Chapter 10
Everyday American Food, 1896: Try the Roast and Beans but Skip the Fish
If you lived in Boston during the 1890s, what would you be cooking at home and how would you cook it? For starters, home cooking in 1896 was vastly different from what the typical household was preparing a century before.
Let’s take Thanksgiving. In the eighteenth century, the Thanksgiving feast would have been made entirely from local ingredients, and would have appeared provincial to an 1896 Bostonian. The baking would have been done in a brick oven by the fireplace. Wild partridge might have been substituted for the turkey. Pie crusts were made from a fine rye and “adorned with all sorts of fanciful flutings and architectural strips laid across the great cranberry tarts.” Egg flip, considered old-fashioned and almost never served by the late Victorian era, was a popular holiday drink around 1800. (Egg yolks were beaten with sugar, hot milk, and brandy, then beaten egg whites were folded in and grated nutmeg sprinkled on top.)
Thanksgiving itself was considered a semireligious day in the early 1800s, with a special service at the meeting house, which, by the way, was not heated. (“A good mug of hot cider before leaving home in the morning had fortified us against the bitter cold of the first service.”) Women brought their foot warmers (cast-iron footrests that contained hot coals and had a handle for carrying), people stood in the “sheep pens” (squared-off sections for the congregation), and the congregants stood for the first hour and then sat for the second hour, which was devoted to the sermon. This was also a day to help out the minister with gifts. He would have been paid roughly $300 per year and given twenty cords of wood. But on Thanksgiving, he would receive all sorts of beef and pork, butter, a bushel or two of beets, candles, geese, and brandy.
By contrast, Fannie’s “Menu for Thanksgiving Dinner” seems rather modern. It began with oyster soup with crisp crackers, celery and salted almonds, and then roast turkey with cranberry jelly, mashed potatoes, onions in cream and squash, then a course of chicken pie, followed by fruit pudding with sterling sauce. Three dessert pies were next—mince, apple, and squash—and then Neapolitan ice cream and fancy cakes (small, individual cakes or cookies), fruit, nuts, and raisins, bonbons, and a final course of café noir with cheese and crackers. Variations on this theme would have included creamed oysters instead of the soup, green peppers stuffed with shrimp, and cooked artichoke hearts served with a white sauce. Some sort of sponge cake might have been added for dessert, since it was popular and could be easily dressed up with colored whipped cream.
Victorian cooks pot-roasted, fricasséed, roasted, fried, panfried, braised, stewed, and boiled. Roasting first meant cooking over an open fire and then, when wood and coal cookstoves came into use, cooking over “fierce heat.” Braising was originally done in a braising pan with a cover that would accommodate coals, so there was no need for an oven. This method was good for “large pieces of tough, lean meat.” A stew might also be referred to as a haricot, a ragout, or a salmi. Salmon or other oily fish was started in cold water and brought almost to the boiling point quickly for best texture and flavor.
Broiling was translated as “to burn.” A one-inch steak would have been broiled for about four minutes, and an inch-and-a-half steak for six minutes or so. They also turned it every ten seconds because they were concerned about overcooking. How did they know when a steak was done? The meat should “spring up instantly when pressed with a knife”—otherwise, it was overcooked. (Late Victorian cooks did understand the benefits of rare to medium-rare meat, so the penchant for overcooked steak that is common among many Americans today did not come from this earlier era.) Chickens were also broiled, and, as stated earlier, often a buttered glazed paper was used to protect them. White letter paper was buttered, folded over, and then pinched together to seal. This was, in effect, a clever en papillote technique that they felt would help the chicken to baste in its own juices. The chicken was done when it was well browned.
A fricassée was a common approach to many dishes, defined as “frying” although it was also a form of stewing. Chicken, veal, or some small game was cut into pieces and fried either before or after stewing, and then served with a rich white or brown sauce, without vegetables. They often dipped tougher pieces of meat in vinegar to “soften the fiber.” Panfrying was done with a pan that was heated up “to blue heat” and then rubbed with a bit of beef fat. The meat was seared on both sides and cooked for about four minutes. They also used just about every part of an animal, including the heart. Here is a less than promising recipe from 1896 entitled Stuffed Beef Heart: “Thoroughly cleanse in salt water, fill all cavities with veal stuffing, two ounces beef suet, chopped fine, four ounces bread crumbs, one tablespoon chopped parsley, half teaspoon each of thyme and marjoram, juice of half a lemon, half teaspoon salt, a pinch of pepper and dust of nutmeg. Skewer a few slices of fat pork over the heart, flour, bake one and one-half hours, make gravy, serve hot.”
