The CWI Cookbook

Posts Tagged ‘butter milk’

 3 eggs
2 oz. butter
1 tsp. cream or milk
Buttered toast

Very convenient for invalids, or when required, a light dish for supper. Beat up three eggs with two ounces of fresh butter, or well-washed salt butter; add a teaspoonful of cream or new milk. Put all in a saucepan and keep stirring it over the fire for nearly five minutes, until it rises up like a soufflé, when it should be immediately dished on buttered toast.

From Godey’s Lady’s Book magazine, reader-submitted recipe from 1866.

Comment: While the author prefers to compare this to a soufflé, we must confess to suspecting a bit of “it sounds so much tastier in French!” classism at work here. This is not a durn thing but scrambled eggs after all, and the bit of butter and cream should make it tasty indeed.

Most cookbooks of the period had entire sections devoted to “cooking for the sick” and “invalid” was an all too common status in the years of the war, and long afterwards. Also included in the category would be those who, while otherwise healthy, had lost or damaged teeth and consequent difficulty chewing hard foods.

 1 pumpkin
6 eggs
1/4 lb. butter
1/2 pint milk
Ginger
Nutmeg
1/2 c. brandy
Sugar
1 bottom pie crust
Additional pie dough, cut in strips and twisted (optional)

Stew a fine sweet pumpkin till soft and dry; rub it through a sieve, mix with the pulp six eggs [beaten] quite light, a quarter of a pound of butter, half a pint of new milk, some pounded ginger and nutmeg, a wine glass of brandy, and sugar to your taste. Should it be too liquid, stew it a little drier, put a paste [strip of pie dough] round the edge, and in the bottom of a shallow dish or plate–pour in the mixture, cut some thin bits of paste, twist them, and lay them across the top, and bake it nicely.

From The Virginia Housewife or, Methodical Cook, by Mary Randolph, 1841

Comment: Canned pumpkin is so universally available, and so cheap, that few indeed are the people who make a pie by starting with a raw fruit of the vine. Since the situation was quite reversed in Mrs. Randolph’s day, she omits a few processing details. These include the detachment of the rind (the hard, thin outside shell) from the edible part of the pumpkin (the soft yellow-orange flesh) and of course the removal of seeds and strings from the very center as you do when making the jack-o-lantern at Halloween.

The stewing process is probably best accomplished in a double boiler to avoid scorching, since the intent is to use just barely enough water to cook all the chunks through and then evaporate.

The rest of the recipe is quite straightforward, until of course we get to those elaborate cooking instructions: “bake nicely.” The usual directions for pumpkin pie baking say to start at 450 degrees for the first 15 minutes and then reduce to 350 for the remaining 45 or so. The use of any sort of top crust is unusual today but might be considered if this is to be made for an educational or other public setting such as a living history exhibit or fundraising project.

We note that this pie is called a pudding but is basically a custard. Thus does nomenclature change over time.

 Fresh parsley
1/2 tsp. salt
Melted butter

Wash some parsley very clean, and pick it carefully leaf by leaf; put a teaspoonful of salt into half a pint of boiling water: boil the parsley about ten minutes; drain it on a sieve; mince it quite fine, and then bruise it to a pulp.

The delicacy and excellence of this elegant and innocent relish depends upon the parsley being minced very fine; put it into a sauce-boat, and mix with it, by degrees, about half a pint of good melted butter. Never pour parsley and butter over boiled things [in the kitchen], but send it up [to the dining room] in a boat.

From The Cook’s Oracle by William Kitchiner, MD, New York, 1832

Comment: Kitchiner comes across in his book as either a wise, friendly, chatty fellow or the biggest know-it-all you have ever run across in your life. Every recipe, it seems, is followed by either an “Obs.” (observation), “N.B.” (from the Latin nota bene, loosely translated as “friendly tip”), “Mem.” (presumably “memorandum”), or some combination of the above. Frequently attached are asterisks, crosses and other symbols indicating footnotes, in miniscule print, linking to anything from a citation from a cookbook of hundreds of years earlier to a popular poem of his own day, sufficiently lengthy that the footnotes alone sometimes drag on across several subsequent pages, somewhat in the same way that this footnote is threatening to do.

