idiots cake

Okay, so my question still stands. I wouldn't have thought that white sugar would be considered cheap, and the recipe would certainly work just as well with brown. Liquid vanilla extract would be less common than other flavoring choices then, and baking powder would be less common than baking soda. All that, put together, makes it sound like a later recipe.

To see evidence that it included those ingredients in the 1860s would show that those things were apparently cheap and easy to get, for folks suffering from hard times,in some region. It would mean I'd need to change some of my thoughts about what the 1860s were like. If I'm wrong, it would be a good opportunity to learn more, but I'd like to see more evidence, before immediately rejecting my previous research. If more information about this recipe isn't available, has anyone got other examples of cakes from the 1860s with vanilla extract, baking powder (not soda) and white sugar, in the context of cheap or hard times food?

Because the recipe appears in a popular format of the last 100 years or so, when those things would be common and cheap, there's no way to know whether they're later additions, put in at the time the format was changed, or were included at the time. If the measurements themselves were actually specified like that in the 1860s, I'd be even more surprised.

If it hadn't been marked "authentic," I wouldn't ask, but I really am interested in using recipes to help understand more about period foodways and daily life, and this seems like a chance to learn.

To answer one part of your question. Baking powder and baking soda are not the same thing. Note the large proportion of brown to white sugar--and no, they don't give the same results. By using a small proportion of white sugar you can get the desired (lighter in color and texture) results. Vanilla extract has been around for a long time. (Granny occasionally used it instead of cologne--which explains why she smelled so yummy).

We have some other past threads on baking with ingredients of the times. I'll try to find 'em. Just saying that there are some principles of baking that have to be observed or you turn out with a hot inedible mess.
 
What if she gives you her sources?

Then I'd be glad to see them!

Honestly, I'm not trying to be argumentative. I'm seriously interested in period foodways and am always enthusiastic about learning more, but the details that fascinate me seem to make me come across as an annoying nitpicker here. No problem--folks have different ideas about what's fun, so I'm cool with that, and it may be better if I just bow out. I dunno.

To answer one part of your question. Baking powder and baking soda are not the same thing. Note the large proportion of brown to white sugar--and no, they don't give the same results. By using a small proportion of white sugar you can get the desired (lighter in color and texture) results. Vanilla extract has been around for a long time. (Granny occasionally used it instead of cologne--which explains why she smelled so yummy).

We have some other past threads on baking with ingredients of the times. I'll try to find 'em. Just saying that there are some principles of baking that have to be observed or you turn out with a hot inedible mess.

Perhaps the problem is that I didn't make clear that I'm not a beginner, and maybe I dived right in deeper than I should have. However, I just assumed that many others here share similar backgrounds and interests.

To explain a little (and my apologies for the length, and for sounding like I'm bragging, because I cringe at that and really don't want to come across that way, but I don't know how else to explain):

As part of practicing for living history, I've looked at hundreds of period recipes in period cookbooks, tested them, and compared similar recipes to see differences between regions and changes over time from the early 19th century to the 1860s. However, I felt that many cooks in the period didn't tend to slavishly follow recipes, since that became more widespread in the post-Fanny Farmer era, when she encouraged more scientific cooking. Also, period descriptions of illiterate cooks, and period evidence in recipes of imprecise quantities based on texture or flavor indicated that cooks were expected to understand the goal of a recipe, even when some precise quantities were given.

So to portray that aspect of cooking in the period, I decided to learn to cook period foods without recipes. After comparing typical proportions from different period recipes, looking for patterns, and testing, I finally learned to bake cakes, make breads and puddings and so forth, without recipes, just using handfuls and pinches, yet trying to stay as close to documented period foods as possible, and have portrayed a semi-literate professional cook (since I'm male, wouldn't be cooking for a family) successfully getting three meals a day on the table. So I'm fairly comfortable knowing where the parameters are for substitutions and variations. And yes, of course, things may not turn out the same with different ingredients, but wartime substitutions and hard times may mean that something of fairly normal texture and flavor is good enough, even if it's not the ideal that could be made with optimum ingredients.

I know that baking soda and baking powder aren't the same thing, and some of the basics of their period context as well. The following may have some errors, since it's from memory, but it also may be of some interest to others, and also shows where I'm starting from, always in hopes of learning more:

Pearlash or potassium carbonate was one of the earliest artificial leavenings, showing up generally by the late 18th century through the early 19th. It was impure, tended to leave dark marks and possibly a caustic flavor if not perfectly mixed, and so commonly showed up in dark, strong-flavored gingerbread recipes to avoid that. If one sees "soda" instead of pearlash in cookbooks published before around 1830ish, which is very rare to see, there's a good chance it's referring to carbonate of soda, which had the same faults as pearlash, rather than bicarbonate of soda.