In terms of cooking times, beef was cooked eight to ten minutes per pound for rare (the desired end state). A thick five-pound halibut would take an hour to cook, whereas a small fish would take twenty to thirty minutes (they either loved overcooked fish or were using extremely low temperatures). Asparagus and hard-boiled eggs were cooked fifteen to twenty minutes (so much for al dente vegetables), and they often boiled certain fish such as cubed salmon, cod, haddock, and bass.
When roasting, the Victorians always salted and floured the outside of their meat, which they felt helped retain the juices. (The theory was that salt would draw out juices, which would mix with the flour to help form a coating. Both Lincoln and Farmer went in for this approach.) We tested this method when roasting a chicken and found, oddly enough, that there was some merit to the method, although not for retaining juiciness. Fannie’s recipe suggested rubbing a chicken with salt, then spreading the breast and legs with three tablespoons of softened butter that had been mixed with two tablespoons of flour. The chicken was roasted in a hot oven and, once the flour in the bottom of the roasting pan had browned (some was thrown in as an aid in measuring oven temperature), the bird was basted every ten minutes until cooked.
Following in Fannie’s footsteps, we salted and then floured (no butter paste) a chicken only on one side, and left it sitting on a cooling rack over a baking sheet in the refrigerator overnight. We then roasted it at 425 degrees for twenty minutes, then reduced the temperature to 350 degrees, and roasted it another twenty minutes, basting it just once. Then we roasted the bird a final thirty minutes until just cooked through. The result? The half that had no flour had a tough skin, but the side with the flour was perfectly crisp and delicious. The meat on both sides—that is, with or without the flour coating—was juicy and tender. Turns out that this method does provide crisper skin on a roasted chicken. So the Victorians did have a few tricks up their sleeve.
FANNIE FARMER’S ROAST CHICKEN WITH CRISPY FLOUR COATING
The secret is to use flour, not a butter-flour paste, and to baste the bird only once. Air-drying the bird overnight is a time-tested method for producing a thin, crispy skin during roasting. This air-drying method also works for your Thanksgiving turkey.
1 whole chicken, 3½ to 4½ pounds, giblets removed and discarded
1 tablespoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon ground black pepper
¼ cup flour
2 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup water
1. Pat chicken dry with paper towels and sprinkle all over with salt and pepper; rub with hands to coat entire surface evenly. Coat chicken evenly with flour and pat to knock off excess. Set chicken, breast side up, in a V rack set on a rimmed baking sheet and refrigerate, uncovered, for 12 to 24 hours.
2. In small saucepan (or in microwave), heat butter and water until butter melts. Adjust oven rack to lowest position and heat oven to 425 degrees. Flip chicken so breast side faces down. Roast chicken for 20 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees; continue roasting for 20 minutes. Baste with butter mixture, flip chicken breast side up, and baste again. Continue roasting until skin is golden brown and crisp and thermometer registers 160 degrees when inserted in thickest part of breast, and 175 degrees in the thickest part of thigh, about 40 to 50 minutes.
3. Transfer chicken to cutting board and let rest, uncovered, for 20 minutes. Carve and serve immediately.
TO CLARIFY FAT FOR FRYING AND BAKING, UNCOOKED FAT FROM chickens, lard, and beef suet were cut into small pieces, covered with cold water, and cooked over a slow fire until the fat had melted and the water nearly all evaporated. Then this mixture was strained and pressed. The fat was placed in a pan over the fire; when it melted, a small raw potato, cut into thin slices was added. This stood on the stove until the fat stopped bubbling and the scraps were brown and crisp and had risen to the top. The fat was then strained and kept in a cool place where it lasted for weeks. This clarified fat could also be used for bread, plain pastry, and gingerbread.
