The artichoke is actually the bud of a giant thistle, harvested before it blooms. To this day, the bulk of American-grown artichokes are grown in California. They have never been terribly popular in this country. Their outer leaves are largely inedible and the center “chokes” consist of bitter filaments, taking more time to prepare than most home cooks are willing to commit. So, when artichokes began appearing on restaurant menus in California at the end of the 19th century, they were an expensive treat enjoyed by the higher echelons of society.

Artichokes Barigoule appeared on the menu of San Francisco’s illustrious Palace Hotel as early as 1879. Helen Evans Brown published the recipe in her historic 1952 West Coast Cook Book. Barigoule is a classic French Provençal preparation of artichokes which involves stuffing them with a mushroom forcemeat and braising them in wine or broth. Today, you’ll see Artichokes Barigoule on menus stuffed with any number of things including cheese, spinach, ground pork, or bread crumbs, but mushroom forcemeats like the recipe below are traditional.

TIPS AND TRICKS

Preparing an artichoke is one of the more challenging culinary preparations. The leaves are tough and the fibrous choke must be carefully and completely removed to avoid a sickening bitter taste permeating the dish.

Use a sharp chef’s knife to chop off the top of the artichoke, exposing the choke. Use a metal spoon to scoop out the choke into a bowl and be careful that the choke fibers don’t end up getting into any of the other food. You can rinse out artichoke to clean out any remaining fibers.

A good pair of kitchen scissors will help you trim the leaves. While the recipe below suggests dunking them in “acidulated water” after trimming the leaves, you can achieve the same result by rubbing the artichoke with lemon juice. This helps prevent browning. Alternatively you can use 1/4 cup lemon juice to two cups of water.

A forcemeat can be created by passing all of the ingredients into a meat grinder, or alternatively spinning them in a food processor. For a chunkier result, you can chop all the ingredients finely and mix them together by hand.

THE TAKE-AWAY

These are a beautiful labor of love, perfect as a starter for an impressive at-home dinner or on its own for an elaborate but light lunch. While preparation does get faster the more you do it, it is easy to see why artichokes haven’t become a more popular vegetable outside those creamy “spinach artichoke” appetizers so popular today. Just as it was a century ago, preparing this dish for guests is a sign that you care and that you’re willing to go the extra mile to create an experience for them.

And eating artichokes IS an experience – there is a ritual to it akin to the making of a nice pot of tea. Starting from the outside and working your way in, you peal away at the leaves, perhaps dipping them in a bit of melted butter, and you scrape the little morsels of soft artichoke flesh into your mouth with the backs of your teeth. Dipping once in awhile to the meat and mushroom stuffing provides a complimentary flavor and texture that leads you down, finally, to the artichoke heart waiting at the bottom. Much like its preparation, the eating of Artichokes Barigoules takes time. It is leisurely and indulgent, and perfect for those meals where nobody is in a hurry.

Palace Hotel’s “Artichokes Barigoule” from Helen Brown’s West Coast Cook Book (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1952)

4 artichokes
4 slices bacon
1/4 cup minced shallots
1/2 cup minced mushrooms
1 tablespoon minced parsley
salt and pepper
Nutmeg
1/2 cup stock or wine
olive oil

Trim and boil 4 artichokes for 5 minutes, drain, and remove chokes, then put in cold acidulated water. Make a forcemeat with 4 slices of minced bacon, 1/4 cup of minced shallots, 1/2 cup of minced mushrooms, a tablespoon of minced parsley, salt, pepper, and a little nutmeg. Stuff the artichokes, tie a string around each to keep the filling in, and brown on all sides in olive oil. Add 1/2 cup of stock or wine, or a combination of the two, and bake until tender. Remove strings before serving to four persons.

We can owe the entire bundt cake phenomenon to one single recipe: the Tunnel of Fudge cake.

Following World War II, a man named H. David Dahlquist returned home to Minneapolis after serving in the Navy. With a degree in chemical engineering, he founded a small bake-ware company called Nordic Ware. In 1950, members of the women’s Zionist group Hadassah approached Dahlquist and asked him to create a modern pan to make the classic European pastry kugelhopf – a tall, brioche cake baked in ceramic molds. The company developed a round, aluminum tube pan and trademarked the name “bundt.”

Ella Rita Helfrich, second place winner in the 1966 Pillsbury Bake-Off, places a bundt pan with her prize-winning Tunnel of Fudge cake in the oven.

