I don't know about you, but I love old cookbooks. Maybe it's because I'm both a lover of food and a historian who appreciates a good primary source, but there is something about an antique cookbook that gets me excited. Our own bastrop wrote a diary for this series on an old cookbook last year that was quite interesting. I have another for you tonight--although, it's not quite as old as bastrop's--that I stumbled upon in my Internet wanderings.
It is a cookbook from 1922 apparently marketed to single men called The Stag Cook Book: A Man's Cook Book for Men. I know, it sounds very Ron Swanson, doesn't it? No, it's not just a compendium of recipes featuring bacon, venison, and whiskey. Although, it is kind of hilarious, and some of the recipes are about as crude as something Ron Swanson might come up with. Once I started reading, I couldn't stop. It's available for free on Project Gutenberg, so feel free to check it out in full.
The cookbook brings together the recipe contributions of many men, at least some of whom I'm sure you're familiar with, such as then-President Warren G. Harding (his presidency may have sucked, but at least he knew his way around a waffle iron), Houdini (deviled eggs), and Charlie Chaplin (steak and kidney pie). And so many more. It's a goldmine of fascinating (and often weird) old recipes, and the narration provided by some of these guys is amazing. Some of the recipes are clearly satire. The authors introduce the contributors:
The immortals who have contributed recipes to this volume were born with a silver spoon not in their mouths, but in their hands. The cap and apron, not the cap and bells, is the garb in which they perform. Secrets handed down through generations are thrown with a wanton hand on the pages that comprise this volume. Sauces from the south, chowders from New England, barbecued masterpieces from the west, grilled classics from field and stream, ragouts, stews, desserts, dressings are hung within reach of all, like garlic clusters from the rafters of opportunity. Reach up and help yourself.
Be not disturbed by occasional jocund phrases in this symposium. Behind them is probably concealed a savory or a flavor. A long paragraph may conclude with full particulars concerning the architecture of a gastronomic dream. Turn the pages slowly lest you be overwhelmed by the richness of the menu.
Oh yes, it's pretty rich indeed. Here are some excerpts:
R. L. (Rube) Goldberg, Hash
All joking aside, my favorite dish is hash.
I have never actually been in the kitchen to see hash pass through the various stages of its epicurean development, but I imagine hash is manufactured something like this:
First the father must eat a big lunch, the mother must fill herself up on cake in the afternoon and the children must have spoiled stomachs. This condition of affairs ruins the evening meal completely and there is plenty of meat left over for hash the next day.
The cook takes the beef or veal or whatever it is and throws it into the electric fan. The flying bits of meat are caught on ping pong rackets by experts and knocked back into a pot that contains a large quantity of mashed potatoes. Then the fire is lighted and the cook can go out to an afternoon movie.
The beauty of hash is that, no matter how it tastes, you think it is all right. There is no standard flavor for hash. Hash is fundamentally accidental, so it has no traditions to live up to.
Warren G. Harding, Waffles
2 eggs
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon salt
1 pint milk
flour to make thin batter
2 large teaspoons of baking powder
Beat yolks of eggs, add sugar and salt, melt butter, add milk and flour; last just before ready to bake add beaten whites of eggs and baking powder.
Bake on hot waffle iron.
Editor’s Note:—There is a great deal of argument about the proper dressing for waffles. Various gravies are used by one school of waffle eaters; while honey, maple syrup, and various specially flavored sugar powders are preferred by another.
President Harding is a staunch upholder of the gravy school and likes his in the form of creamed chipped beef.
Jules J. Jusserand (Ambassador to the United States from France), Radish Salad
The French ambassador presents his compliments and begs to state that he does not believe that any dish, or food, is more palatable than a salad of radishes, the radishes to be cut in very thin slices and to be seasoned with the usual salad dressing.