By the early to mid 19th century, saleratus or potassium bicarbonate came into more common use, and it was an improvement on pearlash, and began to be used commonly in a wider variety of foods. I suspect that potassium rather than sodium was used because it was a byproduct of wood ashes, something cheap and readily available to factories. Around the mid 19th century, bicarbonate of soda came into use, but recipes books, cooks and storekeepers still often called it saleratus out of habit, so for a wide period in the mid century, one can't be sure if saleratus specifically meant potassium or sodium bicarbonate.

Usually, before mid-century, soda or saleratus will be added to a recipe by first mixing them with a liquid, then pouring the liquid in. Around mid-century, the modern method of adding the powder to the dry ingredients starts to come into use. I'm not sure why this change occurred, but wonder if it had something to do with the chemical being impure, so one could get rid of lumps and check for impurities that wouldn't dissolve; it also may have been out of habit, to make it seem more like liquid yeast.

Around the same time, mid-century or a few years after, baking powder started coming into use, and became even more widespread as the end of the century progressed. If one sees "baking powder" before mid-century or in some contexts even after that, it may be referring to baking soda or saleratus, which were also called yeast powders.

Soda and saleratus made food rise, of course, because they were alkali, and when combined with an acid--usually sour milk, but also molasses or occasionally cream of tartar or tartaric acid or another acid--they reacted and produced carbon dioxide. Sometimes before mid-century, especially for making carbonated drinks, powdered acid and alkali were sold in sets of measured papers, white and blue. Here's a typical example of the use of "yeast powder" and the two separate powders, from 1847.

Baking powder was an attempt to combine the acid and alkali in the proper combination in a single powder. The problem was preventing it from reacting too soon, if it gathered dampness. Period cookbooks cautioned to keep it well stoppered, and companies used various fillers to produce a suitable powder. All the baking powder, though, was "single acting," meaning it began to react as soon as it was mixed into the moist batter, so just like soda, you had to have the oven hot and get the batter baking fairly quickly--not really a problem, since cooks were used to that.

Typical modern baking powder is double-acting, meaning it reacts a little when moistened, then reacts again when heated, so one can take more time getting it in the oven.

As for liquid vanilla extract, yes, it's been around a long time, but I got curious about its context in period recipes. From what I've seen, recipes for things we associate with it, usually had rosewater or another flavoring in the early 19th century such as cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon, etc., and then vanilla gradually increased as a popular flavoring as the century went on. "Extract," used without a qualifier, generally referred to a solid extract, or powder, in the early century, while liquid extracts gradually became more common by the 1860s. When vanilla was specified in recipes in the first half of the century, it was often as a vanilla bean, and one still sees that interspersed with other recipes that called for the extract, even in the 1860s.

So there's no single thing which makes the recipe sound rewritten, but taking all its attributes together: the complete list of ingredients precisely specified by volume, the use of vanilla extract rather than other flavorings, the use of baking powder, etc., all make it sound like a brand new, unusual recipe of the 1860s or an 1860s recipe adapted by someone familiar with late 19th/20th century foods. It's the same sense a person who's looked at a lot of photographs gets, when someone shows one that seems like it's post-war, even though there's nothing obviously post-war about it--just the little details of a hairstyle, the subtle cut of a man's coat sleeve, the style of studio background, the typeface of the photographer's name. Any of it could be pre-1865, but it would be odd to find them all together then, and more common to find them all later when they were typical.

But the best way to keep honing one's sense of what's period and what isn't, is to ask about things that don't seem right, and find out more, which is why I asked.

Whew. My apologies for the long post. I dread hitting "reply" now, because I've probably come across as even worse of a jerk than before. But at least y'all know a bit more about what kind of a jerk I am, LOL, and that my interest in foodway details is sincere and not just an attempt to be superficially argumentative or annoying. And maybe some of the above is informative too, hopefully.

I'll be glad to post sources and discuss evidence and research and so forth, if anybody's interested, but didn't want to go to all that trouble if, as I suspect, all that trivia isn't really important to anybody else but me. It still may be better if I just bow out of this section, rather than bore and annoy y'all.
 
