The Buckeye Cookery Book of 1876

  I'll never forget the day Bean was gifted with this treasure of a cook book. The owner of the local used bookstore, Diane, who well knew Beans passion for cook books and who frequently kept back special books that came in just for her to have first perusal,  handed her this book. She explained she couldn't sell it as it was really in tatters but it was special and it was a gift to the one person she knew who would truly appreciate it. You could the hear the angel's singing I swear as my Mom held this book in her hands!

The Buckeye Cookery Book.

    Granted it doesn't look like much.  The cover, which is loose, is unreadable and actually looks as if brown paper was glued to it over a hundred years ago. The spine is broken, the threads holding it together are visible, and there is no title page anymore.
But, it has a quirky dedication page:

                              "To the
                 PLUCKY HOUSEWIVES
                             Of  1876.
Who master their work instead of allowing.                       it to master them.
             THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED."

   
      In the center of the book is a section of blank pages so the "plucky housewife" could include her own cherished recipes. And the original owner of this cookery book did just that, pages of lovely script some in fountain pen, some in pencil, fill all of the pages. She had a fondness for puddings!

Never enough pudding recipes...

     And who was this plucky woman who loved her puddings...one Mrs. I.A. Morrow of Yankton, Dakota Territory, 1878. But more about her later.

     So using the clues I had, I discovered this cookbook was 'The Buckeye Cookery Book...with Hints on Practical Housekeeping,' published here in Ohio by the ladies of the First Congregational Church. It was a fundraising endeavor to build a new parsonage and it was a great success with the ladies making $2,000.00. A Mrs. Estelle W. Wilcox, who was quite involved with the book from the beginning, along with her husband,  recognized the potential of the book and bought the rights to it. They moved to Minnesota and published the book and subsequent editions for the next 28 years with Estelle at the helm. You can still hear her voice of authority when you read; "let all things be done decently and in order and the first to put in order when you are going to bake is yourself."
   
     The book has a total of 46 chapters with an index, a total of 464 pages. The longest chapter is dedicated to "cake-making" with 41 pages covering 125 cake recipes followed by 9 frosting's. There are other chapters dedicated just to desserts as well; breakfast and tea cakes, creams and custards, cookies, confectionery, pastry, puddings and sauces, ices and ice creams...they loved their sweets!

     There are chapters on everything from meat to catsup's and sauces; pickles and canning fruits; housekeeping; butter making; soups; vegetables; hints for the sick room; and even the management of help. How many cook books tell you the best way to survive a "run away horse and wagon"? Answer...stay in the vehicle and do not attempt to jump!

     Need to build a root cellar or ice-house? Want to know what foods to prepare for a sick member of the family? It's all here within these pages.

     One thing that is quite evident as you peruse this book is just how much work everything was. If our ancestors could come forward in time they would marvel at today's conveniences. For instance in the chapter entitled House-cleaning they discuss spring cleaning. Carpets would be folded and carried outside and hung over a strong line. The carpet would then be beaten with a broom or carpet-whip. Then you would wash the grease spots out with clean water (drawn from the well) and gall soap. Gall soap being made from the fluid found in the gallbladder from animals that you would have raised and butchered and saved the gall for soap making. As you wait for the carpet to dry you'd return to the house with a pail of sawdust (or moist earth) which you wet down and scattered over the floors. This you then swept up and it captured the dust. You then proceeded to wash the windows and woodwork and the walls from the attic to the cellar. To hot water you added cayenne pepper to wash the floors which "drives out mice, rats and other vermin." When the floor is dry you blow more cayenne into every crack using a small bellows. Now the room is ready to bring in the furniture that has also been washed, brushed and polished. I'll admit some of the cleaning practises I have never heard of like kalsomining which sounds like a form of white washing and uses skin milk.

Bina's Strawberry shortcake recipe.

