pennsylvania-Dutch cooked fruit puree, dating at least to 1765, made by
cooking and pureeing apples with cider."
"And while apples came from England, there's no doubt that the German Rhinelanders (and
Moravians) who came south into the Blue Ridge and Cumberland country in the 1700s really
honed apple butter-making to a deliciously fine art."
The earliest recipe we have for apple butter comes from The Kentucky Housewife, Lettice
Bryan, 1839: Related food? Apple pie.
According to the food historians, baking soda [bicarbonate of soda] dates back to ancient
civilization. It was not until the mid-19th century, however, that it was regularly used by English
and American cooks. The most comprehensive discussion of the history of this topic may be
found in English Bread and Yeast Cookery, Elizabeth David [Penguin:Middlesex England]
1977. Your librarian can help you find a copy.
"Bicarbonate of soda: NaHCO3, has been used in cookery for so long that, despite its chemical
label it has largely escaped the growing opposition to chemical' additives. It is an alkali which
reacts with acid by effervescing--producing carbon dioxide. It is therefore a leavening agent in
baking, if used in conjunction with, say, tartaric acid...The alkaline properties of bicarbonate of
soda can also be used to soften the skins of beans and other pulses. And a pinch added to the
cooking water makes cabbage and other green vegetables greener, but its effect on the pigment
chlorophyl. However, it also induces limpness (by breaking down hemicelluloses) and the loss of
vitamins B1 and C; and in the practice, which dates back to classical Rome and used to be
recommended in Britain and N. America, has largely died out."
[1846]
Soda Ash or Trona, Mineral
Information Institute
The history of modern baking powder begins in the late 18th century:
Pearlash
"The alkaline component of baking powder is usually Bicarbonate of Soda, also known as baking
soda. The first type, invented in the USA in 1790 was pearl ash', potassium carbonate prepared
from wood ash. This provided only the alkali; the acid had come from some other ingredients, for
example sour mlk. Pearl ash reacted with fats in the food, forming soap which gave an unpleasant
taste. Soon it was replaced by bicarbonate of soda, which still reacts in this was but to a much
smaller extent. An American name used for either of these alkali-only agents was saleratus.
True baking powder, containing both bicarbonate of soda and an acid, was introduced around
1850. The acid was cream of tartar or tartaric acid, both of which conveniently form crystals. This
was mixed with a little starch to take up moisture and so keep the other components dry, so that
they did not react prematurely. A disadvantage of this mixture was that is sprang into rapid action
as soon as it was wetted, so that the dough had to mixed quickly and put straight into the oven
before the reaction stopped.
Modern baking powder still uses these substances, but some of the cream of tartar (or tartaric
acid) is replaced with a slower acting substance such as acid sodium pyrophosphate. This hardly
reacts at all at room temperature, but speeds up when heated, so that bread and cakes rise well
in the oven."
What was saleratus?
"Saleratus.
"A score of years before the Civil War, the American breadmaker received help in the form of a
new leavening agent called saleratus, which changed its name later to baking soda. It was
convenient to use, but required the help of an acid to perform its work; cream of tartar was the
one usually chosen. In 1856, baking powder was devised; this provided the cream of tartar, or
some equivalent, already mixed with the baking soda."
"In order to make their bread and cakes rise the emigrants [westward-bound pioneers] carefully
packed saleratus. Saleratus, from the Latin salaeratus (aerated salt), is potassium or sodium
bicarbonate, a chalklike substance. It was a commercial leavening product that, like its
predecessor pearlash, allowed cooks to bake bread without yeast and cakes without large
quantities of beaten eggs. Saleratus had to be mixed with an acidic food or chemical, such as
cream of tartar, to activate the leavening process. Unlike our present-day baking soda, which
must adhere to a standard formula, the leavening action of saleratus depended on the brand.
Manufacturers in that era varied the amounts of chemicals added according to what they thought
was the best formula. As a rule, saleratus was stronger than today's baking soda. Saleratus was
first processed by adding carbonic acid to pearlash and changing potassium carbonate to
bicarbonate. Later the product was made from the reamins of marine plants and sea salt, a
fortunate discovery because pearlash was derived from the ashes of trees. Large forests had been
stripped to meet the demand for this new product. Saleratus became available commercially in
1840 and was packaged in paper envelopes with recipes. Catherine Beecher, considered an
authority on domestic matters, advised the "when Pearlash or Saleratus becomes damp, dissolve it
in as much water as will just entirely dissolve it, and no more. A tablespoonful of this equals a
teaspoonful of solid. Keep it cored in a junk bottle." Saleratus worked best when added to dough
that would bake quickly over a high heat. Cast-iron utensils placed over the intense heat of an
outdoor fireplace served perfectly. Cooking over hot coals had many disadvantages but it did
produce heat quickly. If the supply of saleratus brought from home was depleted, the emigrants
supplemented it from natural soda springs found near Sweetwater River...Besides using saleratus
as a leavening agets in baked goods...[emigrants] used it to hull corn."
"Saleratus: the monopotamic or monosodic carbonate. The potassium salt was formerly used in
baking, but it has been generally displaced by bi-carbonate of sodium, which is preferable as a
culinary ingredient and more easily assimilated by the system."
Baking powder
Baking
soda, muriatic acid, cream of tartar, Boston Cooking School Book, Mrs. D. A.
Lincoln [1884]
"Few realize that the first type, the cream of tartar baking powder, has practically disappeared
from the market. Combination baking powder now dominates the field. It contains phosphates and
aluminum as do our natural foods. The essential facts regarding this efficient and wholesome
product are told clearly in this book."
Most food history books place the invention of baking powder in the "1850s." Some say 1856.
The earliest
reference we find to a product called baking powder is dated 1852. This evidence suggests baking
powder
was used several years before Rumford introduced its famous product in 1859.
[1852]
[1855]
[1856]
[1859]
Yeast
Very few foods are "invented." They evolve over time according to product availability and local
taste. Recipes for all sorts of chocolate cakes, cookies, frostings, and candy (esp. fudge)
proliferated during the last quarter of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th. This was due, in
a part, to chocolate manufacturers who agressively marketed their products to the American
public. Mass production meant chocolate was no longer a food of the rich. It could be enjoyed by
everybody. Company cookbooks, promotions, and advertisements give us our glimpse of where
the idea for brownies might have originated.
Food historians have several theories about the history & origin of brownies:
"Chocolate, made from native American cocoa beans, was first consumed as a bitter beverage like
coffee, soon afterwards sweetened with sugar, which itself was very expensive until the mid-18th
century. By 1780 John Hanan had opened the first chocolate factory under the financing of Dr.
James Baker (therein the origin of "Baker's Chocolate," a product still made by General Mills,
Inc.). Cocoa powder didn't come along until 1828, and the first chocolate bar, made by the
Cadbury Company of England, didn't came along until 1842. Chocolate cakes, therefore, were a
rarity, and it was most probably an American baker who baked the first of them, and the brownie,
which would be made with unsweetened or dark chocolate, was among the first. Its texture,
somewhat chewy rather than cake-like, gives the brownie its appeal, and there are those who
prefer it more like fudge than cake, which further sets it apart from traditional cakes. Last but not
least, brownies should not be tall, but only an inch or so high, which also increases their density of
texture and flavor."
"Brownie...the name comes from the deep brown color of the confection, and it has been an
American favorite since the nineteenth century first appearing in print in 1906 in the "Boston
Cooking-School Cook Book," (Earlier references to "brownies" include Sears, Roebuck Catalog
for 1897, although the reference is to mail order chocolate candies named after cartoon elves
created by author Palmer Cox in a series that began with "The Brownies: Their Book"
[1887], and in the 1896 edition of the "Boston Cooking-School Cook Book" for a browned
molasses confection containing no chocolate.)"
"The two earliest recipes I could find for chocolate brownies appear in the 1906 edition of The
Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (with 2 squares Baker's Chocolate, melted) and in
Lowney's Cook Book, written by Maria Willet Howard and published by the Walter M.
Lowney Company of Boston in 1907...A note in Betty Crocker's Baking Classics (1979)
says that Bangor Brownies are probably the original chocolate brownies. Legend has it that a
Bangor, Maine, housewife was baking chocolate cake one day and it fell. Instead of pitching it
out, this frugal cook cut the collapsed cake into bars and served it, apparently with high marks.
Was that the beginning of brownies as we know them today? New York food historian Meryle
Evans doubts it, believing this story, like so many others, to be apocryphal. Some say brownies
were invented by a woman named Brownie. Others that brownies are an Americanization of
Scottish cocoa scones...The real story isn't known...Whatever their true origin, brownies didn't
become popular until the 1920's."
"The original brownies had no leavening, except for an egg or two, and little flour, but were so
rich with butter and melted chocolate that they baked up softer than other cookies...Fannie Merrit
Farmer's first brownie recipe, published in 1896, produced a confection that was colored and
flavored with molasses. Each brownie had a nut placed at its center. All early brownies contained
chopped nuts as well...The first chocolate brownie recipe was...published by Fannie Farmer in her
1905 revision of the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book. The proportions are similar to
her 1896 chocolate cookie recipe, except that she radically reduced the amount of the flour. In the
chocolate recipe she specified a "7-inch square pan."...[Maria Willett] Howard, who had been
trained by Fannie Farmer, was then employed by the Walter Lowney chocolate company. She
enriched Farmer's chocolate brownie recipe with an extra egg, creating Lowney's Brownies. She
then varied the recipe by adding an extra square of chocolate and named the Bangor Brownies.
This last recipe apparently started the idea that brownies were invented by housewives in
Bangor, Maine. The leading advocate ot the Bangor theory of brownie origin was Mildred Brown
Schrumpf, aptly nicknamed "Brownie," born in Bangor in 1903. Unfortunately, Mrs. Schrumpf's
best piece of evidence was a Girl's Welfare Cook Book publsihed there in 1912. This is
not only seven years post-Farmer, but the recipe contributed by Marion Oliver for Chocolate
Brownies to that cookbook is almost exactly the same as the two-egg recipe for Lowney's
Brownies, not Bangor Brownies. Oliver also contributed a recipe for Molasses Brownies
evidently taken from the Farmer cookbook...Maria Howard may have considered the Bangor
Brownies, which were to be baked in a cake pan (unlike her Lowney's Brownies), to be
descended from a recipe for Bangor Cake in Maria Parloa's Appledore Cook Book
(1872), which was a white sheet cake...In fact, the two-egg Lowney's Brownies was the recipe
most often reprinted in new England community cookbooks before 1912."
Who was Mildred Brown Schrumpf?
Early Brownie recipes:
[1896]
Brownies, Fannie Merritt Farmer (molasses, not chocolate)
[1912] "Lowney's Brownies
Cream butter, add remaining ingredients, spread on buttered sheets, and bake ten to fifteen
minutes. Cut in squares as soon as taken from oven."
[1912] "Bangor Brownies"
[1918] About Baker's Chocolate
Blondies
Food historians generally agree that recipes named "brownies" and chocolate brownies [as we
know them today] were first introduced in the beginning of the 20th century. This coincides with
the mass production [availability & affordability] of chocolate and cocoa. Here are our notes on
the history of [chocolate]
brownies.
According to old cookbooks, blonde brownies (also known as "Blondies") predated chocolate
brownies, though under different names. The primary ingredients of blondies (brown
sugar/molasses and butter) compose butterscotch, a candy that was popular in America in the
mid-19th century. Some 19th century American cookbooks contain recipes that combined
traditional butterscotch ingredients with flour and a leavening agent (baking powder or soda).
