Cookie of the Month - First American Cookies

Yesterday, Matt and I took a super-fun field trip to Old Sturbridge Village, an 1830s re-enactment town about 50 miles southwest of Boston.  We went for my new favorite holiday, Tomato Day, where heirloom tomato plants are given to visitors as part of the entrance fees.  Matt and I are newbie gardeners, but our garden is growing pretty well so far, so we figured we'd supplement it with a tomato plant.  Matt's not even big on tomatoes, but I love them enough for the both of us.  And they're free!  Ahh, America.  Unfortunately, when we got there, we were told at the door that they were out of tomato plants.  That was discouraging, but we had a great time exploring the village anyway.  While there, we saw re-enacters making shoes, carding wool, throwing pots, making barrels, printing leaflets, forging iron, and making candles, as well as an old-fashioned baseball demonstration (they run to third base first!  What is that about?!).  Maybe most fascinating was the hearth cooking re-enactment with a woman baking bread and a pumpkin pie from dehydrated pumpkin, as well as making soup with dumplings.  Keep in mind that it was about 80 degrees out yesterday, and she was wearing a full 1830s respectable woman outfit - including long sleeves and a bonnet.
  

Leftover Thursday - Biscuits

I've been thinking about making biscuits for a while, particularly since reading Amelia Simmons' recipes for biscuits.  As I think I mentioned earlier, one of Amelia's biggest contributions to the world of cookbooks is her use of chemical leaveners, particularly pearl ash and emptins.  Pearlash - potassium carbonate, for the chemists out there - is a more refined version of potash, which is made from the ashes of hardwood trees and is commonly used in soap-making.  Pearlash was discovered in the 1740s, although potash has been around for much longer.  By the 1760s, potash had become a major export from Canada, with most of it being sent to Great Britain.  Potash continued to be a major export from both Canada and the United States as pioneers moved westward, culling forests as they went.

First U.S. Patent, issued in 1790 to Samuel Hopkins for his new process of refining potash and pearlash.

Shrewsbury Cakewiches

Yesterday's Shrewsbury Cakes experiment was fascinating (to me, at least) because it felt like tasting the past.  Those of you who know about my past as an archaeologist (and the fact that I'm dating a historian) know that I have long been interested in recreating the past, and that's what I felt I was doing yesterday, albeit with some modern enhancements.  One of the things I couldn't get into in yesterday's post was the history of Shrewsbury Cakes themselves.  I mean, that post was already verging on novel-length, so it was a good thing I clipped it when I did.

Shrewsbury Cakes for as long as the eye can see.

Old-timey Cooking - Shrewsbury Cakes

Alright, friends, today is the day.  After all this research-cum-procrastination, today is the day I conduct my first old-timey cooking experiment from American Cookery.  Picking a recipe wasn't that straightforward - I don't eat a lot of meat, and even if I did, I'm not quite up to the task of something like Dreffing a Calves Head, Turtle Fafhion.  I'm not even really sure what that means, but anything that involves me messing around with a cow's brain is not going to happen (and especially not with the recent reports of mad cow disease in California).  So that cut out a lot of recipes right there.  Not the cow brains, per se, but the meat in general.

Another gratuitous shot of the flowers from Matt.  Not like I'm bragging.

Of the baking recipes, I don't have the leavener needed for her cookies and many of her breads.  This is a solvable problem, but I haven't yet solved it.  For the cookies, Amelia uses pearl ash to create carbon dioxide in her recipes, thus getting a rise out of her cookies and cakes.  Pearl ash was an early precursor to the baking soda and baking powder we use today, but the chemical properties of it are different so substituting baking soda in Amelia's recipes won't quite do the trick.  For her other bread recipes, Amelia calls for something called "emptins" as the leavener.  She also describes how to make emptins: Take a handful of hops and about three quarts of water, let it boil about fifteen minutes, then make a thickening as you do for ftarch, ftrain the liquor, when cold put a little emptins to work them, they will keep well cork'd in a bottle five or fix weeks."  Since Matt's semester is over, I think he'll start brewing again, so the next time we go to the brewery supply store I can pick up some extra hops to make the emptins.  But until then, I have neither pearl ash nor emptins.  Many other early recipes call for beating by hand "for an hour" to incorporate air into the batter.  Unsurprisingly, that is not appealing.

Leftover Thursday - Lemon Roasted Vegetables

Around about Thursday is when my dinner planning stops.  There are usually some leftover ingredients in the fridge that need to be used, and caution is thrown to the wind.  And that's where I found myself this afternoon, facing a half-full (or half-empty, depending how you look at it) container of mushrooms, a lemon that was nearing the end of its prime, half a bunch of collard greens, part of a head of broccoli, and two chicken breasts.  There are probably about a million combinations of those ingredients that would result in a delicious dinner (or, you know, at least ten), but this is the one I came up with.  

And don't worry, y'all - my new found love of early American cooking is still going strong.  Early Americans had a variety of poultry and fowl available to them, and Amelia Simmons has this general advice for the homecook choosing a bird: "Having before ftated that the female in almost every inftance, is preferable to the male, and pecularily fo in the the Peacock, which, tho' beautifully plumaged, is tough, hard, ftringy and untafted, and even indelicious - while the Pea Hen is exactly otherwife, and the queen of all birds."  I'm not even going to touch that "ladies are better than gents" statement, or make a broader analogy about peacocks or anything.  Though it would certainly be easy to do...

American Cookery, the first cookbook published in America by an American. 

Stuffed Bell Peppers

Yesterday's brief research into the history of brownies got me thinking about how cool it would be to focus this blog on the histories of different foods and/or recipes, particularly in American cooking.  As I noted yesterday, the Michigan State library has an online collection of old cookbooks (here).  Anyway, I spent some time tooling around their catalog today, and found what is generally credited to be the first American cookbook - Amelia Simmons' American Cookery, or the art of dressing viands, fish, poultry, and vegetables, and the best modes of making pastes, puffs, pies, tarts, puddings, custards and preserves, and all kinds of cakes, from the imperial plum to the plain, adapted to this country, and all grades of life.  That title just rolls off the tongue. 

First published in 1798 - a full 20 years after the Revolutionary War began - the cookbook was the first to be written by an American using American ingredients, although many of her recipes were borrowed from British cookbooks of the time.  Her cookbook is truly unique, though, in its use of New World ingredients, which at that time were uncommon in Britain.  Crops like corn, squash, and bean (known as the Three Sisters), as well as Jerusalem artichokes and cranberries, are featured in her cookbook but were harder to come by for the average Brit. Besides shedding light on early American cookery, Simmons' book also provides a glimpse into the development of a national identity, and particularly the role of women in America - indeed, she writes that her "treatife is calculated for the improvement of the rifing generation of Females in America."  (Oh those crazy early Americans, using f's in place of s's when they feel like it!)  She was the one to emphasize Females, by the way, not me.  For what it's worth. 

What would Amelia Simmons do?