Beat me to it. Beautifully. There now, that wasn't so bad, was it?

Soooooo.....what I've discovered in an afternoon of research:

By the time of the Civil War, you might have recipes with baking powder, but it's doubtful anyone was carrying around some in his haversack. (BP tends to lose its potency with age or moisture--something hard to avoid when trecking after THAT GUY or Stonewall.... I did, however, find a few cake recipes from the period (Isabella Beaton's cookbook for example) with BP rather than soda.

Sugar has many substitutes...but your end product is going to definitely be different. Grinding up lump sugar and using it would not be unheard of....nor would white sugar. Again, MIGHT is a term I'd use with this. Found white sugar mentioned in a list of what you should take on the Santa Fe Trail in 1859, so I would think folks back East would surely use it if they could afford it....afford being the operative word. Sorghum did well for a great many folks, or that old standby, honey.

Heck, some people didn't think you could make butter in Texas! (I have no idea why other than if they did it once they'd have to do it again. I sort of agree). Apparently Frederick Law Olmstead was most impressed with the Germans around New Braunfels for having it....after having been told you couldn't have it in East Texas.

Raisins. Yuck. Enough said. Dried fruits are the staple for most cooks of the era. Whatever's handy. Mayhaws or mustang grapes or what-have-you, too.

And the most revolting thing....mixing egg yolks with sorghum to make a jelly substitute. EWWWWWWWWWWWW.
 
Oops...vanilla can easily be made into an extract with brandy. So can a number of other items. If it stretches the vanilla bean (which was always expensive), I'm pretty sure some thrifty cooks made extracts at home and used them.
 
Then I'd be glad to see them!

Honestly, I'm not trying to be argumentative. I'm seriously interested in period foodways and am always enthusiastic about learning more, but the details that fascinate me seem to make me come across as an annoying nitpicker here. No problem--folks have different ideas about what's fun, so I'm cool with that, and it may be better if I just bow out. I dunno.



Perhaps the problem is that I didn't make clear that I'm not a beginner, and maybe I dived right in deeper than I should have. However, I just assumed that many others here share similar backgrounds and interests.

To explain a little (and my apologies for the length, and for sounding like I'm bragging, because I cringe at that and really don't want to come across that way, but I don't know how else to explain):

As part of practicing for living history, I've looked at hundreds of period recipes in period cookbooks, tested them, and compared similar recipes to see differences between regions and changes over time from the early 19th century to the 1860s. However, I felt that many cooks in the period didn't tend to slavishly follow recipes, since that became more widespread in the post-Fanny Farmer era, when she encouraged more scientific cooking. Also, period descriptions of illiterate cooks, and period evidence in recipes of imprecise quantities based on texture or flavor indicated that cooks were expected to understand the goal of a recipe, even when some precise quantities were given.

So to portray that aspect of cooking in the period, I decided to learn to cook period foods without recipes. After comparing typical proportions from different period recipes, looking for patterns, and testing, I finally learned to bake cakes, make breads and puddings and so forth, without recipes, just using handfuls and pinches, yet trying to stay as close to documented period foods as possible, and have portrayed a semi-literate professional cook (since I'm male, wouldn't be cooking for a family) successfully getting three meals a day on the table. So I'm fairly comfortable knowing where the parameters are for substitutions and variations. And yes, of course, things may not turn out the same with different ingredients, but wartime substitutions and hard times may mean that something of fairly normal texture and flavor is good enough, even if it's not the ideal that could be made with optimum ingredients.

I know that baking soda and baking powder aren't the same thing, and some of the basics of their period context as well. The following may have some errors, since it's from memory, but it also may be of some interest to others, and also shows where I'm starting from, always in hopes of learning more:

Pearlash or potassium carbonate was one of the earliest artificial leavenings, showing up generally by the late 18th century through the early 19th. It was impure, tended to leave dark marks and possibly a caustic flavor if not perfectly mixed, and so commonly showed up in dark, strong-flavored gingerbread recipes to avoid that. If one sees "soda" instead of pearlash in cookbooks published before around 1830ish, which is very rare to see, there's a good chance it's referring to carbonate of soda, which had the same faults as pearlash, rather than bicarbonate of soda.

