A national training school opened in 1873, continuing the work by training cooking teachers.  Buckmaster’s cookery : being an abridgment of some of the lectures delivered in the cookery school at the International Exhibition for 1873 and 1874 : together with a collection of approved recipes and menus  is an artifact of this phase of the movement.  The lectures address topics that were to be reiterated at length in other Cooking School publications: soup as a healthy, economical, and underappreciated aliment; how to manage leftovers; food as fuel for the human machine, and the need for girls to be educated in kitchen and household arts.

In America, reformers and cookbook writers soon took up the cause, but as the movement took hold in America, the focus began to shift. American reformers were much concerned with the issue of unemployment, and began to hold classes designed to teach unemployed women the skills that would allow them to find work as household servants. Such classes did not, it turned out, pay the rent, and it wasn’t long before the schools began to feature classes aimed at a middle class audience, which thereafter existed side by side with classes for women already employed as domestics.

Late 19th century cookbooks and domestic manuals are full of talk about the problems with the American diet:  American cooking was denigrated as indigestible, unhealthy, and wasteful.  The word “dyspepsia” was on everyone’s lips. Experts of all kinds put forward schemes for the reform of the national diet; the reformers of the Cooking School movement touted a more scientific approach in the practice of cooking to address this national ill. In this we see the promotion of the professionalization and rationalization of cooking, as of many elements of American life in the last third of the 19th century. There was also a push for cooking to be taught in public schools, and the Domestic Science movement (later the Home Economics movement) had similar aims for housekeeping and the management of the home.

Cooking schools began publishing cookbooks within a few years of their formation, and this new kind of cookbook was an established phenomenon by the mid-1880s. We have excellent examples of this genre of culinary publishing, and the related one of textbooks for cooking classes in the public schools, which became popular a little later.

The earliest of this wave of American cooking schools was Juliet Corson’s New York Cooking School, launched in 1876.  (There had been earlier American cooking schools and classes, but that’s a topic for another post.) We have Corson’s 1879 Cooking school text book and housekeepers’ guide to cookery and kitchen management: an explanation of the principles of domestic economy taught in the New York Cooking School .  It gives lessons for the “artisan course”, the “plain cooks course”, and the “ladies’ course in middle class and artistic cookery” giving us a window into the social stratification of food and cooking in Gilded Age America. The preface also sounds what will become a familiar note for cooking schools:

“In presenting this text-book to the public, we desire to call attention to the necessity for accompanying technical instruction with some explanation of the principles of cookery as applicable to the preservation of the general health. A book of mere receipts would fail to accomplish the purpose we have in view, i.e., some intelligent comprehension on the part of the cook of the chemistry of food and the physiology of nutrition.”

The Boston Cooking-School, started in 1879, was perhaps the most influential of the American cooking schools. It was the first to be incorporated (in 1883) and it spawned the very popular Boston Cooking-School Magazine, published until 1914.  It also gave rise to one of the most popular cookbooks ever published in the US: Fannie Merit Farmer’s    Boston Cooking-School cook book , which we hold in the 1896 first edition. While not a textbook per se (no lesson plans, no advice to the teacher) the book is very much the product of the Cooking School movement. It begins with this

“With the progress of knowledge the needs of the human body have not been forgotten. During-the last decade much time has been given by scientists to the study of foods and their dietetic value, and it is a subject which rightfully should demand much consideration from all. I certainly feel that the time is not far distant when a knowledge of the principles of diet will be an essential part of one’s education. Then mankind will eat to live, will be able to do better mental and physical work, and disease will be less frequent.”

The project of rationalizing cooking, and making it into a scientific area of study is everywhere evident in the book; there is an exhaustive attempt to be exact about procedures, and the first chapter, on food, takes up the fuel-for-the-human-machine theme.  This gives the whole a somewhat pedantic tone. Cooking, we are shown, is a serious business. On the upside, Farmer’s attention to technique makes it an easier book to cook from, today, than many of its contemporaries, 19th century cookbooks being often somewhat vague about  what the reader is supposed to do with the ingredients named, perhaps because the assumption was that anyone picking up a cookbook was already versed in cooking. No such assumption is made here, and in the recipes it’s possible to trace the precise, step-by-step,  directions given to students at the school. The words of advice on measuring succinctly encapsulate the movement’s take on the relationship between the new and old approaches to cooking:

“Correct measurements are absolutely necessary to insure the best results. Good judgment, with experience, has taught some to measure by sight; but the majority need definite guides.”

A crossover genre may be seen in The easiest way in housekeeping and cooking: adapted to domestic use or study in classes by Helen Campbell which we have in the 1881 and 1893  editions. The metaphor of the body as a mechanism to be fueled by proper food flourishes in this book. At the end of the chapter on “the Body and its Composition” we find the following:

“With this basis, to give us some understanding of the complicated and delicate machinery with which we must work, the question arises, what food contains all these constituents, and what its amount and character must be. The answer to this question will help us to form an intelligent plan for providing a family with the right nutrition.”

And in the same section we find a table of “Analogies of the steam-engine and the living body”

The first cooking classes in public schools began in Boston in the mid-1880s.They began with experiments by proponents of “manual training,” (the need for which was a hotly debated contemporary educational theory) created to establish the utility and popularity of such classes.  (An early 20th century history of the movement in Boston can be found in the “Home Economics in the Public Schools” chapter of The Home Economics Movement by  Isabel Bevier and Susannah Usher, to be found at the internet Archive, here)

Mrs. D.A. Lincoln (Mary Johnson Bailey Lincoln) was the principal of the Boston Cooking School from 1879 to 1885, and was active as a teacher and an author thereafter. We have her 1887 Boston school kitchen text-book : lessons in cooking for the use of classes in public and industrial schools .  It, too, takes up the theme of a scientific understanding of food, cooking, and nutrition. Lessons include rudimentary physics in explanations of the cooking processes, something approaching chemistry in the composition of foodstuffs, and detailed commentary on nutrition and digestion. The volume gives us a valuable window into the pedagogical process, as practiced in the classes: each lesson has its set of recipes to be cooked, and is proceeded by suggestions to the teacher, allowing us to see the details of the process of teaching. Lessons are also followed by sets of questions, making explicit what the students were intended to take away from them.

An altogether more curious volume is the 1890 Cookery in the public schools by Sallie Joy White, (Brief biography here) which gives us a window into the movement as it got underway. It’s pitched to girls who were potential students of cooking classes, and the author adopts a chatty, anecdotal style, addressing the readers at one point as “…my dear little amateur cooks who read this.” Besides providing a first-hand look at how adults addressed children at the end of the 19th century, and what topics and strategies one author thought fitting to engage children’s interest,  it also gives us a window into the rhetoric used to support the establishment of cooking classes in public schools, the perceived need for manual training and cooking instruction, and the contemporary perceptions and preoccupations that made them seem desirable.

