Blog - Vintage Recipes and Cookery

Old-Fashioned Cooking Hints and Advice

Angela Johnson Comments 7 comments

Most old cookbooks also included cooking and household advice. Here are some hints from cookbooks published in the 1800s. Please note that the advice about preserving meat and milk is not safe according to today’s food safety standards. But these were the days before electricity and refrigeration were available in homes. INFORMATION BELOW FROM 1800s COOKBOOKS Lemons will keep fresher and better in water than any other way. Put them in a crock and cover them with water. They will…

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How to Make and Cook Hominy

Angela Johnson Comments 1 comment

Hominy is made from dried corn (maize), soaking the corn kernels in a weak solution of lye. Then it can be cooked or dried for later use. Ground hominy is known as masa or grits, and it can also be ground more finely to make flour. Today’s canned hominy is already cooked and ready to eat. INFORMATION BELOW FROM 1800s COOKBOOKS MAKING HOMINY Use field corn to make hominy; yellow dent, flint corn, and Indian corn are all good varieties….

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Unusual Sandwiches from the 1800s

Angela Johnson Comments 6 comments

I don’t make sandwiches often, but they’re not anything like these from 1800s cookbooks. I was especially intrigued by the baked bean sandwich recipe and the one for an anchovy sandwich. In the 1800s, bread was mostly homemade and had to be sliced evenly for sandwiches, as the first automatically sliced loaves of bread weren’t produced until 1928. Also, plastic wrap and aluminum foil weren’t invented yet, so most sandwiches were eaten soon after they were made. INFORMATION BELOW FROM…

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Cauliflower Recipes from the 1800s

Angela Johnson Comments 11 comments

Cauliflower wasn’t very popular during most of the 19th century because it was expensive to buy. In the latter part of the century, though, when hot houses became common, cauliflower became more affordable. The recipes and advice below are from cookbooks published in the 1800s. INFORMATION BELOW FROM 1800s COOKBOOKS CAULIFLOWER Cauliflower is similar to cabbage, but its flavor is a little more delicate. The cauliflower possesses a most agreeable flavor and is sufficiently delicate to be served at the…

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Old-Fashioned Gooseberry Recipes

Angela Johnson Comments 6 comments

When I was in grade school in the 1960s, we visited our grandparents every summer and they grew gooseberries. We picked and ate green gooseberries right off the bushes. They were certainly sour, but that was the attraction. We had contests to see how many we could eat before having to spit them out. We never did get to see them as red berries. They must have ripened in late summer or early fall after we went back home. I…

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How to Make Fondant and Bonbon Candy

Angela Johnson Comments 8 comments

There are basically two types of fondant that are used for making bonbons. The first is poured fondant, a creamy mixture used as a filling, and the other is rolled fondant or fondant icing, which is of a thicker texture and used for coating candy or icing cakes. INFORMATION BELOW FROM 1800s COOKBOOKS CANDY MAKING AT HOME The proverbial “sweet-tooth” is a characteristic of the American people. Hundreds of tons of candy are annually consumed, and fortunes have been made in…

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Making Milk Curds and Whey

Angela Johnson Comments 0 Comment

The first time I ever heard of curds was in the nursery rhyme “Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet, eating her curds and whey.” Curds look similar to cottage cheese, but in the recipes from 1800s cookbooks, they used rennet for milk curds, but not for cottage cheese. Today, you can buy rennet powder and rennet tablets at stores or online. INFORMATION BELOW COMPILED FROM 1800s COOKBOOKS TO PREPARE A RENNET A rennet is the stomach of the calf….

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Hash Recipes to Use Leftover Meat

Angela Johnson Comments 2 comments

“Hash is a peculiarly American institution. In no other country is every remnant of cold meat turned into that one unvarying dish. When English people speak of hash, they mean something quite different—meat warmed in slices. Our hash, made with nice gravy, garnished with sippets of toast and pickles, surrounded with mashed potatoes or rice—is dignified abroad by the name of mince, and makes its appearance as an elegant little entrée.” (from an 1800s cookbook) INFORMATION BELOW FROM 1800s COOKBOOKS…

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