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Category: Desserts

homemade Christmas mincemeat
Mock Mincemeat Recipes – Without Meat

Mock Mincemeat Recipes – Without Meat

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Traditional mincemeat contained meat, fresh fruit (mostly apples), dried fruits such as raisins and currents, spices, and alcohol, which helped preserve it. Mock mincemeat has no meat, but some of the recipes include suet, which is beef or sheep fat. If you are a vegetarian, perhaps you could substitute a vegetable fat if you wanted to try one of these recipes. Click on this link if you’d like to read the post on making traditional mincemeat. INFORMATION BELOW FROM 1800s…

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Homemade pie and crust
How to Make Perfect Pie Crust

How to Make Perfect Pie Crust

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Not many people make their own pie crusts these days. With refrigerated and frozen pie crusts available in grocery stores, it’s easier to buy a pie crust and add your own filling. Premade pie crusts became available in the U.S. in the mid-1950s.  Quote from an 1800s cookbook: “Few people know what really good pastry is. Fewer still can make it. It has no inevitable resemblance either to putty or leather. It is light, crisp, flaky, goodly to behold—goodlier to the…

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cooking home grown popcorn
Old-Fashioned Popcorn Sweets

Old-Fashioned Popcorn Sweets

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Popcorn is a special type of corn; not all varieties of corn will “pop.” In the 1800s, some families raised their own popcorn. After cutting the corn from the stalks, they dried it, then shelled it by hand. They put the dried popcorn in “poppers” which were shaped like long, thin boxes made from tightly woven wire, attached to a long handle. Then the corn could be popped over an open flame without having to get too close to the…

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Three Quince Fruit
How to Use Quinces, an Old-Fashioned Fruit

How to Use Quinces, an Old-Fashioned Fruit

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Quinces resemble a pear, and are yellow when ripe, but the exterior is bumpy. They have a sour, astringent taste unless completely ripened, so they’re usually cooked. This fruit bruises quickly and very rapidly turns to a dark brown.  The quince tree was brought to the American colonies by English settlers. During the 18th century, there was usually a quince at the lower corner of the vegetable garden [reference]. Today, there aren’t many commercial quince tree orchards in the U.S….

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Green unripe gooseberries
Old-Fashioned Gooseberry Recipes

Old-Fashioned Gooseberry Recipes

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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

How to Make Fondant and Bonbon Candy

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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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Prunes with plums in small sack
A Variety of Prune (Dried Plum) Recipes

A Variety of Prune (Dried Plum) Recipes

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FROM AN 1800s COOKBOOK: “The unpopularity of prunes is unfortunate. This may be because prunes were formerly one of the cheapest fruits or because they are cooked and served in the same way too often.

Desirable results can often be secured by combining prunes and other dried fruits with tart fruits such as apricots, apples, and rhubarb.”

Rice pudding with cinnamon powder
Old-Fashioned Pudding Recipes

Old-Fashioned Pudding Recipes

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There were no packaged pudding mixes in the 1800s. Homemade puddings were made from scratch and were either baked, boiled, or steamed. Puddings were made from a variety of foods, served hot or cold, and was a time-consuming process. “My*T*Fine” was the first packaged pudding introduced to the United States in 1918. Source – FoodTimeline.org .   INFORMATION BELOW FROM 1800s COOKBOOKS ABOUT PUDDINGS The eggs for all sorts of puddings in which they are used should be well beaten and then…

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