We also hold a dozen more works on cooking in the public schools from the early 20th century. Through our works on cooking schools and cooking in schools, the researcher can explore a fascinating chapter in the history of cooking as a daily necessity, an element of home life, a public good, a debated educational priority, and a site of the performance of class and gender in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

When I went looking for collections of civil war letters with references to food and eating, I found them using a remarkable tool that’s been developed here at the Clements over the past 8 years: The Food and Society References Database. This searchable database in effect annotates source material in the manuscript collections.  Dedicated volunteers, led by Phil Zaret are identifying material on American food and related social topics. Manuscript
collections (approximately a quarter of the 2500 collections held by the Manuscript Division) have been extensively tagged for food and culinary-related content. The records also note other social phenomena, under such headings as transportation, medicine, and education. To date, we’ve created an index of about 80,000 records

Using the database, I was able to efficiently find mentions of army camp food and eating in such collections as the Hacker letters, which contains many letters written from Union army encampments by Rohloff and Philip Hacker, two brothers from Michigan who served from  1861 to 1863.  The Finding Aid for the collection is here

The brothers’ letters give a detailed picture of what Union soldiers ate and what deprivations they felt. There’s a good deal about what home food they missed, one way or another.  Many of these come in responses to news from home: mention of food-related activities at home, such as harvesting, created cravings for home food. Memories of eating are woven into their memories of home life, with remembered meals standing in some way for the security and comfort of life at home

Rohloff Hacker, in a letter home dated November 16-17th 1861

“I am glad that your crops have done so well this year …  Chester told me that they were at buckwheat already. Oh! Father, would I not like to eat with you some cold morning those hot cakes, sausage, yes, and many other things which cannot get here”

Moreover, as farm boys they’re aware of crops in the areas they pass through, and there are many reports of crops similarity or difference to what they’re used to at home. In a letter written October 5, 1861Philip writes home

“We have roasted a great deal of green corn this last week and I doubt whether the corn is riper here than in Michigan”

And in another, (August 11, 1861) Rohloff says

“I do not understand how that potatoes can grow here for the ground is so clayey and hard that while building baterys it must be all picked with the mattock”

And in yet another (September 29, 1861) Philip says

I will send you a few tomatoes different from any I have seen in Michigan. The vines when stretched are taller than 2 [ The tomatoes small smooth and long and sweeter than the common kind.

Looking just at the 1st year of the war, the letters show the range of ways soldiers were fed in camp and on the march:

• They were issued rations, typically very basic: cornmeal or flour , sugar, coffee, molasses, salt pork, fresh or salt beef, hard tack or crackers, sometimes with the addition of beans, fresh or desiccated vegetables (which the soldiers hated, and called “desecrated vegetables”) and rice or hominy.

• Another way soldiers got food was in boxes sent by friends or families, soldiers asking for and commenting on the arrival of boxes is a frequent feature of letters, this particularly shows what foods soldiers craved

Rohloff Hacker on receiving a box, early November 1861:

“I felt so glad that you in Brighton have not forgotten me. So many nice things both for wear & eat, especially that cake from Lilly it was some broken (the box was cracked all about but string held) Now whom sent those round cakes and that great large square one – they were all so good it made me think of great times in old Mich”

• It seems they sometimes had the option of buying extra food from the quartermaster, although this was a privilege usually reserved for officers, who, instead of drawing rations were issued a monthly cash allowance with which to buy their supplies.

Rohloff C. Hacker  around October 1861

” When we …  gets only coffee and bread we feel cross and go to the Brigade Quartermaster and buy such as we think best.”

• Union Soldiers throughout the war bought food and drink from sutlers, authorized merchants who had an established business selling to the regiments: Sutlers sold beer, whiskey, and tobacco but also foodstuffs . There are numerous references in the Civil War letters of soldiers going to the sutler’s to satisfy their cravings for more palatable food than their  rations: milk, butter, fresh fruit, and canned goods

• Sutlers weren’t the only ones who sold food to the soldiers, of course.  Soldiers also bought food from  what some of the writers refer to as Hucksters: locals who came to camp to sell food or sold by the side of the road: these seem to have been mostly ready-to-consume foods, cakes, pies, fruit, cider, and candy are all mentioned in our Civil War  letters.

• Soldiers also bought eatables from locals who sold food out of their houses or off their farms.

• Soldiers also got some of their food by foraging, either under orders, or on their own initiative. Foraging meant a number of things to the writers of our letters.  In the most straightforward  “living off the land” sense it meant things like picking fruit or gathering nuts, fishing, and hunting

Rohloff C. Hacker October 27, 1861

“I with 2 of my comrades off went in the woods and around sight seeing & eating walnuts butternuts and hickory nuts had a good time”

• Soldiers also appropriated  food from houses and farms, either abandoned or still occupied.  This was another meaning of “foraging.” Another term for it was “cramping”

Rohloff Hacker,  undated

“We had not been there long when some of the boys went out for what we call cramping and soon returned with a 12 or more of hogs and pigs which they had shot.

• Many soldiers, from the evidence of their letters, considered it perfectly fair game to take food from an inhabited farm or homestead, I found  mentions of procuring fresh corn, other kinds of produce, and honey, of milking pastured cows, and of killing livestock for meat

Consider this quote from a letter dated October 5th, 1861, by Philip Hacker. Speaking of a householder whom he characterizes as “an old secessionist preacher that lives near us … a double tonged man and a regular hipocrit” he says

“… when we retook the place last Saturday night they revenged themselves a little by helping themselves to his hogs fowls milk cakes and etc. Last Sunday morning he wanted us to give him two cts. for each canteen of water but we took all the water we wanted in spite of him. He had some cakes and pies for which he charged an enormous price which so exasperated some of our men that they took all without even thanking … one of our men shot one of his cows and for a while milked his other two. He also has a large cornfield near us and we use of it all we want”

Food has always borne an especial importance for soldiers, who have extra trouble procuring it but who need it more than ever–for morale as well as their extra nutritional requirements. Ingenuity is valued, and gratitude heartfelt. From the evidence of our Civil War letters, meals were a significant source of comfort and interest in soldiers’ day to day lives. The letters provide documentation of the variety of official and unofficial ways the soldiers were fed, and of their attitudes towards and feelings about all things gustatory. For exploring these matters, the above examples show how our Food and Society Database is an invaluable tool for saving the researcher’s time.

And it’s true, you can certainly find that. In our 1866 edition of Mrs Beeton’s Book of household management, you will find this recipe for spinach in the English style:

TO BOIL SPINACH (English Mode).
1155- Ingedients.—2 pailfuls of spinach, 2 heaped tablespoonfuls of salt, 1 oz. of butter, pepper to taste.
Mode.—Pick the spinach carefully, and see that no stalks or weeds are left amongst it; wash it in several waters, and, to prevent it being gritty, act in the following manner:— have ready two large pans or tubs filled with water; put the spinach into one of these, and  thoroughly wash it; then, with the hands, take out the spinach, and put it into the other tub of water (by this means all the grit will be left at the bottom of the tub); wash it again, and, should it not be perfectly free from dirt, repeat the process. Put it into a very large saucepan, with about 1/2 pint of water, just sufficient to keep tho spinach from burning, and the above proportion of salt. Press it down frequently with a wooden spoon, that it may be done equally; and when it has boiled for rather more than 10 minutes, or until it is perfectly tender, drain it in a colander, squeeze it quite dry, and chop it finely. Put the spinach into a clean stewpan, with the butter and a seasoning of pepper; stir the whole over the fire until quite hot; then put it on a hot dish, and garnish with sippets of toasted bread.
Time.—10 to 15 minutes to boil the spinach, 5 minutes to warm with the butter.
Average cost for the above quantity, 8d.
Sufficient for 5 or 6 persons.
Seasonable.—Spring spinach from March to July; winter spinach from November to March.
Note.—Grated nutmeg, pounded mace, or lemon-juice may also be added to enrich the flavour; and poached eggs are also frequently served with spinach: they should be placed on the top of it, and it should be garnished with sippets of toasted bread

1888 edition available at Google books, here

Moreover, Marion Harland’s  1882 Common sense in the household: a manual of practical housewifery (online here) recommends an even longer time, 15 to 20 minutes, and in her in her 1884 Cookery for beginners: a series of familiar lessons for young housekeepers she calls for it to be cooked for 45 minutes.