Larding, daubing, and barding were common techniques, rarely used today. Larding started with strips of salt pork, two inches wide and four inches long, cut into lardoons, a quarter of an inch both wide and long. Then, the cook was instructed to “with the point of the needle take up a stitch half an inch deep and one inch wide in the surface of the meat.” The ends of the salt pork would then stick out of the surface of the meat, making it look a bit like a porcupine. Daubing was used with a broad, thick piece of beef or veal—the notion was to insert fat all the way through a piece of meat, not just on the surface, as was done with larding. Salt pork was cut into strips a third of an inch both wide and thick. A hole was punched clear through the meat with a steel larding needle and then the strips of pork were inserted with a large larding needle or with the fingers. Another technique was to simply cover a roast with wide strips of salt pork before cooking. (This latter technique, referred to as barding, was offered up in James Beard’s American Cookery and tried in our test kitchen with a roast turkey. With a few modifications, it works admirably.)
So what would a Victorian Boston family have to eat during a typical day in 1896? This is easily determined by looking at the menus printed in the back of Fannie’s cookbook. But I also spent time reading two columns from the Boston Globe: “Our Cooking School” and the “Housekeeper’s Column.” First, a word about the column. By this time, recipes were no longer rough notes, but very precise, with specific ingredient amounts. The preamble to each day’s column was as follows: “It is also suggested that directions for mixing ingredients should be very explicit, and quantities should be definitely indicated. Only favorite, true and tried recipes should be sent in. Mere skeletonized recipes, such as some cook books give, are not desired.” I also noted that not all of the correspondents to the “Housekeeper’s Column” were female. One such writer referred to himself as “Male Cook” and offered a recipe for broiled veal.
Let’s start with breakfast. One almost always had meat at breakfast: lamb chops, chopped beefsteak (cooked rare), broiled steak, ham, bacon, cold meat, or broiled rump steak were popular. A hearty breakfast was not out of place for a population that was doing a lot of hard manual labor: 38 percent of workers labored on farms; 31 percent were in mining, manufacturing, or construction; and the remainder, 31 percent, were in service businesses. (Today, 78 percent of American labor is in the service sector.) Eggs were served occasionally, but were not a central part of the breakfast table. Fruit was usually included, whether it be prunes, oranges, canned pears, stewed apricots, or stewed apples. For bread, rolls, muffins, or toast was served.
Buckwheat or potato cakes were not uncommon, and maple syrup was often served, even when one did not have griddle cakes on the menu. Pancakes had various names, including fritters, flapjacks, slapjacks, butter cakes, griddle cakes, and slappers. Pancakes were originally a muffin batter mixture, stiffer than a drop batter but not stiff enough to roll out. The batter was dropped from a spoon into hot fat and fried like doughnuts. More recently, Mrs. Lincoln noted in her 1883 cookbook, the name had been applied to a thin batter usually made without soda, cooked one cake at a time on a small well-buttered frying pan and turned like a griddle cake. She described griddle cakes as “any kind of small, thin batter-cakes cooked on a griddle.” Pancakes were “larger, thin batter-cakes made without soda and cooked in a small frying-pan.” Griddle cakes could be made out of many things, including stale bread crumbs, boiled rice, fine hominy, cornmeal mixed with buckwheat flour, dried peas that were boiled, sifted squash, and flour. Potatoes, cornmeal mush, or hominy were on almost every breakfast menu, whether browned, mashed, baked, or lyonnaise. Oatmeal was not as common as one might expect, and coffee, not tea, was the hot beverage of choice.
Dinner, the large meal served in the middle of the day, was not that different from what one might expect in modern times except for the Victorians’ use of pickled foods, love of jelly, and devotion to cheese. Occasionally, dinner would start with a soup such as tomato, turkey, or consommé, but more often than not, there was no first course. The main offering might be veal stew, chicken pie, fricasséed oysters, a leg of pork (fresh pork, I assume, not a ham), roast beef, steamed chicken, stewed beef, roast leg of lamb, or roast turkey. For starch, they served sweet potatoes, rice, potatoes (steamed, mashed, or boiled), and some pasta or “macaroni” as a side dish. The vegetables were most often tomatoes (baked, stewed), turnips, cabbage, canned string beans, or canned corn.