Presumably, these recipes would have produced something similar to the blonde brownies we
enjoy today.
Is this the beginning of the "brownie/blondie" recipe? Most likely not.
Enter--the gingerbread factor.
Before gingerbread? Ancient Roman, Greek, and Egyptian cooks made soft cakes with honey,
flour, spices and nuts.
"By the 1950s, butterscotch or vanilla brownies were described as "blonde brownies,"
underscoring the primacy of chocolate."
A sampling of ingredients listed in historic blondie-type recipes:
[1828]--Common Gingerbread
[1896]--Brownies
[1946]--Pecan Brownies
The general consensus of the food historians is that Brussels sprouts were
first propagated in northern Europe sometime between the 17th and 18th
century. Ancient/Classical Mediterranean claims are unclear and not
documented to the satisfaction of scholars. Presumably they are based on
the fact that cabbages, from which Brussels sprouts originated, were
grown in this place/period. Notes here:
"Brusssels sprouts...Members of the cabbage family that descended from the
cabbage (Brassica oleracea) and were named for the capital of Belgium,
Brussels sprouts are immature buds shaped line tiny cabbages...Although
the cabbage is native to the Mediterranean region (where it has been
cultivated for some 2,500 years), Brussels sprouts were developed in
northern Europe (the cabbage was carroed there by the Romans) around the
fifth century--or prehaps even later. One source claims that the plant was
cultivated near Brussels in the thirteenth century; another places the
first recorded description of Brussels sprouts in 1587; still another
claims that they have been widely grown in Europe only since the
seventeeth century; wheras at least one more source insists that they have
become popular in Europe only since World War I. Of course, these claims
are not necessarily contradictory. Brussels sprouts reached North America
with French settlers, who grew them in Louisiana, but they have been
popular in the United States only during the twentieth century."
"Brussels Sprouts, Brassica oleracea, Gemmifera group, a many-headed
subspecies of the common cabbage. The main head never achieves more than a
straggly growth while many miniature head buds grow around the stem...Some
authors have referred to the possibility that they were known in classical
times, and cite stray references from Brussels in the 13th century and
documents about wedding feasts of the Burgundian court at Lille in the
15th century. However, sprouts only became known in French and English
gardens at the end of the 18th century and a little later in N. America,
where Thomas Jefferson planted some in 1812."
"The cabbage is the oldest of the edible varieties of vegetables which
provided inspiration for the gatherers in their plant-hunting and their
culinary creativity...The magic of cultivation has now created some 400
varieties...Brussels sprouts gown ever since the seventeenth century for
the little buds sprouting from the stem..."
"Firmly ensconced as they now are, brussels sprouts...seem to be a
comparatively recent addition to the British table. The first recorded
reference to them comes in Charles Marshall's Plain and Easy Introduction
to Gardening (1796), and their description ('Brussels sprouts are winter
greens growing much like borrcole [kale]') suggests that they may first
have been valued for the tuft of leaves at the top of their tall thick
stem rather than the small green buttons growing up it...The first cookery
writer to mention them seems to have been Eliza Acton, who in her Modern
Cookery (1845) gives directions for cooking and serving them in 'the
Belgian mode', boiled and with melted butter poured over them. But why
brussels sprouts? They seem always to have been popular in Flanders and
northern France, and market regulations for the Brussels area as long ago
as 1213 mention them, but when the name was actually conferred on them is
not clear."
"Brussels Sprouts. Additional notes, modern varieties/growing
instructions & pictures.
The word casserole has two meanings: a recipe for a combination of foods cooked together in a
slow over and the dish/pot used for cooking it. Casserole, as a cooking method, seems to have
derived from the ancient practice of slowly stewing meat in earthenware containers. Medieval pies
are also related, in that pastry was used as a receptacle for slowly cooking sweet and savory
fillings. Early 18th century casserole recipes [the word entered the English language in 1708]
typically employed rice which was pounded and pressed (similar to the pastry used for pies) to
encase fillings. Like their Medieval ancestors, they were both savory and sweet. The casseroles
we know today are a relatively modern invention. Casserole cookery is known in other cultures
and cuisines as well: the tagines of Morocco and the mud-encrusted Beggar's Chicken of China
are two examples. Tuna noodle casserole is arguably one of the most
most popular American family dishes of the twentieth century.
Some brief notes on history:
"Casserole....The word has a complicated history, starting with a classical Greek term for a cup
(kuathos), progressing to a Latin word (cattia), which could mean both ladle and pan, then
becoming an Old French word (casse...), which then became casserole...Historically, casserole
cookery has been especially popular in rural homes, where a fire is in any case burning all day and
every day...Although casserole is a western term, the use of cooking pots which would be called
casseroles in Europe or Americas is almost universal in Asia."
"Casserole...perhpas the most remarkable aspect of its history is the complete and sudden change
in the dish it refers to that has taken place within the past hundred years. When English took it
over from French at the beginning of the eighteenth century it meant a dish of cooked rice
moulded into the shape of a casserole cooking pot and then filled with a savoury mixture, say of
chicken or sweetbreads. It was also applied by extension to a border of rice, or even of mashed
potato, round some such dish as fricasee or curry...Then some time around the 1870s this sense of
casserole seems to have slipped inperceptibly by swiftly into a dish of meat, vegetable, and stock
or other liquid, cooked slowly in the oven in a closed pot', its current sense...The word seems not
to have been used as a verb in English until after the First World War: It seemed a shame to
casserole [the chicken], for it would ave roasted beautiful' (Dorothy Sayers, Strong
Poison, 1930)."
"Casserole: A dish or pot made from a material such as glass, cast iron, aluminum, or
earthenware in which food is baked and, often, served. The word, which may also refer to the
food itself...is from the French and was first printed in English in 1708....Cooking in such dishes
has always been a part of most nation's gastronomy, but the idea of casserole cooking as a
one-dish meal became popular in America in the twentieth century, especially in the 1950s when
new
forms of lightweight metal and glassware appeared on the market. The virtues of easy-to-prepare
meals were increasingly promoted in the women's magazines of the era, thereby supposedly
freeing the housewife from the lengthy drudgery of the kitchen....By the 1970s casserole
cookery took on a less-than sophisticated image..."
"Casserole cookery has been around since prehistoric times, when it was discovered that cooking
food slowly in a tightly covered clay vessel softened fibrous meats and blended succulent
juices...With the addition or subtractions of leftovers or inexpensive cuts of meat, the casserole is
flexible and economical in terms of both ingredients and effort. The classic casserole, a French
dish, was originally made with a mound of cooked rice. Fannie Meritt Farmer's Boston
Cooking School Cook Book (1896) had one casserole recipe, for Casserole of Rice and
Meat, to be steamed for forty-five minutes and served with tomato sauce. In the twentieth
century, casseroles took on a distinctive American identity. During the depression of the 1890s,
the economic casserole provided a welcome way to stretch meat, fish, and poultry. Certain items
were also scarce during World War I and leftovers were turned into casserole meals. The same
was true during the Great Depression of the 1930s."
A brief survey of casserole recipes through time:
[1869] "Rice Casserole with Lamb Sweetbreads
[1880s] "Casserole of Rice (English method)
Casserole of Rice (French method)
[1884] Casserole of
rice and meat, Boston Cooking School Cook Book, Mrs. D. A. Lincoln
[1912] About casseroles:
[1924] "Casserole cookery
Recipes from this book include Pigeons en Casserole, Chopped Beef in Casserole, Casserole of
Rice and Liver, Bananas en Casserole & Tamale Pie.
"Pork Chops en Casserole:
Place a layer of sweet potatoes, sliced crosswise, in a greased casserole, dust with salt, pepper,
and a little brown sugar; continue the layers until the casserole is aobut two-thirds full. Heat the
milk and pour it over the potatoes; it should just cover them. Place the pork chops on top of the
potatoes, cover and bake for an hour, then remove the cover and season with salt and pepper.
Leave the cover off and cook until the chops are tender and niceley browed on top." (p. 626)
[1929]
[1940]
Did you know? Tuna noodle casserole was very popular in the
1940s.
Tuna Noodle Casserole
Casserole, as we Americans know it today, is an economical meal. Food historians confirm
*modern*
casseroles were known in the 19th century. They became popular in the 1930s when the Great
Depression
forced cooks to seek economical solutions to family meals. This cooking genre was continued in
the 1940s
(economic reasons) and 1950s-1970s (convenience reasons). About
casseroloes
.
Forerunners of tuna noodle casseroles have been composed for hundreds of years. In 19th century
America, the meat of choice was typically the same as for salad-sandwiches: chicken, turkey, and
lobster.
Recipes for creamy casseroles composed of white sauce and meat and noodles/rice also appear at
this
time.
Tuna was first commercially canned in 1903. It took much corporate promotion to convince
home cooks to
substitute this canned product for *traditional* protein sources. If tuna salad sandwiches can be
used as a
"food barometer," this product was not readily accepted until the 1950s. About tuna
So when did tuna noodle casserole debut? Some food historians credit the Campbell Soup
Company
[Camden NJ] for setting the table. This company's Cream of Mushroom Soup was actively
promoted to
American consumers in the 1930a as an quick and economical alternative to homemade sauces.
Corporate advertisements, cooking brochures and cookbooks promoted casserole dishes. Tuna
noodle
casserole was among them. No, the company did not invent the recipe. It did, however, make it
famous.
The oldest TNC recipe we have on file was published by Campbell's in 1941.
1920s casseroles were promoted as economical meals because they used cheaper cuts of meat and
lots
of filler. These casseroles required hours of baking. Tuna noodle casserole, on the other hand, was
a quick
meal assembled in short order from canned foods. Voila! Dinner is served.
ABOUT CREAM OF MUSHROOM SOUP
"1934: Cream of
Mushroom soup is
introduced, becoming Campbell's first soup to be widely used as a sauce."
"For most of its early history, the [Campbell] company's list of soups remained remarkably
stable...In the
mid-thirties, however, the manufacture of six soups of the original twenty-one soups was
discontinued. Not
surprisingly, these were, to the taste of the average American, some of the more exotic: Julienne,
Printanier, Mulligatawny, Mutton, Tomato Okra, and Vermicelli-Tomato. Taking the place of
these soups
were, among others, Chicken Noodle, Cream of Mushroom, Bean with Bacon, and Vegetarian.
Of them,
Cream of Mushroom was the most significant in terms of the changing state of the Campbell
company.
Shortly after the introduction of the initial lines of Campbell's condensed soups, it was suggested
that,
because of their extreme concentration, a single can of undiluted soup could double as a sauce or
stock.
"Many times," the booklet Helps for the Hostess stated, "unattractive left-overs are
thrown away
when, by using a can of Campbell's Soup, they could have been made into an attractive,
appetizing dish."
The booklet gave them what Escoffier would have termed the "culinary operation" to be
followed:
ABOUT PROMOTING CANNED SOUPS AS EASY SAUCE FOR FAMILY
MEALS
SAMPLE CASSEROLE CIRCA 1924
"White Casserole
TUNA NOODLE CASSEROLE RECIPES
Company Casserole.
[1946] "Tuna, Noodle and Mushroom Soup Casserole
[1952]
You will find information [and pictures] of historic casserole cookware in collectibles/pottery
books. Ask your librarian to help you find them.
Michael Symons notes: "The cook created by Philemon the Younger decrees: A man isn't a cook
merely because he comes to a customer with a soup-ladle and carving knife, nor even if he tosses
some fish into a casserole; no, Wisdom is required in his business'. [A History of Cooking,
University of Illinois:Urbana] 1998 (p. 42).
