Joan’s Country Kitchen

This unique cake recipes comes from my mom’s 1920’s Iowa Farm Bureau Cookbook. It was submitted by Mrs. Donald Klopping. The recipe caught my eye because of the idea of adding a mashed potato to a cake recipe seemed interesting. The results are delicious though!

Historic recipes are not long on directions so I’m using the directions I used myself. Most old recipes presupposed that the cook really knew what she was doing in the kitchen!

Potato Caramel Cake Recipe

Ingredients

2-3 cups butter (I used 2 cups)
2 cups sugar
1-2 cup sweet milk ( I started with one cup and added a little more until I got to the right consistency)
1 cup mashed potato
2 cups flour
1-2 cups cocoa (I used one cup)
1 cup raisins
1 cup nuts ( I used walnuts)
4 eggs
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp nutmeg
1-2 tsp cloves

Directions

Cream sugar and butter, then add egg yolks, potato, milk, spices, cocoa, nuts, and raisins rolled in flour. Mix well and then slowly add flour, blending as you go.

Beat egg whites until stiff and fold into cake batter.

Bake in a tube pan at 350.

I love historic recipes and the original Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe has a very interesting history.

Over 700 delicous recipes from Ruth Wakefield

In 1930, Ruth Wakefield and her husband, Kenneth, bought a 1709, Cape Cod-style toll house situated halfway between Boston and New Bedford, Massachusetts, just outside the town of Whitman.

A toll house used to serve as an inn and eating establishment for road-weary travelers. Here passengers paid their toll, changed horses, and ate welcome home style meals. This particular toll house, purchased by the Wakefields, was turned into a lodge called The Toll House Inn, with Ruth baking for all the guests who stayed at there.

Ruth used historic and traditional Colonial recipes, for her guests and her delicious desserts began attracting people from all over New England. One favorite cookie recipe from the Colonial Days was called Butter Drop Do cookies. One day, while preparing these, she decided to cut up a Nestle Semi-Sweet Chocolate candy bar and add it to the cookie dough.

Ruth expected the chocolate to melt but instead, the chocolate bits held their shape and softened. This chocolate chip cookie recipe became extremely popular at the inn and it wasn’t long before Ruth’s cookie recipe was published in a Boston newspaper, then other newspapers in New England.

Ruth Wakefield’s chocolate chip cookie recipe caused the sale of Nestle Semi Sweet Chocolate Morsels to sky-rocket in the New England area. Soon, Ruth reached an agreement with the Nestle company which allowed them to print the recipe on the wrapper of the Semi-Sweet Chocolate bar and in exchange, Ruth received a life-time supply of chocolate so she could continue making delicious chocolate chip cookies, which Ruth had named Toll House Cookies, after her inn.

Nestle loved the idea so much, they even sold a special chopper with the candy bar for easier cutting. Then in 1939, the Nestle company started offering the tiny chocolate bits in ready to use packages. This best-selling chocolate chip continues to create delicious chocolate chip cookies today.

Get the original Toll house homemade chocolate cookie recipes, plus 700 more historic recipes from Ruth Wakefield in Toll House Tried and True Recipes Her book includes authentic recipes for Authentic recipes from the famous Toll House restaurant in Massachusetts, like popovers, Toll House baked beans, chocolate cake, crumb pudding, and, of course the original Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe. Many historic recipes you don’t find anywhere else.

Read more about the Nestle Company’s Toll House chocolate chips at Very Best Baking.com

I love historic cookbooks and collect them wherever I go. I think one of the best ways to learn about life in the past is to know how people ate, what recipes they used and how women saw their role in life. Most historic

Historic cookbook by Sarah Josepha Hale

cookbooks, like Early American Cookery: “The Good Housekeeper,” 1841 by Sarah Josepha Hale, not only contains recipes but household hints for cleaning, caring for the sick, living on a budget and nurturing children, among other topics.

Sarah Josepha Hale was born in 1788, in New Hampshire and as an author and magazine editor, she was very influential in shaping the lives of 19th century women. She was the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book for 40 years. Godey’s, considered a forerunner of the modern women’s magazine, was the most widely read periodical in the US during the Civil War, with 150,000 subscribers.

