The CWI Cookbook

Posts Tagged ‘wine’

 5 cups flour
3 cups sugar
two cups butter
5 eggs
one tsp. soda
2 tsp. cream of tartar,
one glass of wine
one glass of brandy
one nutmeg
one pound of raisins

Composition Cake; 5 cups of flour, 3 cups of sugar, two cups of butter, 5 eggs, one tsp. soda, 2 tsp. cream of tartar, one glass of wine, one glass of brandy, one nutmeg, one pound of raisins.

From the diary of Sgt. Samuel Andrew Jackson Creekmore, Jeff Davis Legion, Mississippi Cavalry. Submitted by CWi reader “Dameron”.

  “Cooking instructions: Beat butter and sugar together. Beat eggs, mix in soda and cream of tartar and nutmeg, then mix in liquors. Mix into flour, then add butter-sugar blend. Mix all thoroughly. Divide into bread or cake pans and bake at 350 degrees for around 40 minutes or until it looks done enough. If it’s brown on top and a knife or skewer inserted into the center comes out dry, it’s probably about right.”

Comment: One of the very few recipes we have ever heard of mentioned in an actual soldier’s diary from the Civil War period. The diary entry itself consists only of a list of ingredients, but that was the normal form for the time. Cooking instructions were added by Dameron.

This would appear to be a good deal more manageable than the Election Cakes, although it would be a fortunate soldier indeed who had access to all these ingredients during the War years.

“Cooking instructions: Beat butter and sugar together. Beat eggs, mix in soda and cream of tartar and nutmeg, then mix in liquors. Mix into flour, then add butter-sugar blend. Mix all thoroughly. Divide into bread or cake pans and bake at 350 degrees for around 40 minutes or until it looks done enough. If it’s brown on top and a knife or skewer inserted into the center comes out dry, it’s probably about right.”

Comment: One of the very few recipes we have ever heard of mentioned in an actual soldier’s diary from the Civil War period. The diary entry itself consists only of a list of ingredients, but that was the normal form for the time. Cooking instructions were added by Dameron.

This would appear to be a good deal more manageable than the Election Cakes, although it would be a fortunate soldier indeed who had access to all these ingredients during the War years.

 2-3 lb. lean pork
Puff paste or pie dough
Pepper
Salt
Nutmeg or mace
Apples, cored and sliced
Sugar, about 1 oz.
1/2 pint sweet cider or wine
Butter
1 egg, beaten

Cut two or three pounds of lean fresh pork into strips as long and as wide as your middle finger. Line a buttered dish with puff-paste; put in a layer of pork seasoned with pepper, salt, and nutmeg or mace; next a layer of juicy apples, sliced and covered with about an ounce of white sugar; then more pork, and so on until you are ready for the paste cover, when pour in half a pint of sweet cider or wine, and stick bits of butter all over the top. Cover with a thick lid of puff-paste, cut a slit in the top, brush over with beaten egg, and bake an hour and a half.

This is an English dish, and is famous in the region from which it takes its name. It is much liked by those who have tried it, and is considered by some to be equal to our mince-pie.

From Common Sense in the Household by Marion Harland, New York, 1871

Comment: Sadly enough, the once massive range of meat pies which made up a very long tradition in European (particularly English) cooking has faded to where the only remaining specimens are tasteless, flabby things featuring chicken or turkey and found in grocers’ freezer compartments. They are consumed largely by college students and others of the poor and/or cooking-averse persuasion. Pork and apple is a traditional combination, and this recipe would probably feed twice as many people for much more than twice the enjoyment as the nasty pre-made versions mentioned above.

“Sweet cider” simply means the plain unfermented variety, as opposed to “hard” or alcoholic versions of the fluid.

1/2 pint currant juice
1/2 pint Port wine
peel of 1 lemon, thin yellow part only
1 tsp. ground nutmeg
Sugar, white or brown
3-4 pints milk

 Half a pint of currant, the same of Port or white wine, half a grated nutmeg, and the peel of a lemon; sweeten well with pounded loaf or good brown sugar, and mix it together in a China bowl, and when the sugar dissolves, milk upon it three or four pints of milk. Serve it when cold.

From The Cook’s Own Book by “a Boston Housekeeper” (Mrs. N. K. M. Lee) Boston 1832

Comment: Syllabubs were wildly popular drinks as far back as the Middle Ages, which have inexplicably gone out of fashion. However, to say “a” syllabub is about as useful as saying “a” milkshake without specifying whether it be vanilla, chocolate, strawberry or some more exotic variety. Some syllabubs, probably the majority, contained alcohol but many others did not. Some were heavily spiced and others exceedingly bland.

The comparison to milkshakes above is intentional, because that is essentially what syllabubs evolved into. A special mixer was often used to produce them, known as a “syllabub churn” and in fact a miniature version of a butter churn. A circular piston with holes in it was attached to a rod, which was pulled up and pushed down rapidly in the glass to froth the milk and mix the other ingredients through it.

And note the interesting phrasing Mrs. Lee uses, that one should “milk upon” the other ingredients the three or four pints of milk called for. This sounds very much like one is expected to take one’s “China bow” of other ingredients out to the barn and tap the cow juice straight from the cow. We leave this possibility as an option for the cow owners among our readership while pointing out to the rest that this part is not mandatory.