That’s what they used to call recipes. I think they still do, some places; I remember reading old books by Elizabeth Enright where people in upstate New York talked about their “re-ceets” for pound cake and such. It always fascinated me. I could juuuust about tell what they meant – but WHY?
My lovely fiancee Annie looked it up for us and found this:
Receipt was first used in medieval English as a formula or prescription for a medicinal preparation (Chaucer is the first known user, in the Canterbury Tales of about 1386). The sense of “a written statement saying that money or goods have been received” only arrived at the beginning of the seventeenth century…. Recipe is the imperative, “take!”, from the same Latin verb. It was traditionally the first word in a prescription, heading the list of ingredients.
I love how enthusastic that sounds. I’d like to write a cookbook called “Take!”
This came up because I dug into The Improved Housewife; or, Book of receipts; with engravings for marketing and carving (1847), by Mrs. A. L.
Webster for some inspiration for this week’s cookbook, which centers around 1851, the year of Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech.
“Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.”
She was evidently a hilarious and apt speaker. The Battle Creek Historical Society quotes her as beginning one speech, “Children, I have come here like the rest of you, to hear what I have to say.”
Sojourner Truth
The Improved Housewife is hilarious and fascinating too, but often unintentionally so. This week’s cookbook includes several pages of my favorite stories and quotes from Webster’s work, but I find them so entertaining that I just had to include a few here! Without further ado, some of its strangest (from a modern point of view) moments:
Clams and Crabs.
Cut the hinge of the clam-shell with a thin sharp-pointed knife. Roast, take out, chop fine, season, then replace them in the one half their shell with a paste [pastry] cover, and bake. Very nice. So are crabs. Serve them hot.
[I just love the last three little bits. "Very nice. So are crabs. Serve them hot."
And for an excellent overview of everyday life:]
To keep Green Corn and Grapes, and to keep Things.
Strip of part of the husks; tie the others tight over the tip end of the cob; confine the corn in a tight barrel, with alternate layers of coarse salt; keep it in a dry cool place, and it will be nice for new-year’s. Pack grapes in cotton. Keep crusts and pieces of bread in a earthen pot or pan, in a cool dry place, well covered; fresh lard and suet, in tin vessels; salt pork fat, in unglazed earthen-ware; yeast, in wood or earthen; preserves and jellies, in glass, china, or stone-ware; cabbages, buried in the ground, roots upward; salt, in a dry place; meal, in a cool dry place; ice, in the cellar, wrapped in flannel; vinegar, in wood or glass; bed linen, well aired; hair or straw mattresses, for your children to sleep on; milk, for them to eat; bed curtains, at a good remove from the bed slept on – and keep boys where they should be; girls too, studying Housewifery.
[I think we've probably all been wondering how to prepare calf's head....]
To Grill a Calf’s Head.
Clean and divide the head as for mock turtle; take out the brains and tongue; boil the head tender; take the eyes out whole, and cut the flesh from the skull part in small pieces. Take some of the water the head was boiled in for gravy; add to this gravy, cayenne pepper, salt, a grated nutmeg, and a spoonful of lemon pickle: simmer this till the gravy is well flavored. Next, take the chop, pick out the bones; cover it with bread crumbs, chopped parsley, pepper, and salt, and set it in the oven to brown. Then,
thicken the gravy with the yolks of two eggs and a spoon-ful of butter rubbed into two of flour, and stew the skull part in it a few minutes; put this part on the dish; and complete the whole dish by placing the grilled chop on it and garnishing with brain cakes and broiled sweetbread.
[Mmmm... brain cakes.
This one is kind of awesome; I want to make mock venison!]
Mock Venison.
Mutton is the best substitute for real venison. Hang up, for several days, a large loin of fat mutton; then bone it, and take off all the kidney fat, and the skin from the upper fat; mix together two ounces of brown sugar, one ounce of pulverized black pepper, and two of allspice; rub it well into the mutton; keep the mutton covered with the skin, and rub and turn it daily five days. When to be roasted, cover it with the skin, and pepper it the same as for venison, first washing from it entirely the spices. Roast about the same time as for real venison. Serve it with made gravy and currant jelly.
[I still don't know what any of this means:]
For a Felon.
Roast a lump of salt of the size of a walnut wrapped in a cabbage leaf, and pulverize it. Take the same quantity of shaving soap, and the same of bar soap, and make all into a very smooth salve; soak the felon in lye; apply the salve; in twenty-four hours, pare down where it looks like breaking, till you open it; put on basilicon salve.
[And finally, I love this glimpse into the author's life - and how some things never change:]
To Extract a Clove, Bean, or any Artificial Substance from the Nose of a Child.
Press with the finger the well nostril, so as to completely close it, at the same time fitting your lips to the child’s closely; blow with a sudden puff into the child’s mouth. The writer thus extracted a clove from the nose of a young child.