Sarah Josepha Hale also wrote novels and our modern Thanksgiving dinner owes it’s beginnings to her description of that holiday dinner in Northwood; or, Life north and south: showing the true character of both.

The historic cookbook, Good Housekeeper, was written in 1839, when there were probably less than 30 American cookbooks published. Other cookbooks of the time focused on frugal living but Hale wanted to combine frugal with healthy, to teach “how to live well, and to be well while we live.” She includes “cheap dishes” like Cheap Bread, Pork and Beans and Pea Soup, but she also addresses the “proper quality of food” to promote health, especially for children, who, in the 1800’s, often died before their second birthday.

The Good Housekeeper also gives advice for cleaning and first aid. To clean straw carpets, “wash them in salt and water and wipe them with a clean dry cloth.” For burns, “Apply cotton wool dipped in oil as soon as possible and it it on till the fire is entirely out, which will usually take from two days to a week.”

The Good Housekeeper contains recipes for the sick as well. Here’s a recipe for gruel, commonly thought to be an easy to digest meal for the sick. “Sift the Indian meal through a find sieve; wet two spoonfuls of this meal with cold water, and beat it till there are no lumps; then stir it into a pint of boiling water, and let it boil half an hour, stirring all the time.”

Other sound health advice - “In setting out early to travel, a light breakfast before starting should always be taken; it is a great protection against cold, fatigue and exhaustion.”

The Good Housekeeper also contains recipes, naturally. There is a chapter on making bread, cooking meat from partridges to mutton, making sausage, salting meat to preserve it, how to make gravies, jams and jellies, and how to use herbs and spices.

Reading historic cookbooks helps us to realize how women’s lives are woven together with their sisters down through the years. Our concerns about family and managing a household haven’t really changed entirely - we’re all still interested in preparing healthy food on a budget, caring for our children and spouses. We have much in common with those who came before us and it’s good to know what they went through to give us the life we have today.

I love historic recipes and when my mom gave me an old Iowa Farm Bureau Cookbook, published in the 1920’s, I was in heaven. Since I now have the cookbook my own mother and grandmother used to make many of our family dishes, my dad asked me to find a piccalilli recipe for him.

There was one very funny story involving piccalilli relish in a book I was just reading, All Things Bright and Beautiful by James Herriot about a British country vet, set in the 1930’s. Many on the farms in England, and here in the US on country farms, loved piccalilli relish.

Here are two piccalillli relish recipes from my historic Iowa Farm Bureau cookbook. Some directions in historic recipe books seem very vague to us these days, but most farm wives back then already knew all the basics and took the directions for granted.

Ingredients for Piccalilli Relish

1 package green tomatoes
6 medium onions
1 medium head cabbage
1 1/4 c salt
6 green peppers
1 red pepper
2 cups sugar
1 tsp cloves, cinnamon and mixed spices

Directions

Put vegetables through a food chopper, then add salt. Let misture stand over night and then drain off liquid.

Add vinegar and spices and cook “gently” for one-half hour.

Put into sterilized jars and seal while hot.

Recipe 2 for Piccalilli Relish

This version will be spicier and makes more than recipe one.

Ingredients

1 package green tomatoes
8 large onions
1 cup salt
2 quarts water
1 quart vinegar
2 cups sugar
2 quarts vinegar
1 tablespoon white mustard seed
2 tbs ginger

1-2 tbs cayenne pepper
2 tbs cinnamon
1 tbs cloves and allspice

Directions

Chop fine tomatoes and onions, stir in salt and let it stand over night.

In the morning, drain off liquid.

Boil 2 qts water and 1 qt vinegar with tomatoes for 20 minutes.

Drain, put in kettle.

Put spices into cheesecloth and form a bag. Add this to the kettle, along with 2 quarts vinegar. Boil these together for another 20 minutes.

Add sugar if more sweetness is desired.

Makes 7 pints.