     So I decided to make this interesting strawberry short cake recipe as I have never seen anything quite like it. It intrigued me and I know my Mom would have approved. Growing up strawberry shortcake was an event in our house. Strawberry season found us all out in the fields picking so that Mom could make jam and freeze great quantities to use all year. Strawberry shortcake for dinner was a special treat and Mom made traditional New England shortcake, which is like a crumbly moist biscuit, not terribly sweet, slathered in sliced strawberries  that were sprinkled with sugar and left to break down a time. Then the berries and juice were spooned over the warm shortbread after it came out of the oven before being crowned with a healthy dollop of homemade whipped cream. Yum!

     The first task at hand was to reconfigure the measurements of old into modern day and fill in the directions because frankly they figured you already knew how to cook so why waste time with full instructions. No small feat and I am a fairly experienced cook and baker.

             Bina's Strawberry Shortcake
                        (original recipe)


"2 heaping teaspoons baking powder sifted into 1 quart flour, 1 scant half tea cup butter, 2 tablespoons sugar, a little salt, enough sweet milk (or water) to make a soft dough; roll out almost as thin as pie crust; place one layer in a baking pan, and spread with a very little butter, upon which sprinkle some flour, then add another layer of crust and spread as before, and so on until crust is all used. This makes 4 layers in a pan 14 inches by 7. Bake about 15 minutes in a quick oven, turn upside down, take off the top layer (the bottom when baking), place on a dish, spread plentifully with sliced strawberries (not mashed) previously sweetened with pulverized sugar, place layer upon layer, treating each one in the same way, and when done you will have a handsome cake, to be served warm with sugar and cream. The secret of having light dough is to handle it as little and mix it as quickly as possible."

     

Flour, baking powder, salt, sugar and butter.

   
      A half tea cup is approximately a half cup. A quart of flour is 4.65 cups or 4 and 2/3s. I cut the 1/2 cup of butter into the flour mixture until it resembled small crumb. To form the dough it took 1 cup plus 1 tablespoon of milk. My worry was how to not handle the dough much and yet you are instructed to roll it out.  I didn't have a pan that measured 14 x 7 so I decided to use a 9" round spring form pan and only make two layers. I have never seen a recipe where you layer raw dough and then separate the layers after baking and frankly I was doubtful. So I rolled and cut the dough to fit, brushing each with butter and sprinkling flour in between. I baked it in a 350 oven for approximately 15 minutes. It rose but was quite dense. The big reveal and using two spatulas I carefully separated the layers, it worked!

First layer.

   

Strawberry layer.

       

Crowned with whipped cream and strawberries.

 
    Impressive to look at, tasted good but the shortcake was still a bit tough and needed to be a bit sweeter. I would also macerate the strawberries a bit and really pour on the juice and let it soak in. All in all it was a fun experiment and frankly how can you go wrong with strawberries and whipped cream? And the day after I took the leftovers and turned it into a small trifle soaking the layers with Chambord raspberry liqueur and pools of white chocolate pudding. I know, I'm so bad! I must have been channeling the original "plucky housewife" with the penchant for puddings who I discovered was named Ida.

Mrs. I. A. Morrow, Yankton, 1878.

   
      I have written about Isadora A. (Ketchum) Morrow before on my other blog, womeninspirit.blogspot.com if you'd like all of the details.
 
      I discovered that Ida was the wife of Stanley J. Morrow a western photographer of note who was the apprentice to famed photographer Mathew Brady. Ida and her husband were originally from Ohio she being born there in 1844. She and her husband moved to Yankton, Dakota Territory and while he was off traveling throughout Montana and the Dakotas taking photographs she raised three children and ran the photography studio and business. She lived well into her 80s and passed away in California in the 1920s. She left her husbands photographic collection to the Montana Historical Society. How her much loved cookbook came to rest in a used bookstore in the Sierra Nevada mountains I don't know but I like to think she had a hand in passing it into the hands of another "plucky housewife" my Mom.

     "It is not a hap-hazard collection of recipes, gathered at random from doubtful sources, but has been made up without sparing time, labor, or expense, from the choicest bits of the best experience of hundreds who have long traveled the daily round of household duties, not reluctantly like drudge's, but lovingly, with heart and hand fully enlisted in the work." Amen.