If you ask me over to your house to babysit, I will snoop in your kitchen while your baby sleeps and search for old cookbooks. That’s where I found The Hundred Menu Chicken Cookbook from 1972, which has the tagline “One-pot chicken recipes that are easy-to-make and a treat to serve” and boasts that it contains recipes from over 20 countries.

Chicken with Chili is a warming full-flavoured chicken dish that would be an excellent slow-cooker recipe. I was intrigued by Chicken with Chili because it claimed to be an Ethiopian recipe and I was skeptical about how accurate it would be, but it turns out that it is reasonably similar to Doro Wat! A couple of ingredients that are typically served in Doro Wat are missing and the traditional spices have been substituted for spices that would have been found in the kitchens of most American families in 1972. What you end up with Chicken with Chili is an echo of Doro Wat without the spicy heat.

Chicken Terrapin, from the 1903 Good Housekeeping Everyday Cook Book, is a creamy and decadent casserole dish, perfect for using up leftover chicken. After selecting this recipe, my research began with the question "Why is this dish called Chicken TERRAPIN?" and quickly descended down a rabbit hole. Literally. Before beginning to pull together what I learned about Terrapin recipes, I had pulled my childhood copy of Alice in Wonderland off my bookshelf!

The chicken meat in this recipe is meant to take the place of Terrapin Turtle meat and I'll be delving into how one prepares Terrapin meat, the popularity of Turtle Soup, specialized Turtle Soup Tureens and the replacement of dishes featuring turtle meat with Mock Turtle recipes. I'll also explain the appearance of the Mock Turtle character in Alice in Wonderland, and why he is so melancholy in the story.

To Fry Fish is found in A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes,written by Charles Elmé Francatelli in London in 1852. Fortunately, I had some bacon fat in my fridge, so that's what I used to fry my fish. Let me tell you, fish dredged in flour and fried in bacon fat is scrumptious, and so were the fried onions that we ate on the side. I paired the fish with Sharp Sauce for Broiled Meats from the same cookbook. The main component of this sauce is a variety of pickles and it reminds of relish, albeit without the sweetness. I round out this blog post by delving a little bit into the Fish Slice, a serving utensil for fish.