March 31^st is the anniversary of this blog – and in honour of my first recipe, Cayenne Cheese from Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, which is the first written recipe for Cheese Straws, I’ve been making recipes that feature flour, butter, cheese, salt and cayenne pepper each year to mark the occasion. This Cheese Cookie recipe is from the 1940s edition of the Joy of Cooking.

Rhubarb Cups are a simple, three-ingredient, make-ahead dessert from the 1847 cookbook The Lady’s Receipt Book by Eliza Leslie. Rhubarb Cups would be a perfect dish to add to your recipe rotation if you’ve got a freezer full of stewed rhubarb! I have to admit, they don’t end up being the most visually appealing dessert, but what they lack in aesthetics, they make up for in taste. The cups themselves are very mild, but this recipe also includes a zippy and flavourful butter, sugar and lemon hard sauce. As an added bonus, in this blog post you’ll find out where you can find rhubarb growing wild in Banff National Park.

Every year in March for my blogging anniversary, I make a different Cheese Straw recipe and this year’s Cheese Straws called for an pre-prepared batch of pastry. I searched for a pastry recipe from the same time period and found Short or Flaky Pastry in the 1901 classic The Settlement Cook Book.

Short or Flaky Pastry is a puff pastry recipe that’s easy to pull off and it does live up to its name by producing a pastry that’s both flaky and light. It calls for half butter and half lard, but it is also delicious when made with only butter. This is definitely a recipe that I’m going to look up on my own website when I need to make some puff pastry fast!

It’s my anniversary today! Three years ago today, I was furiously completing my first blog post, Cayenne Cheeses, which still is one of my favourite historic recipes. Each year ever since, I’ve made another baked cheesy recipe with cheese, butter, flour, salt and cayenne pepper in the ingredient list.

This Cheese Straw recipe is from the 1903 Good Housekeeping Everyday Cook Book and it’s very simple to put together. Grate cheese, season with salt and cayenne pepper and sprinkle it on top of thin strips of pastry. It’s an excellent recipe for making a delicious snack from the extra pastry when you’re making a pie. You could also make or buy pastry if you want a larger batch. They taste quite more-ish, so you might very well want to make pastry specifically for this recipe!

Cu p Cookies are a milk lemon sugar cookie with an almond, sugar & cinnamon topping sprinkled on top. This recipe is from Aunt Babette’s Cook Book from 1889, and its leavening agent is Ammonium Bicarbonate or Baker’s Ammonia
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‍I’ve chosen this recipe because for the last 2 years, my Ammonia Cakes recipe has been my most popular post by far. That shows me that there’s an appetite for information about and recipes using Baker’s Ammonia, but I’m torn, because Ammonia Cakes is not a delicious recipe at all! I had to make a second recipe, Icing for Cake to save the Ammonia Cakes so they were edible and they didn’t end up in the compost.

Cup Cookies are a much more delicious ammonium bicarbonate cookie. Stick with this recipe for the deliciousness, but head over to Ammonia Cakes for a bit of history about Baker’s Ammonia

Today’s my 2^nd Blogaversary! 2 years ago today, I nervously and excitedly hit “publish” on my very first recipe post. The recipe I picked was Cayenne Cheeses from the 1861 cookbook Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management. I picked it because it was – and it still is – my favourite historic recipe that I’ve ever made and eaten.

A year later, I started the tradition of posting a similar recipe each year on March 31^st to celebrate the milestone. Last year’s recipe was Cheese Hooies from the 1965 Stillmeadow Cookbook by Gladys Taber. 2020’s twist on baking flour, butter, cheese, salt and cayenne pepper together is Cheese Straws. This recipe come to us all the way from the 1891 Tried and True Cookbook, a community cookbook compiled by the “Ladies Aid Society and Friends of the First Methodist Episcopal Church of Deadwood, South Dakota”.