Pickling was popular since it was a preservative, and they served spiced grape pickles, pear sweet pickles, and just regular “pickles.” For jams, marmalades, and jellies, served at most dinners, they used apples, lemons, raspberries, quince, and grapes (for marmalade), cranberries (more for sauce), currants, and peaches. Breads included white bread (often store-bought), cornbread, or just “bread and butter.” For dessert they were fond of ginger cakes, apple and squash pies, floating islands, puddings, turnovers, chocolate cake, canned fruits, sherbet, and gingerbread, although a meal could have been finished with just fresh fruit. Dinner usually ended with cheese and crackers, but not always.
Supper was the evening meal, and it was modest. It could be as simple as crackers and milk, bread and butter, fruit, oatmeal wafers, and tea. Or they might have tucked into Boston baked beans, bread, prunes, cookies, and tea. Cold meats (leftover from dinner) were quite common, although one might see an oyster stew or perhaps dried beef in cream gravy on the table as well. The rest of the menus were fruit (baked apples were popular, although canned fruits were readily available by this time as well), cookies or cake, bread and butter (brown bread was popular for supper), and tea, not coffee. Compared to the current playbook used by the average home cook, the Victorians were a cauldron of culinary enthusiasm and technique.
A useful way to look at the changes in cookery from 1800 to 1900 is to consider that ingredients were scarcer and more expensive at the beginning of the century, and therefore earlier recipes were designed to use every scrap. Take bread, for example. Fresh crumbs could be dried in an oven, then pounded in a mortar and pestle and sifted through a coarse sieve. They were then used as a coating for fried foods, but never for bread puddings or scalloped potatoes, since they would absorb too much liquid. Stale bread was simply coarsely grated and used for stuffing, bread puddings, griddle cakes, or scalloped fish. The crumbs had to be used quickly before they became musty. Stale bread was also steamed without becoming soggy or wet, and then spread with butter and served on a hot platter. Stale bread could be used for toast, employing either a toasting fork or a wire broiler. Or a simple bread pudding could be made by immersing “two 5-cent loaves of baker’s bread into 2 quarts of sweet milk and soak[ing] over night.” The mush was beaten the next day with eggs, molasses, butter, sugar, spices, raisins, currants, and citron, and then baked in a six-quart pan in a slow oven for six hours.
Key ingredients, such as corn, also provide a good snapshot of the changes in cooking during the nineteenth century. Take an ingredient you have probably never heard of, samp (the term probably derived from a local term, newsamp). Samp is dried corn that is ground or pounded into a powder, coarser than meal but finer than grits. Two common ways of cooking it included boiling it into a mush (this was eaten with milk or cream and sugar) or allowing the mush to cool, then slicing and frying it. Before mills were common, samp was pounded in mortars. Charles Ranhofer in The Epicurean (1894) suggested cutting cooked, cooled samp into squares, dipping it in egg and bread crumbs, and then frying it as a side dish to be served with canvasback ducks. This was a far cry from pioneer porridge.
Macaroni (a general term for pasta) was an ingredient that became increasingly popular during the nineteenth century, although it was often cooked to death and often in milk. By the Civil War, macaroni was generally available, and whatever snob appeal this new food may have had earlier in the century had disappeared. According to Corby Kummer in an article in The Atlantic, the first American pasta maker may have been Louis Fresnaye, a French immigrant operating out of Philadelphia. By 1873, the Boston Directory contained a listing for Richard Pfeiffer as a macaroni manufacturer, the earliest such listing that I could find. However, Italian immigrants tended to prefer imported pasta, since it was made from durum wheat, a commodity that was well suited to the soil of Sicily and Campania. Regardless of his business acumen, Fresnaye was probably the first American to offer a recipe for macaroni and cheese. One pound of vermicelli was broken into one-inch pieces, boiled in three quarts of salted water until al dente, drained, placed into a shallow baking dish, spread with grated Parmesan, then drizzled with melted butter. The dish was then placed into a preheated 375-degree oven for ten to fifteen minutes or until the cheese was toasted.
