So recently at a yard sale, I purchased 3 very old cook
books, tattered, with loads of notes written and faded on the pages; I really enjoy
old books, regardless of the subject matter.
I paid roughly $35.00 for all three books held together with some string.
And brought them home. At the time that I
purchased them, I was just told that they were very old, had been in the family
for years, and years … And her Mother
who passed away earlier that year used them quite a bit back in the late 1930’s
for cooking, so I assumed that they were cook-books, still unsure what they
were, but was intrigued.
To me an old book, is an evening of wonder, better than the
television, radio, and most definitely better than any other thing anywhere
else, sit in an easy chair or lounge on the sofa, and read. What I found, was
that I had purchased three cookbooks, very nice gems. Yes, they may be tattered, ripped, torn,
stained and written on long ago, with the writings faded with time, but
absolute Gems
And this is what I bought:
1). The Experienced
English Housekeeper, by, Elizabeth
Raffald, 1st
edition, 1869, all there but the book is falling apart;
2). English cooking, by “A Lady” (but written in faded
pencil was Han. Glasse, 1st edition, published in 1747, and again
this one is no longer bound, just a collection of loose pages, and wait for it …. I am missing page 62, but …
3). The Modern Cook,
by Charles Elmé Francatelli, 1st
edition, 1846, Publishers Richard
Bentley & Son, London, all 306 pages with the addition my missing page 62
of ‘English cooking’ stuffed between paged 105 and 106 respectively.
So, now I bet your
asking yourself why am I explaining this to you - the reader? It’s simple really, you see I’m not really a
great cook on my own. In fact, most people
refuse to even try to taste my cooking, particularly when I use ingredients
that they find to be ‘obnoxiously invented and inserted by me into my cooking to run afoul with their senses, and
deprive them of a few moments of sanity through the general disruption of their
sense of taste, and my ability to overwhelm that sense to the point of not
being able to taste anything for a week or three after tasting a dish made by
Birdy,” and then caution other people not to try or taste my cooking…
I’ve spent a good many years in prison and
believe me: prison food is the last thing on earth that people want to try to
live on. So, raw, burnt. ½ cooked, whatever, its food and tastes good and came
from my stove. I will still eat it.
However, there are
some of my ‘cooking experiments’ that went awry, now a prime example of this,
is the bare spot of ground near my residence, where nothing grows anymore, I
have used the same spot to throw out some of my creations, where they were not
fit for human consumption, even most of the wild animals won’t eat it, and the
few that have – died, a few feet away from their last meal … The grass, bushes and lone pine tree that was
there when I started dumping some of my cooking experiments have long since
died … so now it’s just a bare spot, even the birds don’t venture to inspect
what I put there ….
But, I am good at
following instructions from cook books I could not find a coal fired stove, let
alone the coal necessary to use such a contraption, and some of the ingredients
mentioned, I had to research on-line to find the equivalent of, as geese oil is
no longer available and neither is musk of wild cat (the musk is, but the
recipe calls for 5 ounces, and the modern day cost of such a product is [the
cheapest] $82.50/gram …) which is far too expensive to me.
So, I tried some of
these recipes, and had to make some changes to make them work out correctly.
And I will reproduce two of them here, that even my fiercest foe enjoyed tasting,
and wanted more.
Here goes:
Pale-Ale Cookies:
6 Large Tablespoons
of Fresh Butter (Or Lard)
6 Heaping Tablespoons of Freshly Ground Sugar (Powdered Sugar)
3 Beaten Eggs Yolks
2 Teaspoons pure
vanilla (or ½ Teaspoon Vanilla Extract)
1/8 Teaspoon of coarse salt
1 ½ cups of sifted
flour
Thoroughly cream
the butter and the sugar; add egg yolks and vanilla, beat very well. Now, while
still mixing. Add the flour and salt. Let cool in ice-box (refrigerator) for 20
minutes.
Then, with greased
spoon, scoop and drop dough from 12” onto a cookie sheet and bake for about 15
to 17 minutes in oven set to temperature at around 365 This will make around 2 to 3 dozen cookies. Now while they are still
warm from the oven you can add whatever topping you want, me I added a tiny lump
of creamy peanut butter which promptly melted – and expanded to cover almost
the entire top with a sheen of peanut butter.
I had to make 3 batches as everyone want more, and more and more…
Whole White Nut Raisin Loaf Bread
1 ¾ Cups of sugar
4 Tablespoons of butter
4 Large Eggs [the recipe calls for Geese Eggs]
2 ½ Cups of Whole
Milk
1 ½ Cups of Honey
4 ½ Cups of sifted
flour
4 Teaspoons of
rising [baking] powder
1 ¾ Teaspoons of
fine [table or sea] salt
1 ½ Cups of chopped
nuts [your choice here, I used pecans]
1 ½ Cup of Raisins
Mix thoroughly sugar,
honey, butter, eggs and milk.
Sift all dry
ingredients. Mix these together, now slowly add dry ingredients to the wet
ingredients while stirring, making sure that all are mixed together without any
lumps. Now add the nuts and raisins,
until they are blended into the mixture.
Pour this batter into a greased bread pan and cook in oven set to temperature
at around 365 degrees for 1 hour and 20 or so minutes, this will make about 2 ½ loaves
of bread, wait until nicely cooled until you try to cut it with bread knife. Magnificent!
So, ends another
post, as I will continue to strive for a better cooking experience, I will be
posting them here as well, thus I bid you this:
As always, stay
safe and be happy !
-Bird
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