By the early to mid 19th century, saleratus or potassium bicarbonate came into more common use, and it was an improvement on pearlash, and began to be used commonly in a wider variety of foods. I suspect that potassium rather than sodium was used because it was a byproduct of wood ashes, something cheap and readily available to factories. Around the mid 19th century, bicarbonate of soda came into use, but recipes books, cooks and storekeepers still often called it saleratus out of habit, so for a wide period in the mid century, one can't be sure if saleratus specifically meant potassium or sodium bicarbonate.

Usually, before mid-century, soda or saleratus will be added to a recipe by first mixing them with a liquid, then pouring the liquid in. Around mid-century, the modern method of adding the powder to the dry ingredients starts to come into use. I'm not sure why this change occurred, but wonder if it had something to do with the chemical being impure, so one could get rid of lumps and check for impurities that wouldn't dissolve; it also may have been out of habit, to make it seem more like liquid yeast.

Around the same time, mid-century or a few years after, baking powder started coming into use, and became even more widespread as the end of the century progressed. If one sees "baking powder" before mid-century or in some contexts even after that, it may be referring to baking soda or saleratus, which were also called yeast powders.

Soda and saleratus made food rise, of course, because they were alkali, and when combined with an acid--usually sour milk, but also molasses or occasionally cream of tartar or tartaric acid or another acid--they reacted and produced carbon dioxide. Sometimes before mid-century, especially for making carbonated drinks, powdered acid and alkali were sold in sets of measured papers, white and blue. Here's a typical example of the use of "yeast powder" and the two separate powders, from 1847.

Baking powder was an attempt to combine the acid and alkali in the proper combination in a single powder. The problem was preventing it from reacting too soon, if it gathered dampness. Period cookbooks cautioned to keep it well stoppered, and companies used various fillers to produce a suitable powder. All the baking powder, though, was "single acting," meaning it began to react as soon as it was mixed into the moist batter, so just like soda, you had to have the oven hot and get the batter baking fairly quickly--not really a problem, since cooks were used to that.

Typical modern baking powder is double-acting, meaning it reacts a little when moistened, then reacts again when heated, so one can take more time getting it in the oven.

As for liquid vanilla extract, yes, it's been around a long time, but I got curious about its context in period recipes. From what I've seen, recipes for things we associate with it, usually had rosewater or another flavoring in the early 19th century such as cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon, etc., and then vanilla gradually increased as a popular flavoring as the century went on. "Extract," used without a qualifier, generally referred to a solid extract, or powder, in the early century, while liquid extracts gradually became more common by the 1860s. When vanilla was specified in recipes in the first half of the century, it was often as a vanilla bean, and one still sees that interspersed with other recipes that called for the extract, even in the 1860s.

So there's no single thing which makes the recipe sound rewritten, but taking all its attributes together: the complete list of ingredients precisely specified by volume, the use of vanilla extract rather than other flavorings, the use of baking powder, etc., all make it sound like a brand new, unusual recipe of the 1860s or an 1860s recipe adapted by someone familiar with late 19th/20th century foods. It's the same sense a person who's looked at a lot of photographs gets, when someone shows one that seems like it's post-war, even though there's nothing obviously post-war about it--just the little details of a hairstyle, the subtle cut of a man's coat sleeve, the style of studio background, the typeface of the photographer's name. Any of it could be pre-1865, but it would be odd to find them all together then, and more common to find them all later when they were typical.

But the best way to keep honing one's sense of what's period and what isn't, is to ask about things that don't seem right, and find out more, which is why I asked.

Whew. My apologies for the long post. I dread hitting "reply" now, because I've probably come across as even worse of a jerk than before. But at least y'all know a bit more about what kind of a jerk I am, LOL, and that my interest in foodway details is sincere and not just an attempt to be superficially argumentative or annoying. And maybe some of the above is informative too, hopefully.

I'll be glad to post sources and discuss evidence and research and so forth, if anybody's interested, but didn't want to go to all that trouble if, as I suspect, all that trivia isn't really important to anybody else but me. It still may be better if I just bow out of this section, rather than bore and annoy y'all.

That trivia does not bore anyone. What you post enriches us all.
 
Grinding up lump sugar and using it would not be unheard of....nor would white sugar.

I totally agree. My only quibble whatsoever on that point, is if a recipe is supposed to be something with the cheapest ingredients, for hard times. For normal baking, absolutely, white sugar would/could be used, no problem.
 
I totally agree. My only quibble whatsoever on that point, is if a recipe is supposed to be something with the cheapest ingredients, for hard times. For normal baking, absolutely, white sugar would/could be used, no problem.