For the next 16 years, the company barely sold any of the new pans. Several times the company considered discontinuing it. Recipes for bundt or “fluted tube” cakes occasionally appeared in cookbooks, but none of them were terribly popular.

Enter Mrs. Ella Helfrich of Houston, Texas. In 1966, she came in 2nd place in the annual Pillsbury Bake-Off competition with the Tunnel of Fudge Cake, a chocolate-nut bundt cake that seemingly magically baked with a fudgy center. Helfrich lost out to Mrs. Mari Petrelli’s Golden Gate Snack Bread, but her recipe became one of Pillsbury’s most requested recipes. Over 200,000 letters poured in, not only requesting the recipe but information about where to purchase the unique cake pans.

To meet the demand for bundt pans, Dahlquist put his factory into round-the-clock production, eventually turning out 30,000 pans a day. Within four years, he licensed the “bundt” name to Pillsbury. Pillsbury created a ready-made cake mix line specifically for bundts, and sold packages that included the bundt pans and mixes. For the next twenty years, bundt cakes were a staple dessert in the American kitchen. Several of the original bundt pans made by Dahlquist are now in the collections of the Smithsonian.

At some point, Pillsbury unexpectedly discontinued the key ingredient in the recipe – their Double Dutch Fudge Buttercream Frosting Mix. The outcry was so immense, Pillsbury brought the powdered mix back for a time though they eventually did discontinue the mix permanently. Responding to demand, they published an adapted recipe that attempted to recreate the frosting mix using powdered sugar and cocoa. The new recipe also includes a chocolate glaze for the cake.

To this day, the Tunnel of Fudge cake remains the most popular recipe in the history of the Pillsbury Bake-Off competition.

TIPS AND TRICKS

Follow the instructions carefully. It is absolutely essential to use nuts in this recipe. The fudgey center doesn’t form without them. Walnuts were used in the first printed recipe from Pillsbury, but the recipe’s inventor, Mrs. Helfrich, used pecans.

It is also important to grease and flour your pan to ensure the cake removes cleanly. Carefully work a half tablespoon of butter into all of the folds of the pan. Add a couple tablespoons of flour into the pan and roll the pan to evenly coat the edges. Shake out the excess flour.

Some people attempt to follow the original recipe using canned frosting. The ingredient the original recipe refers to was a powdered mix used to make frosting. Canned frosting won’t work. The adaptation Pillsbury made attempts to recreate the powdered mix at home.

In an article for the New York Times, Shirley O. Corriher suggests toasting the nuts before adding them to the batter for enhanced flavor.

THE TAKE-AWAY

The annual Pillsbury Bake-Off has become one of the great American culinary traditions. While the general public doesn’t follow it with the same level of fanaticism it once did, it captures the creative ingenuity of the experimental home baker, and no other recipe captures the spirit of the Pillsbury Bake-Off more than the Tunnel of Fudge cake. It’s worth making it for this reason alone.

The original recipe magically produced a gooey ring of fudge in the center of the cake. Unfortunately, the adapted recipe from Pillsbury does not produce quite the same affect, though the inside still has a soft fudge-like taste.

This is a recipe that suggests classic retro baking, while still appealing to contemporary tastes. Yes, it’s a bit labor intensive compared to buying a cake or using a mix. It’s also gimmicky, but that’s partly the appeal. It is a crowd-pleaser and a conversation piece for your next special occasion. And with nearly four cups of sugar in the cake alone, it has enough to satisfy even the most fickle of sweet-tooths.

Original 1966 Recipe:
Tunnel of Fudge Cake
by Mrs. C. J. Helfrich, Houston Texas

1 1/2 cups soft Land O’Lakes Butter
6 eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 cups Pillsbury’s Best Flour
1 package Pillsbury Two Layer Size Double Dutch Fudge Buttercream Frosting Mix (*see note above)
3 cups chopped Diamond Walnuts

Oven 350 degrees. 10-inch tube cake. Cream butter in large mixer bowl at high speed of mixer. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each. Gradually add sugar; continue creaming at high speed until light and fluffy. By hand, stir in flour, frosting mix and walnuts until well blended. Pour batter into greased Bundt pan or 10-inch tube pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 60 to 65 minutes. Cool 2 hours; remove from pan. Cool completely before serving.

