Its Ice Cream Time... again!

They say its going to be 97 degrees today. Sunday will be July 4th. You may remember that last year I posted about my ice cream making adventures on the Fourth of July. I shared a recipe for ice cream that began, "Take the yolks of 13 eggs..." So here we are a year later, and I thought, "you know, we should have an online ice cream making contest. Or fiesta. Or whatever."

So here's the showdown throwdown. Post your old fashioned ice cream recipe here, and make it on the 4th. Then lets get back together next week and share our ice cream making (and eating!) experiences.

For those who need a little help, just google "historical ice cream recipe" or even "Jefferson's ice cream". I remember seeing Thomas Jefferson's recipe last year, facsimile photo of his original handwriting. Of course the purists will use a Mormon pioneer recipe. After all, what good are Mormons without our ice cream?

Can't wait to hear what you come up with!

Its My Birthday!

Hello again. It was nice to hear all your responses to the last post. I thank you all for the feedback. It was especially nice to hear from Annette, a colleague from my days in the museum biz.

Last week I turned the big Four-Oh. Strangely, there was no crisis attached since I used up all my crises a couple of years ago with a divorce. But I did get presents. Oh boy did I get presents! A Japanese garden pagoda, gold-toe socks, and of course wonderful hours spent with my kids. All this bores you, I know.

I also got... TWO COOK BOOKS!!! The first one was the Don Holm classic treatise on Dutch oven cooking, with notes about sourdough. I made a peach cobbler for breakfast this morning (with ice cream on the side). I also got a tasty little compilation from my sister. Regular readers here might know that I absconded with my grandmother's recipe files when she retired to the assisted living home. My sister Tawna absconded with my other grandma's cooking files when alzheimer's overpowered her. Tawna is a very motivated and energetic person. She edited the collection and self-published it on Lulu.com Its called, "Recipes from the Kitchen of Metta Hale Stauffer." Yup, the daughter-in-law from Henry Alfred Stauffer of the previous posting.

Metta (she's 92 now) is a second generation Danish American. Her mother Mary Ann Amanda Peterson came to Utah as a little girl, and they were both raised in Cache Valley and also a stint in Blackfoot, ID. In the recipe book we find a few recipes reaching back to Metta Hansen Peterson, my great-great-grandmother. One such is this unremarkable recipe for "Meat Dumplings."

1/2 lb ground meat
2 eggs
Small onion, chopped
1/2 c breat crumbs
Salt, pepper
If it needs moisture add sego milk. WOrk into small balls. Roll in flour and drop in soup.

Basically, this is Frickadeller. This Danish version of a hamburger, meatloaf or dumpling can take several forms, and might be served on a bun, stand alone, or in soup. In the course of my research I came across a very similar recipe attributed to Caroline Berg Ostermann, circa 1850. Caroline studied cuisine in Denmark before immigrating to Utah in 1868. Her frickadeller recipe came down through five generations, and is now archived in the Utah State Historical Society archives at the Rio Grande station in Salt Lake City.

Aren't I a lucky boy to receive such birthday presents?

Mush

So over Memorial Day I went to pay homage to ancestors at various cemetaries. One stop was to the grave of Ulrich Stauffer, my great great grandfather. He was a polygamist, and his wives are all buried around his grave. I'm descended from his wife Verena, through his son Henry Alfred.

Ulrich liked to eat a particular kind of cracked wheat cereal. I believe it has to do with his Swiss heritage. In our family, we like to tell a story that he actually invented this mush, but that's not really likely. Still, we call it Stauffer Mush, and we eat it particularly at family reunions, to affirm our heritage. The traditional preparation is that it should be made rather stiff, enough that it can "stand alone" on a plate, and it is served with sugar and half-n-half. It's not bad.

While I was at the cemetary I bumped into a second cousin that I didn't know from Adam. But he was there poking around Ulrich's grave, so I figured we were related. He's also through Henry Alfred's line, but through my Grandpa's brother, whom we had always heard called "Uncle Ree." Turns out the man's name was Henry. So I asked him if his family ever had Stauffer Mush. He replied that he remembered Henry used to make it and it was delicious, but when his mother made the same mush it was terrible. We tried to figure out why and decided maybe she didn't put salt in it while it boiled. Also, he says his mother was always stingy on the sugar, and only used skim milk. Thus died the Stauffer Mush tradition in his family.

Hope you all had a lovely Memorial Day.

A Thousand Words

Well, I'm to the point now that I have to start looking for illustrations. The reader reviewers said the book must have illustrations, and I agree. They suggested photos from the period. That's tricky because photography had only just been invented, and wasn't common in the West. Of course we're very familiar with the Matthew Brady photos of the Civil War. But out west, we were only taking pictures of architecture and groups of important men. A lot of portraits but not many pictures of food. I suppose there are DUP photos of many of the women whose recipes will be featured. Here's one of Patty Sessions:




And here's my other hero, Emily Barnes, who wrote very explicitly about her food:




























I found one photo at the Utah State Historical Society of people sitting on a lawn eating watermelon. The one you see here isn't that one, but it is similar, from a later date.




Here's one I call "Portrait with sauerkraut." Its not from a Mormon pioneer source. There just aren't that many good food photos from the period. Can I still use non-Mormon photos?





