Betsy Challenge 19: Something Borrowed, Something Blue

I knew that blue foods would be tricky even when we were planning the challenges last summer. Blue foods just aren't really plentiful. The obvious one - blueberries - didn't become popular in recipes until well after my chosen time period (1840s-1860s). So I decided to stretch myself into a new era, and I even had a book I was interested in using.

Fannie Farmer is a legendary chef in American cookery. Her recipe book, The Boston Cooking-School Book, completely revolutionized the way cookbooks were written. Prior to its publication, most cookbooks relied on cooks' knowledge of arbitrary measurements. We're familiar with these at the Historical Food Fortnightly - "butter the size of an egg", and so forth. Fannie Farmer's cookbook promoted a scientific approach to cooking and standardized these measurements into the ones we know today - cups, teaspoons, and tablespoons. She also relied on volume rather than weight. Whether or not this was an improvement, and what it did to American cooking, is up for debate (and if you're interested on how the post-Fannie Farmer home economics movement changed women's roles and domesticity, I highly recommend you check out Made From Scratch by Jean Zimmerman). However, it means that the recipe does not require any of the fudging or translating that older recipes do!

I also borrowed my mom's kitchen to make this, yet again.

The Challenge: Something Borrowed, Something Blue

The Recipe: Steamed Blueberry Pudding, from The Boston Cooking-School Book

The Date/Year and Region: 1912 (Revised Edition), Boston

How Did You Make It: I rubbed the butter into the dry ingredients with my fingertips (which is a technique I learned while learning to make soda bread - it's similar to using a pastry cutter or running it through a food processor, but ends up with a lighter finish). Then I added the milk and the blueberries dredged in flour, put it in the steamer, and put that in a stock pot with water to steam for an hour and a half. Took it out, got it out of the mold, and ate it - couldn't have been easier! And my small mold was a perfect size.

Time To Complete: About an hour and 45 minutes

Total Cost: Less than $5

How Successful Was It?: It's pretty tasty! I didn't have time to make the sauce that should have gone with it, but we had whipped cream on it and that was a nice addition. With no sugar added to it, it's a little bland on its own. I was a little concerned about the taste with so much baking powder added to it, but it turned out like a big biscuit with juicy blueberries in it. The family taste-tested it and gave it two thumbs up.

How Accurate Is It?: No heirloom ingredients but otherwise I followed the recipe to the letter.

Have some pictures!

Rubbing the butter into the dry ingredients

Blueberries are surely the prettiest fruit...

Put into the mold for steaming...bon voyage, buddy!

The finished product! It got a little stuck to the pan but it tasted lovely!

Betsy Challenge 10: Pumpkin Hoe Cakes

As with every single challenge, I started this one with very good intentions. The challenge was just in time for an immersion event I was doing; making cakes in an 1820s log cabin would be the thing to take my Historical Food Fortnightly participation to the next level!

Well, it didn't happen. I found a cabin-worthy cake, but was so busy having an excellent time (and slumming it as a tavern maid) that I didn't get a chance to make the cakes.

When I got home (after some adventures too tedious to mention here) I decided to make the things I'd been planning on making anyway - pumpkin hoe cakes, from the Kentucky Housewife. Hoe cakes are a kind of fried cornmeal cake indigenous to the southern United States. I picked this recipe because it was simple and fast. It was also dated to the time in which our cabin was first built and occupied, and a similar location (our cabin having come from Tennessee) and it was very appealing to cook the same food that might have been cooked in the cabin when it was first occupied. It was also very seasonal - 'tis the season for pumpkin, after all.


The Challenge: Let Them Eat Cake!

The Recipe: Pumpkin Hoe Cakes, from The Kentucky Housewife by Lettice Bryan

The Date/Region: 1835/Kentucky

How Did You Make It: The recipe calls for 1 quart of cornmeal, and 1 pint of pumpkin. You mix this together, with enough milk to make a thin dough, and fry it on a griddle greased with lard or butter until browned. Serve hot with butter.

I surprisingly know a thing or two about working with cornmeal, and one of the things I know is that corn has no gluten. Cooks in the 19th century often used cornmeal in exactly the same ways as they would use wheat flour, but  corn's lack of gluten makes cornmeal a very different creature.

When working with cornmeal, it is helpful to use hot (boiling) water and let it sit for about 20 minutes before working with it. This gives the best taste and makes the cornmeal more malleable (and less likely to crumble into bits, which was my big concern). So, despite there being no mention of this technique in the original recipe, I heated up the milk to scald it, mixed it in with the cornmeal until it was just moistened, and let it sit a spell.

After it sat, I mixed in the pumpkin. The texture was good, so I dropped it by very heaped tablespoons into the pan to fry. It took about 4 or 5 minutes on each side to fry up, and it was hard to tell when it was browned. A couple did fall apart, but most stuck together - victory!

Time to Complete: About a quarter of an hour from start to finish.

Total Cost: Under $5. I randomly have a superfluity of cornmeal, and a small can of pumpkin was less than $1

How Successful Was It: I was surprised at how much I liked them. They're good in the way that anything browned in butter, and then spread with more butter, is going to be good. They remind me a great deal of fried cornmeal mush (unsurprisingly) or cornmeal fritters. However, they are rather bland. I could see serving them with any mid-19th century condiment - apple butter, fruit preserves, honey, sorghum, molasses, maple syrup, or even spread with brown sugar. I ate them on the side of some carrot soup, which made for a very orange dinner, but they went together surprisingly well.

How Accurate Is It: Besides my liberties with the cornmeal and the milk, I used a can of pumpkin instead of stewing my own heirloom variety, and I am sure the corn is not heirloom either. Modern stove, etc etc etc.

They aren't very photogenic...

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