From The Pillsbury Busy Lady Bake-Off Recipes (1966)

Pillsbury’s Modern Adaptation:
Cake
1 3/4 cups sugar
1 3/4 cups margarine or butter, softened
6 eggs
2 cups powdered sugar
2 1/4 cups Pillsbury BEST® All Purpose or Unbleached Flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
2 cups chopped walnuts

Glaze
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
4 to 6 teaspoons milk

Heat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour 12-cup fluted tube cake pan or 10-inch tube pan. In large bowl, combine sugar and margarine; beat until light and fluffy. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually add 2 cups powdered sugar; blend well. By hand, stir in flour and remaining cake ingredients until well blended. Spoon batter into greased and floured pan; spread evenly.

Bake at 350°F. for 45 to 50 minutes or until top is set and edges are beginning to pull away from sides of pan.** Cool upright in pan on wire rack 1 1/2 hours. Invert onto serving plate; cool at least 2 hours.

In small bowl, combine all glaze ingredients, adding enough milk for desired drizzling consistency. Spoon over top of cake, allowing some to run down sides. Store tightly covered.

Recipe from Pillsbury

Spring has finally sprung, and my first year teaching at Macalester College has come to an end. In Minneapolis, where I currently live, spring is a welcome sight after what are inevitably very long, very cold winters. Spring means t-shirts and shorts at the first hint of 40+ degree weather. Weeknights are spent around the city’s many lakes, and weekends bring a mass exodus from the city as families take to their cabins out in the woods.

Spring also brings flowers. And pollen. And if you suffer at all from allergies, you’ll want to know about switchel.

Also known as Harvest Drink, Harvest Beer, Swanky, Haymakers Punch, and a host of other aliases, switchel is a refreshing beverage that has been fortifying the American immune system since at least the founding of this nation.

At its most basic, switchel is water, cider vinegar, ginger and a sweetener (molasses, honey, sorghum, etc.). Rum, whiskey, brandy or hard cider can be added to give it a bit more oomph. I’ve seen some recipes, particularly in the south, that add cayenne pepper to the mix as a cold cure.

One of the earliest written references to switchel comes from Philip Freneau, known as the “Poet of the American Revolution,” in his 1789 poem “On the Demolition of an Old College.” Describing an incident at Dartmouth College where a group of students tried to take down an old log building, Freneau suggests switchel is not boozy enough to lead a man to destruction:

Relent, relent! to accomplish such designs “Folks bred on college fare are much too weak;” For such attempts men drink your high-proof wines,
Not spiritless switchel and vile hogo drams, “Scarcely sufficient to digest your Greek–“

Each cook had their own recipe for switchel. The amount of each ingredient depended largely on the personal tastes of those making it, and exact measuring wasn’t necessary – one would simply add more of something until it tasted right. Sweetners depended on what was available. Molasses was more common in New England where the rum trade from the Carribean made the black syrup a staple on pantry shelves. In the frontier, switchel would often be made with honey, and in the south, sorghum would be used to soften the beverage’s bite.

The spicy brew would often be made in large batches, and carried out into the fields in ceramic jugs. To keep it chilled, jugs would be stashed away under the shade of a tree or partially submerged in a cool stream. For centuries, farmers have sworn on switchel – claiming it quenches the thirst, clears the throat and nose of dirt and hay, provides a boost of energy, and keeps the body from getting sick.

Since switchel was mainly for farmers and those who toiled outside, recipes for it were left out of the earlier American cookbooks aimed at higher-class households. One of the earliest comes from Elizabeth Hall’s Practical American Cookery and Domestic Economy (1853).

TIPS AND TRICKS

Powdered ginger is traditional at least into the 19th century, but the powder never completely dissolves. If this bothers you, I’d recommend taking a large, peeled chunk of fresh ginger, cutting it into smaller chunks, and simmering it in six cups of water. Cook it down to five cups to make a strong ginger-infused base. Let it cool completely before adding the remaining ingredients. Note that this method will not produce as strong of a ginger flavor as it does using powdered.

I’ve seen a couple more recent recipes mention heating the mixture to help dissolve the powdered ginger. I doubt most farm cooks would have done this. Not only would you be using up a lot of fuel to cook it down, you’d be making it during the hotter seasons of the year, and you want the finished product as cool as possible. I also think that boiling switchel might kill some of the health benefits of the cider vinegar.

Try to get your hands on raw, unfiltered cider vinegar. You can get it online, as well as in health food stores and natural food co-ops.

If you are trying a sweetner other than molasses, realize it will have a different sugar content and you will need to add more or less to taste. Add a bit at a time and keep testing till you get the right proportion. If you add too much, you can always add more ginger, vinegar and water.

