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kyburgWhat's this?:
Hints:
- The copyright is 1948, Homestead Welfare Club of Homestead, Iowa.
Is it:
- A junket that came with a new Amana Refrigerator/Stove/whatsit?
- A teaching book for a not-very-well-known branch of scouts?
Or is it a cookbook of recipes taken from one of the few successful communal societies with an interesting religious history? (For as long as it lasted.)
Yeah.
I admit, I collect cookbooks, and this one I grabbed in a second-hand store someplace without really looking at it...and thought it was probably the first guess. Then I began reading it when I got home (folks, fifty cents is NOT too much to pay for a mistaken identity), and was more than pleasantly surprised.
Californians tend to think we have the market cornered on religious nutcases, after all. Finding a record like this one that had its roots both in Germany and Midwestern US is intriguing.
I think of my SCA friends when I look it over these days. The recipes are staunchly German fare, with all of the names in both German and English. But they are scaled to serve armies. They also start at the bottom of the cuisine, including recipes for stock and "extracts" to be used in other recipes. It's also a record of how desperately simple and frugal the cuisine was as well - there's no goat cheese, sherry (few use any alcohol at all for flavoring), shallots, or any of the other Really Nifty Things people put in their dinners these days.
There are recipes using crumbs and dandelions, though.
A sample:
KIRSCHEN SAFT (Cherry Juice)
2 gallons cherries
Sugar - 2 cups per pint of juice
Wash and stem cherries. Mash in a large bowl and let stand for twelve hours. Then strain through jelly bag. To each pint of strained juice, add two cups of sugar. Put into preserving kettle and simmer for fifteen minutes. Fill into sterilized bottles and seal. To serve, dilute 1/4 cup juice with 1 cup water.
Hints:
- The copyright is 1948, Homestead Welfare Club of Homestead, Iowa.
Is it:
- A junket that came with a new Amana Refrigerator/Stove/whatsit?
- A teaching book for a not-very-well-known branch of scouts?
Or is it a cookbook of recipes taken from one of the few successful communal societies with an interesting religious history? (For as long as it lasted.)
Yeah.
I admit, I collect cookbooks, and this one I grabbed in a second-hand store someplace without really looking at it...and thought it was probably the first guess. Then I began reading it when I got home (folks, fifty cents is NOT too much to pay for a mistaken identity), and was more than pleasantly surprised.
Californians tend to think we have the market cornered on religious nutcases, after all. Finding a record like this one that had its roots both in Germany and Midwestern US is intriguing.
I think of my SCA friends when I look it over these days. The recipes are staunchly German fare, with all of the names in both German and English. But they are scaled to serve armies. They also start at the bottom of the cuisine, including recipes for stock and "extracts" to be used in other recipes. It's also a record of how desperately simple and frugal the cuisine was as well - there's no goat cheese, sherry (few use any alcohol at all for flavoring), shallots, or any of the other Really Nifty Things people put in their dinners these days.
There are recipes using crumbs and dandelions, though.
A sample:
KIRSCHEN SAFT (Cherry Juice)
2 gallons cherries
Sugar - 2 cups per pint of juice
Wash and stem cherries. Mash in a large bowl and let stand for twelve hours. Then strain through jelly bag. To each pint of strained juice, add two cups of sugar. Put into preserving kettle and simmer for fifteen minutes. Fill into sterilized bottles and seal. To serve, dilute 1/4 cup juice with 1 cup water.
