After Mom died, I collected all her folders of recipes as well as about twenty cookbooks that had belonged to her or my grandmother or my great-grandmother (or possibly been borrowed from a neighbor and never returned). My goal was to create a family recipe collection to share with my brother.
Hoo, boy. It's a lot.
Anything as recent as Betty Crocker, I decided to let go -- it's readily findable again. I learned that the library at Iowa State University has an Iowa cookbook collection, and, although they already had a copy of "The Des Moines Ladies Cookbook, A Collection of Choice Recipes contributed by The Ladies of Des Moines August, 1903" which had been published to benefit the Des Moines Missionary Sewing School, they agreed to take great-grandmother Dora's copy, as well. The Archivist said they were interested in comparing the handwritten recipes that had been added by the owners of the two books. Here's one of Dora's:
Pork Cake
1 lb. fat pork chopped fine
1 pint boiling hot water poured over pork
1 cup brown sugar
1 lb. dates
1 lb. raisins
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon nutmeg, cinnamon etc.
4 cups flour
Bake 1 hour.
Both this article from Okra Magazine and this "century-old recipe challenge" from the Oregon Historical Library hypothesize about the origins and, er, composition of pork cake but it seems safe to say it was a dessert or tea-cake that could be made from common houshold staples. It would keep well -- one claim says up to a year in waxed paper! -- and thus come in handy for unexpected visitors. In that light, I can see how Dora, who grew up on a remote central Iowa farm in the latter half of the 19th century, would have found this a recipe she wanted to keep handy, no matter how much it sounds today like the Trifle Rachel made on the television show, Friends, when two pages of the cookbook stuck together and she accidentally included ingredients for roast beef, with a horrified Ross describing the final product: "it tastes like feet."
My absolute favorite of all my inherited 'commercial' cookbooks has always been "The New American Cookbook," edited by Lily Haxworth Wallace, a "Home Economics Lecturer and Writer," who was an Instuctor of the Household Arts Department at the Ballard School in New York City. She was assisted by "fifty-four leading Authorities on Domestic Science and the Art of Modern Cooking." How about those bona fides? It was published in 1941 and my copy has a bookplate showing my grandmother acquired it that same year, the year that her second husband, Shug, died. The book has very few illustrations in it and a handful of color photographs, but, in my experience, if you want a non-nonsense, 'get it done' recipe, it will be in this book. It is two inches thick and features thumb tabs for each of the categories, like an old unabridged dictionary. My favorite recipe is for Ham Loaf, which is delicious, but I definitely haven't tried them all! There is also a recipe for Meat Shortcake...
I suppose it all seems very "Life With Father," (or WandaVision Episode 1 for you young 'uns) but the sheer comprehensiveness of this book is amazing, and it is a great time capsule, in addition to having good recipes. Also, Inez shoved lots of interesting things into it, including a letter from "Jack" with whom she worked at the Rock Island Arsenal, who (according to the letter) left to become editor of The Carbondale Leader in Pennsfylavnia. Actually, it sounds as though he resurrected the paper, which apparently had gone under for a time. He writes that they had a phone put in and "were fortunate to get a good number, 802." I wonder why that was a good number?
Other than the occasional letter and photo, however, the book is a bit of a disappointment in that it is not annotated in any way. It is certainly well-used, but Inez didn't make notes. But I did find a notebook dated March 25, 1936, in which she had recorded some recipes, She would have been 41, married to Shug for 13 years, with a seventeen year old (Jean) and a 12 year old (Mom). Her precise and distinctive handwriting here is so different from the very uneven, shaky script I'm used to from her later years. She never writes "crackers" but always "crax." There is a recipe for "Mrs. Richardson's Oatmeal Cookies" which looks similar to Dora's recipe from "Mary," although the milk isn't specified as sour. The contrast in the ingredients between the 1903 and 1936 records are interesting, with Dora's focusing on very simple items like shortening and flour while Inez's calls for chocolate, butter, and vanilla. These "Chocolate Honeycombs," cooked in a waffle iron, sound interesting.
More special than the recipes, though, are notes Inez made for herself, mostly 'to-do' lists, ("Mail Jean overshoes," must have been when eldest daughter Jean was at the University of Iowa). There's also one addressed to someone named "Marg," who must have been helping look after elderly Dora, as well as keeping an eye on my Mom. Inez wrote "I try to be very careful with Mother T dishes. See that they are scalded well. If the house takes fire, get my dishes out. Ha! Be good and have Dot obey you. If someone should ask her to the game tonight, o.k., if they are responsible, you judge that."
I'm not sure which dishes Inez was worried about here. She had inherited some lovely pieces from her first husband's family and added to them every chance she could. My guess is she's worried about either the hand-painted luncheon plates for two dozen, or the lovely white Haviland through which you could see a candle flame. I still have some of the Haviland but let most of the dishes go, and have to admit that it was hard to set the table for Thanksgiving and not be able to pick from several sets of silverware; I especially miss the beautiful pearl-handled flatware. Inez embroidered many a linen tablecloth and had gorgeous etched stemware. Being served by waitstaff never happened at home but the elaborate place-settings of Downton Abbey always felt more familiar than foreign to me!
After we got her set up with a personal computer, which she took to like a former linotype operator who had been separated from a keyboard for the last 40 years, Mom created little anthologies for us -- favorite poetry (much of it quite naughty), genealogical and family history stories, and recipes. I love that she noted the source of each recipe -- the salad Ida Mae Parker served at the baby shower she had for Mom before I was born, "Inez's Apple Sauce cookies," others from her co-workers at the State Hospital School. Throughout, if there is a mention of crackers, they are always "crax." Isn't that funny -- I never noticed that until I read her recipes side-by-side with those from Inez.
It's tempting to see whether the internet knows what the "sweet rather clear sauce" might have been that Inez served with the date nut roll. And why not English walnuts? But it's not really about a Date Nut Roll recipe, is it? It's about the people who thought enough of the recipes to save them, and the memories we have of sharing meals together. In a way, a recipe collection is as important a personal reflection as any photo album, scrapbook or diary.
Anybody hungry for some Date Nut Roll now? Just me?
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