THE TAKE-AWAY

This is a remarkably refreshing beverage that I would easily make any time of the year. The vinegar and the ginger give it a nice bite, while the molasses keeps it from being overpowering. I was afraid it might be cloyingly sweet, or overly spicy, but Hall’s recipe is superbly balanced.

I can see the centuries-old appeal of switchel. You don’t need to heat anything. You’re using ingredients that don’t need to be prepared. It comes together quickly and can be stored for a decent amount of time. Switchel’s simplicity made it the base recipe for so many possible variations. Have company? Add rum and maybe some chopped fruit and a cinnamon stick to make a punch.

Switchel is experiencing something of a come-back in this age of home remedies and craft brewing. I have even heard of some entrepreneurial folks selling it in jars at farmers markets.

The variations on switchel can be plentiful. Let your imagination guide you and once you’ve tried it on its own, play with it. Remember that each household made it to their own tastes. Add muddled berries or sliced citrus fruits. Try it with a splash of bourbon and some crushed mint. Make a couple bottles for a picnic, or put it in mason jars with lids to take camping.

Harvest Drink. Mix with five gallons of good water, half a gallon of molasses, one quart of vinegar, and two ounces of powdered ginger. This will make not only a very pleasant beverage, but one highly invigorating and healthful.

From Practical American Cookery and Domestic Economy, Elizabeth Hall (Miller, Orton & Co: New York, 1853) [Link to 1860 edition]

Reduced Adaptation:
5 cups of cold water
½ cup of blackstrap molasses
¼ cup of apple cider vinegar (preferably raw, unfiltered)
3 tablespoons ground ginger

Mix ingredients thoroughly. Store in jars, jugs or bottles. Shake before serving. Serve cold.

Mary Randolph’s The Virginia Housewife may not be the first cookbook published in America, but many consider it the first truly regional American cookbook – with recipes that were forged out of necessity and using local ingredients.

During the colonial period, cookbooks were imported or brought with immigrants to the New World. Cookbooks printed in the colonies during this time were imprints of books published in other countries. One of the first cookbooks published in the newly formed United States was Amelia Simmons’ American Cookery (1796), which was one of the first to include recipes for cornmeal and other new foods. I’ve explored her work before when I tried her recipe for Pound Cake, which – true to its name – uses a pound each of flour, sugar, butter and eggs.

But Randolph went particularly local with the Virginia Housewife, setting the standard for what southern (and in particular, Virginian) cuisine would taste like. It includes recipes for Okra Soup and Barbecued Shote (a young hog). 175 years later, the book is still in print and is a frequent inspiration for chefs today.

In honor of the anniversary of Randolph’s birth on August 9, I thought it’d be the perfect time to try out one of her recipes. Tomatoes are in season right now through much of the country and so I followed her advice “To Scollop Tomatos.”

Tomatoes have a long and rich history in global food traditions. Scientists generally agree they come from South America originally. They were brought to Europe by the Spanish in the 16th century where, believing they were poisonous, they were cultivated as curiosities from the New World. They started appearing in recipes in Southern Europe (Spain, Italy, Southern France) during the 17th century.

According to Andrew Smith in his book The Tomato in America, the English herbalist William Salmon identified tomatoes growing in present-day South Carolina as early as 1687 – likely introduced to the area by Spanish settlers in Florida. By the time Randolph published her cookbook, tomatoes were being grown and consumed along the entire east coast at least as far north as Massachusetts.

To “scollop” or scallop, is a French culinary term to bake something with a creamy sauce and breadcrumbs. The recipe highlights the influence French cuisine already had on America – being our closest allies during the American Revolution. Third President Thomas Jefferson was an enormous fan of French cuisine and helped to popularize it this country during the early 19th century. Randolph would have been heavily influenced by this, as her brother married Jefferson’s daughter Martha.

TIPS AND TRICKS

Most store-bought tomatoes have been genetically engineered to be perfectly round and red. This process has also stripped tomatoes of almost all their flavor. Try to get some heirloom tomatoes for this dish if you want to taste anything other than the seasoning. Smell them before you buy them. If the tomato doesn’t smell like tomatoes, it won’t taste like them either. The amount you’ll need depends on the size of your dish, because you’ll want at least two layers. I had about 4 lbs which seemed just right.

If you’ve never skinned tomatoes, fear not. It couldn’t be easier. The best way to skin tomatoes is to cut a small x through the skin of the bottom of the tomato with a paring knife. Drop them in boiling water for about 5-10 seconds, or until you begin to see the skin peeling away from the cut you made. Lift it out immediate with a slotted spoon. You may want to speed this process by dropping them all in the boiling water at once, but even after you remove them, the heat will be retained in the tomato until you peel it, so unless you work awfully quickly, you’re going to end up peeling mushy tomatoes by the end.