Related food? Coq au vin.
Food historians generally credit Auguste Escoffier for creating Cherries Jubilee to mark Queen
Victoria's Jubilee celebration. There seems to be some conflict as to which Jubilee (1887? 1897?).
Charles Elme Francatelli (primary Chef to Queen Victoria) confirms the Queen's oft noted
affection toward cherries. Francatelli's recipe was meant to accompany venison:
Of course, dishes are not invented, they evolve. A survey of 19th century cookbooks confirms
both cherry compote and cherries preserved in brandy were popular items. Towards the end of the
century, elaborate chafing dish and flambe recipes (Baked Alaska, for a dessert example) became
the hallmark of the best chefs and finest menus. Given this context, it was probably only a matter
of time before someone decided to set sweetened, liqueur-covered cherries "on fire." The vanilla
ice cream base was introduced later, probably inspired by the popular appeal of Baked Alaska. In
America, Cherries Jubilee quickly became a standard dessert item in the finest continental
restaurants. The recipe was quickly adopted/adapted by American home cooks who wanted to
impress their dinner guests. Cookbooks in the 1950s & 1960s almost always contain a simplified
recipe for this particular item. In the United States, flamboyant flambe dishes climaxed during the
Kennedy years.
"Cherries Jubilee were created in honor of Queen Victoria. Then, as now, the British public
delighted in every detail of the Royal Family's life and everyone know that cherries were the
queen's favorite fruit...The whole nation celebrated at her Golden Jubilee in 1887 and again at her
Diamond Jubilee in 1897. It was during the earlier celebration that Cherries Jubilee first appeared.
Curiously, the original dish did not call for ice cream at all. Sweet cherries poached in a simple
syrup that was slightly thickened, were poured into fireproof dishes, then warmed brandy was
added and set on flame at the moment of serving. Soon, however, Escoffier was serving vanilla
ice cream accompagnie de Cerises Jubile to many dignitaries..."
"Cherries Jubilee: A dessert made with black cherries flambeed with kirsch or brandy, then
spooned over vanilla ice cream. The dish [was]...especially fashionable from the 1930s through
the 1960s in deluxe restaurants, and also a popular dinner-party dish of the same period. The
origins of the dish are unknown."
Compare these recipes:
[1903] "Recipe 4523: Cerises Jubilee
[1954] "Cherries Jubilee
There is plenty of information on the history of chewing gum. If you just need a brief profile,
check out these passages and Web sites. If you are conducting in-depth research ask your librarian
to help you find the resources cited at the end of this message.
"Chewing gum...a confection of sugar flavouring, and an insoluble base which eventually is
eventually spat out and discarded by the user. Originally it was made from chicle, the latex of the
tree Manilkara zapota, which is native to Central and South America. A sweet based on a mixture
of chicle, sugar, and a flavouring (licorice or sassafras) was patented in 1871. By the end of the
19th century, several entrepreneurs were making handsome profits form the manufacture of such
items as Chiclets, Gumballs, and Spearmint Gum. The foremost of these, William Wrigley, made
clever used of marketing techniques and expanded the market considerably. The sweet became
popular in Europe after soldiers from the USA brought it in their ration packs during the Frist
World War."
"The United States chews more gum per capita than any other country in the world; Canada is
second. After them come the Latin American countries. Gum chewing is thus concentrated in
countries inhabited originally by American Indians; and it was indeed from the Indians that the
Anglo-Saxon colonists of North America and the Latin colonists of South and Central America
inherited the habit of chewing gum. In New England, the Indians masticated the resin of the black
spruce and taught the Pilgrims to do the same; in Central America, the Mayans masticated chicle
(from the Nahuatl chichtli), the coagulated latex of the sapodilla tree, and taught the Spaniards to
do the same. The first chewing gum produced commercially seems to have been that made about
1850 in the state of Maine, which, following the Indian example, was based on spruce
resin....About 1890 the United States, which had been importing chicle as a rubber substitute,
suddenly noticed that South American Indians chewed it, and decided to try it out in gum..."
"The chico zapote, the fruit of the Manilkara zapota, the tree that produces the sap that used to be
made into chewing gum, was a delicious morsel, although we have no evidence that the Maya
chewed the gum the way the Aztecs did."
Bubble gum was invented in 1928 by Walter Diemer. He was employed by the Fleer
Corporation.
"...it was an early-August morning in 1928 , and a young cost accountant named Walter Diemer
did the trick. The age of bubble gum rose like a shimmering pink sun on the horizon. Inspired by
his employer's search for a large, dry bubble that wouldn't explode and stick so fast to young faces
that parents would forbid it in the house, the 23-year-old Diemer was experimenting with a new
batch of bubble gum mix. He had no knowledge of chemistry; for more than a year he'd been
working by simple trial and error."
History of chewing gum, Wrigley Company
If you need additional information ask your librarian to help you find this book:
You will find several other books listed in the Library of
Congress catalog, run a subject search for "chewing gum." Your librarian can get these
books for you.
Also ask for these articles:
"The sticky history of chewing gum." American History, Oct. 98, Vol. 33 Issue 4, p. 30 (8
pages)
Additional information, courtesy of
the National Association of Chewing Gum Manufacturers.
One of the great American food company traditions is promoting one's products through recipes.
Period cookbooks and women's magazine ads from the 1950s and 1960s confirm the idea of
combining manufactured cereal with other products and toasting them with butter was popular.
According to one source, Chex Mix (aka TV Mix, Chex Party Mix. Mix Trix) was introduced in 1955
If so? The Ralston Purina company was not the first to market the idea. The 1950
edition of Betty Crocker's Cook Book [General Mills] has a recipe for "Buttered or
Cheese Kix,"
Kix being a General Mills brand cereal. Some notes on corporate recipe development here.
"Traditional Chex Brand Party Mix.
This crunchy nibble hit the party circuit in 1955. In St. Louis. There's a good reason for this. The
recipe was dreamed up by the savvy folks ar Ralston Purina--a St. Louis company--as a way to
push its Chex Brand cereals (wheat, corn, and rice). Today, it's a staple in millions of homes from
Maine to Monterey. Some cooks fiddle with the classic recipe, loading it with a favorite nut,
perhaps..."
Original Chex Party Mix
recipe, from General Mills
Mix the packaged cereals and pretzel sticks together. Combine the melted butter and seasoning.
Pour over the cereal mix. Stir well together. Spread in a layer on a baking sheet, and bake at 250
degrees F. For an hour, stirring every 15 minutes."
[1962]TV Mix
"TV Mix.
According to the records of the U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office "Chex Mix" was not registered until 1990: Registration #1663021
Photographs of Chex Mix/TV Mix
recipes from product boxes
"The town of Sterling, Colorado celebrated its favorite snack food today with a Main Street
Parade, the naming of a "Mr. and Ms. Chex Mix" and even the presentation of a college
scholarship. Saying they had to see it to believe it, several General Mills representatives flew in
from Minneapolis to attend the festivities and hear the mayor proclaim Chex Mix as the city's
official snack. The day's events developed after local radio DJ Jason Murphy asked listeners of his
KPMX morning show to name their favorite snack food. The resounding answer was Chex Mix.
"I was shocked by how many people called in to say Chex Mix ruled," says Murphy...Amused and
flattered by the town's efforts, General Mills sent more than 700 bags of Chex Mix to Sterling,
most of which will be donated to the local food shelf."
ABOUT CHEX BRAND CEREAL
This very popular dessert has surprisingly little documented history. Food historians tell us
savoury mousse (finely whipped foods achievieving a "foam-like" texture) was an 18th century
phenomenon. Dessert mousses begin to appear in the second half of the 19th century. These were
generally fruit mousses. Early recipes for dessert mousses in English and American cookbooks are
classified with ice creams. Sarah Tyson Rorer [1902] states they are the same as parfait. Indeed, the method and flavors are similar.
Coincidentally? Chocolate mousse was promoted in the USA about the same time as chocolate pudding mixes.
Food historians generally agree the French first began consuming and cooking with chocolate in
the early 1600s. Chocolate: An Illustrated History, Marcia & Frederic Morton (page 15)
states that "chocolate was introduced to the French by the Spanish princess Anne of Austria, upon
her marriage to Louis
XIII in 1615." About chocolate.
According to The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University
Press:Oxford] (p. 516) "Mousse, a
French term meaning foam, is applied to dishes with foamy texture, usually cold and often sweet
but also savoury and sometimes hot. The terms was in common use in France by the 18th century.
Menon (1758) has recipes for frozen mousses...Chocolate mousse is well known internationally.
Other mousses, such as those incorporating ham...or fish or asparagus, are more likely to be
found in a French context."
"A Mousse is a light frothy dish, usually eaten cold, consisting of a sweet or savoury puree
whipped up and set in a mould with beaten egg whites, cream, or gelatine. English took the term
over from French as recently as the 1890s. There, it originally meant 'moss', and indeed moss and
mousse probably share a common prehistoric source (whos ancestral sense was probably bog').
The possible etymological connections with applemose, a now obsolete term for a dish made from
stewed pulped apples, are not clear; the semantic similarities are striking, but the likelier
explanation is perhaps that the element -mose comes from a primitive Germanic word for soft
food' (represented also in muesli)."
The oldest print reference we find for "chocolate mousse" in an American source dates to 1892:
[1896]
[1897]
[1899]
[1907]
[1918]
What about white chocolate mousse?
"White chocolate mousse. A dessert made from white chocolate, cream, egg whites, and sugar. It
was created by chef Michael Fitoussi in 1977 on the occasion of the second anniversary of the
Palace Restaurant in New York City and quickly became popular in other restaurants around the
United States; it also began an interest in white chocolate (actually a form of flavored cocoa
butter) as a confectionery ingredient."
"And then there was white chocolate. After chef Michel Fitoussi created a white chocolate
mousse in New York City in 1977, we couldn't get enough. Mousse was perhaps the most
popular of the white chocolate desserts, but whit chocolate was soon finding its way into truffles,
brownies...dessert sauces, cakes, paves, tortes, tarts, cheesecakes, ice cream, and which chocolate
chip cookies. Pastry chefs appreciated white chocolate's malleability and, as they had done with
dark chocolate, were soon molding it into fantastic flowers, ribbons, butterflies, and leaves to
decorate cakes that had already been wrapped in sheets of the stuff."
About white chocolate.
"Botanists disagree about whether the species originated in the region of the East Indies and
Melanesia, as most think, or
in tropical America, as a minority have vigorously argued. The minority view is supported by the
fact that almost all the
coconut palm's relations are in America, the one important exception being the oil palm, which is
African. Yet the
coconut has, at most, an exigius history in Central America in pre-Columbian times; the evidence
that the earliest
Spanish invaders found it growing on the west coast of the Isthmus of Panama is uncertain; and if
it was growing there it
is odd that its cultivation was not widespread, since it is so useful. In contrast, the coconut has
been known in East Asia
and the islands for a very long time indeed; it exists in greater variety in that region; and there is
another evidence
(including the number of species of insects associated with it in the various regions) that it did
originate there, probably
in Melanesia. There is also an interesting diversity of views about the origin of the name 'coconut'.
