I recently enjoyed reading a couple of books about food and recipes from the 1800s and early 1900s, and thus I was excited to accept an offer to review Extra! Extra! Eat All About It!: Recipes and Culinary Curiosities from Historic Wisconsin Newspapers ($30, Wisconsin Historical Society Press), which comes out this month.
It’s part history book and part cookbook, providing entertaining stories and easy-to-follow recipes published in Wisconsin newspapers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Authors Jane Conway and Randi Julia Ramsden (a Madison native) did a wonderful job of taking you back into history. As examples, they recapped newspaper tips on extending the freshness of bread (p. 71), an article on how to construct a root cellar (p. 83) and a report on the introduction of electric appliances (p. 100). I also enjoyed seeing a 1928 photo of bananas in a storefront on Williamson Street and a 1911 ad for an electric fireless cook stove.
Recipes from 100+ years ago tend to be simpler based on the (lack of) availability of ingredients, as I learned from another book on old recipes. That theme is certainly confirmed in Extra! Extra!.
On p. 69, I followed the instructions for making a ham sandwich. The ham is finely chopped and mixed with chopped pickles, mustard, butter and black pepper. As I was making it, I thought, why are all of these ingredients mixed together instead of layered as we would make the sandwich today? However–and I know this sounds weird–I thought this sandwich tasted better with all the ingredients mixed. It made me think of a spread you might find at a supper club.
I also made the French dressing (p. 52), which is not similar to the French dressing we know today. Looking at the ingredients–which included shallots, garlic and curry powder, making for a very fragrant mix–I thought that this dressing would be too chunky. But then I realized that most of the ingredients are mashed together to make a pulp, and then oil and vinegar are added. Surprisingly, this made for a tasty and not chunky dressing, although I would classify it more as a vinaigrette.
I look forward to making the breakfast rice (p. 23) and the candied orange peel (p. 185).
You can purchase Extra! Extra! Eat All About It!: Recipes and Culinary Curiosities from Historic Wisconsin Newspapers on the Wisconsin Historical Society website.
Image provided by Wisconsin Historical Society
Tags: cooking