But it turns out that it depends on which cookbook, and how old.

Elizabeth Raffald, in 1806 (The experienced English housekeeper: for the use and ease of ladies …)  has a much shorter boiling time:

To stew Spinage.

WASH your spinage well in several waters, put it in a cullendar, have ready a large pan of boiling water, with a handful of salt, put it in, let it boil two minutes, it will take off the strong earthy taste, then put it into a sieve, squeeze it well, put a quarter of a pound of butter into a tossing pan, put in your spinage, keep turning and chopping it with a knife until it be quite dry and green, lay it upon a plate, press it with another, cut it in the shape of sippets or diamonds, pour round it very rich melted butter, it will eat exceeding mild, and quite a different taste from the common way.

Looking further back, in an edition of Hannah Glasse’s Art of cookery, from 1796, we find the following directions for spinach, very much as we would cook it now.

Stewed spinage and eggs
PICK and wash your spinage very clean, put it into a saucepan with a little salt, cover it close, shake the pan often; when it is just tender and whilst it is green throw it into a sieve to drain, lay it in your dish…

A 1784 edition is more explicit

To dress spinach
PICK it very clean, and wash it in five or six waters; put it in a sauce-pan that will just hold it, throw a little salt over it, and cover the pan close. Don’t put any water in, but shake the pan often. You must put your sauce-pan on a clear quick; fire. As soon as you find the greens are shrunk and fallen to the bottom, and that the liquor which comes out of them boils up, they are enough. Throw them into a clean sieve, to drain, and just give them a little squeeze. Lay them in a plate, and never put any butter on it but put it in a cup.

This is not to say that no one in the the late 18th century cooked the stuffing out of spinach, but it does point out the unwisdom of thinking we know what we’ll find when we peer at the past through the window of cookbooks.

I’ll let Marion Harland have the last word on spinach, with advice that is good even today…

Boiled Spinach.

In respect to quantity, spinach is desperately deceitful. I never see it drained after it is boiled without bethinking myself of a picture I saw many years since, illustrative of the perils of innocent simplicity. A small (lucky) boy and big (unlucky) one have been spending their holiday in fishing. While the former, well satisfied with the result of his day’s sport, is busy putting up his rod and tackle, the designing elder dexterously substitutes his own string of minnows for the other’s store of fine perch. The little fellow, turning to pick it up, without a suspicion of the cruel cheat, makes piteous round eyes at his fellow, ejaculating, “How they have shrunk!”

A young housekeeper of my acquaintance, ordering a spring dinner for herself and husband, purchased a quart of spinach. When it should have appeared upon the table, there came in its stead a platter of sliced egg, she having given out one for the dressing. “Where is the spinach?” she demanded of the maid of all work. “Under the egg, ma’am!” And it was really all there.

Moral.—Get enough spinach to be visible to the naked eye. A peck is not too much for a family of four or five.

She was born Sarah Josepha Buell on October 24th, 1788 in Newport, New Hampshire.
She was educated at home, with tutoring in Latin, philosophy, English, and classical literature by her brother while he was a student at Dartmouth. As a young woman she distinguished herself as a teacher  at a private school in Newport. She was married in 1813 to David Hale, a lawyer, with whom she continued to study such topics as French, botany, geology, and literature. She remained a strong proponent of education for women throughout her life. When she was widowed in 1822, she turned to literature as a means to support herself and her children.  She established her reputation in 1827 with the novel Northwood, in which we already see a Thanksgiving theme emerging: a Thanksgiving holiday forms the background for part of the action, and the Thanksgiving meal has a chapter of its own, with roast turkey and pumpkin pie being given pride of place on the groaning board.

From 1837 to 1877 Hale was the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, a wildly successful magazine for women which achieved a circulation of 150,000 by 1865. Hale used her monthly editorial to advocate for the causes to which she was committed. While she was especially enthusiastic about education for women, she also agitated for women’s employment,  a monument on Bunker Hill, making Mount Vernon a national shrine, the elevation of housekeeping to a profession, and of course Thanksgiving.

Hales campaign to have Thanksgiving declared a national holiday began in the 1840s. She wrote an editorial about it every year from 1846 on, and corresponded with state and territorial governors, members of congress, and presidents to promote the last Thursday of November as the official day. A typical editorial, from October 1858, said:

“The last Thursday in November falls, this year, on the twenty-fifth. May we not hope that our nation will unite, on this day, in keeping the festival? The Governors of the States and Territories might, by uniting on this day, make the year memorable in our annals to the end of time. Will not the editors of newspapers lead the way in this union of hearts, at our national festival? Then the last Thursday in November would soon come to be considered the American’s Thanksgiving Day, and wherever our countrymen dwelt the day would be a festival.”
The custom gathered force, due in part to Hale’s promotion of it, with many states and territories declaring a holiday on the appointed day. Hale’s efforts finally met with success in 1863, when Lincoln, in a proclamation of October 3rd, proclaimed the last Thursday of November as a national holiday. Subsequent presidents followed suit, and in 1941, a Congressional Joint Resolution officially set the fourth Thursday of November as a national holiday for Thanksgiving.

Hale contributed largely to periodicals besides her own and published more than forty volumes of poetry, fiction, plays, biography, household management, and cookery.  The Clements has a number of her works, including the 1873 revised edition of her Mrs. Hale’s new cook book : a complete cookery book for all classes with rules and illustrations for household management and full directions for carving, arranging the table for parties, etc. : together with preparations of food for invalids and for children.

The book contains recipes the modern cook would recognize for the central dishes of the Thanksgiving meal: roast turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin pie. Here is her recipe for roast turkey:

To roast a Turkey.—Prepare a stuffing of pork sausage meat, one beaten egg, and a few crumbs of bread; or, if sausages are to be served with the turkey, stuffing as for fillet of veal: in either, a little shred shalot is an improvement. Stuff the bird under the breast; dredge it with flour, and put it down to a clear brisk fire; at a moderate distance the first half-hour, but afterwards nearer. Baste with butter; and when the turkey is plumped up, and the steam draws towards the fire, it will be nearly done; then dredge it lightly with flour, and baste it with a little more butter, first melted in the basting-ladle. Serve with gravy in the dish, and bread sauce in a tureen. …

A very large turkey will require three hours’ roasting; one of eight or ten pounds, two hours ; and a small one, an hour and a half.

Roasted chestnuts, grated or sliced, and green truffles, sliced, are excellent additions to the stuffing for turkeys.

The book is also a platform for a certain amount of editorializing.