Child (1974) gives a
good account of these and comes down in favour of the etymology which commands most
acceptance, that 'coco' was
first used towards the end of the 15th century by Portuguese seamen, who applied to the nut, with
its three 'eyes', the
Spanish word coco, referring to a monkey's or other grotesque face. When Linnaeus gave a
scientific name to the tree in
the 18th century, he toyed with Coccus (coccus, berry in Latin) but settled on Cocos. It was also
in the 18th century that
the notorious confusion between cocnut and cocoanut began. The blame for this seems to rest
with Dr. Johnson, who
confused the two in a single entry in his dictionary (1755); and one still occasionally comes across
'cocoanut' when
'cocunut' is meant. The term 'coker-nut', an old variant of coconut, was at one time in commerical
use in the Port of
London, to avoid the confusion, and remains in popular use."
"Unfortunately, it is not possible to provide as much information as one might want on the
coconut in prehistory. This is
becuase heat and humidity work agains the preservation of fossils, and thus there are is a dearth of
archaelogical
materials, coprolites, and biological remains on tropical seashores where the coconut palm is
native. Coconut residues
do not accumulate because the palm grows and fruits the year round. This makes crop storage
unnecessary and, in fact,
because of their high water content, coconut seednuts cannot be stored; they either grow or
rot...In 1501, King Manuel of
Portugal itemized some of its uses at a time when the coconut was first becoming known in
Europe."
"Coconut...The word is a combination of a Portuguese children's term, coco, for the "goblin" shell
of the fruit and the
English word "nut." The fruit was first mentioned in English print in 1555, and the first American
reference was in 1834.
The origins of the coconut have never been fully understood, but some believe it is native to
tropical America and was
dispersed to Pacific Islands by the drift of pods through the ocean. Coconuts were known in
Egypt by the 6th century
AD, and Marco Polo noted them in India and elsewhere in the Far East. Certainly coconuts were
encountered on the
Pacific shores of South America and Hawaii, but coconut is not a major crop in the latter."
How did coconuts get to colonial America?
This is what the food historians say on the topic:
"Columbus took vegetable seeds, wheat, chick-peas, and sugar cane to the Caribbean on his later
voyages; Columbia's second governor introduced the first cows that had ever been seen there;
settlers took bananas, rice and citrus fruits; yams and cowpeas crossed the Atlantic with the
slaves. Coconuts were introduced to the Bahamas, breadfruit to the Caribbean, and coffee to
Brazil."
"Just when the coconut palm appeared on American shores is open to debate, but some accounts
tell that on southern plantations coconut meat was used for making the holiday dessert,
ambrosia."
"There are coconuts in Florida today, but there were none then [1519], and even those we have
now are the result of an accident: the schooner Providence, carrying coconuts from the West
Indies, was wrecked off the coast of Florida in 1879; the nuts floated ashore and took root.
Though the Providence's coconuts came from the West Indies, it is almost certain that Columbus
never saw any there. The Spaniards reported fully on new foods enountered in the Caribbean area
and in Mexico, but none of them ever mentioned the coconut. There were coconuts in America
before Columbus, for they are pictured in pre-Columbian pottery, but they were on the wrong
side of America to be found by Columbus, on the coasts of Chile and Peru, suggesting that the
coconut, a great floater, had drifted across from the Pacific Islands."
"By the 1850s ships from Florida were delivering fruits and vegetables there twice a month; and
by the middle of the century pineapples and coconuts were arriving from Cuba, from other West
Indian islands, and even from Central America."
A BRIEF SURVEY OF EARLY AMERICAN COCONUT RECIPES
[1824]
[1828]
Corn bread was not invented. It was a product of cultural exchange and practical necessity. Corn
[aka maize] is a new world food. Native Americans were cooking with ground corn long before
the European explorers set foot on New World soil. The food we know today as "corn bread" has
a northern European (English, Dutch, etc.) culinary heritage. Why? Because the new settlers often
had to "make do" with local ingredients [corn meal] when their traditional ingredients [finely
ground wheat] were in short supply. When colonial American recipes carried the name "Indian" in
their title (Indian bread, Indian pudding) it was because one of the ingredients was cornmeal.
About corn & maize
This is what the food historians have to say:
"Native Americans roasted their corn and ground it into meal to make cakes, breads, and
porridges...The new cereal was precious and helped the early settlers to survive those first harsh
years. ..Before long uniquely American dishes were being developed on the basis of this new
grain, including an Indian bread called pone' or corn pone' (from the Algonquin word apan,'
[meaning] baked) made of cornmeal, salt and water. This was later called corn bread' and has
been a staple of American cooking to this day...Once the [corn] crops took hold throughout the
colonies, cornmeal foods were everyday fare..."
"Once the corn was ground to meal, the question was what to do with it. For wheat eaters, corn
was a punishement...In frontier America, as in colonial America, any form of bread made with
corn
instead of wheat was a sad paste of despair. How sad is reflected in the lowliness of the
names--pone, ashcakes, hoe-cakes, journey-cakes, johnny-cakes, slapjacks, spoonbreads,
dodgers--all improvised in the scramble to translate one culture's tongue and palate into another's.
Names got muddled by region and recipe as much as samp, hominy and grits and for the same
reason: the desperate attempt of a wheat culture to order by its own canon the enourmous variety
of pastes, batters and doughs cooked by native grinders of corn.
From the start, colonist put interchangeable labels on the generic native ash-cake, baked in an
open fire, which seemed to the people of iron griddles and pots and appalling reversion to
Stonehenge. Words slithered in the mud of translation, Narragansett nokechick' becoming
no-cake and hoe-cake; journeying cake Shawnee cake or every John's no-cake becoming
jonny or johnnycake. At the same time, these Anglicizations of hoe-cake and johnny-cake took
hold early and hung on late a symbols...of rebel identity...For those who actully cooked the stuff,
cornmeal was hard going. Not only was corn obdurately hard to pound even to coarse meal, but
the meal refused to respond to yeast. No matter how they cooked it, in iron or on bark or stone,
corn paste lay flat as mud pies...Heaviness was a constant colonial complaint, which cooks sought
to remedy by mixing cornmeal with the more finely ground flours of rye or wheat-when they
could get them..."
"[In the] large stretches of the South, Indian pone was the more usually name for cornmeal cakes
while johnny cake was cutomarily made of rice...The earliest recipe that I find for Johny cake, or
Hoe Cake is in American Cookery (1796) by Amelia Simmons. It calls for Indian meal, as
do
all New England recipes, and is baked before the fire, presumably spread on a propped up hoe,
plank, or stone...as the colonists had been doing all along. It must be understood that among the
scores of johnny cakes, pones, ash cakes, hoe cakes, bannocks, and even various fried cakes,
differentiation was not rigorous. Each colony, each community, had its own versions and names, a
tradition that faded as the iron kitchen range made all hearth cakes virtually obsolete..."
ABOUT EASTERN WOODLAND CORNBREAD
"Boiled corn bread. After the corn has been hulled and washed...it is placed in the mortar and
pounded to a
meal or flour. As the pounding progresses the fine sifting basket is frequently brought into
requisition...The
hand is used to dip the meal out of the mortar into the sifter. The large bread pan is often set on
top of the
mortar and the sifter shaken in both hands. The coarser particles are thrown into a second bowl or
tray and
are finally dumped back into the mortar to be repounded. A hollow is next made in the flour and
enough
boiling water poured into it to make a stiff paste. Usage differs somewhat in this respect, cold
water being
used by some for mixing. The stirring paddle is often employed at first, after which the paste is
kneaded with
the hands. Dried huckleberries, blackberries, elderberries, strawberries, or beans may be
incorporated in
the mixture, beans apparently enjoying the greatest favour. The latter are previously cooked just
so that
they will remain while or nearly so. Currants or raisins are sometimes used at present. Formerly
the kernels
of walnuts and butternuts were employed in the same way. A lump of paste is next broken off, or
about a
double handful. This is tossed in the hands, which are kept moistened with cold water, until it
BECOMES
rounded in form; the surplus material forms a core at one side, usually the right, and is finally
broken off.
The lump is now slapped back and forth between the palms, though resting rather more on the left
hand;
and is at the same time given a rotary motion until a disk is formed about 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 inches
thick and
about 7 inches in diameter. Boiling water for mixing is stated to make the cakes frimer and better
to handle.
No salt nor other such ingredients are used. The loaves are immedately slid into a pot of boiling
water from
the paddle or from between the hands and are supported on edge by placing the paddle against
them until
all are in. The bread paddle, or sometimes a special circular turning paddle, is used to rotate the
cakes a
little when partly done, so as to cook all parts alike. An hour is usually required for
cooking...Boiled corn
bread, while not light in the ordinary sense, is decidedly tasty when newly made. It may be sliced
and eaten
either hot or cold with butter, gravy, or maple syrup...Loaves of corn bread were frequently
carried along
while travelling, though parched corn flour sweetened with maple sugar was a more popular
material. The
use of corn bread for this pupose is indicated in the word "johnny-cake" from "journey cake." The
ash-cake,
hoe-cake, and pone are other European adoptions. Boiled bread...was frequently used as wedding
bread.
A girl cooked twenty cakes of corn bread with berries in them. These were taken to the house of
the young
man, where they were cut up and given to friends and relatives who were assembled. Bread was
sometimes made from other materials, such as beans and acorns...Baked Corn Bread...The name
signifies
"under the ashes cooked," and is applied to bread baked in the embers, or on flat stones placed
over the
fire. This seems to have been formerly in much favour. Its disuse is probably owing to the
abandonment of
the open fireplace and to the general adoption of European foods. The mixture used was
practically the
same as for boiled bread. About three-quarters of an hour was required for cooking. As the loaves
bake
somewhat more quickly on top, they were turned over to be evenly done. To tell when they were
finished,
the cakes were tapped with the finger, if not sufficently cooked, they felt heavy to the touch, and
when done,
felt lighter and more spongy. The last part of the operation was to wash them in cold water to free
them
from ashes or cinders."
Anglo-American recipes through time
---History of Food, Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat [Barnes & Noble Books:New York]
1992 (p. 629)
[1390]
"Hot Applesauce (Appulmose) for Meat and Fish.
Nym appelyn and seth hem and lat hem kele and make hem throw a cloth and on flesch dayes kast
therto god fat breyt of Bef and god wyte grees and sugar and safronn and almonde mylke of
fische dayes, oyle de olyve and gode powdres and serve it forthe.
---From The Forme of Cury (circa 1390), edited by Samuel Pegge, [London:1780], as
reprinted and translated in Apples:History, Folklore, Horticulture, and Gastronomy, Peter
Wynne [Hawthorne Books:New York] 1975 (p. 201)
"Amplummus
Pour faire un amplummus: prenez pommes pelleez et copez par morceaulx, puis mis bouiller en
belle esve fresce; et quant il sont bien cuis, purez l'esve hors nettement, puis les suffrisiez en beau
bure fres; ayez cresme douce et moyeulx d'oels bien batus, saffren et sel egalment; et au dreschier
canelle et chucquere largement pardessus.
---The Vivendier, A Fifteenth-Century French Cookery Manuscript, A Critical Edition
with English Translation by Terence Scully [Prospect Books:Devon] 1997 (p. 46)
[NOTE: editor's comments following this recipe refererence several variations, including the use
of cream and egg yolks. He also conjects this recipe might have been appropriate for sick people
based on its placement in the book. Similar recipes from other period European texts are cited.
Mr. Scully tells us the name "amplummus" is probably a combination of the words "apple" and
"mush" derived from Old German.]
"To make Sauce for a Goose.
Pare, core, and slice your apples. Put them in a saucepan with as much water as will keep them
from burning. Set them over a very slow fire, keep them close covered till they are of a pulp, then
put in a lump of butter, and sugar to your taste. Beat them well and send them to the table in a
china basin."
