A few weeks ago, we were having dinner with some friends at their home. The house had been in the family for many generations, and as such, it continued to wield a number of treasures from its nooks and crannies.
The wife in the coupon had decided to clean out an old shed that was currently being used for both storage and a garage space. it was there that they found their latest discovery, a set of really old cookbooks.
These cookbooks were a real reflection on their times. Off-set type, hand-drawn lithographic like illustrations and text written in strong dialect. Some of it was hard to read for more ways that one. I’m not sure which was more disturbing, the frequent mentions of “mammies” and “darkies” or the recipes that would give even Jack Lalanne a heart attack. Actually, it was definitely the dialect and language, which to my modern eyes was highly offensive.
I tried to get past that to put myself, well, in the past. The poor typical “housewife” or hired cook in those days had to not only cook up the bacon, but kill and skin the pig, too. Or, if she was of a more enterprising sort, she could simply go out into her backyard, kill a stay possum, skin it, mash up it’s liver with a bit of lard, run its inside cavity with more lard, return the liver mix to the inside of the possum, sew it up and coat it in, wait for it…more lard, before deep frying it. If one had a bit of bacon, one could also tie the bacon to the outside of the possum before frying.
I have my own vintage cookbook at home, although it is of a much younger era, having been published in 1958, an Italian cookbook by Ada Boni, known as the Italian Fannie Farmer. The ingredients in this one are a little more recognizable to my pallet, but with some notable exceptions, such as the recipe for Frogs Legs Fricassee, which required the cook to clean 12 whole frogs.