Cider Cake is a simple coffee cake spiced with apple cider, brown sugar, cinnamon and cloves. This recipe is found in The Frugal Housewife’s Manual, which is the first cookbook compiled and published in the English language in Canada in 1840. I tested out this Cider Cake recipe when I was preparing for an Open Hearth Baking class that was to be taught at Nelles Manor Museum in Grimsby, Ontario in early April 2020. An interesting note is that The Frugal Housewife’s Manual was compiled by someone with the initials A. B., who lived in Grimsby, Ontario at the time. Conceivably, this A.B. and the Nelles family who lived at Nelles Manor would have been acquainted with each other since the both lived in the same small community.

This was one of the mid-1800s recipes that I would be preparing using Nelles Manor’s Open Hearth with the class participants using the Dutch Oven. Other open hearth baking recipes would have made by using other open hearth baking implements, such as cheese straws fried on the griddle, coconut macaroons in the reflector oven, and fritters fried on a trivet. Keep an eye out in this blog for a description of how I used the dutch oven to bake the Cider Cake, and future blog posts for how-tos for all the open hearth baking techniques I’ve mentioned.

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.

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 and 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

I’ve chosen this recipe because for the last 2 years, my Ammonia Cakes recipe has been my most popular post by far. This tells me that there’s an appetite for research 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.

Apple Sauce Cake is a dairy-free apple & spice loaf, which has a dense but moist consistency. This recipe contains walnuts and raisins, but you could certainly swap in nuts, seeds and dried fruits of your choice. This recipe is from the 1946 cookbook A Modern Kitchen Guide, which was published in Chicago, but distributed by Farmer’s Advocate magazine based out of London, Ontario, Canada. Have a read to find out more about this free cookbook/promotional vehicle that ended up in kitchens all over Canada and the United States.

Queen of Puddings comes to us all they way from Toronto in 1877. The Home Cook Book is Canada’s first community cookbook with recipes contributed by women as a fundraiser for The Hospital for Sick Children. Queen of Puddings must have been popular in Toronto in the late 1870s because this recipe (with various names) was submitted by 5 different women to the Puddings chapter of the book!

I had plenty to share with friends & family and I described it to the people I gave it to as a lemony soufflé bottom with a jam layer and meringue on top. The reviews I received were: no response, that it was delightful and “it was very good and had a unique texture.”

Pineapple Nut Stuffing will probably be the recipe I select the next time I make a Christmas or Thanksgiving turkey. The earthiness of the walnuts and the sharpness of the celery would complement the additional flavour of the turkey juices and the pineapple in the recipe is only perceptible by a slight sweetness.

This recipe is found in the 1950 The American Woman’s Cook Book and the introduction to the chapter on Stuffings for Fish, Meat, Poultry and Game lists alternative ways to prepare stuffing. Instead of cooking my stuffing inside of a fowl, I decided to try three of the methods listed in this paragraph: baked, steamed and fried in croquettes.

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”.

To make fine pippen Tarts is a handwritten recipe from an early 1700s English manuscript in the University of Pennsylvania Libraries. It’s a recipe I’ve wagered in the battle to use up apples from the gargantuan apple tree in my back yard, and also a recipe that was interpreted in 2017 on the food history blog Cooking in the Archives.

On this blog, Dr. Marissa Nicosia recreates Early Modern recipes from 1500- 1800 for the contemporary kitchen, and she is also one of my most enthusiastic supporters on twitter! You’ll find Cooking in the Archives at https://rarecooking.com/ and on twitter and Instagram as @rare_cooking.

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!

Baking Soda Bread is a shortcut to eating fresh baked bread when you’re short on time. You’ll be spreading butter on a warm bread slice in about an hour and a half!

This Soda Bread recipe, from the 1861 Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, is a favourite of mine because it produces a more moist and less dense soda bread than most recipes that I’ve tried. Soda bread doesn’t have the longevity of risen breads, so it will be toast (literally) sooner than later.

I wanted to prepare one last root-vegetable recipe before the greens & herbs start popping up here in Ontario, and I thought I'd turn to a local 1898 cookbook: The New Galt Cook Book.

Galt is a town which is now part of Cambridge, Ontario and it's also close to where I grew up and where I live now in Hamilton. Scalloped Turnips is an interesting twist on scalloped potatoes. The turnips provide additional flavour to the dish, and it is creamy but also light because the sauce uses a butter & flour rue and the cooking water from the turnips instead of a white bechamel sauce.

Coincidentally, I had this recipe selected and the turnips purchased before I knew that cooking at an event using recipes from The New Galt Cook Book was even a possibility! I'll be preparing food from this cookbook for a Victorian Tea at the Fashion History Museum in Cambridge, Ontario on May 18^th, and Food Historian Carolyn Blackstock will be speaking about her year-old journey making a recipe a day from The New Galt Cook Book.

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.

I was intrigued by this gingerbread cookie recipe from The Cook's Complete Guide (1810) – gingerbread cookies rolled like wafers! The historic recipe instructs us to "bake it gently; when hot cut it in squares, and while warm roll it over a stick, like wafers, till cold".

But yet, my gingerbread cookies that I created are flat squares. This is one of those occurences when a historic recipe doesn't turn out as expected the first time around (they instantly cracked and broke when I tried to bend them).This is a delicious lightly flavoured Lemon Gingersnap, so I recommend it, whether it is rolled or flat.

If a sweet scone and a cookie got married and had a baby, that baby would be Albany Cakes. However you classify Albany Cakes, this sweet bit of bakery with cinnamon and rose water flavours is deelish! This was another recipe that we made at the cooking classes that I taught this autumn at Nelles Manor Museum in Grimsby. Our Albany Cakes recipe comes from The Frugal Housewife's Manual, published in Toronto in 1840, but written by a mysterious resident of Grimsby who likely would have known the Nelles family.

If you asked anyone in my family about our traditional family recipes, probably the first dish listed by everyone would be Squash Puff. I'd describe Squash Puff as a cross between squash pudding and soufflé.

It is light, fluffy and very flavourful considering it doesn't contain any onions or herbs. My Mom cut the recipe out of a newspaper at some point and it's been in her giant binder of recipe clippings ever since I can remember. Give Squash Puff a try at your next Thanksgiving, potluck or family gathering...or when you've got a hankering for some satisfying comfort food.

In my backyard is a giant apple tree, so for as long as I call this house my home, you'll find apple recipes on this food history blog this time of year.

Apple Bread is surprisingly not sweet. This bread is very flavourful thanks to a longer prefermentation process and the apples add a little je ne sais quoi to the complex flavour of this moist bread. I took both the very large loaves this recipe yielded to a gathering along with some butter. I thought that there would be leftovers and there most definitely were not!

These Shrewsbury Cakes are one of first recipes that I tested out for the Open Hearth Cooking Classes that I'm teaching at Nelles Manor in Grimsby, Ontario in September.

They are crisp & buttery, and the flavour of caraway seeds balances out the sweetness of these cookies. Shrewsbury Cake is from the first English-language cookbook that was both compiled & printed in Canada. The Frugal Housewife's Manual was published in Toronto in 1840, but the cookbook author is credited as “A. B. of Grimsby”. I love this connection to the Nelles family, since they likely would have known this mysterious A. B. who wrote the book.