To make your own bread crumbs, slice a loaf of bread in thick chunks, and bake them at a low temperature until they dry out – about 325F for 30-40 minutes depending on the kind of bread and the thickness you cut it. Use a hand grater or, if you’re feeling more modern, run it through a food processor.

Given that ovens didn’t have temperature gauges, recipes from the time might only refer to the oven as “quick” meaning very hot or something like it. This does not include any mention of temperature, as the cook was simply to know how to bake things and how to handle their fire or oven. In this case, I’d recommend 375F for about 30 minutes, keeping a watchful eye to prevent burning.

THE TAKE-AWAY

I admit, first and foremost, that this recipe reminded me very quickly that I really detest large hot pieces of tomato – a fact I’d completely forgotten. Which is unfortunate, because I really wanted to like it. Something about the texture and flavor reminds me of cooked watermelon. Tomato soup? Awesome. Tomato sauce? I’m a happy camper. Fresh cool tomatoes? Heaven. But this…

Perhaps some of the fault also lies with the butter. It certainly imparts the creaminess one would want in a ‘scalloped’ food, but it combines with the tomato juices and, well, really – lets just say it’s a bit heavy.

Now, all this being said, I would happily cook a variation of this recipe where the tomatoes would be chopped smaller, the breadcrumbs would be seasoned more, some chopped basil and garlic were tossed about, perhaps a light drizzle of olive oil substituted for the butter and some shaved parmesan scattered on top.

I realized this even while I was assembling the food and fought the urge to doctor the recipe, because I really do feel it’s important to try it the way it was meant to be prepared before I go making wild adjustments. Unless you’re a food history stickler like me, perhaps you will allow my sacrifice of some beautiful heirloom tomatoes so that you won’t have to.

Whether you change the recipe or not, the dish goes well as a side for beef or lamb roasts, or as a compliment to pasta. However, unless you change the recipe, it is a bit too heavy as a stand-alone dish.

From Mary Randolph’s The Virginia Housewife (Baltimore: Plaskitt, Fite, 1838)

If memory serves, this week’s “Retro Recipe” began as a dare some months ago when a friend and colleague posted a photo of Ham Banana Rolls to my Facebook page. Like many, my first reaction was repulsion. The combination of ham, bananas, mustard and cheese does not appeal to contemporary palates like perhaps it once did.

But consider that bananas and ham often appear together in recipes of the Pacific and Caribbean. Much like pineapple, bananas represented adventure and far-off exotic places in the American imaginary as early as the 1830s when they began appearing in markets in major cities. The growth of the railway in 1880s allowed perishable imported foods to reach the midwest, at which point cookbooks began including a variety of banana recipes including creams, custards, cakes, pies, and even ice creams.

In Bananas: An American Story, Virginia Scott Jenkins recounts a story from the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. A forty-acre display of tropical plants in the Horticulture Hall included large banana tree. It was so popular that a guard had to be posted nearby to discourage people from tearing the plant apart for souvenirs. Interestingly, it was the same year that bananas appeared in Philadelphia markets, wrapped in tin foil. They were sold at ten cents each, which was equivalent to an hour’s wage for most people. It wasn’t really until after WWII that bananas went from being a luxury food to an inexpensive kitchen staple – thanks in large part to the efforts of the Dole and Chiquita and companies.

The United Fruit Company, parent company of Chiquita, advertised this recipe for decades from the post-war period through the 1970s. This particular advertisement suggests Ham and Banana Rolls as part of a luncheon menu that also includes a mixed vegetable salad and a hot gingerbread with whipped cream.

TIPS AND TRICKS

You need to use bananas that are slightly green, otherwise they will fall apart after baking. Most grocery stores sell them this way. If yours are ripe or over ripe, it will be better to make a banana bread or cake.

The kind of prepared mustard you use is a matter of preference. American “French style” yellow mustard will give more tang from the vinegar, while Dijon or brown mustard will offer a spicier kick.

The kind of cheese you use is also a matter of preference. American cheese, as suggested, melts easier because of the higher oil content – as Velveeta or Kraft. If you’re intending to serve these as an interesting appetizer for a nicer dinner party, I would recommend an aged cheddar. This basic recipe for cheese sauce was a kitchen staple that many cooks and housewives could make without referencing a recipe card. It is useful with any number of recipes.