Hale had high aspirations for women as a moral force in the world. She felt women should not directly involve themselves in politics, and therefore opposed suffrage.  Rather she advocated women working in their domestic sphere (and in suitable occupations such as teaching) to influence those under their care. The preface to Mrs Hale’s new cook book claims the influence of women in the home as significant work in an important sphere of action:

“Cookery, as an Art, ranks in the highest department of useful knowledge, connected, as it is, with the welfare of every human being.

When understood in all its bearings and conducted on scientific principles, it promotes health and happiness, moral and social improvement, and adds the charm of contentment to every-day life.”
This is a familiar theme for the proponents of Domestic Science, a term Hale coined: women were to make the world a better place by creating an environment that would foster virtue, whereupon virtuous action would diffuse from the home into society.

Hale, like many of the writers and teachers who espoused this idea, was not herself averse to acting on a wider stage, with her editorials, letter writing, and other campaigns for the causes she undertook. If she had been, our Thanksgiving holiday might look very different.

There’s a good deal of history to be divined from these works, especially when you consider them set against the spiraling  production and consumption of sugar in the 18th & 19th centuries.  As sugar grew more available, cooks and confectioners developed a plethora of ways to use it. In the Glasse book, there are numerous chapters that ring the changes just on what you can do with sugar and fruit: compotes, conserves, jam, jellies, marmalades, clear cakes, dried fruit with sugar, etc, not to mention all the other confections.

But occasionally these works find another use. Ann Arbor is fortunate enough to be the home of a candy maker with a deep interest in handmade candy, and he’s been in on and off over the last several weeks, studying some of our candy manuals from the mid-19th century.  Now, there’s an opportunity to hear him speak on his engagement with sugar and what can be made with it.

Charlie Frank is the principal in Zingerman’s Candy Manufactory, makers of Zzang bars.  You can read enthusiastic reviews of his candy here and here. What he strives for, at the cost of no little trouble, is the pleasures that come with absolutely fresh candy, made by hand with care, and shipped in small batches.

This week, Charlie is giving a talk on his candy making, and the devotion that lies behind it. Below is the official announcement.

Charlie Frank, “Candy and Passion – A Sweet Life”

Thursday, October 7th, 7:00-8:30 pm
Held in the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) Gallery in Room 100 (use Diag entrance)
913 S. University Ave., Ann Arbor, MI
Public parking is available in the structure at 650 S. Forest, just south of S. University
Free and open to the public!

Charlie Frank, Candymaker and head of Zingerman’s Candy Manufactory, will talk about his path to a life making candy, his enthusiasm for his work, how candy is made at Zingerman’s, and how everybody can relate to his passion for…SUGAR! Candy tasting and a Q&A will follow.

We have more than 1000 charity cookbooks, 700 and some of them cataloged. You can find them in Mirlyn, the University of Michigan Libraries’ catalog, by going to advanced search, and putting “charity cookbooks” in the “Subjects” field.

The first charity cookbook was Maria J. Moss’ A Poetical Cook Book, written for the 1864 Sanitary Fair in Philadelphia, an exposition held by the Philadelphia branch of the United States Sanitary Commission, a relief organization whose funds went to support those wounded, widowed, or orphaned by the Civil War. You can read more about The Great Philadelphia Sanitary Fair here, read Lincoln’s address at a similar fair in Baltimore here, or see a splendid image of the fair building here.

Charity cookbooks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries embraced many causes, everything from support for the local church building fund to national-scale movements like Temperance. Suffrage is a strikingly apt cause for a charity cookbook, as a move by women to act in the public sphere.

I call it apt because the act of creating a charity cookbook was a crossover activity: women who created these books were, on the one hand, staying within women’s sanctioned sphere – what could be more securely within women’s domestic concerns than cooking?

However, they were also publishing a book, and fundraising for an unabashedly political cause, and thereby participating in a national debate, so they were taking action on the national stage.

Much more on this and related topics can be found in our exhibit on “The Old Girl Network”.

The Suffrage Cook Book is a thoroughly portmanteau affair. Most of the recipes are unattributed, but there is a lengthy list of contributors, and some of the contributors were clearly solicited because of their prominence as social activists: there are attributed recipes from Jane Addams, the founder of Hull House, Feminist author Charlotte Perkins Gillman, and Suffrage notables Carrie Chapman Catt and Constance Lytton.  There are also a few vanilla celebrities like Jack London and the actress Madame (Alla) Nazimova.  There is, moreover, a dedicated poem by James Whitcomb Riley, and an introduction by Pittsburgh journalist Erasmus Wilson, for 36 years the author of the column “The Quiet Observer.”

There are portraits of the celebrities, and other, presumably prominent, contributors. There are also portraits of a number of governors of states which had already passed female suffrage:  Arizona, California, Wyoming, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Washington, and Oregon. Along with his portrait, each of these politically savvy gentlemen sent a letter in support of suffrage, to the effect that women were thoughtful, responsible voters who support good government, and that their voting was of inestimable benefit to the state in question. This one, from Moses Alexander of Idaho, will serve to represent the whole:

Woman Suffrage has gone beyond the trial stage in Idaho. We have had it in operation for many years and it is now thoroughly and satisfactorily established. Its repeal would not carry a single county in the State.

The women form an intelligent, patriotic and energetic element in our politics. They have been instrumental in accomplishing many needed reforms along domestic and moral lines, and in creating a sentiment favorable to the strict enforcement of the law.

The tenor of the whole book is very forward-looking — no pining for the Good Old Days here — and anticipates a future both rational and bright. The introduction makes it a point to reconcile, or maybe I should say to align,  the two perhaps slightly contradictory impulses of the book, the action in the traditional smaller and revolutionary larger spheres, connecting women’s safely traditional mission to their newfound political one….

In these later times professors of the culinary art tell us the cooking has been reduced to a science, and that there is no more guess work about it. They have given high sounding names to the food elements, figured out perfectly balanced rations, and adjusted foods to all conditions of health, or ill health.
…
Now that women are coming into their own, and being sincerely interested in the welfare of the race, it is entirely proper that they should prescribe the food, balance the ration, and tell how it should be prepared and served.

Two distinctly satiric recipes are slipped in among the regular ones for suet pudding and stuffed tomatoes, which give the flavor of the informal side of the suffrage controversy, four years before the passage of the 19th Amendment, and five years before its ratification.

An opponent of suffrage was known as an “Anti”, and here is a recipe for…

Anti’s Favorite Hash
(Unless you wear dark glasses you cannot make a success of Anti’s Favorite Hash.)
1 lb. truth thoroughly mangled
1 generous handful of injustice. (Sprinkle over everything in the pan)
1 tumbler acetic acid (well shaken)
A little vitriol will add a delightful tang and a string of nonsense should be dropped in at the last as if by accident.

Stir all together with a sharp knife because some of the tid bits will be tough propositions.

Later on, we find this one

Pie for a Suffragist’s Doubting Husband
1 qt. milk human kindness
8 reasons:
War
White Slavery
Child Labor
8,000,000 Working Women
Bad Roads
Poisonous Water
Impure Food

Mix the crust with tact and velvet gloves, using no sarcasm, especially with the upper crust. Upper crusts must be handled with extreme care for they quickly sour if manipulated roughly.

Clearly valuable political lessons were being learned here.

