Sweet Holiday Recipes Dated 1807 through 1959
Surprisingly relevant recipes and stories; some over 215-years old.
One of the hottest-selling books in the United States during the first half of the 19th-century was a cookbook. It was first published in England in 1806, then introduced to the United States as a second edition the following year. Immediately, this carefully written cookbook became an chart-topping sensation.
It was authored by “A Lady” who was, in actuality, Mrs. Maria Eliza Rundell (1745-1828) and her cookbook was the first publication of its kind to teach women how to cook in an orderly fashion. Rundell’s recipes, called receipts, were presented with measurements more exact than ever before, and not just “to taste” or with instructions left to memory.
Mrs. Rundell’s book was so popular that it went through dozens of editions and was published until the late 1880s. The recipes included instructions such as how to properly choose ingredients in the marketplace, season foods and cook stock, present dishes to the table, and even how to select and care for various cooking implements. Mrs. Rundell described French cooking techniques and elaborated on how to make various forms of pastry dough ranging from choux to pie crusts.
Today, many of Mrs. Rundell’s recipes appear quite contemporary. Her relatively easy 215-year old recipe for lemon cream is a pleasant addition to pound cake, biscuits, or scones.
Mrs. Rundell’s Lemon Cream
“Take a pint of thick cream, and put to it the yolks of two eggs well beaten, four ounces of fine sugar, and the thin rind of a lemon: boil it up, then stir 'tis almost cold. Put the juice of a lemon in a dish or bowl, and pour the cream upon it, stirring it till quite cold.”
A New System of Domestic Cookery: Formed Upon Principals of Economy; and Adapted to the Use of Private Families by A Lady, First American Edition 1807
In contrast, Mrs. Rundell also included traditional recipes in her cookbook that now seem incredibly abnormal in this century. For her cake recipe, Mrs. Rundell admitted that hers was an exceedingly costly concoction; she even offered a cheaper version for those on a more restricted budget.
The ingredients alone for “A Very Fine Cake” are mind-boggling to contemporary cooks. The cake is comparable to very dense spiced pound cake or holiday fruit cake. The recipe requires two and a half pounds of butter flavored with rosewater (used much like we use vanilla today), twenty eggs, two and a half pounds of flour, a pound and a half of sugar, a full ounce of spice such as cinnamon, three pounds of currants, nearly a pound of blanched almonds and sweetmeats combined with chopped raisins, sweet wine, and brandy.
“Bake in a quick oven,” Rundell advised, “It will require 3 hours.”
Relatively soon after the American Civil War, Peterson’s Magazine (1842-1898) published a chocolate butter recipe in their November issue and the editors promised, “Every receipt in this Cook-Book has been tested by a practical housekeeper.”
Chocolate butter was used as a spread on a variety of breads, much like Nutella today. This American historical recipe is easy to make and be sure to use the finest quality sweet chocolate if you decide to give this a try. As mentioned, butter was typically pressed into decorative butter molds but chocolate butter tastes just as good served in any simple container.
Chocolate-Butter, 1868
“Stir a quarter of a pound of butter over the fire until quite soft and creamy; put two cakes of good vanilla-flavored chocolate on a tin plate, and sprinkle them gradually with (warm) milk until they become so soft that you can mix them with the butter, then stir them well into it. Serve it cold, in whatever shape you like for eating with bread or biscuits.”
Peterson’s Magazine, Published November, 1868, Philadelphia, PA
As the Victorian era progressed, more elaborate cakes, cookies and other baked goods developed in kitchens.
The Every-Day Cook-Book and Encyclopedia of Practical Recipes by Miss E. Neill, published in 1884, was later reprinted so many times that today, editions of this Victorian cookbook are considered ubiquitous and reasonably priced.
In the Chicago 1892 version, there is a recipe for chocolate caramel cake. Like most of the recipes in Neill’s book, the author assumed that the reader already knew her trade and could cook well by experience, sight, and taste so few exact instructions were given. However, due to the number of reprints alone, Miss Neill’s recipes were easy to follow and produced successful results.
Miss Neill's Caramel Cake has baking powder and lots of egg whites, making the bake much fluffier with a lighter crumb than those made in the decades before. The chocolate caramel is a delectable icing.
