I had a lot to say about the recipes in Country Cookin' (Ross Chapel Church, Bolts Fork, KY, 1977), but I still haven't even mentioned one of my favorite features of Peggy Kirk's personal copy: handwritten recipes. They're fun because they're kind of sloppy and a bit mysterious....
When I saw this recipe, I wasn't initially sure what it was for.
I love how the writing goes off in all directions. "Stick" juts out above "Melt 1/2 butter in cake pan" since the missing word meant "1/2 butter" could be read as nearly anything: half the total amount of butter (unfortunately left unspecified), half butter and half shortening, half cup of butter... We need "stick" for the real meaning.
"Pour in pan" slopes downward, immediately after flour, I guess to help specify that the entire cake should be mixed in the pan. No washing extra bowls! And then finally I noticed the recipe title-- "CoBBLeR"-- dead center, hiding amidst the all-over-the place directions and the filler proverb: "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go." (That's got a little more punch than the usually very positive/ inspirational/ religious fillers in most of these types of books.) There was plenty of room on the rest of the page, so I kind of love that the writer decided to put this right on top of the non-blank portion.
I initially thought the CoBBLeR had no cooking directions, either, but then I saw them tucked away in the upper right corner: "Bake 1 hr. at 350-400°" It's beautiful chaos.
The other recipe that caught my eye is much neater, but also more mysterious. When I saw the title "Mexican Wedding Cake" at the top, I assumed it was a recipe for the tiny, buttery cookies filled with nuts and rolled in powdered sugar that my family used to make at Christmas.
Definitely not! The cookies generally use powdered rather than granulated sugar, omit any leavener or eggs, and most of all, DON'T CONTAIN PINEAPPLE. So this is definitely not a recipe for the cookies. I guess it's a recipe for actual cake, but good luck figuring out how to make it based on these instructions. This is the entirety of the recipe, as nothing else appears below. The cook better remember the mixing instructions, the pan size, the oven temperature, and the bake time because none of those things are included. At least modern cooks can pretty easily figure it out with just a little internet sleuthing. (Bonus: The version I found adds CREAM CHEESE FROSTING!)
There's nothing quite as charming as finding old recipes handwritten in the margins of antique cookbooks, but I'm glad it's infinitely easier to research recipes now!
Oh yes, the days before Internet recipes. When you couldn't read other people's ratings of the recipes (other than the occasional note jotted on a recipe). Now I'm remembering the days before the Internet was huge, and photocopies were cheap. Random recipe printouts given away at the grocery store promoting a new item, copies of "healthy" recipes for free on the bulletin board at the gym. A bunch of loose pages stuffed into a folder or notebook where you spend half an hour looking for the one you wanted. Now you can spend hours looking for a recipe, but the pictures are better.
ReplyDeleteAnd I just hope people save caches of old recipe copies that will make their way to an antiques mall where I can buy them...
DeleteWhoever wrote that must have learned cursive from the same method book as my great-grandmother. The resemblance is astonishing.
ReplyDeleteThat made me think about how much less likely it is that people in the future will be able to recognize relatives' handwriting. Just about everything is typed now! We're probably among the last group to be able to make an observation like yours.
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