Tales From Grandma's Cookbook

While looking through some family treasures, I came across this dilapidated, falling-apart gem, one whose existence I was totally unaware of! It must have been my Grandmother's, but when and where did she get it? I spent much of my youthful daytime hours in her Jackson Hole ranch kitchen, yet I don't ever remember seeing this in our cookbook drawer. The title -- when you discovered it hiding among the ads on the front cover -- was "Our Chef's Best Receipts."

Chef's Receipts? What kind of book was that? Ahhh yes, receipts were...many years ago...what we now call recipes!

As the poem goes, " 'Twas tattered and torn, and who could have known..."

Yes, the little book was definitely "tattered and torn," as well as stained from liquids, grease or oils (very likely butter and cream!), and who knows what else.The cover had become detached and many of the leaves were starting to crumble around the edges. It needed tender loving care just to get the pages in order...but it was worth it.

Herein was found, in my grandmother's own handwriting, copies of recipes she had written on some of the blank pages scattered throughout the book -- apparently left blank for that very purpose. Also, carefully tucked within the pages, were recipes clipped from unknown newspapers and magazines of long ago. How I wish I knew their origins and where and when Grandma got them!

The first page of the book states it is

A PRACTICAL COOK BOOK

FOR

PEOPLE WHO LIKE GOOD THINGS TO EAT.

A practical cook book it was -- but it was far more than that.

Printed by RAND, McNALLY & COMPANY and copyrighted in 1899, in reality it was a slice of history...and a public domain slice of history at that!

Other than the printers, I couldn't find any identifying information concerning a specific group that may have collected the recipes. However, at least part of the printing must have been paid for by the myriad advertisements beginning on the outside and inside front cover -- continuing throughout the book -- and finally ending on the outside back cover. One could get quite a picture of life at that time through just the advertisements and their accompanying pictures.

So many ads are related to the St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota area that the book almost certainly came from there. Also, knowing my little Norwegian grandmother went to St. Paul, Minnesota to work when she was 14, right after this book was published, I can be fairly certain that's where it originated and why I now have it in my possession.

Included in this old cook book is a recipe for "corn cake" that I simply must include with this hub. (More will be forthcoming.) The pages are shown in the photo but below is the text, given exactly as it is in the book:

A Bishop as a Poet and Cook

Bishop Williams of Connecticut, senior prelate of the Episcopal church in the United States, is an enthusiast upon the subject of New England corn cake, and has incorporated in verse his views as to how the delicacy should be made. The recipe, as it recently appeared in the Hartford Times, has this prologue:

A forgetful old bishop,

All broken to pieces,

Neglected to dish up

For one of his nieces

A receipt for "Corn pone"--

The best ever known.

So he hastes to repair his sin of omission

And hopes that in view of his shattered condition

His suit for forgiveness he humbly may urge,

So here's the receipt, and it comes from Lake George.

THE RECIPE

Take a cup of cornmeal,

(And the meal should be yellow,)

Add a cup of wheat flour

For to make the corn mellow;

Of sugar a cup, white or brown at your pleasure.

(The color is nothing, the fruit is the measure).

And now comes a troublesome thing to indite,

For the rhyme and the reason they trouble me quite;

For after the sugar, the flour and the meal

Comes a cup of sour cream, burt unless you should steal

From your neighbors, I fear you will never be able

This item to put upon your cook's table;

For "sure and indeed," in all towns I remember,

Sour cream is as scarce as June buds in December.

So here an alternative nicely contrived

Is suggested your mind to relieve,

And showing how you without stealing at all

The ground that is lost may retrieve.

Instead of sour cream take one cup of milk,

"Sweet milk!" what a sweet phrase to utter!

And to make it cream-like put into the cup

Just three tablespoonfuls of butter.

Cream of tartar, one teaspoonful, rules dietetic--

How nearly I wrote it down tartar emetic!--

But ho! cream of tartar it is without doubt,

And so the alternative makes itself out.

Of soda the half of a teaspoonful add,

Or else your poor corn cake will go to the bad;

Two eggs must be broken without being beat,

Then of salt a teaspoonful your work will complete.

Twenty minutes of baking are needful to bring

To the point of perfection this "awful good thing."

To eat at the best this remarkable cake

You should fish all day long on the royal-named lake,

With the bright waters glancing in glorious light

And beauties unnumbered bewild'ring your sight,

On mountain and lake, in water and sky;

And then, when the shadows fall down from on high,

Seek "Sabbath Day Point," as the light fades away,

And end with this feast the angler's long day.

Then, there you will find, without any question,

Than an appetite honest awaits on digestion.

Well, there you have it...

Please enjoy the feast

Of the good bishop's corn cake

From out of the east!

And if this intrigues you

Please come back again

And I will regale you

With more from my pen!