Fannie recognized three types of pasta—macaroni, spaghetti, and vermicelli—and notes that although macaroni was produced in the United States, the best pasta came from Italy. Her basic preparation was to boil macaroni in salted water for twenty minutes (why did they overcook almost everything except meat?), drain, and then pour cold water over it to prevent sticking. She then added cream, reheated it, and served it with salt. She also served macaroni with a basic béchamel and often baked it with sauce and buttered bread crumbs. She did offer a recipe for baked macaroni and cheese: a layer of pasta, one of grated cheese, more pasta, white sauce, and then buttered crumbs on top. She also offered a few ersatz Italian recipes, including a Milanese version that called for mushrooms and smoked beef tongue. Her standard recipe for tomato sauce was particularly vile, combining a cup of brown stock, a very thick roux, and canned tomatoes.
One ingredient I would bet no modern epicure has enjoyed is pickled limes. Limes that were soaked in a brine so they would be preserved during the long voyage from the West Indies were all the rage among schoolgirls in the nineteenth century. Here is an excerpt from Little Women,which was published in 1868: Amy comments, “It’s nothing but limes now, for every one is sucking them in their desks in school-time, and trading them off for pencils, bead-rings, paper dolls, or something else, at recess. If one girl likes another, she gives her a lime; if she’s mad with her, she eats one before her face, and don’t offer even a suck.” In addition to sucking on them like candy, pickled limes were used as a garnish, in a relish or conserve, and to make lime squash, a drink that was traditionally made with lemons.
Since molasses was such a common ingredient in Boston (huge quantities were imported for use in making rum), local cooks would often use it instead of sugar. One such recipe used one cup molasses in an apple pie, and there was a lively discussion of how to keep it from leaking out. The answer was to wet the bottom crust so it adhered well to the top crust, to use cassia (this is what tapioca is made from) as a thickener, and to employ a slow oven, baking for an hour and a half.
To get a better sense of what everyday cooking was like in Boston in 1896, we chose a handful of representative recipes and went into the kitchen to test and improve them, if possible. Additional recipes—Baked Rosewater and Cardamom Custards with Pistachio, as well as Ginger Cream—are available at www.fannieslastsupper.com.
BAKED TOASTED COCONUT AND VANILLA CUSTARD
This Victorian-era custard is made without egg yolks, an unusual approach that makes the custard a bit lighter, more like an Italian panna cotta. The coconut can be toasted on a baking sheet in a 350-degree oven for a few minutes—check it frequently, as it can burn. The egg whites should be about half-beaten—foamy and white on top and still a bit liquid on the bottom.
4 ounces sugar
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup milk
½ vanilla bean, halved lengthwise
Pinch salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup sweetened coconut, toasted for 10 minutes in a 350-degree oven
4 egg whites, beaten until well frothed throughout, but not soft-peaked
1. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Place kitchen towel in bottom of large baking dish and arrange six 4-to 5-ounce ramekins on towel. Bring kettle or large saucepan of water to boil over high heat.
2. Whisk gently to combine sugar, cream, milk, seeds from vanilla bean, salt, vanilla extract, and coconut; whisk until sugar has almost completely dissolved. Add coconut and frothed whites to cream mixture and gently whisk to combine. Pour or ladle mixture into ramekins, dividing evenly among them.
3. Carefully place baking dish with ramekins on oven rack; pour boiling water into dish, taking care not to splash water into ramekins, until water reaches two-thirds height of ramekins. Cover loosely with foil. Bake until centers of custards are just barely set but no longer sloshy, and digital instant-read thermometer inserted in centers registers 175 degrees, about 25 to 35 minutes.
4. Transfer ramekins to wire rack. Cool to room temperature, about 2 hours. Refrigerate until cold, at least 4 hours or up to 2 days.
MUNROE BAKED BEANS
Baked beans from the nineteenth century used a whole lot more pork than we do today. For one quart of beans, Fannie would use a pound of “mixed pork” (this is a great recipe to use up odd bits and pieces). Everything was simply thrown together in a pot, including molasses (half a teacup), a bit of mustard, salt, and hot water, and then baked all day. Half an onion and salt pork were other common ingredients. If you have not soaked the beans overnight, they can be quick-soaked by placing them in a pot, covering them with an inch of water, and boiling them for one minute. Drain and proceed with the recipe. However, we prefer the overnight soak.
