March 31^st is the anniversary of this blog – and in honour of my first recipe, Cayenne Cheese from Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, which is the first written recipe for Cheese Straws, I’ve been making recipes that feature flour, butter, cheese, salt and cayenne pepper each year to mark the occasion. This Cheese Cookie recipe is from the 1940s edition of the Joy of Cooking.

Rhubarb Cups are a simple, three-ingredient, make-ahead dessert from the 1847 cookbook The Lady’s Receipt Book by Eliza Leslie. Rhubarb Cups would be a perfect dish to add to your recipe rotation if you’ve got a freezer full of stewed rhubarb! I have to admit, they don’t end up being the most visually appealing dessert, but what they lack in aesthetics, they make up for in taste.

The cups themselves are very mild, but this recipe also includes a zippy and flavourful butter, sugar and lemon hard sauce. As an added bonus, in this blog post you’ll find out where you can find rhubarb growing wild in Banff National Park.

Every year in March for my blogging anniversary, I make a different Cheese Straw recipe and this year’s Cheese Straws called for an pre-prepared batch of pastry. I searched for a pastry recipe from the same time period and found Short or Flaky Pastry in the 1901 classic The Settlement Cook Book.

Short or Flaky Pastry is a puff pastry recipe that’s easy to pull off and it does live up to its name by producing a pastry that’s both flaky and light. It calls for half butter and half lard, but it is also delicious when made with only butter. This is definitely a recipe that I’m going to look up on my own website when I need to make some puff pastry fast!

It’s my anniversary today! Three years ago today, I was furiously completing my first blog post, Cayenne Cheeses, which still is one of my favourite historic recipes. Each year ever since, I’ve made another baked cheesy recipe with cheese, butter, flour, salt and cayenne pepper in the ingredient list.

This Cheese Straw recipe is from the 1903 Good Housekeeping Everyday Cook Book and it’s very simple to put together. Grate cheese, season with salt and cayenne pepper and sprinkle it on top of thin strips of pastry. It’s an excellent recipe for making a delicious snack from the extra pastry when you’re making a pie. You could also make or buy pastry if you want a larger batch. They taste quite more-ish, so you might very well want to make pastry specifically for this recipe!

Cu p Cookies are a milk, lemon and sugar cookie with an almond, sugar & cinnamon topping sprinkled on top. This recipe is from Aunt Babette’s Cook Book from 1889, and its leavening agent is Ammonium Bicarbonate or Baker’s Ammonia

I’ve chosen this recipe because for the last 2 years, my Ammonia Cakes recipe has been my most popular post by far. This tells me that there’s an appetite for research and recipes using Baker’s Ammonia, but I’m torn, because Ammonia Cakes is not a delicious recipe at all! I had to make a second recipe, Icing for Cake to save the Ammonia Cakes so they were edible and they didn’t end up in the compost.

Cup Cookies are a much more delicious ammonium bicarbonate cookie. Stick with this recipe for the deliciousness, but head over to Ammonia Cakes for a bit of history about Baker’s Ammonia.

Today’s my 2^nd Blogaversary! 2 years ago today, I nervously and excitedly hit “publish” on my very first recipe post. The recipe I picked was Cayenne Cheeses from the 1861 cookbook Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management. I picked it because it was – and it still is – my favourite historic recipe that I’ve ever made and eaten.

A year later, I started the tradition of posting a similar recipe each year on March 31^st to celebrate the milestone. Last year’s recipe was Cheese Hooies from the 1965 Stillmeadow Cookbook by Gladys Taber. 2020’s twist on baking flour, butter, cheese, salt and cayenne pepper together is Cheese Straws. This recipe come to us all the way from the 1891 Tried and True Cookbook, a community cookbook compiled by the “Ladies Aid Society and Friends of the First Methodist Episcopal Church of Deadwood, South Dakota”.

One evening recently, I found myself driving home from visiting my Mom with a small harvest of fresh rhubarb from her garden in the passenger seat. Basically as soon as I set foot in my door, I searched for a historic rhubarb recipe that wasn’t Rhubarb Jam, Stewed Rhubarb or Rhubarb Pie (the things I do for fun!).