---The Experienced English Housekeeper, Elizabeth Raffald, With an Introduction by Roy
Shipperbottom, facsimile 1769 edition [Southover Press:EastSussex] 1997 (p. 29)
To make
Apple Sauce
---Carter, Susannah. The Frugal Housewife: Or, Complete Woman Cook; Wherein the Art of
Dressing All Sorts of Viands is Explained in Upwards of Five Hundred Approved Receipts...
New York, Printed and sold by G. & R. Waite, no. 64, Maidenlane, 1803
Dried Apple
Sauce & Boiled Cider Apple Sauce
---Wilcox, Estelle Woods. Buckeye Cookery, and Practical Housekeeping: Compiled from
Original Recipes. Minneapolis, Minn.: Buckeye Pub. Co., 1877.
Food historians generally credit people of German descent (including the Pennsylvania Dutch) for
introducing apple butter to our country. It is traditionally associated with the Appalachian region,
especially West Virginia and Kentucky. According to the Dictionary of Americanisms, the
first mention of the phrase "apple butter" in print (which often lags several decades behind the
actual use of the term) is 1774: "We often make apple butter." This recipe is also known as boiled
cider applesauce.
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New
York] 1999 (p. 10)
---Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bread, & Scuppernong Wine: The Folklore and Art of Southern
Appalachian Cooking, Joseph E. Dabney [Cumberland House:Nashville TN]1998 (p.
398)
[NOTE: This book has more information and two recipes]
Apple butter.
Cider for apple butter must be perfectly new form the press, and the sweeter and mellower the
apples are of which it is made, the better will the apple butter be. Boil the cider till recuded to one
half its original quantity, and skim it well. Do not use for this purpose an iron kettle, or the butter
will be very dark, and if you use a brass or copper kettle, it must be scoured as clean and bright as
possible, before you put the cider into it, and you must not suffer the butter to remain in it a
minute longer than is actually necessary to prepare it, or it will imbibe a copperish taste, that will
render it not only unpleasant, but really unhealthy. It is best to prepare it lage in the fall, when the
apples are quite mellow. Select those that have a fine flavor, and will cook tender; pare and
quarter them form the cores, and boil them in the cider till perfectly soft, having plenty of cider to
cover them well. If you wish to make it on a small scale, do not remove the apples from the cider
when they get soft, but continue to boil them gently in it, till the apples and cider form a thick
smooth marmalade, which you must stir almost constantly towards the last. A few minutes before
you take it form the fire, flavor it hightly with cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves, and when
the seasonings are wll intermixed, put it up in jars, tie folded paper over them, and keep them in a
cool place. If made in a proper manner, it will keep a good more than a year, and will be found
very convenient, being always in readiness. Many people who are in the habit of making apple
butter, take it from the fire before it is boiled near enough. Both to keep it well, and taste well, it
should be boiled long after the apples have become soft, and towards the last, simmered over
coals till it gets almost thick enough to slice. If you wish to make it on a large scale, after you
have boiled the first kettle full of apples soft, remove them from the cider, draining them with a
perforated ladle, that the cider may fall again to the kettle, and put them into a clean tub. Fill up
the kettle with fresh apples, having them pared and sliced from the cores, and having ready a
kettle of boiling cider, that is reduced to at least half its original quantity; fill up the kettle of
apples with it as often as is necessary. When you have boiled in thsi manner as many apples as you
wish, put the whole of them in a large kettle, or kettles, with the cider, and simmer it over a bed
of coals till it is so thick, that it is with some difficulty you can stir it: it should be stirred almost
constantly, with a wooden spaddle, or paddle, or it will be certain to scorch at the bottom or sides
of the kettle. Shortly before you take it from the fire, season it as before directed, and then put it
up in jars."
---(p. 375-77)
Baking soda & powder
---The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford]
(p.73)
Arm & Hammer Baking Soda
How baking soda
works
"Pearl ash--This was a popular name for potassium carbonate, a refined form of potash, in turn an
alkaline substance obtained by leaching ashes of wood or other plants (pot ashes). The use of
wood ash in meat curing is ancient. And lye, the leaching water, has long been used from
cleansing and making of soap. But the use of these alkaline substances as leavening appears to be
American in origin. Study of Indian lore is frustrating because of early contamination, but it does
seem that Indians employed ash as seasoning becasue of its salt content, and as a foaming agent in
their breads. With corn meal, even using purer forms, the effect is largely a change in texture; with
wheat flour, the leavening is specatular and virtually instantaneous, particularly when sparked by
the acidity of sour milk, for example.
This usage is first recorded, it seems, in 1796 by Amelia Simmons in a recipe for gingerbread;
molasses supplies the requisite acidity. But the practice clearly was widespread and already of
long standing as shown by a recipe for Handy-cake or Bread in Essays and Notes on
Husbandry and Rural Affairs by J. B. Bordley (1801): "The good people of Long Island call
this pot-ash or handy-cake;...wheat flour 2 lbs; sugar 1/2 lb, have added to them a tea spoonful of
salt of tartar heaped, or any other form of pot or pearl ash."...Gradually, saleratus and other
baking sodas replaced pearl ash...Eventually, acid and alkali were combined in one baking
powder'."
---The Virginia House-Wife, Mary Randolph, with historical notes and commentaries by
Karen Hess [University of South Carolina Press:Columbia] 1984 (p.281-282/notes from Ms.
Hess)
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] (p. 50)
Good question. We find several definitions of this compound chemical leavener:
An early-nineteenth-century form of baking powder (1830). Used as a leavening
agent, it was an improvement over pearlash (used in the eighteenth century) and predated baking
soda, which came along in the 1870s. Saleratus (which in Latin means "aerated salt") was first
made from potassium bicarbonate, then sodium bicarbonate, and it imparted an undesirable
bitterness. One may still hear of old-fashioned saleratus bread and biscuits, although one will no
longer find saleratus in a grocery store."
---The Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New
York] 1999 (p. 280)
---Eating in America: A History, Waverly Root & Richard de Rochemont [Morrow:New
York] 1976 (p. 225)
---Wagon Wheel Kitchens: Food on the Oregon Trail, Jaqueline Williams [University
Press of Kansas:Lawrence] 1993 (p. 9-11)
---The Grocer's Encyclopedia, Artemas Ward [New York] 1911 (p. 538)
"Baking powder: A combination of sodium bicarbonate and acid salt salt that became popular
in the 1850s as a
leavening agent in baking what came to be called quick bread, lightnin' bread, or aerated
bread. By 1854 Americans had self-rising flour, which was baking powder mixed with flour. In
1867 James A. Church introduced Arm & Hammer "baking soda," a new term for the earlier used
but less desirable potassium or sodium bicarbonate, also called saleratus" (an American variant of
the Latin sal [salt] "+aeratus" [aerated]). In 1889 William M. Wright developed a double-acting
baking powder whose leavening
action began in the dough and repeated in the oven. Wright and his partner, chemist George C.
Rew, marketed the product under the name Calumet Baking Powder."
---The Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New
York] 1999 (p. 17)
---Modern Baking Powder, Juanita E. Darrah, published by Comonwealth Press
[Chicago, IL] in 1927.
"Durkee's Baking Powder. Housewives are advised to try the above article and they will find a
cessation of
complaints from husbands and other about sour or heavy bread, biscuits, pastry, &c, and on the
contrary,
will hear accompanied by smiles "What nice biscuits you have made, my dear," &c &c. Grocers
and other
can be supplied by calling at or sending orders through Penny Post to the principal depot, No.
139 Water
St."
---New York Times, April 7, 1852 (p.2)
"Dissolution. The copartnership heretofore existing under the firm of Rogers & Lockwood,
manufacturers of
Judd's Baking Powder, is this day dissolved. New York, June 13, 1855."
---New York Times, June 14, 1855 (p. 8)
"Baking powder is introduced commercially for the first time in the United States."
---The Food Chronology, James Trager [Henry Holt:New York] 1995 (p. 254)
[NOTE: No company, place, or person credited.]
Rumford Baking Powder
Leavener history,
from the Hulman Company
How baking powder works,
chemical reactions
About ammonium carbonate and ammonia cookies
Brownies & blondies
---"Brownies Are Back," John Mariani, Restaurant Hospitality, Feb 99, (p. 54)
---The Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New
York] 1999 (p.44)
---The American Century Cookbook, Jean Anderson [Clarkson Potter:New York] 1997
(p. 492)
[NOTE: The Scottish connection might be Broonie, aka Orkney oatmeal gingerbread. F. Marian McNeill's The Scots Kitchen contains
a recipe for this item on page 191. Ingredients: oatmeal, brown sugar, butter, ground ginger, baking soda, treacle, egg and buttermilk. Except for the
oatmeal, it is similar to Fannie Farmer's 1896 recipe (see below).]
---The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith editor
[Oxford University Press:New York] 2004, Volume 1 (p. 136-7)
"Mildred
Brown Schrumpf--Orono, Maine As Home Economist, "Good Samaritan," Nutritionist,
Newspaper Columnist, Food Judge, Author and Cook, Mildred "Brownie" Schrumpf can truly be
called "First Cook" of the State of Maine. " (no mention of chocolate brownies)
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 squares Lowney's Premium Chocolate
2 eggs
1/2 cup nut meats
1/2 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
---Lowney's Cook Book Illustrated, Maria Willett Howard, Revised Edition [Walter M. Lowney
Co.:Boston] 1912 (p. 278)
1/4 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
3 squares chocolate
1/2 to 3/4 cup flour
1 cup nut meats
1/4 teaspoon salt
Put all ingredients in bowl and beat until well mixed. Spread evenly in buttered baking pan. Bake
and cut in strips."
---ibid (p. 273)
[NOTE: The Lowney company was manufacturer of chocolate and cocoa. It published many
books and brochures to promote its products to the public.]
Brownies, Boston Cooking School
Cook Book, Fannie Merritt Farmer [1918] (scroll down towards the bottom of the page)
If you would like more information on the history of chocolate ask your librarian to help you find
a copy of The True History of Chocolate, Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe [Thames
and Hudson:London] 1996.
European Medieval and Renaissance cookbooks contain recipes for soft, chewey cakes and
cookies that used treacle (a precursor to brown sugar) as an ingredient. It was called gingerbread.
Cooks were often instructed to cook gingerbread in shallow pans and add nuts, just as many
traditional brownie recipes do today. Notes on gingerbread history from Alice
Ross.
---The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith editor
[Oxford University Press:New York] 2004, Volume 1 (p. 137)
[1747]--To make Ginger-Bread Cakes
flour, sugar, butter, ginger, nutmeg, treakle, cream, nuts
---The Art of Cookery Made Plain & Easy, Hannah Glasse (p. 139)
molasses, brown sugar, butter, flour, milk, pearl-ash (leavener), ginger
---Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes and Sweetmeats, by a Lady of Philadelphia
[Eliza Leslie] (p. 66)
butter, sugar, molasses, egg, bread flour, pecans
---Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, Fannie Merritt Farmer (p. 424)
egg whites, brown sugar, maple flavoring, pecans, dry bread crumbs
---Culinary Arts Institute Encyclopedic Cookbook, Ruth Berolzheimer (p. 239)
Brussels sprouts
---Cambridge World History of Food, Kenneth F. Kiple & Kriemhild Conee
Ornelas [Cambridge Universtiy Press:Cambridge] 2001, Volume Two (p.