6 ounces salt pork
1 pound navy beans, rinsed and picked over, and soaked overnight
1 medium onion, peeled and cut into quarters
¼ cup molasses
¼ cup light brown sugar
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
¾ teaspoon salt
1. Place salt pork in a small saucepan of boiling water. Allow to return to a simmer and cook for two minutes. Remove from pan, rinse, and cut into three or four large chunks. Meanwhile, heat oven to 250 degrees and adjust a rack to the center position.
2. Drain beans and place in a Dutch oven. Arrange salt pork and onion wedges in the center of the pot. Add molasses, sugar, mustard, and salt and cover with 8 cups water. Place over high heat and bring to a boil. Transfer to oven and cook 4 hours. Stir, check for seasoning, and cook until very soft and creamy and the beans and liquid have turned a uniform color, about 2 hours longer.
TAPIOCA PUDDING
Yet another recipe that intrigued us—mostly because of the use of large pearl tapioca—was a peach and tapioca pudding, which was nothing more than canned peaches topped with soaked pearl tapioca and then baked for an hour, served with cream and sugar. We baked up a batch and it was—and I am not holding back here—truly horrible. It turned into a gelatinous paste over mushy canned peaches.
Thinking that perhaps we were to add some milk and sugar along with the soaked tapioca, we included a cup of milk and one-third cup sugar. This time the paste was slightly looser, whiter in color, and a bit sweeter, but still, well, disgusting. We should also note that canned peaches are not agreeable to a modern palate. They have a soft mushy texture, a strange uniform color, and artificial flavor. So we headed back to the drawing board, taking the underlying concept of this recipe but starting completely from scratch. The recipe below is wonderful when topped with fresh berries or thinly sliced stone fruit. The pudding is best served on the day it is made, and is equally good whether cold, at room temperature, or warm.
½ cup small pearl tapioca
2 cups whole milk
1/3 cup granulated sugar
½ teaspoon salt
2 large egg yolks
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1. Soak the tapioca in enough cold water to cover by 1 inch for at least 4 hours and no more than 12 hours. Drain. Place in a medium-sized saucepan with the milk, sugar, and salt and bring to a gentle simmer, with small bubbles around the perimeter of the pan. Simmer gently, stirring often, until the pearls are translucent and almost tender, about 40 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, lightly beat the egg yolks. Add them to the pot and stir well to combine. Continue to cook until the pudding is very thick, about 10 minutes longer. Remove from heat and add the vanilla. Transfer to a serving bowl or individual serving dishes. Serve (with fresh fruit as a topping if you like) warm or cooled to room temperature. If you choose to chill the pudding, do not refrigerate until it has reached room temperature.
Serves 4 to 6.
JULY 2009. ALTHOUGH BOSTON SOCIETY WAS AN INSULAR world, it was also America’s busiest port in the nineteenth century, so, over time, the world of the Cabots and the Lodges changed forever, mainly because of modern transportation. The first true transatlantic steamer, the Curaçao, made the first crossing of the Atlantic in 1827, from Rotterdam to the West Indies. By the 1880s, virtually all transatlantic voyages were made by steam, reducing the crossing time from six weeks to just one. In 1896, 343,267 immigrants arrived on our shores, including 68,060 from Italy, 45,137 from Russia, 39,908 from Ireland, 31,885 from Germany, and 31,496 from Austria.
Steamboats also meant that the markets between Europe and the United States were more closely joined, leading to the widespread availability of items far beyond the usual list of tea, spices, and fortified wines: olive oil, real Italian Parmesan, French Brie, durum wheat pasta, Spanish olives, jarred French peas, plus domestic items, including oranges from Florida, peaches from California, and Hubbard squash from Michigan. In addition, the culinary practices of modern-day Paris were no longer a world away, nor were modern techniques of European food production, including, for example, compressed yeast. Although the first edition of The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book did not fully reflect this groundswell of social change, I wondered if later editions, still edited by Fannie Farmer, might reflect the times. So I found a 1913 edition and compared it to the original.