First, a little sugar history…

Sugar was originally known to Europe as a rare and costly spice, but the growth of sugarcane production, first in the Mediterranean and then in the Atlantic regions, made it ever more available. Between the middle of the 17th and the middle of the 19th century, sugar was transformed from a luxury to a widely consumed commodity. Grain, livestock, lumber and salt cod from America were crucial to the maintenance of the sugar colonies in the West Indies in the 18th century, and by the mid 19th Americans had access to plentiful cane sugar from the East and West Indies, plus its own cane sugar from Louisiana and beet sugar from the broad “beet belt” across the continent. As production and consumption chased each other upwards,  prices fell, and by the mid 19th century it was a thoroughly common article of diet in the US.

Now, back to cookbooks…

The first cookbooks in English that relied on sugar were addressed to those who cooked for great households, for instance François Massialot’s Court and Country Cook of 1702, which included a translation of his Nouvelle instruction pour les confitures from 1692. But sugar was rapidly ceasing to be the province of the wealthy, and sometime around 1760 Hannah Glasse published her  Complete Confectioner OR, THE Whole Art of Confectionary Made Plain and Easy,  and in 1789 Frederick Nutt (who had apprenticed with Domenico Negri, the reigning confectioner of his age) published his Complete confectioner or, The whole art of confectionary: forming a ready assistant to all genteel families, both directed at households of the middling sort.

Nutt’s work was reprinted in America by 1807, and in 1828 Eliza Leslie published her Seventy-five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats, of which she has this to say…

“The receipts in this little book are, in every sense of the word, American; but the writer flatters herself that (if exactly followed) the articles produced from them will not be found inferior to any of a similar description made in the European manner.”

Browsing through any of these works, what one is struck by is just how finicking and laborious the making of sweets by hand was. But, in the middle years if the 19th century, technology was not standing still, and neither was the confectionery trade. When sugar was a luxury, professional confectioners catered to the well-to-do, providing sweetmeats, ice creams, and elaborate sugar and pastry sculptures to grace the table at grand meals, but as sugar dropped in price, confectioners’ goodies came within reach of more and more consumers. And then, as I say, there was technology. Confectioners and inventors developed specialized machines to handle the many intricate and painstaking processes the confectionery art involved. Henry Weatherly, in his  Treatise on the Art of Boiling Sugar, Crystallizing, Lozenge-making, Comfits, Gum Goods, and Other Processes for Confectionery (1865) puts it neatly

“Twenty years since it was considered rather a clever thing (with a pair of scissors, the principal tool a sugar boiler used) to cut a seven pound boil of acid drops to size, and, with the help of a practised boy, make them round and press them flat, with the hands, in half-an-hour. The same quantity may now, with the machine, be made into drops, by the boy alone, in five minutes.”

Mechanization and cheap sugar ushered in the age of penny candy, arguably the original modern consumer good aimed specifically at children. This brings us back to our 1880s and 90s home candy manuals, published at a time when candy was becoming ever more abundant and cheap, as this was also the era of pure food scandals.

The four candy manuals I’ve been looking at all betray a distinct anxiety about adulterated, commercially produced candy and send the message that making candy at home keeps the family safe from the unwholesome commercial article. In an era when reformers tried to persuade parents to restrict children’s purchase and consumption of candy, warning that it would lead to adult vices like tobacco and alcohol, these books seem to seek to make candy safe by bringing it under control in the home sphere. They promote candy making as a wholesome domestic pastime, as well as a defense against adulterated food , and indeed this era saw the rise of candy-making as a genteel leisure activity.

Candy Making at Home: Containing Full Directions for Making in Your Own Kitchen About Two Hundred and Fifty Different Kinds … by One Who Has Tried It published in 1884 begins by quoting in full a scare article republished from The Household of Brattleboro, Vermont, June 1879 , which gives the tenor of the conversation about pure and impure candy.

“Adulterated Confectionery — In raising adulteration
to the dignity of a science, says the Boston Commercial
Bulletin, the manufacturers of confectionery have done
their part. Properly, there are only three component
parts in pure confectionery — the sugar, or body of the
matter; the extract, or flavoring quahty of the same, and
the coloring property. To such a degree of ingenuity have
candy-makers arrived, that some kinds of their wares are
put up fur the market wnth only a very slight proportion
of the first, and with the coloring and flavoring of so cheap
a quality, that their ‘manufactured articles can be bought
at the same price per pound as the plain sugar itself.

It is not to be supposed that there is no pure confection
ery. Those who purchase at our best and old-established
places are morally sure of getting a genuine article.
But children do not always go to these places. They
strike for the nearest shop or store and where they can
get the most for their pennies. The cheaper candies, of
which hundreds of tons are sold every year, contain some
of the most deadly poisons known, among them red lead,
gamboge, vermillion, chromate of lead, Prussian blue,
verditer or carbonate of copper, arsenite of copper, Brunswick
green, the various oxides of iron, white lead, etc
Terra alba, a kind of clay or white earth is very largely
used, in some qualities it forming from 50 to 60 per cent.
of the manufactured article. “

Moreover….

“The worst eftects of the use of terra alba are, that the
terrible diseases of stone and gravel are caused by the in-
troduction of earth into the system, and the large increase
of patients suffering from these diseases is attributed by
high medical authorities to the introduction of this terri-
ble ingredient into the confectionery and similar arti-
cles consumed in this country.

Glucose, or “grape sugar,” is the name of another dan-
gerous article extensively used in the adulteration of can-
dies. It is not, as its name would imply, made from grapes,
but from potatoes, and its effect is to produce paralysis of
various portions of the system, especially the kidneys,
where the effect is not only to paralize them, but to turn
them into a sugary substance; in other words^ to produce
Bright’s disease, a malady for which physicians have found
as yet no remedy.”

Certainly good reason to make candy at home, instead.

The other books, while less thorough, all manifest the same fears, explicitly or implicitly. The Housewife’s Practical Candy Maker  …Especially Adapted for Manufacture in the American Kitchen  by G.V. Frye. (1889) also harps on purity:

“There is scarcely a mother in the land who does not feel proud in having a choice supply of pure candies on Christmas, New Year’s or the birthday for the ‘little ones’ but it is often difficult to procure goods that are fresh and pure in our smaller cities and towns…”

Sarah Tyson Rorer, in her Home Candy Making of the same year, does likewise

“This little book is the result of careful practice in teaching beginners how to make attractive, wholesome, and palatable varieties of home-made candies…The aim has been to meet the wants of the masses, who, from various causes, cannot obtain the best confections…”

And finally, The Correct Art of Candy-making (1894), part of  Butterick’s Metropolitan Series, flatly admits that it’s fighting a rearguard action against penny candy:

“Children will have candy, but the confectionery offered in many of the shops is adulterated to such an extent, and often with such injurious substances, that it is very unwholesome. Therefore mothers will find it both to their own and their children’s interest to make for the little ones wholesome and delicious candies…”

We also, possibly,  see a whisper of the Colonial Revival in these manuals: most contain recipes for “Old-fashioned Molasses Candy” – the only recipes in which refined sugar does not predominate. The Colonial Revival’s focus on the home, and its nostalgia for a virtuously homespun past may be manifested here as it was in architecture, art, and landscaping. In any event, the safety and innocence of the domestic sphere is vividly contrasted with the heartless hurly-burly of the marketplace.