Icing for Cake saved the day when I had about 5 dozen bland Ammonia Cakes that needed some extra pizzazz! Both Ammonia Cakes and Icing for Cake are found in the 1898 The New Galt Cookbook, which is a community cookbook compiled not far from where I grew up and where I live today. Icing for Cake is a simple white sugar and milk icing that hardens within minutes and you could drizzle it on cakes, cookies, donuts or squares.

If you do want to make a cookie using Baker’s Ammonia as the leavening agent, I really do suggest baking Cup Cookies instead. It’s just a more flavourful cookie!

Ammonia Cakes: probably the least appetizing cookie name that I’ve ever come across. These cakes use ammonium bicarbonate (baker’s ammonia) as the leavening agent and I assure you that they don’t taste like ammonia, but they will temporarily stink up your kitchen like cat urine while they bake! Ammonia Cakes fall on the bland side of the cookie spectrum, so I was lucky to find the recipe Icing for Cake in the same recipe book and I iced them the next day.

If you do want to make a cookie using Baker’s Ammonia as the leavening agent, I really do suggest baking Cup Cookies instead. It’s just a more flavourful cookie!

One year ago today, on March 31st, I hit the "Publish" button for the first time and put out my first Food History blog recipe for the world to see and taste. I selected Cayenne Cheeses, a scrumptious cheese biscuit, from the 1861 Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management because it has been one of my favourite historic recipes since I began working in Historic House Museums. They are really delicious, you should try them!

My 1-year anniversary recipe is Cheese Hooies. When I first read this recipe in the 1965 Stillmeadow Cookbook by Gladys Taber, I saw the ingredient list (butter, cheese, flour, salt and cayenne pepper) and thought, "These Hooies are basically Cayenne Cheeses". Cheese Hooies haven't kicked Cayenne Cheeses off my favourite recipes list, but making them was interesting look at how a century changes a recipe.

With only three chopped ingredients in the salad, this is a fairly simple but delicious recipe to prepare. The dressing is also rather easy to put together, but is subtly flavourful. This recipe is found in The Modern Family Cook Book from 1953, which was written by Meta Given, who probably has the best cookbook author name in history. When I was growing up, my Mom had her own copy of this cookbook in our kitchen, and I remember loving its design even as a kid. I think it's the most gorgeously designed cookbook in my collection today. Each time I open it, I marvel at the care that went into designing the layout, the illustrations and the attention paid to the tiny details.

This Taheeni recipe isn't a Tahini recipe, simply because its main ingredient is eggplant and not sesame seeds. I'd describe Taheeni as basically Baba Ganoush, ironically without the tahini! I found this recipe in The Blender Cookbook by Ann Seranne & Eileen Gaden from 1961 in the International Specialties chapter under "The Near East". Today, I'm able to walk into almost any grocery store and buy myself a container of tahini or baba ganoush, but this was likely not the case in 1961. I'll chalk up the name to something getting lost in translation, but whatever it's called, my tastebuds give this this dip two thumbs up.

Miss Leslie would be appalled, and perhaps stupefied, that I made this recipe today. In April. In Canada. She put forth a very strong opinion about cucumbers and their longevity in Miss Leslie's Directions for Cookery, stating that "few vegetables being more unwholesome when long gathered". Who knows when my grocery store cucumber was harvested, but I still found this recipe to be delicious. It's fresh-tasting, subtly flavoured by the salt, pepper & onion.

Before I began speaking to people about trying out Fannie Farmer's German Cabbage recipe from 1896, I never knew how many people had a passionate love affair with cabbage! I really like how the flavours are balanced in the German Cabbage: some tang thanks to the vinegar, a bit of sweetness from the nutmeg & sugar, and a hint of spice from the cayenne pepper. And of course, if a dish is fried in butter, it's got to be delicious.

When I decided to start my own food history blog, I knew right away that my first blog post would be about Cayenne Cheeses. Why? Cayenne Cheeses were the first historic food that I fell in love with when I started working as a Historical Interpreter, and I'm not alone. If my coworkers don't have dietary restrictions against dairy and wheat, it's a pretty safe bet that they're also mad about Cayenne Cheeses.