Editor’s Note:—This salad will be at its best if the foundation, upon which the thin slices of radish are placed, is made of small crisp leaves of romaine. The usual dressing—french, of course—is prepared in this way:
To one tablespoonful of lemon or vinegar add three tablespoonsful of the best olive oil, a dash of black pepper, and a half teaspoonful of salt. Beat well with a silver fork, and add enough paprika to give it a ruddy color, and a rich flavor. If the salad dish is rubbed with garlic it will do no great harm to the mixture!
Houdini, Scalloped Mushrooms and Deviled Eggs
The Mushroom Dish
Choose for this purpose fine firm ones. Pick, wash, wipe and peel—then lay them in a deep pudding dish well buttered. Season them with pepper and salt, and add a little onion. Sprinkle each layer with rolled bread crumbs, dot with small pieces of butter and proceed in this way until dish is full, having the top layer of bread crumbs. Bake in a moderate oven.
The Eggs
Boil the eggs hard. Remove shells and cut eggs in half, slicing a bit off the ends to make them stand upright. Extract yolks and rub them to a smooth paste with melted butter, cayenne pepper, a touch of mustard and a dash of vinegar. Fill the hollowed whites with this and send to table upon a bed of chopped lettuce or water cress, seasoned with pepper, salt, vinegar and a little sugar.
Dr. Charles M. Sheldon, Likes Bread and Milk
A recipe of my favorite dish is very simple—bread and milk with American cheese broken into it. I eat this dish once a day every day and find it wholesome and nourishing. It does not require any skillful putting together, simply a good appetite and a taste for that sort of provender. If there is an apple pie anywhere around to top it off with, I do not despise that.
I find as a rule that the simpler and more elementary the food, the better so far as the body is concerned. And take it the year around a bowl of milk with fresh bread and rich American cheese, finishing up with “good apple pie like mother used to make,” is all the midday meal I need. I can work on that all the afternoon and feel better than if I had had a seven course dinner.
Charlie Chaplin, Steak and Kidney Pie
This is how I do it:
Get 2 pounds lean steak
1 beef kidney
1 small onion.
Cut the steak and kidney into two inch pieces. Flour them. Add pepper and salt to taste. Line a deep pie dish with rich pie crust after having buttered dish. Put inverted egg cup in center. Fill with meat and finely chopped onion. Add water almost to top of dish. Roll pastry half inch thick and cover all. Make several small holes in pastry to permit steam to escape. Bake three hours in moderate oven. EAT.
Editor’s Note:—Steak and kidney pie is a favorite with many beside the great film comedian. Interesting variations of Mr. Chaplin’s recipe are:
Lamb kidney instead of the beef kidney.
Top crust only.
Fry the meat chunks before putting them into the pie.
Irvin S. Cobb, Hog Jowl and Turnip Greens
For a person who has written so copiously about food and the pleasures of eating it, I probably know less of the art of preparing it than any living creature. I cannot give my favorite recipe because I have none; but I am glad to give the names of my two favorite dishes, to wit, as follows:
1st—Hog jowl and turnip greens—Paducah style
2nd—Another helping of the same.
Editor’s Note:—Hog Jowl, Paducah Style, may be prepared like this:
Get the jowl. Some prefer it cooked and served with the bone; others remove the bone before serving. Boil it in well salted water for thirty minutes, then add the turnip greens and boil at least thirty minutes longer. Serve with plenty of butter for dressing; a dash of vinegar and a semi-colon of mustard are used by some folks who are hard to please.
Beet greens could be used but they are not considered au fait, and to use spinach is an absolute faux pas.
William Allen White, Vegetable Salad
My idea of good food is a vegetable salad. Any kind of a vegetable salad is good; some are better than others. Here is a recipe for a French dressing on a lettuce salad which you should try on your meat grinder, or your potato masher, or your rolling pin or whatever kitchen utensil you can play.