Ahem. To return to the recipe at hand, Kitchiner merely notes here that this same procedure can be used on chervil, basil, tarragon, burnet, or cress, as well as on parsley. All are recommended for use on boiled poultry or fish. Herbed butters can occasionally be found commercially made in gourmet food stores but at such prices that it is usually a much better idea to make them yourself.

 10 c. flour
6 c. sugar
3 c. butter
3 c. buttermilk or sour cream thinned with milk
8 eggs
1 c. wine
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. nutmeg, ground
1 lb. currants
1 lb. raisins

To ten cups of flour, put six of sugar, three of butter, three of sour milk (a little warm), eight eggs, a glass of wine, a large teaspoonful of saleratus, a nutmeg, a pound of currants, a pound of raisins.

From The Young Housekeeper’s Friend by Mrs. [M. H.] Cornelius, 1865.

Comment: We know this is intended to be a “cup cake” because it is in a section of Mrs. Cornelius’ book with that overall label. As the little paper cupcake holders with which we are familiar today had not yet been invented, these were normally baked in, well, cups. Regular cups normally used for coffee, tea or the like. One would probably not use the finest family china for this task, but any sturdy porcelain or other smooth drinking vessel would be appropriate.

“Saleratus” was a precursor of baking powder used to produce rising in baked goods for which yeast was not appropriate. Use regular baking powder in similar proportions. Using the quantity of ingredients listed here will produce a great whacking lot of cupcakes, so for family use one might want to consider cutting the amounts called for in half.

 2 cloves garlic
1 tbs. butter, softened
1/2 pint liquid: either melted butter OR beef stock OR garlic vinegar

Pound two cloves of garlic with a piece of fresh butter, about as big as a nutmeg; rub it through a double-hair sieve, and stir it into half a pint of melted butter, or beef gravy, or make it with garlic vinegar.

From The Cook’s Oracle by William Kitchiner, New York, 1832

Comment: This is a triple-threat sauce depending on which of Dr. Kitchiner’s options you use to finish it. The butter-butter option would seem intended for seafood; the garlic-beef gravy choice for a steak or a dish made with the previous day’s leftover meat; and the garlic-vinegar would go well in a salad dressing. We like Dr. K’s work largely because he confirms our belief that one can never have too much garlic, nor too many uses to which it can be applied. Except ice cream. That would probably not be good. Put that into the exception-to-every-rule file.

 4 lb. flour
1 lb. butter
1 lb. sugar
6 eggs
1 pint milk
1/2 pint yeast (use 2 cakes or packets commercial yeast)
Carroway seeds as desired

Four pound flour, 1 pound butter, 1 pound sugar, 6 eggs, 1 pint milk, half pint yeast; mix the flour and sugar with carroway seed, melt the butter, and with the milk mix it all together; bake them quick.

From American Cookery by Amelia Simmons, 2nd edition, Albany NY 1796

Comment: This recipe is so old that the original book uses spellings with the “medial S,” a now (thankfully) obsolete letter resembling a lower case “f”. Assuming that our readers do not wish to wade through directions like “1 pound fugar” and “half pint yeaft,” we have taken the liberty of modernizing things a bit.

“Bake them quick” does not mean to tear through the process as if you were trying to set a speed record, it means to use a hot oven. We suggest trying 400 degrees, checking them frequently, and removing when they appear done, then noting the time required for future reference in case they prove popular and you want to make them again.

The fact that yeast is involved suggests that after mixing this dough should be given some time to rise, but since Ms. Simmons does not make mention of any such thing we can only shrug helplessly and leave the matter to the discretion of the cook.