Caramel Cake
“One cup of butter, two of sugar, a scant cup milk, one and a half cups flour, cup corn starch, whites of seven eggs, three teaspoons baking powder in the flour; bake in long pan. Take half pound of brown sugar, scant quarter pound of chocolate, half cup of milk, butter size of an egg, two teaspoonfuls vanilla; mix thoroughly and cook as syrup until stiff enough to spread - spread on cake and set in oven to dry.”
The Every-Day Cook-Book and Encyclopedia of Practical Recipes by Miss E. Neill, Chicago, IL 1892
American families had at least one maid, and typically more, as well as a cook during the Victorian and Edwardian years. With that extra help in mind, an elaborate Chocolate Layer Cake was offered for an ending to the traditional feast in the November 1909, Thanksgiving issue of Good Housekeeping.
The instructions are long and laborious, and this would have been the crowning glory for the family's chef. The recipe calls for a great deal of butter, but only one egg, powdered sugar, three ounces of unsweetened chocolate, whole milk, and finely ground flour with cream of tartar and baking soda added.
It was baked in three thin pans and according to the recipe, should come out light and fluffy. The layers were stacked atop one another and separated by a thick layer of chocolate filling that was rich with egg yolks and flavored with coffee.
This was then covered with an almond chocolate glaze. Just before serving, the cake was topped with decorative pipings of sugary, vanilla whipped cream that had been beaten nearly to a mousse consistency. Finally, the recipe recommended that the cake required a garnish of glacé fruits and nuts or that it should be covered with chocolate bonbons.
Maids, hired cooks, and kitchen help became far less commonplace during the 1920s as electrical appliances took their jobs. Electric mixers were first introduced to the home kitchen during the 20s, as well as electric waffle irons and toasters. Housewives took the role of family chef and created recipes for parties and fancy dinners in their new-fangled kitchens. As they experimented with recipes, they passed along their skills and notes to their children and grandchildren who would cherish the memories, smells, and tastes of childhood.
Electric mixers opened up a whole new era of baking exploration for the housewife during the 1920s, and she tried cooking in ways that had not been possible previously. In her spare time, she poured over women’s magazines, cutting out recipes to add to her kitchen scrapbooks that were otherwise filled with her culinary experiments and notations.
Today, many of these hand-written cookbooks are considered collectible. Such food journals are filled with family as well as published recipes with remarks about the successes and failures the owner experienced in the kitchen.
These manuscripts also became a kind of family diary. Local newspaper articles, children’s notes and valentines, wedding, birth and death announcements, plus cherished letters from friends were often glued onto the pages for safe-keeping between recipes.
We know nothing about Ramona other than the fact that she was from rural Ohio. However, in her handwriting, Ramona documented her beloved mother’s apple dumpling recipe sometime during the 1920s. The directions are mostly reminders as to how to make the dough since her mother had passed the process down to her and had not written recipe onto paper. Therefore, the instructions appear incomplete because Ramona left out the amount of butter, spices, and apples that should be used in the filling. Of course, she knew exactly what the recipe should look and taste like since she learned the steps while standing next to her mother throughout her lifetime.
My Mother’s Apple Dumplings
2 scant cups Flour
1/2 tp salt
2 tps Baking Powder
4 tbs Lard
1/2 to 3/4 cups milk or waterBlend Lard and flour and add water. Roll out flat. Put apples, sugar, butter, cinnamon, flour and nutmeg in center. Bake for 15 minutes. Make syrup of 1 cup Sugar and 1/2 cup water. Pour over Dumplings and continue baking 10 or 15 minutes longer. Oven 400 degrees. This makes 4 immense dumplings.”
Handwritten recipe from Ramona, 1920s
During The Great Depression, an editor for McCall’s November 1937 issue offered a new idea for the traditional Thanksgiving pumpkin pie that would be baked in those fancy, new high-tech kitchens with electric ovens. Kitchen appliances at this time began to resemble those found in many of our houses and apartments today.
In 1937, and for those who could afford it, there was even an electric dishwasher alongside the spacious electric refrigerator with its speedy freezer that even made ice cubes. After all, since prohibition had ended only four years prior, iced cocktails were back on many Thanksgiving menus.