1738-9)
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University
Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 110)
---History of Food, Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, translated by Anthea Bell
[Barnes & Noble Books:New York] 1992 (p. 690-1)
---An A to Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxfod]
2002 (p. 44-5)
Eliza Acton's recipe [1845]
These delicate little sprouts, or miniature cabbages, which at their fullest growth scarcely exceed a
large walnut in size, should be quite freshly gathered. Free them from all discoloured leaves, cut
the stems even, and wash the sprouts thorougly. Throw them into a pan of water properly salted,
and boil them quickly from eight to ten minutes; drain them well, and serve them upon a rather
thick round of toasted bread buttered on both sides. Send good melted butter to table with them.
This is the Belgian mode of dressing this excellent vegetables, which is served in France with the
sauce poured over it, or it is tossed in a stewpan with a spice of butter and some pepper and salt;
a spoonful or two of veal gravy (and sometimes a little lemon-juice) is added when these are
perfectly mixed. 9 to 10 minutes."
---Modern Cookery for Private Families, Eliza Acton, facsimile 1845 edition with an
introduction by Elizabeth Ray [Southover Press:East Sussex] 1993 (p. 291)
casseroles
---The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] (p.
143)
---An A-Z of Food & Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 60-1)
---The Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New
York] 1999 (p.59)
---Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith editor [Oxford
University Press:New York] 2004, Volume 1 (p. 194)
[1747] "To dres[s] Rabbits in Casserole.
Divide the Rabbits into Quarters, you may lard them or let them alone just as you please, shake
some Flour over them, and fry them with Lard or Butter, then put them into an earthen Pipkin
with a Quart of good Broth, a Glass of White Wine, a little Pepper, and Salt if wanted, a Bunch of
Sweet Herbs, and a Piece of Butter as big as a Walnut rolled in Flour; cover them close and let
them stew Half an Hour, then dish them up and our the Sauce over them. Garnish with Seville
Orange cut into thin Slices and notched, the Peel that is cut out lay prettily between the
Slices."
---The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy, Hannah Glasse, [London] (p. 51)
Wash 2 pounds of rice in water, twice; drain, and put it in a stewpan with doule its quantiti of
water; season with salt and pepper, and put it on the fire; when the water boils, cover the rice with
some thin slices of fat bacon, and put it on a slow fire with some live coals on the cover of the
stewpan; When the rice is cooked, pount it in a morter; then gather it up in a ball; put it on a
baking-sheet, and mould it with the hadns to the shape of a casserole; Brush the casserole over
with a brush dipped in clarified butter, and put it in the oven until it asumes a nice yellow colour;
Trim and remove some of the rice from the inside, and fill the casserole with a blanquette of lamb
sweetbreads...place a circle of larded and glazed lamb sweetbreads round the top, and finish with
some cock's combs in the centre; and serve."
---The Royal Cookery Book, Jules Gouffe, translated to English by Alphonse Gouffe
[London] (p. 450)
Wash a pound of the best rice in two or three waters, a boil it very gently until it is quite tender by
whole. Drain it and beat it well. If for a sweet casserole, use mik, sugar, a little butter, and lemon
or other flavouring. If intended for meat or fish, stew the rice with water and fat, and season it
with salt, pepper, and nutmeg. When quite cool, put a bordering about three inches high and three
wide round the edge of a shallow dish, brush it over with egg or clarified butter, and set it in the
oven to brown. Then place in the middle of the stew, curry or sweets which are prepared for it.
Time to boil the rice, three-quarters of an hour...Sufficient for five or six persions."
Wash one pound of the best Carolina rice in two or three waters. Drain it, and put it into a
stewpan with a quart of water, a large onion, a tea-spoonful of salt, and two ounces of fat. The
skimmings of saucepans will answer for this purpose, or fat bacon, but if these are not at hand,
use butter. Simmer very gently till the rice is quite soft but whole. Then drain it, and pound it to a
paste. Well butter a baking dish or casserole mould, and press the paste into it. Mark the top a
cover, making the mark rather deep. Pour a little butter over the whole, let it get cold, then turn it
out of the mould, and bake it in a very hot oven till it is brightly browned, but not hard. The oven
can scarcely be too hot for it. Take off the marked cover about a inch in depth. Scoop out the
middle, and fill it with whatever is prepared for it. This may consist of mincemeat, Irish stew,
rechauffed curries, hashes, or macaroni. Pour it a suitable sauce, replace the cover, and before
service return it to the oven for a few minutes. Time to boil the rice, about three quarters of an
hour...Sufficient for six persons."
---Cassell's Dictionary of Modern Cookery, London (p. 110-1)
"There is no doubt that the fashion of cooking in casseroles or eathenware
dishes has come to stay in this country; and it is hardly a matter of surprise when the advantages
of this form of cookery are really understoood, whether it be actual casserole cookery, so called,
or cookery in fireproof utensils. Cooking "en casserole" is a term which signifies dishes cooked
and served in the same eartheware pot or utensil, though, as every one knows, the original French
word is the generic name for a stewpan or a saucepan. The old idea of a caserole was some
preparation of chopped fish, or vegetables enveloped in a crust of cooked rice, macaroni, or
potato. Properly speaking, however, a casserole is a dish, the material for which in many instances
is first prepared in the saute or frying pan and then transferred to the earthenware pan to finish
cooking by a long, slow process which develops the true flavors of the food being cooked. The
sooner the casserole utensil becomes an indispensable part of our everyday kitchen outfit the
better...When casserole cookery is thoroughly understood, many combinations of food and many
inexpensive viands will be put to use and very palatable results obtained."
---How to Cook Casserole Dishes, Marion H. McNeil [David McKay:Philadelphia] (p.
vii-viii)
The expression en casserole is frequently misunderstood, for the reason that the word casserole
is used in two quite different ways by writers on domestic subjects. Properly speaking, a casserole
is the coarse clay saucepan so common in France in which meats and vegetables are not only
cooked, but served on the table. The other usage of the word casserole is intended to describe a
case or mold, either of potato, rice or fried bread, inside of which is placed some preparation of
meat or vegetables. The word casserole in this case really signified a border or croustade and is
therefore more or less misleading. This latter form of casserole will be found in the chapter on
entrees. The casserole should be chosen with consideration for the needs of the home. There are
casseroles of every size, from the individual ramekin up to the largest size, which will hold a
couple of chickens; and of very shape--small ones with long handles, oval and round, shallow and
deep ones; in many colors--blue, green, brown, yellow and mixtures; of a variety of
materials--glass, vitrified china, earthenware, iron and aluminum....The casserole saves washing
dishes, for
the food is brought to the table in the dish in which it is cooked. Frequently, also, it contains a
one dish meal which eliminates all but the one cooking and serving dish. It makes possible the
use of left-overs in attractive, palatable, and appetizing ways, the cooking tender of tough meat,
and an unlimited variety in the ways of preparing vegetables. ..Food cooked in this way requires
little watching, and is not likely to burn..."
---The New Butterick Cook Book, Flora Rose (p. 622-623)
6 pork chops
6 sweet potatoes
salt & pepper
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 to 2 cups milk
Mrs. Allen on Cooking, Menus Service Ida C. Baily Allen has recipes
for
Browned Casserole (made with beef, veal or lamb) and White Casserole (made with chicken,
lamb or veal).
"Casserole and oven cookery.
The expression "en casserole" is sometimes misunderstood because the word "casserole" is used
in two quite different ways by writers on domestic subjects. Properly speaking, a casserole is the
coarse clay saucepan, so common in France, in which meats and vegetables are not only cooked
but served on the tabel. In its other usage the word is applied to a case or mold of potato, rice or
fried bread, inside of which is placed some preparation of meat or vegetables. The word in this
case really signifies a border or croustade. Directions for using this second form of casserole will
be found in the chapter on entrees.
Varieties of Casseroles
Casseroles of different sizes, shapes and materials, are convenient additions to the cooking
equipment, and should be chosen with consideration for the needs of the family. They come in
many sizes from the individual ramekin up to one that will hold two chickens. They may be had in
various shapes--oval and round, shallow and deep. They are made in a variety of materials--glass,
vitrified china, earthenware, iron and aluminum--and in a color-range that allows one to choose
according to personal preferences--brown, yellow, green, blue and mixtures.
Care of Casseroles
Casseroles will last indefinately if properly treated. It is wise to avoid a sudden and great change
in temperature, such as occurs when a casserole is taken from a hot oven and placed in a wet sink.
It is not advisable to set a glass or earthenware casserole over a high flame without an asbestos
mat under it. A new casserole may be tempered and made more tough by pouring cold water into
it and about it, and bringing it gradually to the boiling point.
Advantages of Cooking in a Casserole
THE CASSEROLE SAVES DISH-WASHING, because it makes it possible to bring food to the
table in the dish in which it was cooked. Frequently, also, it contains a "one-dish meal" which
eliminates all but the one cooking dish. THE CASEROLE MAKES IT POSSIBLE TO USE
LEFT-OVERS in attractive, palatable combinations, to cook tough meats tender, and to preapare
vegetables in an almost unlimited variety of ways. Any vegetable may be boiled, steamed, baked,
scalloped or creamed, and cabbage, cucumbers, eggplant, onions, peppers, potatoes or tomatoes
may be stuffed and cooked in the casserole. FOOD COOKED IN THIS WAY NEED LITTLE
WATCHING, it may be kept warm and still attractive if the meal is delayed, and there is no loss
of vegetable or meat juices. These juices contain a valuable part of the food which is often thrown
away, especially in the case of vegetables that are boiled. A WHOLE MEAL MAY BE
COOKING IN THE OVEN in the casserole while the oven is being used for some other purpose,
such as baking cookies. The cover of the casserole should fit well into the dish, so that it is
practically aritight, a fact that should be borne in mind when the casserole is purchased. If the
oven must be kept very hot for something else, set the casserole in a pan of water so that the food
within will simmer, not boil. As the water becomes hot, take out part of it and add cool water to
keep it at the desired temperature."
---The American Women's Cook Book, Edited and Revised by Ruth Berolzheimer
[Consolidated Book Publishers:Chicago] 1940 (p. 701-2)
[NOTE: This book offers the following casserole recipes: Chicken en Casserole, Pigeons en
Casserole, Steak en Casserole, Chopped Beef en Casserole, Tamale Pie en Casserole, Turbans of
Fish en Casserole, Hungarian Goulash en Casserole, Lamb en Casserole, Pork Chops en
Casserole, Calf's Liver en Casserole, Casserole of Rice and Liver, Rice en Casserole (p. 707-707).
If you would like any of these recipes let us
know.]
Soup is ancient. So are mushrooms. A survey of historic cookbooks confirms creamy mushroom
soups
were cultivated by several cultures and cuisines, mostly Northern European. "Cream of
Mushroom Soup,"
as we Americans know it today, traces its roots to these "Old World" traditions. Many early 20th
century
American cookbooks contain recipes for Cream of Mushroom Soup. Period articles published in
the
New York Times confirm the popularity of creamy mushroom soups served at the beginning
of a meal.
The practice of using manufactured soups (Campbell's Cream of Mushroom was introduced in
1934) as
"culinary substitutes" took hold in the 1930s. The Great Depression was all about saving money.
Canned
"Cream of Mushroom" happened to be in the right place at the right time.
"The general rule for making Campbell's sauces is:
1 cup Campbell's Soup
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon flour.
Melt butter, add flour, blend, and pour in soup. Then add chopped leftovers and serve in one of
varios ways.
Use on toast with rice; with pastry shell or vol-au-vent, or bake and scallop in oven for a few
minutes; or
pour over macaroni or noodles.
