Betsy Challenge 15: Sacred or Profane

It was sheer luck that caused me to stumble across the recipe for this challenge. I was scratching my head trying to think of any sort of recipe I could do for this, and had nearly settled on devil's food cake, when I stumble across this recipe in A Prairie Kitchen by Rae Katherine Eighmey:

Well that sounded promising! In previous challenges, we discovered the importance of checking one's sources, so I went to the Illinois Digital Newspaper Collection and found the corresponding edition of The Prairie Farmer. There it was!:

The Challenge: Sacred or Profane

The Recipe: Nun's Toast, from The Prairie Farmer

Year/Date and Location: 1883, Midwest

How Did You Make It: Just exactly as directed.The Gentleman Friend helped as I got distracted by a phone call in the midst of it, and then had Issues with the roux.

Time To Complete: Probably half an hour? See aforementioned distraction.

Total Cost: Under $5

How Successful Was It?: Well it's pretty much exactly what you would imagine eggs in a bechamel sauce to be like. I was surprised at how tasty it was! I'm not a huge fan of eggs but I can definitely see the appeal - this is a meal that would stick to your ribs, can be made very cheaply, and would probably be pretty good with some sausage or ham on the side. Gentleman Friend gave it a good review.

How Accurate Is It?: I did not use heirloom ingredients and I cooked it on an electric stove. Beyond that, I followed the directions closely.

Betsy - Challenge 6: Seasonal Fruits and Vegetables

This is going to be the least sexy, most convoluted challenge I have done.

I knew I wanted to do a recipe I hadn't done before, with seasonal foods that were maybe a bit unexpected. I am still enamored of the Prairie Farmer, and went back to it for a seasonal produce recipe. I found another recipe in Rae Eighmey's compilation for "corn and beans", so I went back and looked for the original recipe, based on her 1849 date.

I found nothing.

Please note that the Prairie Farmer has been digitized all over the place. Still I ran into dead ends everywhere. I'm not sure what happened, if Eighmey misquoted the date or if I just missed something, but the Prairie Farmer had no references that I could find to this dish. I finally found a mention in the Country Gentleman - a similar periodical that freely admitted to stealing from the Prairie Farmer - for "methods of cooking green corn", that alluded to the Eighmey-cited recipe with corn "mixed with butter beans, seasoned with butter, pepper and salt, makes succotash, a capital dish". So, I gave it a go.

Despite the fact that I'm writing and posting this just before the challenge ends, I actually cooked it before this challenge even began, and served it the day it started. So, this is likely the only time I will be early to finish a challenge.

The Challenge: Seasonal Fruits and Vegetables

The Recipe: Composite from The Prairie Kitchen by Rae Katherine Eighmey and "Methods of Cooking Green Corn" from The Country Gentleman

Date/Year and Region: Eighmey gives the date as 1849, The Country Gentleman was printed in 1854. The Prairie Farmer was located in the Midwest, while the Country Gentleman was printed in Albany, New York. Make of all that what you will.

How Did You Make It: It was really simple. I cut up the salt pork and cut the kernels off the corn cobs to reserve in the fridge. I boiled the cobs with the salt pork until the pork was falling apart. (As a side note, I may have trouble getting all sorts of interesting ingredients, but my grocery store carries salt pork in abundance. The joys of country living.)

I took out the cobs, and put in the corn and the lima beans. I cooked them until tender, then took them off the stove. The recipe was not clear as to whether or not the vegetables should be drained, but reading between the lines, it read as a recipe for a salad rather than a soup. So I drained off the water, then added butter, salt and pepper.

Time to Complete: Half an hour or so? I was doing other things while the cobs boiled.

Total Cost: The corn was $2 from a roadside stand, the salt pork was $1.50, the beans were given to me for free and the butter, salt and pepper were negligible. So, about $3.50, and with four cobs of corn and about 4 cups of lima beans, there was plenty of food - enough as a side dish for a table of six, for sure.

How Successful Was It? It was...corn and beans and salt pork with butter. Tasty and fresh, not necessarily innovative, but simple and inexpensive and good. And really, really easy.

How Accurate Is It?: As always, I have no idea if the types of corn and beans I used were around in the period but I highly suspect not. I also clearly had some tenuous recipes to work with, but the reference in the Country Gentleman to succotash is pretty clear so I felt confident that, while I maybe hadn't started from a clearly-documented recipe (IMPORTANT: CHECK ORIGINAL SOURCES), I had ended up with one through my research.


And here's a picture of the dish on our period picnic table...which had, in fact, been rained on. Don't worry, the corn and beans were covered and survived and were still quite delicious.

Betsy: Challenge 5 - Pies!

True confession: I have never made a pie crust.

First, I do not come from a family that eats much pie. Some people eat pies all the time; my childhood was instead filled with cakes and brownies. So, not much impetus to try it. Second, I'm not a huge fan of pies myself. Third, I was always satisfied with the Pillsbury pre-made crusts.

But, I figured for this challenge, I'd better try a homemade crust.

For the challenge, I wanted to try something unique - not your average apple pie or cherry pie. I decided to check out the Prairie Farmer, which was a publication printed from 1841 to 1900. It contains a treasure trove of recipes used by farmer's wives in the Midwest, and since they're dated, it's really easy to find recipes useful to one's place and time - if, that is, one lives on the prairie.

Rae Katherine Eighmey has taken some Prairie Farmer recipes, tested them, and converted them for modern cooking in her book A Prairie Kitchen. This was my first stop, and I found a recipe from March of 1859 for a "cheap pie". It was easy to track down the original recipe on Google Books, which reads thus:

...yup, that would be cheap indeed

Pretty simple, really. So I had to pick a pie crust recipe, and I went with our old friend, Eliza Leslie, who had a really easy recipe for a butter crust:

I halved the crust recipe, as usual, and just followed the directions. It was a little tricky, as I was doing some marathon cooking for an event and my kitchen was a little warm. In the future I think I'd pay more attention to keeping things cool.


The Challenge: Pies!

The Recipe: "Cheap Pie" from The Prairie Farmer, and "Common Pie Crust" from Directions for Cookery

The Date/Year and Region: 1859 in Illinois/1840 United States

How Did You Make It?: Just like it says - the pie filling was full strength molasses, a very small bit of flour and some cinnamon. The crust was just as Eliza Leslie had it, but I halved the recipe. I baked it at 350 for about 25 minutes.

Time To Complete: I really had to wrestle with the dough. With baking, it probably took about an hour or so.

Total Cost: Cheap. Har har. I didn't keep track of the costs as I had everything on hand. The butter and the molasses would have been the big cost factors - it was probably about $5, max.


How Successful Was It?: I brought it to a reenactment for people to try, and the results were pretty positive. I happen to like molasses, so I thought it was great. The filling was a bit runny, and it was a lot of crust and not a lot of filling. I would definitely like to try the crust again, so I can try rolling it out more thinly - I think it got a little thick.

All in all, it was an interesting take on a pie and definitely not our modern idea of "pie". Given the date, and knowing what early springtime is like on the prairie, this must have been appealing to those whose stores of preserves, canned produce, and fresh produce were running a bit low at the end of winter. I can definitely see a Midwestern farmer's wife making this recipe for a midday meal with the family - it would please the kids, and fill up farmhands for very little cost.

How Accurate Is It?: As always, I baked in a modern electrical oven, but the rest is, I think, pretty accurate.

The pie on our picnic table on Saturday