THE TAKE-AWAY

Once people get over their initial repulsion over the idea of this recipe, their first question is inevitably “What does it taste like?”

First, unripe bananas – even after baking – have a starch-to-sugar ratio of 25:1 (a ratio that changes dramatically to 1:20 when ripened). So if you’re expecting a bizarre combination of savory and sweet, you’ll be disappointed. Unripened bananas and plantains are much more related to potatoes than fruits. A friend of mine described the flavor of the baked banana as being similar to baked artichoke hearts. And so much of what you taste is the sweetness of the ham, a bit of tang from the mustard, and the zip from whatever kind of cheese you use from the sauce.

Much like the others in the Retro Recipes series, this dish captures the flavors, ingredients and cooking methods of the times.

6 thin slices boiled ham
prepared mustard
6 firm bananas
cheese sauce

Spread each slice of ham lightly with mustard. Wrap a slice of the prepared ham around each banana. Place in a buttered shallow baking pan and pour cheese sauce over bananas. Bake in a moderate oven (350F) 30 minutes, or until bananas are tender… easily pierced with a fork.
Six servings.
Serve hot with cheese sauce from the pan poured over each roll.

To Make Cheese Sauce:
1 1/2 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 tablespoons flour
3/4 cup milk
1 1/2 cups grated American cheese

Melt butter, add flour and stir until smooth. Stir in milk slowly. Add cheese and cook, stirring constantly until sauce is smooth and thickened. Makes about 1 cup sauce.

Few foods are more characteristic of the Virginia / Maryland area than crab. The difficulty in catching them made them a special treat for colonists, but by the early 19th century crabs were often available for purchase at markets.

This recipe for Crab Soup is often credited to the first First Lady, Martha Washington, though it does not appear in any of her cookbooks. Her Booke of Cookery includes a recipe for stewing, but nothing quite like this soup recipe. We do know that Washington had a first edition copy of Hannah Glasse’s popular The Art of Cookery (1747) – which is still in the collection at Mount Vernon. Glasse offers a recipe to “To dress a Crab” which involves stewing the crab meat with white wine, nutmeg, pepper and an egg yolk, but again, the result would not have been much like a soup.

The first references to a “Washington Crab Soup” first appear in the late 19th century. All of them are notably different from one another. But by the 1930s, the crab soup recipe was mostly standardized. I found at least four recipes from the period that are similar in ingredients and preparation. It was around this time that the recipe was added to the White House repertoire. The soup is said to have been a favorite of Franklin Roosevelt and was also served during the Eisenhower administration.

It was common to make crab soup with hard boiled eggs. Fertile female crabs with their roe were highly sought for their flavor and color, but were very expensive. The flecks of yolk in the soup mimicked the presence of roe – a little bit of 19th century cookery deception.

Worcestershire sauce is a latter day addition – Lea and Perrin did not begin selling the sauce until 1838, over thirty years after the Washingtons had died. However, anchovies were often added to crab dishes – particularly in the south during the Antebellum years when the Washington Crab Soup recipes began appearing (anchovy being one of the main ingredients in Worcestershire sauce).

While this soup may not be traceable back to the First President, Washington – who was a fan of simply prepared meals and seafood – would have likely enjoyed it.

TIPS AND TRICKS

Because this is such a simple dish with so few ingredients, it helps to use the best quality available. Use the freshest milk and cream you can get your hands on. If at all possible, also try to get fresh crab. Being a lowly, underpaid graduate student living in the midwest and far from the ocean, I went with canned crab meat. While it wasn’t bad – it would have been markedly better with fresher crab. If you must use canned crab meat, get the lump meat, rather than the flaked white.

This recipe doesn’t take long to make – just a few minutes more than it takes to boil milk. Like any good chef, be sure to have all of your ingredients prepared before hand, including the hard boiled eggs.

Never rapidly boil milk. Heat it on medium to medium low, stirring frequently to prevent a skin from forming.

Don’t let the grated lemon rind or eggs put you off. The lemon flavor is subtle and gives this simple soup a bit more complexity. The eggs become part of the roux and are hardly noticeable with the crab meat – and, as mentioned above, it gives the soup a bit of color.

THE TAKE-AWAY

This is a remarkably simple and tasty soup, perfect for summers when you don’t want to spend the day over a hot stove but still want something a bit substantial. It is rare to have such a dish anymore – today, it would probably be served with creme fraiche and chives. And indeed that would be delicious. But it is also worth making as-is. Indeed, this soup would be ideal as a palate cleanser between courses.