Rhubarb and Banana Fool, from the 1900 cookbook Mrs. Beeton’s Cold Sweets, was the most intriguing to me. A good description of this recipe in today’s terms would be a low-sugar banana and rhubarb smoothie, with a suggested whipped cream topping.

This recipe got me to start thinking about a few things: what immediately sprang to mind was one of my Father-in-Law’s favourite stories to tell first time he ate a banana in the 1950s. It’s a funny tale, so be sure to keep reading for a chuckle.

Discovering the Rhubarb and Banana Fool recipe also made me wonder: “When did people start eating bananas in North America?”, so I delve into answering that question by having a look at American and Canadian cookbooks.

You’ll also find a bit of bonus info about Cochineal, an insect used as a red dye. At the end, I briefly run over the beginnings of the banana growing industry in the Americas, and the grave injustice of the more-delicious Gros Michel banana becoming almost wiped out by disease, to be replaced by our less-tasty Cavendish bananas that we eat today.

Icing for Cake saved the day when I had about 5 dozen bland Ammonia Cakes that needed some extra pizzazz! Both Ammonia Cakes and Icing for Cake are found in the 1898 The New Galt Cookbook, which is a community cookbook compiled not far from where I grew up and where I live today. Icing for Cake is a simple white sugar and milk icing that hardens within minutes and you could drizzle it on cakes, cookies, donuts or squares.

If you do want to make a cookie using Baker’s Ammonia as the leavening agent, I really do suggest baking Cup Cookies instead. It’s just a more flavourful cookie!

Ammonia Cakes: probably the least appetizing cookie name that I’ve ever come across. These cakes use ammonium bicarbonate (baker’s ammonia) as the leavening agent and I assure you that they don’t taste like ammonia, but they will temporarily stink up your kitchen like cat urine while they bake!

Ammonia Cakes fall on the bland side of the cookie spectrum, so I was lucky to find the recipe Icing for Cake in the same recipe book and I iced them the next day.

If you do want to make a cookie using Baker’s Ammonia as the leavening agent, I really do suggest baking Cup Cookies instead. It’s just a more flavourful cookie!

I wanted to prepare one last root-vegetable recipe before the greens & herbs start popping up here in Ontario, and I thought I'd turn to a local 1898 cookbook: The New Galt Cook Book.

Galt is a town which is now part of Cambridge, Ontario and it's also close to where I grew up and where I live now in Hamilton. Scalloped Turnips is an interesting twist on scalloped potatoes. The turnips provide additional flavour to the dish, and it is creamy but also light because the sauce uses a butter & flour rue and the cooking water from the turnips instead of a white bechamel sauce.

Coincidentally, I had this recipe selected and the turnips purchased before I knew that cooking at an event using recipes from The New Galt Cook Book was even a possibility! I'll be preparing food from this cookbook for a Victorian Tea at the Fashion History Museum in Cambridge, Ontario on May 18^th, and Food Historian Carolyn Blackstock will be speaking about her year-old journey making a recipe a day from The New Galt Cook Book.

One year ago today, on March 31st, I hit the "Publish" button for the first time and put out my first Food History blog recipe for the world to see and taste. I selected Cayenne Cheeses, a scrumptious cheese biscuit, from the 1861 Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management because it has been one of my favourite historic recipes since I began working in Historic House Museums. They are really delicious, you should try them!

My 1-year anniversary recipe is Cheese Hooies. When I first read this recipe in the 1965 Stillmeadow Cookbook by Gladys Taber, I saw the ingredient list (butter, cheese, flour, salt and cayenne pepper) and thought, "These Hooies are basically Cayenne Cheeses". Cheese Hooies haven't kicked Cayenne Cheeses off my favourite recipes list, but making them was interesting look at how a century changes a recipe.

If you asked anyone in my family about our traditional family recipes, probably the first dish listed by everyone would be Squash Puff. I'd describe Squash Puff as a cross between squash pudding and soufflé.

It is light, fluffy and very flavourful considering it doesn't contain any onions or herbs. My Mom cut the recipe out of a newspaper at some point and it's been in her giant binder of recipe clippings ever since I can remember. Give Squash Puff a try at your next Thanksgiving, potluck or family gathering...or when you've got a hankering for some satisfying comfort food.