Although there is no preface, Mrs. Boyd is not without opportunities to sermonize:

CANNING FRUITS.

The four months from the time of strawberries in June, till October, is the harvest time for fruits for every housekeeper, as well as for the industrious farmer, to go earnestly into the work of securing the winter and spring supplies of relishes, preserves, canned fruits, pickles and condiments of various kinds. To an ambitious housekeeper it is a genuine pleasure and satisfaction, that she may be fully equipped to supply the needs of those who are depending upon her for much that goes to make life a pleasure.

There is no claim made for originality in the recipes, as the appellation “Compilation” in the title makes clear. The author draws liberally on Mrs. Rorer and the Home Messenger for her recipes, and also relies on, for instance “a French Chef from Heidelberg” for her recipe for French Fritters, which is Pâte à choux made into balls and deep fried.  But my favorite of her sources is “Bob the Sea-Cook,” who has provided three recipes for the book.  One is for bread, when made at sea (which may indeed count as two recipes, since it includes Bob’s prescription for how to handle yeast for use at sea,) another for  Haricot (Harako) Soup, and a third for an omelette.

Although she is choosy in her sources, she feels free to disagree with them. And she is not so choosy as to omit recipes of which she may not approve, as with Mince Pie:

“The two following recipes I take from the Messenger, but I think them too rich for health; neither do I think it a good plan to boil the mince meat:”

She is, moreover, of two minds about tea:

“Most of the unpleasant effects of tea are ascribed to the volatile oil. The long continued breathing of air impregnated with this oil, produces illness in the packers of tea, who press it down with their bare feet; and the tea tasters at the tea marts in China, who are ever careful not to swallow the infusion, are obliged in a few years to give up their lucrative positions, with shattered constitutions. The Chinese, who drink tea at all times, are careful to use none less than a year old, as in that time the oil either evaporates or is so modified that it ceases to be injurious. Is it not safer not to drink tea at all, and healthier and more nourishing to drink milk either hot or cold (but do not boil) for supper or have a cup of hot cocoa, or chocolate made of milk ?”

But then she goes on to give directions for making this deleterious article.

We get another dose of the authorial voice when she sets herself to tell us about puddings, for which she gives some dozen or more recipes..but not until she has said the following

“Fifty-six years ago there were but few recipes for puddings or pies, both being considered as an extra dish for company. A recipe book of 1838, which was the one I tried to follow, when I first went to housekeeping in 1842, gave recipes for only twelve puddings and seven different kinds of pies. How uncertain I found them. I shall never forget my first baked Indian pudding. I mixed it ready to bake, and left it for the girl to bake (as I was invited out to dine), according to directions in the book, three to four hours. It was more like a rock than a delightful suet pudding. I soon left the book to lie on the shelf for future ages to explore. Some puddings are good either cold or hot. A baked pudding is not as acceptable immediately from the oven as one covered and cooled for ten minutes. A blistering hot pudding is anything but acceptable, no matter how delicate the article may be.”

And she waxes chatty again with Oysters on Toast

“This may be quickly prepared after everything and all the family are ready for tea. Have coals ready for the toast. Toast as many slices of bread as there are members of family. Take as many oysters as you need and scald the pure broth and skim, add butter, pepper, salt, a little cream, and flour enough to make it as thick as cream, and boil a minute to cook the flour, then put in the oysters and let them get boiling hot through without boiling. A half-warmed oyster is not acceptable. Lay buttered toast on platter and pour on oysters and broth. If more broth put it in gravy tureen. Be careful not to have too much broth on toast, or it will be soaked. The toast must be toasted brown, not white nor black. I prepare this myself while the maid toasts the bread, then it is all served hot and seasoned desirable.”

However, by way of contrast, in his final offering, she sees fit to let Bob the Sea Cook speak for himself

Bob The Sea Cook’s Omelet.

“A real French omelet is a natural dish. It don’t want all the fixing most cooking folks put on her. One would think by reading the books that it was as big a thing to do as a suffler. Most books tell you to beat up your whites till they stand, but it ain’t right. A Frenchman don’t take no time in making an omelet. While the butter is in the pan heating, he gets his eggs ready. There ain’t no use to separate whites and yellows. Break the eggs in a bowl, stir them so whites and yellows is mixed thoroughly and that’s all. Two minutes does that. Now don’t you add water, nor milk, nor nothing. You can put cream in, but then that don’t make the old original Johnny omelet, but something else that may be good enough but new fangled. If you have any parsley, chop that up before you begin, that is, if you want a parsley omelet; the parsley, about a teaspoon to six eggs, ought to be as fine as possible; add a little salt and very little white pepper to your eggs and when your butter is a sizzing, tilt over the frying pan a very little and pour in your eggs. It don’t take half a minute to cook. If your butter is hot enough a minute will do it all. Don’t go to turn your omelet with a fork but sling her. She ought to take a whole turn in the air and fall on her other side. But anyhow, if you ain’t up to that trick, you might help her over with a spoon. An overcooked omelet is just a disgrace. It ought to be mellow and a little underdone in the middle. Don’t you never go to give people as knows what an omelet is, something in a flat sheet as tough as a canvas and call it an omelet.”

Since last heard from, I’ve been trying to spend about an hour a day getting to know the collection. This means standing in the stacks and looking, at least briefly, into every volume. A long process, but a worthwhile one, for all that my memory is fallible enough that I don’t pretend I’ll retain everything I make note of.

Still, certain things leap out.  One is that the prefaces of cookbooks have certain distinct messages they wish to convey.  They are not quite all the same, but many of them, well, remind one of each other.

So, what do they have to say? Well, besides the predictable “…it is hoped this book will prove useful to/find acceptance by/meet with the approbation of the public…” there is the reason this particular tome is brought forth, and for the benefit of whom.

There are many that start with a sort of Socratic device. They note that there are already many cookbooks, published previously, published contemporaneously, etc, and since this is so (they rhetorically ask) whyever was this one added to their number?

A few examples of this…

Harder’s Book of practical American cookery
“What!” the reader may exclaim “Another book on cookery! Have we not Careme and Francatelli, Vatel and Soyer, Ude and Gouffe, Miss Acton and Mrs. Beeton, Meg Dodds and Mrs. Hale, and scores of other authorities on the same subject? Must every cook be an author, and we be asked to read his book, as well as to eat of the dishes he prepares?” Gentle reader, it is to anticipate this possible state of mind, and to answer these probable questions, that this explanatory preface is submitted.

Breakfast, dinner, and supper, or, What to eat and how to prepare it : containing all the latest approved recipes in every department of cooking, instructions for selecting…

“OF making many books there is no end.” This we are told by the wisest of men, and the phrase might well be quoted with reference to cook books.

Housekeepers’ and mothers’ manual / by Mrs. Thomas L. Rosser.

IN compiling and writing “THE Housekeepers’ And Mothers’ Manual ” I have done so in the face of many contingencies, and the knowledge that there are already many excellent cookery books published; and in addition to the cookery books, cooking schools giving advantages in that department of household work unknown thirty years ago

But it turns out there always *is* some reason, and the author or editor begs to be allowed to disclose it to you. Other cookbooks, the preface continues, cannot supply what this one does. For instance, other cookbooks are not, it is reported, reliable enough, but the book you hold in your hands has been (depending) either compiled solely from recipes that have been thoroughly tested, or from those garnered from the Best Authorities.

