I have a loose-leaf notebook of recipes that had belonged to my maternal grandmother 100 years ago. Grandma was a home economics teacher before she married Grandpa. (Those were the days when women had to quit jobs once they got married.) The collection is an interesting time capsule of foodways in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Examples:
No oven temperatures, only low, moderate, or hot. Probably these recipes were designed for ovens without precise heat settings, such as wood-burning stoves.
No seasonings other than salt and pepper in main dishes. Spices do make appearances in baked goods.
Some recipes didn’t have methods, just a list of ingredients. One had to be a home economics teacher to figure things out.
Lots of white sauces. The most bizarre use of white sauce was a recipe for deep-fried peanut butter croquettes. The most egregious error I saw was in a recipe for baked eggs, where one was to make a medium thick white sauce with 1 1/2 cups milk and 4 1/2 cups flour. That’s more like muffin batter than a sauce.
The only two recipes I found for fish involved canned salmon and salt cod. This is probably related to supply. Fresh fish was not readily available unless a family member caught one. There was a recipe for scalloped oysters, which was one of my mother’s favorite dishes.
Some of the most interesting items in the notebook are the newspaper clippings. I found a recipe for mock chicken loaf that won a $1 prize for Mrs. J.B. Fish, who resided at 134 College Avenue in Ithaca. (Chicken was more expensive than pork or beef back in the day; hence the campaign slogan, “A chicken in every pot.”) I checked out this address on a map app. It still exists, although it’s been chopped up into several student apartments.
I wonder what someone 100 years hence would think of my collection of recipes. The person might find my obsession with Asian cuisine and spices quaint, or wonder why I needed so many cookbooks. Or s/he might wonder what these foods are, since our descendants may be consuming the 22nd century equivalent of Space Food Sticks.
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