If you wanted to add a bit more body to the soup and still be entirely appropriate to the time period, you could add fried bacon lardons, fresh sweet corn, and/or diced cooked potatoes at the point in the recipe where the crab meat is added to the milk mixture.

This recipe makes about 6 servings of soup as a meal, and probably twice as much if served as part of a multi-course meal. Serve this soup with thick sliced corn bread or oyster crackers.

1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon flour
3 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and mashed
grated rind of 1 lemon
salt and pepper
4 cups fresh milk
1/2 pound cooked fresh crab meat or 1 cup canned or frozen lump crab meat
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup sherry
Worcestershire sauce

Combine butter and flour in a soup pot. Stir in mashed hard-boiled eggs, grated lemon and salt and pepper to taste. Bring milk almost to a boil in a saucepan. Pour it slowly into the egg mixture, stirring to combine. Add crab meat and heat through gently, for about ten minutes. Stir in cream, and bring soup back to a near boil. Remove from heat and stir in sherry and two dashes of Worcestershire sauce. Serve hot.

Anyone who grew up in the United States was likely taught the apocryphal story of the child George Washington who chopped down a cherry tree, and when confronted by his father, he confessed “I cannot tell a lie. I chopped it down with my little hatchet.” While this childhood lesson of honesty is undoubtedly a myth, it is true that Washington was something of a cherry fanatic.

There is little doubt that Martha and her household were capable of making the grandest of cuisines. But her husband grew up in relative poverty, and never grew accustomed to the fancier foreign foods served at wealthier estates. Future presidents like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison had distinctly French tastes in food and wine. If you are what you eat, Washington was a Virginian, through and through. The Mount Vernon estate where the Washingtons lived was entirely self sufficient, producing all the food and beverage they would need for the year, with the remainder sold to market.

The Washingtons did not have children together, but Martha had four children with her first husband. According to her grandson Custis, the first president “ate heartily, but was not particular in his diet, with the exception of fish, of which he was excessively fond. He partook sparingly of dessert, drank a home-made beverage, and from four to five glasses of Madeira wine.”

We are remarkably fortunate that the family cookbook survived all these years. It likely dates to the 17th century, and many of the recipes are English – her mother being of English and Welsh decent. Martha received the cookbook in 1749 on the occasion of her first marriage to Daniel Custis at the age of 18. Custis was a wealthy farmer and land owner twenty years her senior, who died when Martha was 25. Widowed and wealthy, she married General Washington at 27 in a lavish ceremony and became Lady Martha Custis Washington. She had and used the cookbook for much of her life until 1799 when she passed it along to her only granddaughter Eleanor Parke Custis when the young girl married Lawrence Lewis. The manuscript has since been printed in various editions, most notably by Karen Hess who edited and annotated the collection.

TIPS AND TRICKS

You can leave the cherries whole or pit them. Personally, I prefer to pit them first so they don’t have to be dealt with later.

If you happen to have a long-handled metal spoon, so much the better. Otherwise, a regular spoon will be fine – just be careful you don’t burn yourself scraping the foam from the edges of the pan.

If you do plan on keeping these cherries for some time, I would recommend pressure canning them for safety. Granted, this is not what the Washingtons would have done, but then again there were quite a lot of food-borne illnesses back then too. Save yourself the botulism and pressure can them, or eat them within a few weeks and keep it in the refrigerator.

THE TAKE-AWAY

Before refrigeration and pressure cookers, you pickled, salted, or sugared your foods to preserve them. This recipe for preserved cherries is simple and exemplifies the technique. Though home preserving has diminished in the age of canned goods, you still often see fruit canned in syrup. This homemade version using sugar is leaps and bounds better than the stuff you buy steeped in high fructose corn syrup.

As you can imagine, the end result is remarkably sweet. These cherries would likely have been eaten by themselves, but you could also use them for the base of a cherry pie or as a topping for ice cream or shortcake. You can bring some tartness back to them by adding a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. The remaining syrup could also be used as a flavoring to club soda or cocktails.

Like most recipes prior to the 20th century, the instructions are brief and assume basic knowledge of the cook. As such, I offer a more detailed version after presenting the original.

