Do NOT Eat the Fat

Just because I'm a seat-of-the-pants improvisational cook doesn't mean I don't enjoy a good cookbook every now and then.

So when a box lot full of grease spattered grange cookbooks from the 1970's came up on the auction block this week I couldn't help myself. I plunked down $10 and knew I had enough reading to keep me occupied all weekend.

I'd hadn't really looked through the box during preview so you can imagine how happy I was when I discovered it also contained an 1860's farm ledger/family cookbook, a 19th century hand-written book of family recipes and the 1914 best seller “The Orange Judd Cook Book” from the Farm Life Series. 

The hand-written recipe book and the ledger fell apart ages ago and are now held together with a ribbon. 

Both contain beautifully hand written recipes for everything from remedies for whopping cough and laryngitis to dandelion wine. Oh, how I wish modern remedies started with a "spoonful of alcohol mixed with a half cup of sweet milk" and instructed you to take "when distressed". 

The recipes often contain heirloom measurements like a jigger and a gill, but not to worry, there's a long list of equivalents written in the back cover.

Here are a few other favorites:

The Orange Judd cookbook will teach you how to make Stewed Jack Rabbit, Baked Coon, and Possum and Taters for lunch. And assuming you shot the raccoon for stealing turnips out of your garden, there are instructions on how to clean and dress him just in case. Whatever you do though, do not eat the fat. It'll give the meat an oily taste and is far more useful when it's time to make soap.

Don't have a chicken on hand? OJ has a recipe for “Mock Chicken” which is actually made from pork. The dessert section is enormous and oh so mouth-watering and contains recipes for every imaginable pudding including rhubarb, caramel, pumpkin and marshmallow versions. There are sauces for the sweet and the savory, including my favorite “Cheap Sauce” which is a concoction of boiled sugar, flour and milk. Making a pie? Take your pick. You can put it in a suet, egg, sweet cream or egg crust. The jams and jellies sound downright divine but that'll have to be for another post. Time to heat up some leftovers for lunch...