"Campbell's Soup very much resembled Continental stocks and sauces, and the Joseph Campbell
Company suggested their use as such...During the first thirty years of its history, Campbell quite
sparingly
published recipes that used soup as a sauce, and when it did, Tomato Soup was usually called
for...The
use of soup took a huge leap forward, however, when Campbell introduced Cream of Mushroom
Soup in
1934. Like Tomato, Cream of Mushroom was both an eating and cooking soup. More
importantly, its use in
sauces was easy for the American housewife to understand. One of the most popular recipes was
Cream
of Mushroom gravy, which used the soup as a thickener of sorts: Add to the drippings of a roast
beef one-half water, and scrape the brown from the sides of the pan. Add one can of Campbell's
Cream of
Mushroom Soup and stir until well blended and smooth. Bring to a boil and serve piping hot. It
may be
made thinner, if desired, by adding more water. This makes an excellent gravy for roast beef and
is far
superior to the usual brown gravy....Housewives agreed that it did make an excellent gravy, and
Cream of
Mushroom became the first Campbell's Soup to be widely used as a sauce...This shift in the use of
soup
turned out to be one of the most consequential in the company's history, the sales of cooking soup
such as
Cream of Mushroom eventually growing to around 30 percent of the company's business."
---America's Favorite Food: The Story of Campbell Soup Company, Douglas Collins
[Harry N.
Abrams:New York] 1994 (p. 124-7)
"The home economists also were responsible for writing Campbell cookbooks. In 1942, with the
publication
of Easy Ways to Good Meals by Ann Marshall, later replaced by Carolyn Campbell, the noms de
plume of
the collective home economics department, Campbell began a run of increasingly longer and more
complete cookbooks. By the 1950s about a million of these were in print at any one time,with
titles such as
Cooking with Condensed, Wonderful Ways with Soups, and Campbell's
Treasury of
Recipes...Most young American woemn, who had been taught to cook by their mothers, had
no idea
how to make sauce. ..The wide circulation of Campbell cookbooks changed that. With one of
these simple
recipes in hand, the housewife could, by opening a can of Campbell's Soup, make a "Perfect Tuna
Casserole...Stripped of its now-famous name, Perfect Tuna Casserole was no more or less than
fish
cooked in white sauce, the top of which has been gratineed, or made crispy. The same is generally
true of
many of the other famous Campbell dishes of the era..."
---America's Favorite Food: The Story of Campbell Soup Company, Douglas Collins
[Harry N.
Abrams:New York] 1994 (p. 139-140)
[c. 1924]
"Meat Cooked en Casserole
Any meat may be cooked en casserole. This type of cooking is especially adaptable to the cheaper
cuts,
which need long, slow cooking to make them tender. A casserole may be described as a baked
stew. The
time of cookery varies with the type of meat--the cheaper cuts need form three to four hours,
more tender
meats one and one half to two hours. Vegetables, rice, macaroni, or spaghetti are added to meats
in
casserole cooking, extending them so that it is really a one-dish meal. Meats suitable for casserole
are:
Beef neck, flank, top and bottom round, Veal neck, shoulder, breast, flank, sticking piece, Lamb
neck,
shoulder, breast , shin , flank...
(For chicken, lamb or veal)
3 pounds meat
2 green peppers, minced
1 1/2 cupfuls spaghetti, broken
2 onions, minced
2 teaspoonfuls salt
1/2 teaspoonful pepper
1 tablespoonful minced parsley
Boiling water
1/2 cupful undiluted evaporated milk (optional)
If using chicken, prepare as for fricasee. Combine the ingredients in a casserole, pour in the water,
cover,
and bake slowly in an oven at 325 to 350 degrees F. The add the evaporated milk or use cream."
---Mrs. Allen on Cooking, Menus, Service, Ida C. Bailey Allen [Doubleday, Doran &
Company:Garden City
NY] 1929 (p. 384-5)
[1941]
"Casserole dishes.
Learn how to use Campbell's Soups in your casserole dishes. Discover what
zestful flavor they give--what quick and easy substituted for cream sauce some of them are--the
precious minutes they save you in preparation--they make meals so attractive! The following
recipes are sure to become family favorites (p. 14)...
1 package (6 oz) egg noodles
1 can Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup
1 cup milk
1/4 pound pimiento cheese, sliced
2 hard-cooked eggs, chopped
1 can (7 oz) tuna fish
6 tablespoons flaked cereal crumbs, buttered.
Cook the noodles in boiling slated water until tender. Empty the soup into a pan and stir well,
then add milk
and heat. Add the pimineto cheese and stir until the cheese melts. Combine noodles, eggs and tuna
fish
with the sauce. Put into a buttered casserole, sprinkle buttered flaked cereal crumbs over the top
and bake
in a moderate oven (350 degrees F.) For 25-30 minutes. Serves 8."
---Easy Ways to Good Meals: 99 Delicious Dishes Made With Campbell's Soups,
Campbell Soup
Company [Campbell Soup Company:Camden NJ] 1941 (p. 16)
An excellent emergency dish.
Cook until tender: 2 cups Noodles
Drain them in colander. Pour 3 cups of cold water over them. Drain them again. Drain the
contents of 1 (7 oz) can tuna fish
Separate it with a fork into large flakes. Be careful not to mince it as that isn't nearly as good.
Grease an oven-proof dish. Arrange a layer of noodles, then sprinkle it with fish and so on. Have
noodles on top. Combine and pour over this mixture the contents of 1 (16 oz) can condensed
mushroom soup
1/4 cup water
Cover the top with Buttered cornflakes or cracker crumbs
Bake the dish in a hot oven 450 degrees until the top is brown..."
---Joy of Cooking, Irma S. Rombauer [Bobbs-Merrill:Indianapolis] 1946 (p. 120)
CASSEROLE OF NOODLES AND TUNA FISH (for 25)
"Uncooked egg noodles, 1lb.
Boiling water, 2 1/4 gal.
Salt, 3 tbsp
Tuna fish, 6 cups
Chpopped piniento, 3/4 cup
Drained cooked peas, 6 cups
This white sauce, 1 recipe
Salt, to taste
Pepper, to taste
Buttered bread crumbs or Wheaties, 1 cup
Baking pans, 13X9X2-in. Oblong, two
Cook noodles in boiling salted water until tender. Drain. Place a layer of cooked noodles in
bottoms of
greased pans, then layers of tuna, pimiento, peas and Thin White Sauce. Season with salt and
pepper.
Repeat until all ingredients are used. Sprinkle tops with buttered crumbs or Wheaties. Bake 1
hour in
moderate oven (350 degrees F.)"
---So You're Serving Crowd, Betty Crocker [General Mills:New York] 1952 (p. 33)
Cherries jubilee
"64. Cherry Sauce A La Victoria.
Put a small pot of red currant-jelly into a stewpan, together with a dozen cloves, a stick of
cinnamon, the rind of two oranges, a piece of glaze, and a large gravy-spoonful of reduced brown
sauce; moisten with a half a pint of Burgundy wine, boil gently on the fire for twenty minutes;
pass the sauce through a tammy into a bain-marie, add the juice of the two oranges, and before
sending to table boil the sauce. This sauce is especially appropriate with red deer or roebuck,
when prepared in a marinade and larded."
---Francatelli's Modern Cook, Charles Elme Francatelli [David McKay:Philadelphia]
1890s? (p. 48)
[RECIPE NOTE: Interesting juxtaposition in both ingredients and method to Escoffier'sSteak Diane.
---Rare Bits: Unusual Origins of Popular Recipes, Patricia Bunning Stevens [Ohio
University Press:Athens OH] 1998 (p. 215)
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New
York] 1999 (p. 69)
[1869] "Compote of Cherries
Take 1 lb of May-Duke or Kentish cherries; cut off all but 3/4 inch of the stalks; Put 1/2 lb. Of
lump sugar in a copper sugar boiler, with 2 quarts of water; boil for three minutes; put the
cherries in this syrup; cover the pan, and simmer for five minutes; drain the cherries on a sieve;
dish them up in a compte dish, the stalks upwards; reduce the syrup to 30 degrees; let it cool;
pour it over the cherries; and serve."
---The Royal Cookery Book, Jules Gouffe [Samson Low:London] 1869 (p. 207)
Remove the stone from some nice large cherries then poach the cherries in syrup; remove and
place them in small silver timables. Reduce the syrup and thicken it with diluted arrowroot using
1/2 tablespoons per 3dl (1/2 pint or 2 1/2 U.S. cups) syrup. Instead of the syrup, redcurrant jelly
many be used. Coat the cherries with the sauce, pour 1/2 tablespoon of warmed Kirsch into each
timbale and set alight when bringing them to the table."
--Le Guide Culinaire, August Escoffier, 1903, translated into English by H.L. Cracknell
and R.J. Kaufmann [Wiley:New York] 1981 (p. 538)
[NOTE: the similarities between Francatelli's Victoria recipe (referenced above) and this.]
Few things are easier than this dessert with a cosmopolitan air. You simply drain the juice from a
No. 2 can of pitted black cherries--the big ones--and reserve about one-fourth. Put the cherries
and the juice in a chafing dish. Bring just to the simmering point and keep there for about a
minute, agitating with a spoon (I really mean "agitating" instead of "stirring"). The pour on about
a half a cup of warmed brandy, mix with the cherries, and ignite. While they are flaming, ladle
them over individual dishes of vanilla ice cream, which are ready and waiting. (You'll need a
quart). And this dessert is bound to bring words of admiration."
---Martha Deane's Cooking for Compliments, Marian Young Taylor [M. Barrows:New
York] 1954 (p. 241)
[NOTE: Martha Deane was a radio personality on New York's WOR station]
Chewing gum
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] (p. 166)
---Eating in America: A History, Waverly Root & Richard de Rochemont [Morrow:New
York] 1976 (p. 435)
---America's First Cuisines, Sophie D. Coe [University of Texas Press:Austin] 1994 (p.
166)
---"Since 1928 it's been boom and bust with bubble gum," Robert Hendrickson,
Smithsonian [magazine], July, 1990 (p. 74-82)
History of chewing
gum, Cadbury/Adams
How chewing gum works,
includes history
The Great American chewing gum book / Robert Hendrickson.
"Yum Yum Bubble Gum!," Owl, Nov. 98, Vol. 23 Issue 8, p. 4 (4 pages)
"Wrigley's," Encyclopedia of Consumer Brands, Volume 1 (p. 647+)
"Chewing gum," How Products are Made, Neil Schlager (editor). Volume 1 (p. 124+)
Chex mix
---The American Century Cookbook: The Most Popular Recipes of the 20th Century, Jean
Anderson [Clarkson Potter:New York] 1997 (p. 36-7)
[1954]
"Mix Trix
1/2 cup Kix
1 cup Cheerios
1 cup Wheat Chex
1 cup Rice Chex
2 cups thin short pretzel sticks
1/4 cup melted butter
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon celery salt
1/4 teaspoon garlic salt
---Martha Deane's Cooking for Compliments, Marian Young Taylor [M. Barrows:New
York] 1954 (p. 17)
[NOTE: Martha Deane was a popular radio personality on WOR New York]
"TV Mix...1955...Now, television antennas topped nearly every house, and entertainment meant
westerns in
the living room. Davy Crockett put a coonskin cap on every kid. And the perfect snack was TV
mix, a combo
of crisp-srisp toasted cereals and salted nuts." (p. 90)
4 cups crisp doughnut-shaped oat cereal
6 cups crisp cereal corn puffs
3 cups bite-sized shredded -wheat squares
3 cups slim pretzel sticks
1 pound mixed salted nuts
1/2 cup butter or margarine
1/4 cup bacon drippings
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1/4 teasoon Tabasco sauce
1 1/2 teaspoons seasoned salt
1 teaspoon celery salt
1 teaspoon garlic salt
1 teaspooon savory
Combine cereals, pretzels, and nuts in roaster pan. Melt butter and bacon drippings; add
Worcestershire
sauce and Tabasco; mix well, and pour over cereal mixture. Thoroughly combine seasonings;
sprinkle over
mixture, mixing well. Toast in very slow oven (250 degrees F.) 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes.