Then there's this lovely image of an itenerant cider-making operation. The details are exquisite.





I'm also thinking that perhaps we should go with some line drawings in the absence of photographs. I have a box of crayons and some printer paper. Do you think I can muster the skills? Or should it be farmed out to a professional?

How Strange...

Well, I've started into making a few revisions on the manuscript, as requested. As I went about it I thought, "Ya know, I should talk to some sort of Dutch oven enthusiast for a modern perspective about why people do Dutch oven cooking today..."

So I got online and started surfing around and came up with a name and phone number of someone who seemed to be in the thick of that scene. He graciously consented to a telephone interview. Over the course of nearly an hour he told me about the organizational structure of the International Dutch Oven Society, and the best way to clean your Dutch oven. Yup.

When I asked about Dutch oven traditions from his parents, he said there were none. Nope. He only picked it up a few years ago just for fun. The feeling I got was that it was a very contemporary hobby for a lot of people, having absolutely nothing to do with history whatsoever. Instead it is an alternative to grilling with propane.

How very strange it seems to me...

So I went back to revising the preface and first chapter. It turns out they were both jumbled together and the chronology was all messed up.

It doesn't make a very interesting story, does it? I bet you're even disappointed that you read all the way to the end. Nelson says, "HA ha."

This Just In...

I haven't written in a while, and I'm sorry. The greater portion of my research has wrapped up, so I'm not really finding new stuff very often.

Several months ago, I submitted the finished manuscript of my book to the publishers, and they gave it to a couple of review readers. It had to be proofed for historical rigor. This called for two independent reviewers to read and make thorough comments. The reviewers are respected authorities in the field, who make a recommendation to the publisher about the worthiness of publication. These reviewers remain anonymous (so that I won't offer them bribes of homemade pies to influence their reviews). Today I received copies of the anonymous reviews. I thought I'd share a couple of juicy nuggets with you, purely by way of boasting.

Reviewer #1 said, "This manuscript contributes greatly to the study of foodways in the latter half of the nineteenth century." Whoah there! I started to feel giddy, and then read on. "This book, if published, will be of interest to scholars, history 'buff’s' fascinated with trail history, staffs of museums and living history farms, and the general public who values history." Imagine that, someone besides me thinks there might be an audience and market for the book! This reviewer went on to say that the manuscript needs some serious editing, and maybe not so many recipes but more analysis.

Reviewer #2 said, "I believe that Brock’s research is extraordinary." Heh. I think I know how to do research, but I could do better with writing and analysis of the research. This reviewer also went on to say, "Brock is to [be] congratulated for his painstaking research over two years." Then followed several pages of things that needed a strong editorial hand. But the best part of all is that this reviewer contributed a couple of recipes from her own family dating back 5 generations. I share one of these with you here.

"Molasses Candy
1 cup molasses
1 cup sugar
Butter

Boil until stringy in cold water, not so it breaks or hard. Pour in greased pan, cool, then make a roll and pull into lengths and cut in pieces."
~Anne Hess Milne
St. George, Utah
1854-1921

Thanks to everyone who helped me get this far, including all of you who read here.

Puff Paste

The other day I went to my Irish Pub Cookbook for an idea for dinner. I happened to have some ham in the fridge, and some chicken in the freezer, so I ended up making a pot pie. The recipe called for pre-prepared crust, but I didn't have any (I've never had any). I went to Alice Waters' book for a recipe. Usually my wife makes the pie crusts but she was away.

Actually that one of the things I remember most about my courtship with her. We started dating in October, and then one thing and another, she came to Thanksgiving dinner and she brought pie. I was with her when she made the pie, and she whipped the pie crust out from scratch without a recipe and without measurements. And it was divine. I was in love.

But now being on my own for the crust, I went to Alice Waters. Basically she said two cups flour, one cup butter, a pinch of salt and just enough cold water to hold it together. Refrigerate one hour after mixing before rolling. So I got to thinking... I had seen plenty of pioneer recipes for pie, but never any for a crust or puff paste.

My wife learned to make her pie crust from her mother, and she's made hundreds and hundreds of pies. From everything I've seen, this rote style of learning was how the pioneers did it also-- never a written recipe or set measurements. Fortunately, some people did write things down. Mostly, they were enterprizing publishers, not pioneers.

Here's Anna Maria Collins' recipe for puff paste, from The Great Western Cookbook, 1857:

"To a pound and a quarter of sifted flour, rub gently in with the hand, half a pound of fresh butter; mix it up with half a pound of fresh butter; mix it up with half a pint of spring-water. Knead it well, and set it by for a quarter of an hour; then roll it out thin, lay on it, in small pieces, three-quarters of a pound more of butter, throw on it a little flour, double it up in folds, and roll it out thin three times, and set it by an hour in a cold place."

This seems a little excessive. Here's something more simple, from Warne's Model Cookery, 1869:

"One pound of flour; six ounces of beef suet; a cupful of cold water. Strip the skin from the suet, chop it as fine as possible, rub it well into the flour, mix it with a knife, work it to a very smooth paste with a cupful of water, and roll it out for use."

So we see that there are lots of different ways to make a pie crust. No doubt our Mormon pioneers each had their own method.

What's your pie crust? Where did you learn to make it?