Pumpkin Pecan (Meringue) Pie
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup milk
4 tablespoons flour
1 cup cooked or canned pumpkin
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup butter or margarine
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1 cup whole pecans
1/2 teaspoon ginger
Baked pie shell
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 egg yolks
3 egg whites
9 tablespoons sugarMix brown sugar, flour, spices and salt. Beat egg yolks, add milk and stir into first mixture. Cook over hot water until thick, stirring constantly. Add pumpkin, butter or margin and 3/4 cup pecans. Mix well. Pour into baked pie shell. Cover with meringue made with egg whites and sugar. Garnish with remaining pecans. Bake in moderate oven (325 degrees Fahrenheit) for 20 minutes. Serve cold. Serves 6.
McCall’s, November 1937
Home cooks had a renewed obsession with sugary baking after World War II rationing ended. Food oils, dried fruits, sugar, butter and margarine, jams, jellies, lard, stoves, and fuel oil had been only part of the long list of government rations and this continued through 1946.
By 1947, housewives in America were making up for lost time and yearned for those rich, yummy ingredients. Cookbooks were published with long, individual chapters dedicated solely to cookies, cakes, pies, and candies.
One popular, patriotic cookbook was An American Woman’s Cook Book, published by the Culinary Arts Institute of Chicago. Many editions had been printed since the 1930s, but throughout WWII, the book offered procedures and creative ways to cope with rationing and most importantly, proper nourishment.
Then, after rationing ended, the post-war 1947 edition was profusely illustrated with colorful, mouth-watering photographs of delectable dishes. Since sugar had been on top of the rationing lists, Americans desired sweet recipes most of all.
And that’s when cookies hit their peak in popularity; certainly, at that time, anytime was the right time to bake cookies.
A cheerful hand-written inscription on the title page of An American Woman’s Cook Book tells all. It reads, “One of my favorite cookbooks and my first!” and was simply signed “Jeanice, 1948.”
For the next ten years, Jeanice put pencil notations throughout the 848 pages of that cookbook. She added personal variations to recipes, baking times, as well as opinionated tasting reviews.
“No good!” she wrote about one oatmeal raisin cookie recipe. She spoke again, “this came out way too dry” as her review to the book’s shortbread .
There is no doubt that Chocolate Drop Cookies stood out as a favorite, however, and in her pretty handwriting, Jeanice wrote, “Good! The taste is very similar to brownies. November 1959.”
Chocolate Drop Cookies
1-1/2 cups sifted flour
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup milk
2 ounces (squares) chocolate
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup shortening, meltedSift flour, salt and baking powder together. Melt chocolate and add to melted shortening. Add sugar, egg, milk and vanilla, then add sifted ingredients. Let stand 10 minutes. Drop from the teaspoon onto greased baking sheet and bake in moderate oven at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 12 to 15 minutes. Frost if desired. - Makes 36 cookies.
An American Woman’s Cook Book, Culinary Arts Institute, Chicago, 1947
For well over 200 years, sweet home-cooked recipes have been passed along through families and friends, or through the remnants of aged, handwritten, and often anonymous cookbooks that are found at auctions or vintage shops. Cookies, cakes, pies, and other sweet treats are all part of our food heritage. Treasured recipes well illustrate both specific and significant times in our cultural history; tasting the past is certainly one way to appreciate the lessons and eras from long ago.
Great article! I ran across my sweet granny's recipe for Blushing Betty, written in her handwriting on an index card. I've saved it and make it whenever I can get fresh rhubarb. Here it is:
serves 6
3 cups diced rhubarb (unpeeled); ¾ to 1 inch pieces
1 ½ cups coarse bread cubes (i.e. Pepperidge farm toasting white bread) about 3 or 4 slices, remove crusts, cut in cubes about size of rhubarb pieces)
¼ cup butter, melted
1 cup white sugar (or a little less)
juice of ½ lemon (or a little more)
cinnamon
Mix together rhubarb, bread cubes, butter, sugar and lemon juice.
Put in ungreased 10 x 6 x 2” baking dish. Sprinkle with cinnamon.
Bake at 350 degrees for 45 to 50 minutes. Serve warm with cream.
April 4, 1964; Granny Petersen
I recently stumbled across a book called freedoms table and this article reminded me of it because it has really old recipes from women who waited at home during the wars. Could be a fun read on this same subject