Makes 4
quarts." (p. 94)
---Better Homes & Gardens, May 1962
---"City of Sterling, Colorado Names Chex Mix Its Official Snack Food," Business Wire,
February 23, 2001
If you want more details on this event, contact KPMX .
"In his book Great American Brands, historian David Powers Cleary recorded the origins of Chex
cereal. In 1898 William Danforth, an owner of an animal feed business, saw something in wheat
germ that cereal manufacturers of the period had overlooked. Cereal makers of the day removed
wheat germ from whole wheat cereals because of perennial problems with the wheat germ quickly
growing rancid. A miller from Kansas...discovered a way to keep the wheat germ from going bad.
Meanwhile, Danforth believed wheat germ to be a form of nature's own purity and therefore
importanat to sound health. Danforth soon began a collaboration with the Kansas miller to sell a
ready-to-eat cereal for people: that collaboration marked the very beginning of what would
become
Chex cereal...by 1902, the company name had changed to Ralston Purina Company. To
accompany the new name, Danforth wished to develop a logo that people would remember. He
decided on a smart red and white checkerboard...[which] symbolized, to him, his philosophy of
healthy living...By the time of the Great Depression, Ralston Wheat Cereal was losing money for
the company, despite the growth of overall comapny sales to $60 million. The company remedied
this lapse in sales by bringing in a famous cowboy, Tom Mix, to lend his name to the cereal.
Eventually changing the cereal name to Chex..."
---"Chex," Encyclopedia of Consumer Brands, Volume 1: Consumable Products, Janice
Jorgenson, editor [St. James:Detroit] 1994 (p. 114-116)
[NOTES: USPTO records indicate "Chex" was introduced in 1950; this book has much
more
information than can be paraphrased here. If you need more details ask your libarian to help you
find a copy].
Chocolate mousse & White chocolate mousse
---An A to Z of Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p.
218)
"There were 8,000 persons at the Food Exposition at Madison Square Garden yesterday, and the attendance at the great show grows day by day as popular
interest increases. People go there to see the attractive displays of food products...Miss Parloa lectured in the afternoon on "Lobster a la Newberg," Welsh rarebit,
and chocolate mousse."
---"The Food Show," New York Times, October 7, 1892 (p. 5)
[1894]
"Mousses.--These are a go-between souffles and ordinary iced creams. They are lighter and
more spongy than the latter, on which account they are often better liked. They have the further
advantage of needing no freezing betore they are moulded. The mixture is first thickened over the
fire like a custard, then put in the mould and set in an ice cave until firm enough to turn out. A
cave is a necessisty for the proper concoction of these dishes. To ensure success they need great
care in the preparation."
---Cassell's New Universal Cookery Book, Lizzie Heritage [Cassell and
Company:London] 1894 (p. 966-7)
About mousse & mousse recipes (no chocolate)
---Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, Fannie Merritt
Farmer
"Chocolate Mousse
Take four strips of chocolate, 1 quart of milk, 6 eggs and 1 tablespoon of cornstarch, dissolve the chocolate in a little warm milk, put the quart of milk on to boil
and stir in the chocolate gradually. Set the saucepan where it will cook slowly. Beat the eggs well, mix in the cornstarch and add to the milk and chocolate.
Sweeten to taste and boil gently until smooth and thick, stirring until done. Flavor with vanilla and pour into a glass dish. Serve cold with sweetened whipped cream
heaped upon it."
---"Housekeepers' Column," Boston Daily Globe, March 16, 1897 (p. 8)
"Chocolate Mousse
--Melt 1 1/2 squares chocolate, add 1/2 cup powdered sugar, gradually 1 cup cream. Stir over the fire until boiling point is reached, the add
3/4 teaspoon gelatine dissolved in 2 tablspoons boiling water, 3/4 cup sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Combine mixtures, strain into a bowl placed in pan of ice water
and stir constantly until mixture begins to thicken. Fold in the whip from 1 quart thin cream. Mould, pack in salt and ice and let stand four hours."
---"Ladies' Luncheon for Twelve," Boston Daily Globe, February 24, 1899 (p. 4)
"Mousses Glaces--Iced Mousses. These Mousses can be made either from Creme Anglaise mixture or from a syrup. The syrup method is most suitable for making
iced fruit Mousses...4902. Iced Cream Mousse Mixture. Make a Creme Anglaise (4337) using 16 egg yolks, 500 g (1 lb 2 oz) caster sugar and 5 dl (18 fl oz or
2 1/4 U.S. cups) milk. Allow to cool, stirring occasionally and when very cold mix in 5 dl (18 fl oz or 2 1/4 U.S. cups) unwhipped cream 20 g (2/3 oz) gum
tragacanth in powder form and the selected flavouring...Place mixture on ice and whisk until it becomes light and frothy then fill into moulds lined with greaseproof
paper. Seal hermetically and freeze thoroughly for 2-3 hours according to the size of the mould...4903: Various Iced Mousses. Using the same methods as given
above, Mousses can be made in the following flavours. Mousse Glacee a l'Anisetted, au Cafe, au Chocolat, au Kirsch, au Marasquin, au Rhum, au The, a l'Abricot,
aux Fraises, aux Oranges, aux Mandarines, aux Noix Fraiches, aux Peches, a la Vanille, aux Violettes, etc."
---The Complete Guide to the Art of Modern Cookery, Escoffier, translated by H.L. Cracknell and R.J. Kaufmann [John Wiley & Sons:New York] 1997 (p. 574)
Chocolate mousse
---Boston
Cooking-School Cook Book, Fannie Merritt Farmer [1918]
"White Chocolate Mousse Tart...White chocolate was an 80's obsession, especially white
chocolate mousse..." (p. 386) When white chocolate became the chocolate choice in the 80s,
food companies scrambled to devise new ways of using it in tandem with their own products. One
of the most uccessful recipes is this walnut fudge from Kraft Foods, Inc..." (p. 506)
---American Century Cookbook: The Most Popular Recipes of the 20th Century, Jean
Anderson
[Clarkson Potter:New York] 1997
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Freidman:New
York]
1997 (p. 347)
--- "Food from the 80s," Fashionable Food: Seven Decades of Food Fads, Sylvia Lovgren
[Macmillan:New York] 1997 (p. 394)
Coconuts
Food historians don't quite know exactly when and where coconuts originated. Notes here:
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p.
199)
---Cambridge World History of Food, Kenneth F. Kiple and Kriemhild Conee Ornelas
[Cambridge University
Press:Cambridge] 2000, Volume One (p. 388)
[NOTE: This book contains much more information than can be paraphrased here. It also includes
an extensive
bibliography for additional study. If you information on the many uses of coconuts, ask your
librarian to help you find a
copy]
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New
York] 1999 (p. 88)
Excellent question! A survey of early American cookbooks confirms coconuts were available in
whole, fresh form. Not tinned or pre-packaged. Most likely, they were shipped from the West
Indies region. Food historians generally agree coconuts were not indigenous to the West
Indies/Caribbean region. They introduced to this area after Columbus by European settlers. By
the 19th century coconuts, were growing in this area and were shipped north to the United States.
In the late 18th/early 19th centuries fresh fruits from tropical regions did not fare well on long
journeys. This may account for the traditional popularity/proliferation of coconut in the Southern
recipes. Pineapples follow a similar pattern.
---Food in History, Reay Tannahill [Three River Press:New York] 1988 (p.220)
---Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith editor [Oxford
University Press:New York] 2004, Volume 1 (p. 265)
---Eating in America: A History, Waverly Root & Richard de Rochemont [William
Morrow:New York] 1976 (p. 44)
---ibid (p. 154)
[1770]
"Cocoa Nut Puffs
Take a Cocoa Nut and dry it well before the fire, then grate it and add to it a good spoonfull of
Butter, sugar to your tast, six Eggs with half the whites and 2 spoonfulls of rose water. Mix them
all together and they must be well beat before they are put in the Oven."
---The Receipt Bok of Harriott Pickney Horry, 1770, editoed with an Introduction by
Richard J. Hooker [University of South Carolina Press:Columbia SC] 1984 (p. 71)
"Cocoa-nut Cream,
Take the nut from its shell, pare it, and grate it very fine; mix it with a quart of cream, sweeten
and freeze it. If the nut be a small one, it will require one and a half to flavour a quart of
cream."
---The Virginia House-Wife, Mary Randolph [originally published in 1824] with Historical
Notes and Commentaries by Karen Hess [University of South Carolina Press:Columbia SC] 1984
(p. 175)
"Cocoa-Nut Pudding.
A quarter of a pound of cocoa-nut, grated.
A quarter of a pound powdered white sugar.
Three ounces and a half of fresh butter.
The whites only of six eggs.
Half a glass of wine and brandy mixed.
Half a tea-spoonful of rose-water.
Break up the cocoa-nut, and take the thin brown skin carefully off, with a knife. Wash all the
pieces in cold water, and then wipe them dry, with a clean towel. Weigh a quarter of a pound of
cocoa-nut, and grate it very fine, into a soup-plate. Stir the butter and sugar to a cream, and add
the liquor and rose-water gradually to them. Beat the whites only of six eggs, till they stand alone
on the rods; and then stir the beaten white of egg gradually into the butter and sugar. Afterwards
sprinkle it, by degrees, the grated cocoanut, stirring hard all the time. Then stir all very well at the
last. Have ready a puff-paste sufficient to cover the bottom, sides, and edges of a soup-plate. Put
in the mixture, and bake it in a moderate oven, about half an hour. Grate loaf-sugar over it, when
cool."
---Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats, by a Lady of Philadelphia
[aka Eliza Leslie], facsimile 1828 edition [Applewood Books:Chester CT] (p. 17-18)
Corn bread
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New
York] 1999 (p. 96)
---The Story of Corn, Betty Fussell [Knopf:New York] 1992 (p.220-1)
[this books
contains much more information on your topic...ask your librarian to help you find a copy]
---The Virginia House-wife, Mary Randolph [1824], historical notes and commentaties by
Karen Hess [University of South Carolina Press:Columbia] 1984 [the quoted passage is from Ms.
Hess]
---Iroquois Food and Food Preparation, F.W. Waugh, reprint fo 1913 edition [University
Press of the
Pacific:Honolulu HI ]2003 (p. 80-3)
[1790] Hoe
cakes, Nellie
Custis, Mt. Vernon VA
[1796] Indian
Slapjack & Johny Cake or Hoe Cake, American Cookery, Amelia Simmons, Hartford
CT
[1798] A
Nice Indian Pudding, Amelia Simmons, Hartford
[1830] Corn Bread, Mrs. Isaac Cocks,
Long Island NY
[1857] Corn
meal batter cakes & corn meal mush, Great Western Cook Book, Ann Maria Collins,
New York
[1884] Corn
meal recipes, hoe cakes etc., Boston