The most obvious change was the extensive use of illustrations, about 150 black-and-white photos in all, emphasizing presentation more than basic cooking methods. Puréed spinach is garnished with the yolk of a hard-boiled egg with radiating strips of white and toast points. We are offered a long list of stuffed foods, from eggplant to peppers. French recipe names, from Macedoine of Vegetables à la Poulette to Charlotte Russe, abound. We are taken on a world tour, from Mexican jelly to Russian cutlets to Dresden patties. Foods are presented in baskets (cucumbers, fruit); recipes are given honorariums, as in “à la Newburg” or “à la Lucullus”; and cakes are dressed to the nines, as is a Valentine’s Day cake sprouting giant lilies, and an Ornamental Frosted Cake, decorated with mistletoe and a half-dozen sturdy candles. Toward the end of the book, we find a series of formal table settings, from Table for Formal Luncheon to Centerpiece of Thanksgiving Table, all of which include floral sprays, bunches, arrangements, and sprouts.
Sweetbreads, since they lend themselves to myriad preparations, also made a good comparison. The later edition included exactly the same introduction plus all the recipes from the 1896 edition. However, by 1913, Fannie had added three recipes that say a lot about how American cookery, and her style of teaching, had changed since the 1890s. The Sweetbreads, Country Style are simple enough, baked with a slice of salt pork. However, both the Sweetbreads à la Napoli and the Braised Sweetbreads Eugenie are a bold attempt to tart up the cooking, make it more continental, and appeal to a class of women who were trying hard to impress their guests. The Napoli recipe involves rounds of bread, a layer of Parmesan cheese, a slice of sweetbread, and then a large cap of mushroom all baked in domed glass–covered dishes. The Eugenie version is similar, but substitutes sherry for cheese and adds multiple mushroom caps, also baked in a covered glass dish. It is the domed glass dish that Fannie is after—the presentation itself—rather than the underlying culinary approach. (I also noted that the original 1896 edition had only two chocolate cakes, yet by 1913, chocolate had come on strong, Fannie offering a total of seven cakes in this category, plus a series of frostings.)
The ads in the back of the 1913 edition tell us how quickly home cooking was changing. One could still purchase coal-fired Hub ranges, but Chambers “fireless” cooking gas ranges were now being advertised and, believe it or not, electric ranges were also available. One would also recognize many of the brands advertising in 1913, including Ivory soap, Crisco, Welch’s grape drink, Karo corn syrup, Bell’s seasoning, Wheatena, White Mountain freezer, King Arthur flour, Fleischmann yeast, Chase & Sanborn coffee, Royal baking powder, and Baker’s chocolate.
Two things that had not changed at all were the first line of the first chapter—“Food is anything which nourishes the body”—and the dedication to Mrs. William B. Sewall, in which Fannie thanks her for her work in promoting scientific cookery, “which means the elevation of the human race.” On one hand, Fannie was working hard to make her food appeal to the nouveaux riche. On the other, she still defined cooking as a means of elevating the human race through better nutrition. Perhaps investing cooking instruction with a higher, nobler purpose while, in effect, playing with her food was the perfect formula for success. After all, Fannie always described herself as a businesswoman, and anyone good at business knows the fine art of selling totally contradictory messages: it’s fun, but it’s also good for you.
One of the more modern culinary notions of Fannie’s time was the palate-cleansing sorbet course, which, today, appears old-fashioned and often tastes more like dessert than a change of pace served between savory courses. Many cooks served this course almost—not completely—frozen in glasses and then sipped as a liquid. We tested this notion and found that, unfortunately, this almost frozen drink had a very short window of perfection—it would quickly melt and become rather unpleasant. So we decided to stick with a frozen sorbet and noted that Fannie did the same with her Victoria, Cardinal, Roman, and even—gulp—hollandaise punches. (The latter, thankfully, is based on grated pineapple, brandy, and gin.)
The earliest version of a frozen punch that we could find was a recipe entitled Punch Water Ice that was published in The Complete Confectioner in 1807 in London. The Victoria punch recipe in the 1896 edition of The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book is nothing like the drink; it is a frozen alcoholic ice. Fannie calls for water, sugar, lemon and orange juices, orange rind, angelica wine (a sweet fortified white wine), cider, and gin. The mixture is then frozen. We made a batch and found that it was too sweet and on the syrupy side (the angelica wine made it boozy); it had too little lemon flavor and the gin was pretty much lost.