Point well taken. I mean, where the heck do you get the stuff once you get to New Mexico? :smile:

However, I do recall folks pooling their little stores of various items to have something nice on special occasions. I bet J.E.B. Stuart could find sugar anywhere. :smile:
 
Oops...vanilla can easily be made into an extract with brandy. So can a number of other items. If it stretches the vanilla bean (which was always expensive), I'm pretty sure some thrifty cooks made extracts at home and used them.

Okay, that's something I'd like to learn more about. I've dabbled a little in the making of syrups and ketchups and similar food storage methods--just a smidge--and know they were "principally designed to flavor sauces and gravies, at a time when the fresh materials cannot be procured," as the Kentucky Housewife (1839) says about catchups. But I'm curious about vanilla, if it was made as an extract at home before it was made commercially, how its price compared to other things, and so forth.
 
Okay, that's something I'd like to learn more about. I've dabbled a little in the making of syrups and ketchups and similar food storage methods--just a smidge--and know they were "principally designed to flavor sauces and gravies, at a time when the fresh materials cannot be procured," as the Kentucky Housewife (1839) says about catchups. But I'm curious about vanilla, if it was made as an extract at home before it was made commercially, how its price compared to other things, and so forth.
homemade ketchups? that interests me..
 
Okay, that's something I'd like to learn more about. I've dabbled a little in the making of syrups and ketchups and similar food storage methods--just a smidge--and know they were "principally designed to flavor sauces and gravies, at a time when the fresh materials cannot be procured," as the Kentucky Housewife (1839) says about catchups. But I'm curious about vanilla, if it was made as an extract at home before it was made commercially, how its price compared to other things, and so forth.

Well, start with the price of a vanilla bean, plus brandy. Here's a recipe--admittedly modern, but I can't find my original old one; same principle, though:


Homemade Vanilla Extract
Ingredients:

-Jar or Bottle
-Vanilla Beans in your favorite variety (rule of thumb is 5 beans per 1 cup of alcohol)
-Vodka, Bourbon, Rum or Brandy
Directions:

1. Use a knife to split the bean in half, leave about ½ inch at each end intact.
2. Put your vanilla beans in your glass bottle or jar and cover with vodka.
3. Close jar or bottle and store in a cool, dry place for at least 8 weeks. Give the bottle a shake every week or so. As you use the vanilla, simply add in more liquor to replace what you have used.
 
James B. White Thanks for your posts. Possibly you would like to co-host this forum. You have done probably so much more than the rest of us with the recipes (receipts) from this time period.

I am no expert at foods or anything. I just enjoy reading about foods from all eras and cultures. I collect cookbooks and recipes. My Mom , and both my grandmothers, were excellent cooks. I learned from them but will never be equal to them.

It is just fun to cook different recipes to share with family and friends. Since both my husband and myself have interest in Civil War, thought appropriate to learn the foods served during this time.

It seemed there was an interest on the forum for this forum on food, so because many recommended me to be host, I agreed. I know I am no expert but if one has an interest that really counts a lot. Again, thanks to all who thought I be good host for this forum.
 
James B. White Thanks for your posts. Possibly you would like to co-host this forum.

I wish I had the time, but unfortunately I just couldn't commit to something like that, with all the other things I've got going on. Plus, I have a feeling you're much better suited to it. If what I consider a routine question about the original source of a recipe is met with misunderstanding or hostility, then I probably enjoy talking about period food in a different way than most others here. Not a criticism, or an implication that one way is better than another, just an acknowledgment that most folks are looking for something more like what you can offer.

its not hard to understand,the first recipe i gave was "modernized" i take it,so i gave you a authentic recipe. No comment?

My apologies for not answering this comment earlier. For some reason, it didn't show up for me, until I opened the thread this morning.

I saw the recipe in post #8, but it sounded modernized for similar reasons to the first one, and had no citation to a source, so there didn't seem anything to comment on.
 
homemade ketchups? that interests me..

Most every period cookbook has loads of them, sometimes in with pickles, since the food preservation aspect is similar, preservation with acidity.

The Kentucky Housewife (1839) has a nice selection:

http://books.google.com/books?id=vs5Hjd8mi74C&pg=PA171&output=html and on to the next few pages.

So does Miss Leslie (1844):

http://books.google.com/books?id=jH0EAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA174&output=html

So does Mrs. E. F. Haskell (1861):

http://books.google.com/books?id=oz4EAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA286&output=html

One can see there's not a whole lot of change in 20 years from the basic form, though of course variations from cook to cook.

