Wednesday, March 21, 2018

A very Germanic heritage

Let's get historical!


Today we have Heritage of Cooking: A Collection of Recipes from East Perry County, Missouri (compiled by the Saxon Lutheran Memorial, third printing, 1970). 

This booklet has some of the usual recipes I expect in these community recipe collections-- gelatin-based salads, carrot cakes, rum balls. You can really tell the Germanic heritage in a few sections, though. There's a whole chapter on sausages.

If you need a gallon of Leber Wurst, they've got you covered.


If you need a gallon of sausage AND you want to get use up some oatmeal, there's Gritze Wurst.


If you want to remind me of the vile tubes of pink-brown paste my dad used to smear on crackers, there's Braunschweiger. 


Mrs. Willis Bremer unfortunately does not tell us whether this will make a full gallon of sausage, as we all know that gallon is the standard sausage measure...

For fellow fans of a certain '70s horror movie, there's even a Head Cheese recipe! (It makes a gallon!)


The Germanic temperament comes through in the non-meat recipes too. No desire to waste money on luxurious trifles? That doesn't mean you can't pretend to have a hot cup of coffee...


Just steep browned barley in boiled water. And if the kids want some hot chocolate....


...well, you better have had the foresight to dry some elderberries during the summer (and kids who are unfamiliar with the concept of chocolate). 

If you want to have a happy birthday, you can enjoy this:


Any day that requires only two measures of Endurance is about as carefree as they get in East Perry County. 

The very end of the book also offers some home remedies for people and farm animals, so now I know what to do if my horse gets sweenied... whatever that might mean. (NOT going to Google it!) I'm not sure I'd take the advice to cure a snake bite though, which is to "cut up a live chicken and immediately place the bloody flesh on the bite."

This is an interesting book to make a dark early spring day just that much darker. 

10 comments:

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  2. It's so good to see a low-cal birthday cake recipe. I'll have to try that one on the kids.

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  3. This is like reading the cookbook for the communal kitchens. I'm not sure how many gallons of sausage you need to feed 40 people, though. https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/amana/kit.htm

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    1. I would not have liked communal kitchens! I want my own.

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    2. Being a kitchen manager was a matrilineal job, so if your mother, and your mother's mother, etc was a kitchen manager, you could be too. Jobs weren't necessarily assigned by talent, and there were certain kitchens that people really hoped to get assigned to... or avoid.

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  4. Hello from the old world,

    Leberwurst and Schwartenmagen are usually smoked here in Germany, so making a large batch is sensible. Putting it in the freezer instead sounds as weird to me as adding apple butter.

    Also, the imitation coffee can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caro_(drink)

    It does not taste like coffee at all, but is actually not so bad... something found usually in youth hostels or your MIL's kitchen.

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    1. Hello old world! Too bad the recipes left out smoking the sausages. Smoking makes most things better.

      It looks like Caro is kind of similar to Postum, a wheat-based drink my grandma had for breakfast. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postum

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  5. Hey, my mother smelt of elderberries! Hee hee

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