When I was a child, my mother bought small cans of potted meat and spread it on bread to make sandwiches. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but I should buy some to try again, or make my own. In the days before electric refrigeration, if meat couldn’t be eaten right away, it had to preserved somehow. One way of preserving meat was by potting it. Essentially, to pot meat, cook it, cut in small pieces, pound…
Gravy is traditionally a sauce made from meat drippings and combined with some type of thickening agent. It was especially used in French cooking and became popular in the U.S. in the 1800s. Gravies other than those made from meat include cream or white gravy, mushroom gravy, onion gravy, giblet gravy, vegetable gravy, and more. INFORMATION BELOW FROM 1800s COOKBOOKS MAKING GRAVIESNever toss “that carcass” of fowl, or the ham, or mutton-bone, “with next to nothing upon it,” to the…
Beef tongues used to be a popular dish, but I’ve never seen recipes for them in modern cookbooks. My mother said she ate tongue when she was a child, back in the 1940s, but she never cooked them when I was growing up. I’ve seen tongue for sale in grocery store meat departments, but haven’t had any desire to learn to cook it. Tongues are sold as beef or ox tongues, but they’re both the same. INFORMATION BELOW FROM 1800s…
Homemade stuffing was a great way to use up stale bread and other ingredients and provided a nice dish to accompany poultry. The recipes below will give you some good ideas for stuffings, and you can make changes to suit your taste. INFORMATION BELOW FROM 1800s COOKBOOKS It is necessary to know the difference between fowls and birds. A fowl always leads its young ones to the meat and a bird carries the meat to its young. So our common…
Ham was an important food as it could be cured and preserved for the winter months. It was heavily salted, so it needed to be soaked many hours before cooking to remove most of the salt taste. INFORMATION BELOW FROM 1800s COOKBOOKS TO CURE HAMS To make good hams, the pork must be of the best quality. No animal tastes so much of its food as the pig. For one hundred pounds of fine pork, take seven pounds of coarse…
I had never heard of sweetbreads until I began reading old cookbooks. Sweetbreads are what the thymus gland or pancreas of a calf or lamb are called. Offal or organ meats are the parts of the animal that are not muscle. INFORMATION BELOW FROM 1800s COOKBOOKS TO PREPARE SWEETBREADS The sweetbread belonging to the breast of the calf is far superior to that which is found about the throat, being larger, whiter, more tender, and more delicate. Always buy them…
A pig’s head can by baked, roasted, boiled, and stewed. It can be served whole or halved, or made into head cheese, souse, or other recipes. INFORMATION BELOW FROM 1800s COOKBOOKS BAKED PIG’S HEAD Split the pig’s head into halves and sprinkle them with pepper and salt. Lay them with the rind part uppermost upon a bed of sliced onions in a baking dish. Next, bruise eight ounces of stale bread crumb and mix it with four ounces of chopped…
Tripe is an edible offal (entrails and internal organs). Some grazing animals like cows, buffalo and sheep have multiple stomach chambers to properly digest their food. These stomach linings are called tripe. Most tripe sold in United States grocery stores is from cows. INFORMATION BELOW FROM 1800s COOKBOOKS TO PREPARE TRIPE Empty the contents of the stomach of a fat beef. Scrape and wash the tripe thoroughly. Put it in cold water and salt and soak for ten days. Don’t…