Boston being the epicenter of trade with the Far East, new ingredients were constantly showing up on store shelves, and one of these was Canton ginger, an item that Fannie used in her recipe for Canton punch. Boston’s fortunes were built on shipping. It all started with salt cod, which was shipped to the West Indies and sold for a cargo of sugar, molasses, and tobacco, which were loaded and then transported to England. Finished goods were then taken onboard for the trip back to Boston. Later, Boston distilled rum that was shipped to Africa, where it was traded for ivory, gold dust, mahogany, and slaves. The ships then sailed for the West Indies, where molasses was taken on and the slaves were off-loaded, and then made the return trip to Boston, where the molasses was used to make rum, the cycle starting afresh.
In 1748, a total of 540 ships left and 430 entered the port of Boston. A century later, in one single day, a whopping 70 ships sailed out of Boston. No other American city had command of the international trade in the 1840s—not New York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore. This was due in part to Boston’s natural deep-water harbor, which, by 1700, had forty wharves (Long Wharf was built in 1710 and extended two thousand feet from the foot of King Street out into the deeper waters of the harbor). But also Boston’s fleet of tall ships opened up trade with the Far East, where tea, opium, spices, and silk became dominant players in foreign commerce in the colonies. Huge fortunes were made, mansions built, and families catapulted into the highest ranks of Boston’s social circles.
Looking at maps from the early nineteenth century, one can see why. The city was not much more than a port with a maximum amount of waterfront and a minimum amount of city. Lewis Wharf was perhaps the greatest wharf in mid-nineteenth-century Boston, the peak years being 1840 to 1860, with ships arriving from Liverpool as well as great clipper ships from San Francisco. However, by the 1860s, Atlantic Avenue was built; this signaled the beginning of the end, reducing the footprint of Boston’s wharves and marking the decline of the great sailing ships. (So much of Boston was on the waterfront and so little of it is now that a modern resident of Boston would be shocked to learn that British ships anchored in Copley Square during the siege in the Revolution. Copley is located in the middle of town, sandwiched between Back Bay and the South End, in the heart of Boston’s upscale shopping district. This would be like ships docking at Times Square in New York.)
Going back to the recipe for Canton punch, we researched Canton ginger to get a better understanding of what this recipe might have been like in 1896. Just using fresh ginger did not seem the right way to go because it would be much too strong. It turns out that there are two different meanings to “Canton” ginger: it referred to “true ginger,” or Zingiber officinale, but it also described preserved ginger that was packed in a sugar syrup in Canton and then shipped in stone jars, a common gourmet item in the United States by 1900.
The process for making preserved ginger was very similar to the process of making candied or “dry” ginger. Both were boiled in water after washing, and then the preserved ginger was boiled again in equal parts water and sugar. The candied or crystallized ginger would also get a second boiling, but with very little water added, contributing to its dry texture.
After much testing, we decided to use galangal, a very mild form of Asian ginger that gave the sorbet a subtle flavor. This was probably not what Fannie had in mind, although she probably did not mean fresh ginger of any kind. The good news is that Fannie’s Canton Sorbet recipe was virtually perfect, a frozen palate cleanser that was light, refreshing, and perfect between courses.
CANTON SHERBET
Although this recipe is listed as a sherbet, it is really nothing more than an ice, since sherbets usually have either milk or egg whites added. Do not use traditional ginger for this recipe—you need to purchase galangal or a similar ginger that is much milder. This is the ginger served with sushi: it tastes like ginger, but has much less bite. This recipe will serve 12 as a palate cleanser between courses.
4 cups water
1 cup sugar
5 ounces peeled and trimmed galangal, cut into ¼-inch pieces
½ cup freshly squeezed orange juice
1/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
Heat water, sugar, and galangal in medium saucepan over high heat until it reaches a boil. Cook for 13 to 15 minutes until reduced to 3 cups (including galangal). Cool to room temperature. Add fruit juice, strain mixture through fine mesh strainer, refrigerate until it reaches 40 degrees. Start ice-cream machine and add juice mixture to canister. Churn until sherbet has texture of soft-serve ice cream, 25 to 30 minutes.
Serves 12 as a small palate cleanser.