Holiday Baking #44 More 1800’s Specialty Foods; Cookies, Fruit or Wedding Cake & Suet Pudding
December 14th
Just for fun, lets keep looking at some more 1800’s recipes.
Newberry Vermont 1864 through 1877
Cookies
5 cups of flour
1 cup of butter
2 cups of sugar
1 egg & a little rose water
1 teaspoonful of Saleratus
Caraway
Mrs. Wrights Cookies
8 cups of flour
2 cups of white sugar
1 cup of butter when you use cream (when milk is used, use more butter)
Saleratus & nutmeg
Drop Cake
8 eggs
1 pound of sugar
¼ pound of flour;
Drop half a teaspoonful on buttered tins and sprinkle sugar over them before baking.
Ok, Are you ready for this!! If you think that Mrs. George Washington’s Great Cake that starts with “Take 40 eggs” is something to see; I think this cake takes the, well, Cake! This is a Massive cake, which if it is for a wedding I can see why, but how many layers does this make? Are you ready? Here goes!
Wedding Cake
9 pounds of flour
9 pounds of sugar, nicely rolled & sifted
8 pounds of butter
10 pounds of raisins, after the stones are out
4 pounds of citron, cloves and nutmeg
19 pounds of currants
(Now this next ingredient is something, I just have a problem thinking it could really be this many eggs!)
110 eggs, take out the whites of 20 for frosting
1 bottle of Prestons Extract of lemon
Bake in papered pans from four to six hours. Stir in the fruit last thing.
Frosting for Cake
20 whites and
10 pounds of refined sugar nicely rolled & sifted
10 tablespoonfuls of pulverized starch
Juice of three lemons
2 teaspoonfuls of tartaric acid and season with extract of lemon. Whisk it to a froth. When the cake is almost cold put it on with a feather or knife. The cake is nicer to be made 3 or 4 days before it needed.
Martha’s Granddaughter’s recipe for a great cake. Martha Parke Custis 1781
To Make a Great Cake
Take 40 eggs & divide the whites from the yolks & beat them to a froth. Then work 4 pounds of butter to a cream and put the whites of eggs to it, a spoonful at a time till it is well worked. Then put 4 pounds of sugar finely powdered to it in the same manner then put in the yolks of eggs & 5 pounds of flour & pounds of fruit. 2 hours will bake it add to it half an ounce of mace 1 nutmeg half a pint of wine & some fresh brandy.
From the Mt. Vernon website; Martha’s Great Cake recipe, from the 1700’s.
“Nell Bayley’s Cookies”
2/3 cup of butter
1 cup of cream
2 cups of sugar
1 teaspoonful of saleratus or soda
Flour to roll
Suet Pudding
1 cup chopped suet
2 cups flour
2 cups milk
1 cup molasses
1 cup raisins
1 teaspoon soda. Steam two hours.
Sauce: 1 tablespoonful flour, 1 pt. boiling water, the juice of one lemon and quarter the peel, 4 spoonsful of sugar, let it boil (?up?) once.
(If I am unsure of a word I put in a (?) that represents what the word may be or that I just do not know.)
INGREDIENT REFERENCES and MEASUREMENTS
I have found several references that explains the equivalents to our modern measurements. Just a few examples are;
Gill – Pronounced Jill; equal to a quarter of a pint; or four fluid ounces which equals ½ cup.
Lump of (something) the size of a Turkey’s egg – equals 4 ounces
Lump of (something) the size of a chicken’s egg – equals 2 ounces.
Lump of Butter the size of a walnut – equals 1 ounce. (can also be 1 rounded tablespoon)
A Victorian measurement of a wine glassful, will not be the wine glass we think of today. They were much smaller, about ¼ cup to ½ cup. So, when using a recipe that askes for a wine glass full be sure to use a lot less than you would think about using from today’s size of glass.
Quite a few of these recipes call for; a coffee cupful. A teacup full, and a wineglass full.
A coffee cupful = 1 cup.
A tea cupful = 1/3 cup, I have also found it to be ¾ cup.
A wine glassful = ¼ cup, ½ gill or 4 T.
A Tumbler = ½ pint or 1 cup
Saleratus – From the Latin sal aerates, meaning “aerated salt”. A precursor to baking soda, it hit the market in 1840 and was a chalky powder used for the chemical leavening needed to produce carbon dioxide gas that gives the rise in your baked goods. It was made by adding carbonic acid to pearlash, changing the potassium carbonate into potassium bicarbonate.
It had replaced pearlash as the choice of leavening by 1850 but was soon replaced by baking soda in 1860; although baking soda was also called saleratus for a while; I have found recipes into the early 1900’s using the word saleratus instead of baking soda.
To substitute; per 1 teaspoon of saleratus, 1 ¼ teaspoons of baking soda.
https://www.cooksinfo.com/saleratus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_bicarbonate
Visit my ebay store to find some great kitchen utensils and collectables to go along with these vintage and antique recipes. https://www.ebay.com/str/ozziesattic720?_trksid=p2047675.l2563