Get a crisp head of lettuce, discard the outer green leaves, using the inner yellow and white. Wash it thoroughly, and after pulling it apart dry each leaf with a tea towel. Put it in a big bowl—a big mixing bowl, six inches deep anyway. Then set that to one side, and get about as much onion as the end of your first finger would make, if it was chopped off at the second joint. Mince that. Put it in the bottom of a bowl. Take a large tablespoon; put in salt and paprika to taste, and don’t be afraid of making it salty, then add oil and vinegar, about three or four to one, mixing them in the spoon until it slops over into the onion, and then stir the salt and paprika and oil and vinegar down into the bowl of minced onion, taking a salad fork and jabbing it around in the mixture until the onion has been fairly well crushed and the onion flavor permeates the mixed oil and vinegar, and the salt and paprika have become for the moment a part of the mass. Don’t let it stand a second, but pour it quickly into the bowl of dry lettuce, and then stir like the devil. Keep on stirring; stir some more, and serve as quickly as possible.
Cheese may be mashed into the onion before putting on the oil and vinegar and paprika and salt. If one wants to add tomatoes, wait until the last three jabs of the stirring fork into the lettuce, and then quarter the tomatoes and turn them in just before you turn the lettuce over the last two or three times. This is done so that the watery juice of the tomatoes won’t get smeared over the oil on the lettuce leaves. If you stir the tomatoes in early, you get a runny, watery, gooey mess. Cucumbers may be added, and they should be stirred in rather earlier than the tomatoes in the business of mixing the lettuce leaves and the dressing. Green peppers may be added if they are cut into strings, but too much outside fixings spoils the salad for me. The tomatoes are about as far as one can go wisely.
Roy L. McCardell, "Eggs Mushroomette"
This is the queen of breakfast dishes and should be served, of course, with broiled ham, the king of breakfast dishes, hot buttered toast, and several cups of fresh-made, fragrant and just-strong-enough-to-bring-out-full-flavor, percolated coffee!
Recipe
Peel and slice a half pound of fresh mushrooms and cook in butter in old-fashioned frying pan till nearly done. The pan is now good and hot. Moderate the heat and put in three fresh eggs and fry them very slowly, constantly basting top of eggs with the hot butter the mushrooms have been cooking in. Cook well, slowly and thoroughly till all the mushrooms that attach are nestling in the white of the eggs like plums in a pudding. Serve, when thoroughly cooked, with the broiled ham, fresh coffee, and hot buttered toast.
This dish, as here described, is for one person only—as it is too good to be shared with anybody else.
P. S.—Eggs should never be fried so quickly that the whites are cooked to isinglass. Cook them slowly, surely, thoroughly and baste with hot mushroom butter as directed, and you will have Eggs Mushroomette and have eaten a poem!
I could keep excerpting all day, but just one more:
Hudson Maxim, Spaghetti
Take one package of vermicelli or spaghetti, and put it into a saucepan, crushing it in the hand, then put in hot water, and salt a little more than will suit the taste, and boil for an hour.
While the vermicelli or spaghetti is cooking, take a quart of milk and heat three-quarters—or 24 ounces—of it until it boils. Then stir into the eight ounces of cold milk a level cupful of flour, or two tablespoonfuls of flour, pretty well heaped, and then stir the thickened milk into the boiling milk and cook slowly for ten minutes.
Then add three-quarters of a pound of good, ripe, old American cheese, and about half a pound of butter. Then drain the water off the vermicelli or spaghetti and put in from one and one half pints to a quart of canned tomatoes. Heat the vermicelli or spaghetti to the boiling point; and while the mixture of cheese, butter, milk and flour is still hot, stir the two together, then keep hot and serve hot. Do not boil any more, because further boiling would tend to cause the tomatoes to coagulate the milk in the mixture. I prefer to use a mixture of spaghetti and vermicelli instead of all spaghetti or all vermicelli.
Check out more
over at Project Gutenberg. It's an incredible find if you enjoy antiquated cookbooks. I kind of want a hard copy for my cookbook collection.
Now I'm hungry. Not for steak and kidney pie, though (sorry, Charlie). Or for spaghetti that has been boiled for an hour.
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