This Tuna Sandwich recipe comes from the Peanuts Lunch Bag Cookbook (1974), which is a cookbook that was in our house when I was growing up. I don't remember anyone ever making a recipe from this cookbook when I was a kid, but I remember flipping through this book to read the Peanuts comics that are nestled amongst the recipes. About 6 months ago, I found this book in an antiques market...and all the memories flooded back.

In this sandwich filling, you'll find flaked tuna, crushed pineapple and chopped water chestnuts. When I selected this recipe, my hunch was that it would either be delicious or disgusting and I had no idea which way it would go! I'm happy to report that it was delicious. The pineapple is very subtle. You can taste something a little bit sweet in there but you aren't quite sure what that is, and the water chestnuts add a nice crunch to the sandwich filling. The pineapple and water chestnuts cut the fishiness of the tuna, so you end up with a more subtle tuna flavour (and smell), so this recipe would make tunafish sandwiches more palatable for someone who isn't a fan.

Apple Frazes are a tasty apple pancake from the 18th-century classic: The art of cookery made plain and easy by Hannah Glasse. Through making this recipe, I've learned that adding little bit of sherry to your pancake batter is a very good idea!

I had the pleasure of frying my Apple Frazes over an open hearth built in the 1780s at Nelles Manor Museum (www.nellesmanor.ca), where I'll be teaching Open Hearth Cooking Classes. The September Classes have sold out, but we've added a third class on November 4^th at 1:00. At this class we'll be making the same Autumn recipes as the classes in September, only at the end of the Fall season rather than the beginning.

In my backyard is a giant apple tree, so for as long as I call this house my home, you'll find apple recipes on this food history blog this time of year.

Apple Bread is surprisingly not sweet. This bread is very flavourful thanks to a longer prefermentation process and the apples add a little je ne sais quoi to the complex flavour of this moist bread. I took both the very large loaves this recipe yielded to a gathering along with some butter. I thought that there would be leftovers and there most definitely were not!

These Shrewsbury Cakes are one of first recipes that I tested out for the Open Hearth Cooking Classes that I'm teaching at Nelles Manor in Grimsby, Ontario in September.

They are crisp & buttery, and the flavour of caraway seeds balances out the sweetness of these cookies. Shrewsbury Cake is from the first English-language cookbook that was both compiled & printed in Canada. The Frugal Housewife's Manual was published in Toronto in 1840, but the cookbook author is credited as “A. B. of Grimsby”. I love this connection to the Nelles family, since they likely would have known this mysterious A. B. who wrote the book.

Filled Dills is an appetizer recipe from The Stay Out of the Kitchen Cookbook, published in 1968. This cookbook contains make ahead recipes and dishes that can be left in the oven so that a hostess can spend time with her dinner guests instead of spending her dinner party in the kitchen.

Filled Dills are large dill pickles hollowed out with an apple corer, filled with cream cheese & various flavourings, then finally sliced into thin pieces. They are very tasty and easy to make ahead for your next gathering.

This tasty green bean salad is found in John Smith's The Principles and Practices of Vegetarian Cookery, published in 1860 in London.

The Salad Sauce that accompanies the green bean salad is made of hard boiled egg yolks, oil, vinegar, mustard and herbs, and would taste amazing on salads of all varieties. Steve said that he didn't hate green beans when eating this salad, which is a glowing review of the Salad Sauce!

Queen's Drops are a basic sugar & spice cookie with a hint of dried currants. The recipe is found in The Cook Not Mad, which has the distinction of being the very first cookbook to be published in Canada in 1831!

They are delicious with both white or brown sugar, but I prefer the extra flavour that comes with using brown. The dried currants provide little intense sweet flavour pops, and our recipe suggests using "any agreeable spice", so feel free to customize and add your favourite baking spices.

Today's the first day of a scorching hot Canada Day long weekend in Ontario, and it's the perfect day to post about my experiences making Mint Cup, a mocktail recipe from a 1940s edition of The Joy of Cooking. To start off, you take about 5 minutes to make a mint syrup with fresh mint leaves, sugar and water. Once it's strained & cooled, you add lemon juice, ginger ale and a bit of green food colouring. It's a very refreshing beverage that tastes like a Whisky Sour. I'd recommend giving it a try!