Walnut, mushroom, tomato and lemon seem to be the more commonly mentioned ones in the period, but clearly a wide variety existed and were used. Like many period preserved foods--ham, pickles, corned beef, etc.--they tend to taste stronger than their modern counterparts, because the salt or vinegar is part of the preservation process rather than just for flavor.

They were also sold commercially, as can be seen from newspapers ads, such as this from the Dec. 30, 1859 Dawson's Fort Wayne Daily Times, available on Ancestry.com:

Table Fruits! Peaches. Quinces. Plums, Pine Apples, Preserved Quinces, Fresh and Pickled Lobsters, Walnut & Tomato Catsup, Fresh Turkey Figs, at Henry Dils.

Or the Oct. 19, 1861 Daily Zanesville [Ohio] Courier, available at ancestry.com:
Tomato Catsup and Pepper Sauce, by the dozen or bottle, at Guthrie Bro's.

To see how to use them, one can search for the catsup name, as used in other recipes, instead of recipes for the catsup itself. Rather than normally being added separately after a meal was cooked--though that was also done--as we do with tomato catsup today, they were very often incorporated in a gravy or sauce during cooking. For example, here's Mrs. Haskell's recipe using mushroom catsup:

http://books.google.com/books?id=oz4EAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA102&output=html
"Stewed Loin Of Mutton To Resemrle Venison.—Take out the bones and boil them for the gravy. Season the fat and lean before rolling up. In every other respect, proceed as in Stewed Venison. Add to the gravy mushroom catsup, whether the wine is used or not, and thicken with butter and flour. Serve with onions, parsnips, turnips, and potatoes."
Or Miss Leslie, who doesn't specify, and lets you choose your own flavor. This is also a nice recipe because it gives a glimpsed into the context in which it could be made and served:

http://books.google.com/books?id=jH0EAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA83&output=html
HASHED BEEF.
Take some roast beef that has been very much under-done, and having cut off the fat and skin, put the trimmings with the bones broken up into a stew-pan with two large onions sliced, a few sliced potatoes, and a bunch of sweet herbs. Add about a pint of warm water, or broth if you have it. This is to make the gravy. Cover it closely, and let it simmer for about an hour. Then skim and strain it, carefully removing every particle of fat.

Take another stew-pot, and melt in it a piece of butter, about the size of a large walnut. When it has melted, shake in a spoonful of flour. Stir it a few minutes, and then add to it the strained gravy. Let it come to a boil, and then put to it a table-spoonful of catchup, and the beef cut either in thin small slices or in mouthfuls. Let it simmer from five to ten minutes, but do not allow it to boil, lest (having bee cooked already) it should become tasteless and insipid.

Serve it up in a deep dish with thin slices of toast cut into triangular or pointed pieces, the crust omitted. Dip the toast in the gravy, and lay the pieces in regular order round the sides of the dish.

You may hash mutton or veal in the same manner, adding sliced carrots, turnips, potatoes, or any vegetables you please. Tomatas are an improvement.

To hash cold meat is an economical way of using it; but there is little or no nutriment in it after being twice cooked, and the natural flavour is much impaired by the process.

Hashed meat would always be much better if the slices were cut from the joint or large piece as soon as it leaves the table, and soaked in the gravy till next day.
Or the Virginia Housewife (1838), using tomato catsup:

http://books.google.com/books?id=R4YEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PR44&output=html
"TO DRESS LAMB'S HEAD AND FEET. Clean them very nicely, and boil them till tender, take off the flesh from the head with the eyes, also mince the tongue and heart, which must be boiled with the head; split the feet in two, put them with the pieces from the head and the mince, into a pint of good gravy, seasoned with pepper, salt, and tomato catsup, or ripe tomatos: stew it till tender, thicken the gravy, and lay the liver cut in slices and broiled over it—garnish with crisp parsley and bits of curled bacon."

Needless to say, recipe books are proscriptive rather than descriptive, and therefore may not reflect what people actually did, though they provide more details into foods than any other source.
 
So I made this recipe for our Civil War food night at book club. That four cups of water is way too much. I filled up the muffin tins about 1/3 to 1/2 the way full then poured the water and raisin mixture over it, though had lots left over. The two parts never blended. I ended up with a thin muffin top and watery raisins on the bottom. Of course it could have been an idiot making the recipe, but there ya go.
 
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