Or perhaps there is an approach, a philosophy, that makes this cookbook superior.   Perhaps it is a much-needed universal authority…

The model cook book

There is scarcely a woman who does not feel, at times, the need of advice as to the best manner of  performing the various duties of housekeeping.  Young wives, when first entering upon their duties, are frequently made to keenly feel their ignorance of  the many customs to which all are expected to  conform, and allowance is scarcely ever made for inexperience. Perhaps in no other branch of house-keeping is criticism oftener heard than that of cookery and table etiquette, and to those who are ” in the  dark,” so to speak, this book containing, as it does,  over eleven hundred well-tried recipes, bills of fare,  etc. will prove very acceptable.

Or, other cookbooks are spendthrift, and cannot be relied upon by the thrifty or would-be thrifty. The same work continues…

The universal cry has been, “We can do nothing  with cook books ; the receipts are so expensive.”  To this stereotyped phrase, our reply is, that it has been the endeavor of the author to combine, in this  work, economy with excellence;

So you see, unlike any others, this cookbooks has your best interests at heart, Dear Reader.

Or again…

Harder’s Book of practical American cookery remarks, somewhat superciliously, that

There have been innumerable Cook Books for popular use published, I grant you ; but if you ask nine out of ten persons who consult them, they will tell you they become more and more perplexed as they attempt to follow their guidance. The housekeeper will confess she has been led into errors by their vague recipes, injurious to the family health, and, at the same time, expensive to the family purse.

The model cook book goes on, to a sweeping flourish of a finish…

and with this end in  view that the book might be prepared in the best  manner and free from the impress of one woman’s  ideas, the recipes have been selected with great care  from English, French, German and American authors  whose opportunities have rendered them well-fitted  to treat the subjects on which they have written. In this way we are enabled to furnish the ladies of  America with the most complete work on home and  foreign cookery ever yet produced.   It has been the earnest aim of the compiler to give such a variety of recipes that the housewife of limited means, as well as she of greater financial resources, may be able to select a suitable repast and to properly serve it. Believing there is a genuine need of such a book, we offer it to the public, trusting it  may meet with cordial approbation.

Finally, there is often some talk of the duties of she in whose charge the housekeeping lies, duties moral as well as pragmatic. There is a quote from Ruskin of which cookbook authors seem very fond. Just this week, I found it in three cookbooks from 1897

Breakfast, dinner, and supper, or, What to eat and how to prepare it : containing all the latest approved recipes in every department of cooking, instructions for selecting… by Cooke, Maud C.

Ten lessons on household economy / by Carrie Ives Saunders.

“Cookery means the knowledge of Medea, and of Circe, and of Calypso, and of Helen, and of Rebekah, and of the Queen of Sheba. It means the knowledge of all herbs and fruits, and balms and spices, and of all that is healing and sweet in fields and groves, and savory in meats. It means carefulness and inventiveness, and watchfulness and willingness, and readiness of appliance. It means the economy of your great-grand- mothers and the science of modern chemists; it means much tasting and no wasting ; it means English thoroughness, and French art, and Arabian hospitality ; and it means, in fine, that you are to be perfectly and always, ‘ladies,’ ‘loaf-givers.’ “

For those not acquainted with the etymology, “lady” is derived from ” hlaefdige” which the OED tells us is “loaf kneader”  but Ruskin’s point is carried better by his translation.

There are many more fine examples of this genre….and of the moral charge laid upon the user of the cookbook, household manual, etc…whereof I hope to include more in the future.

Immigrants came from a wide class spectrum, but the majority were drawn from Sweden’s landless agriculturalists. Some came with connections in established Swedish American frontier communities, or with capital that would allow them to rent or purchase land. But some immigrants had only been able to scrape together the money needed for their passage, and so arrived in need of immediate employment. Employment agencies, offering domestic work, found work for many of these.

Of two late nineteenth century, dual language Swedish-American cookbooks in our collections, one clearly represents a class of works published for the use of this population: the 1882 Svensk-amerikansk kokbok : samt rådgivare för svenskt tjenstefolk i Amerika (Swedish-American cookbook: as well as advisor for Swedish servants in America.) We also have another in a similar format, the 1897 Fullständigaste Svensk-Amerikansk kokbok (Popular Swedish-American cookbook.)

All immigrants encounter, and, generally sooner rather than later, make some accommodation to, the foodways prevalent in their new surroundings.  This is important for any immigrant, but how much more so for new immigrants who find employment that in some way involves food — both in public professions (grocers, butchers, bakers, cooks) and in private domestic service. For those whose living depends on preparing food for the native or naturalized consumer’s palate, it is crucial to understand the cuisine of their new country. They need to quickly become familiar with dishes and ingredients, recognize names, and gain facility with modes of preparation. That is what these two volumes could facilitate. Both books are printed in side-by-side columns of Swedish and English, with the Swedish in the left-hand column. Both assume some familiarity with cooking techniques, as is typical for cookbooks of this period. Both have an index in Swedish and English, and both contain some explanatory material, if only in the form of asides, to orient the reader to specifics of American cooking.

For it is of American cooking that both works chiefly treat. Both contain directions for preparing some number of traditional Swedish dishes, but the majority of the recipes are consistent with what you would find in other late nineteenth century American cookbooks. Recipes make much use of cornmeal: cornbread, johnnycake, mush, rye and Indian bread, and there are numerous recipes with explicitly American names, such as Boston brown bread, Saratoga potatoes (the precursor to that very American culinary marvel, the potato chip,) and Hartford election cake.

The earlier of the two works, the 1882 Svensk-amerikansk kokbok : samt rådgivare för svenskt tjenstefolk i Amerika, bearbetad och utgifven af C. G–d. (Swedish-American cookbook: as well as advisor for Swedish servants in America, processed and published by C. G–d,) had a long life. We know of further editions in 1888, 1890, 1893, 1901, and 1923. (The digitized 1923 edition is here.) Our 1882 edition carries advertisements in both English and Swedish for an employment agency in New York (where the vast majority of immigrants landed) owned by Carl Grimsköld (presumably the C. G–d of the byline.)  The ads address different audiences, however. The one in English is clearly addressed to prospective employers, as it reads

First Class Employment Agency for Swedish, English, German, and French Male and Female Servants for all Capacities
I can give my patrons advantages in selecting help, that they cannot obtain elsewhere

This is the only ad in English in the book, but by its presence it suggests that some English-speakers were expected to be amongst the readers. The one in Swedish is addressed to new immigrants, specifically those in need of work as domestics. In translation (courtesy of Anita Anderson) it says

Women who are looking for places in New York, may find same by applying to Carl Grimsköld’s office, where there are always situations for cooks, housemaids, nannies, cleaners, waiters, washerwomen, and ladies’ maids, with salaries from $10 to $50 a month.
Men as well as women workers should, as soon as they arrive in New York, come to my house, where they will receive the best lodging and food, while they choose jobs.
Other travelers can avail themselves of room and board at the cheapest prices during their stay in New York.
CARL GRIMSKÖLD
Employment office
154 East 29th Street, New York City