“To Preserue Cheries” from Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery and Booke of Sweetmeats (1749), Transcribed by Karen Hess, New York: Columbia University Press (1996)

Take 2 pound of faire cherries & clip of the stalks in ye midst. then wash them clean, but bruise them not. then take 2 pound of double refined sugar, & set it over ye fire with a quart of faire water in ye broadest preserving pan or silver basen as you can get. Let it seeth till it be some what thick, yn put in yr cherries, & let them boyle. keepe allwayes scumming & turning them gently with a silver spoon till they be enough. when they are cold, you may glass them up & keep them all the year.

ADAPTATION:

2 lbs of fresh cherries, stemmed
2 lbs sugar (4 cups)
1 quart water (4 cups)

Wash cherries, and pit them if desired. In a large saucepan or pot, make a syrup by adding sugar to boiling water. When sugar is completely dissolved, add cherries to the pot and return to a boil. Using a metal spoon, stir occasionally and remove as much foam that appears as possible. When cherries are soft and liquid has been reduced by about half, remove from heat and let cool.

This southern recipe is basically a sweet rice pudding made with eggs, butter, milk and sugar. Recipes for rice puddings are very old, and even the earliest records of civilization depict grain custards such as this. Rice was thought to have medicinal qualities and through the mid-20th century, it was often given to the sick and infirm. The Byzantine physician Anthimus even gave a recipe for it in his “On the Observance of Food” (530 A.D.) called oriza, which used goat milk and no sweetener.

As I mentioned in the recipe post for Hardtack, a naval blockade from the north prevented a great number of foods from being imported to the south, including wheat. Cooks needed to adapt many recipes to what was available, and starchy rice and potatoes were popular additions to breads and cakes as flour substitutes (rice being a popular crop in the marshy areas of Louisiana and South Carolina).

In fact, this recipe comes from a cookbook from the period that offers many such suggestions to help ease the discomfort of food shortages. The Confederate Receipt Book: A Compilation of Over One Hundred Receipts, Adapted to the Times was printed in 1863 in Richmond, Virginia on polka-dot wallpaper, since regular paper was in short supply. Only five copies of the cookbook are known to have survived, but it has been reprinted many times since then. Many of the recipes from this and other cookbooks like it would re-emerge during the Great Depression.

TIPS AND TRICKS

Custards generally benefit from using whole milk.

If you don’t have leftover cooked rice, boil about 1/2 a cup of uncooked white rice with 1 cup of water in a covered pot until the water is absorbed, which takes about 15-20 minutes.

Like making mayonaise, it helps to have all of your ingredients at room temperature. Take your eggs, milk and butter out of the fridge at least an hour prior to starting the recipe.

This is not really a recipe that stores well. It is meant to be cooked prior to serving, and eaten when it cools to room temperature.

THE TAKE-AWAY

At first, I was a bit worried that this pudding would be bland and eggy without the use of flavorings like vanilla or chocolate, but it had a sweet taste to it that didn’t need it – though it could be added if you wanted.

There are many who are put-off by the texture of rice pudding – the custard itself is smooth, but then you hit these rice grains. If it doesn’t bother you, then don’t be afraid of making rice puddings from scratch. Custards are one of those magic recipes like souffles that are hyped up to be much more difficult than they actually are. The two main things to remember is to keep stirring the custard and keep it on medium-low heat so that it doesn’t burn or curdle.

At a time of incredible hardship for much of the south, this would have been a sweet and filling treat to soothe the stomach. By the end of the war, however, sugar, eggs and butter were scarce and such a recipe would not likely have been possible except in the wealthiest of homes.

You’ll notice the recipe itself is rather brief. It was assumed the average cook knew the basics of making a custard. I’ve fleshed it out a bit in the adaptation below, but have stuck to the original recipe and proportions.

From Confederate Receipt Book: A Compilation of Over One Hundred Receipts, Adapted to the Times, Richmond, VA: West & Johnson, 1863.

“Take one cup of soft boiled rice, a pint of milk, a cup of sugar, three eggs, and piece of butter the size of an egg. Serve with sauce.”

Adaptation:

3 small eggs or two large eggs
2 cups of milk
1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons butter, soft
1 cup of cooked rice (see note above)

Beat the eggs with the milk, sugar and butter using a whisk. Stir in cooked rice, making sure the rice grains are un-clumped. Heat mixture in a saucepan over medium-low heat, stirring frequently with whisk. Mixture will thicken after about 25 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature. Yields four servings.

A caramel sauce is traditional, and can be made by heating 3 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan and stirring in 1/2 cup of sugar and 3 tablespoons of water. The sugar will caramelize and become pourable. Alternatively, towards the end of the war when sugar was scarce, molasses would likely have been poured over the top.