At the end of the book, besides the Swedish and English index there is a chapter of Hushållsordres (domestic orders) with the Swedish and English for sentences an employer might say to a domestic worker, side-by-side. They cover a variety of household positions, mirroring those advertised.  For the servant for general house-work we find “Give me the pan and I will show you how to cook oatmeal” and “You shall keep your own room in as good order as the other rooms.” For the nurse there is “The baby shall have a bath every evening at 7 o’clock” and “The waiter doesn’t understand the children, you know.” The cook, washer, and ironer may be told “You need not iron the wash today” or “Tomorrow we give dinner for 20 persons.” The housemaid may hear “Always bring fresh water before breakfast” or “You can go to church in the afternoon but must be home at a quarter to ten.” For the more specialized housemaid and seamstress there is “When you are at liberty, play with the children” and “I suppose you can cut and fit a dress?” The waiter is informed “The first thing you do, is to look after the furnace” and “You have to take off the mustache” (He is, however, allowed to keep his side-whiskers and goatee.) And the coachman may be told “We take a drive through Central Park” or “Mr.  John and Miss Bessy’s saddlehorses should be saddled at a quarter to seven in the morning when it is clear weather.”

It is tempting to think that these give us a glimpse into typical interactions and expectations. It’s not certain, however, how this section would have been used. Would the employer have pointed out sentences so the employee could read the translation?  Would either have tried to pronounce the sentence in the other’s language? Was it meant as an aid for the immigrant to learn the immediately relevant English, that demanded by their employment? There is also a section on furniture and utensils with Swedish and English names opposite one another in columns. The index gives the English terms after the Swedish ones, and is set up for use by the Swedish speaker, with headings alphabetical by the Swedish terms, which suggests that the main user the author had in mind would be the immigrant employee. The English, while clear, has awkward constructions and other infelicities that suggest the writer or translator was not fluent, and possibly that the Swedish was written first and then translated.

The recipes in the book are, for the most part, typical of those you found in other late nineteenth century American cookbooks: to broil a shad, Brunswick stew, green corn fritters, maple sugar biscuit, pone, Delmonico-pudding, and steamed and baked Indian puddings. Many recipes sport American names such as Hartford election cake, Connecticut cake, Goshen-cake, Federal cake, Rochester jelly cake, Washington pie, and Wisconsin cake. Some are also attributed to American locales, for instance “Clam Soup (Hartford)” or “Stufvad fisk (Astoria)” (literally stewed fish, but the English is “a very nice chowder.”) Occasionally, information is added to the Swedish title of the recipe, to orient the Swedish-language reader. For instance, we find  “Sally Lunn (Frukostkaka)” (breakfast cake) and “West Point-kornbrod (Kadetter)” (cadets.)  In some cases the recipes are attributed by name, such as “Swedish plumpudding (Mary Håkanson)” There are a number of recipes identified as being Swedish in origin, in some sections grouped together, but in others scattered amongst the American recipes.

The later work, the  Fullständigaste Svensk-Amerikansk kokbok (Popular Swedish-American cookbook)  published in 1897 (we also know of an 1895 edition) is half again as long, and somewhat more comprehensive. (The digitized 1897 edition is here.) It was published in Chicago, at that time a jumping-off point for many Swedish immigrants headed for frontier communities, and itself possessed of a sizable Swedish-American community. The book is not as obviously tied to a specific enterprise: the preface merely says “In response to an often-repeated request the public is herewith presented with a Swedish-American Cook-Book, printed in parallel columns.”   A testimonial from “Fru Doktorinnan Sophia Lindahl,” one of the few parts of the book not translated into English, recommends it to Swedish-American housewives setting up housekeeping, for its detailed recipes for the dishes of the new country, and its coverage of unfamiliar ingredients such as maize “for whose use the Swedish cookbooks, quite naturally, do not give any instruction.” Here, then, was a cookbook meant for daily use in the home by Swedish-Americans, but also accessible to English speakers. Like the earlier volume it’s set up for the convenience of the Swedish speaker.  There are separate Swedish and English indexes, obviously composed separately, as the listing is alphabetical by name in the language used. The book ends with twelve pages of publisher’s ads, in Swedish.

As well as a cookbook, this is meant to serve as a household manual. The preface signals this with its reflections on cooking generally (including remarks on nutrition and digestibility,) and outlines the two alternative manners of serving, as well as explaining the custom of the Smörgåsbord:

The French way of serving is to put all dishes on the table before the meal, the Russian way to bring them from the kitchen warm and carved in the order they are to be served. The best way appears to be to make use of both methods, cold dishes being on the table at commencement of the meal, warm ones brought in as needed. Otherwise the Russian way of serving appears to be best for dinners, the French way for suppers.
An original Swedish institution mentioned in the last chapter is “Smörgåsbord,” served before meals either on a small side table or passed around, generally disposed of in a standing position. The “smörgåsbord” is supposed to sharpen the appetite of those participating therein.

Moreover, each section is preceded by a paragraph of general remarks on the availability, preparation, and nutritive value of foodstuffs, and the service of the dishes which follow.  For instance, we learn that “Eggs that give a gurgling sound when shaken are bad.” The section on bread begins with several recipes for making yeast, and there are two sections on preserving food: one on jellies and fruit preserves, and one on preservation more generally (“Pickles and salted goods”) that contains directions for drying fruit and keeping vegetables in sand or earth over the winter as well as recipes for drying or salting them. Dill and parsley are considered sufficiently important to the culinary regimen that recipes are given for preserving them in salt or butter for the cold months. The same section contains directions for salting down beef and pork, and preparing and smoking hams in both the Westphalian and the American manner.

At the end of the book is a section of “General Observations” with household prescriptions such as “to make hens lay in winter,” “to preserve steel pens,” “to test nutmeg,” and “to enamel shirt bosoms.” There is also a series of menus, which begins with a table of the time it takes different foods to digest. There are sample menus for smörgåsbord, small dinners, grand dinners, and suppers, plus simple menus by season.

The recipes are chiefly American, comparable to what one would find in contemporary cookbooks designed for modest households, albeit with some variation and elaboration. For instance, there are three recipes for roast turkey: the French way, stuffed with veal, kidney lard, and ox marrow flavored with brandy, then lined with slices of salt pork and the whole is laid in a cool place for three or four days “in order to get the taste of the stuffing in the meat” before roasting; the English way, with a bread stuffing, roasted and basted with a mixture of butter, water and pepper, glazed at the last with egg white, served with giblet gravy made in the roasting pan and garnished with fried oysters; and the American way, steamed and then stuffed with oysters and a dressing of bread crumbs and butter, roasted (“about half an hour before it is done, baste with butter alone and dredge with a little flour, which will give the turkey a frothy appearance,”) and served with a giblet gravy enriched with cream. There are a few distinctly Swedish recipes, such as fruit soups, rye mush, and graflax.

Like all immigrants, Swedes coming to America brought their foodways with them. Like all immigrants, they needed to adjust to the available foodstuffs of their new home for their own cooking, just as they learned to make other accommodations to their new surroundings, acculturate, and learn (with whatever degree of enthusiasm) to fit in. These two volumes, published with recent immigrants in mind as a market, address specific and immediate needs faced by the target population. What a window into the immigrant experience such works give us!