1884 Dinner Menu: Old Plantation Vegetable Soup, Smothered Rabbit, Backbone Stew, Baked Corn Custard, Pumpkin Bread
Woman's World Cookbook (1922)
1884 Dinner Menu
Old Plantation Vegetable Soup.
Smothered Rabbit, Country Style.
Backbone Stew, Egg Dumplings.
Baked Corn Custard.
Pumpkin Bread.
Old Plantation Vegetable Soup.
Marrow from 1 leg bone of beef
4 gallons cold water
1 large fowl
1 beef tongue
1 chine of fresh pork
3 or 4 pigs feet
1 piece of pickled pork
Soup beef
1 cupful onions
1 cupful turnips
1 cupful cauliflower
1 cupful celery
1 pint tomatoes
1 pint corn
Pods of red pepper
1 bunch garden herbs – thyme, marjoram and parsley
1 pint flour
Salt
Not necessary to have any stock but, early in the morning, put into a large boiler all the marrow out of a leg bone of beef, 4 gallons of cold water, 1 large fowl, a beef tongue, a chine of fresh pork, three or four pigs feet, a piece of pickled pork—one or two or all of them according to what may be on hand at the time, but never put in any mutton. Add all the soup beef besides that the water will cover and some more marrow out of the broken bones. Let it stew four hours. Then take out the meat and cut up portions of any kind that is not fat; about a quart; and put it in the soup. Also, add onions, turnips, cauliflower, celery, or any vegetables except carrots and beets —about a cupful of each. Add 1 pint of tomatoes cut in pieces, pint of corn, pods of red pepper chopped, and a small bunch of garden herbs—thyme, marjoram and parsley. Let boil until the vegetables are done, then add a pint of flour and water thickening and salt to taste. There is a good deal of needless anxiety in some places to remove every particle of grease from the top of the soup, some going so far as to use blotting paper and, perhaps, a microscope, to find the most minute particles. They would fail if they were to try to find such a horror of the fat that shines in spots on the surface of a good plate of soup among the people who consume it. Most people like fat beef, fat fowls, fat butter, and seem to be quite tolerant of a little fat—marrow-fat—on their soup that they sup with bread and crackers. However, it is a matter of taste, perhaps of training, and in any case we do not want fat by the spoonful in our tureen.
Smothered Rabbits, Country Style.
8 rabbits
½ cup butter
1 cup milk
Salt and pepper
Flour
Take eight rabbits and chop off the heads, feet and thin ribs, and divide them each into six cuts; the two legs, two shoulders, and two pieces of back. Keep back the pieces of young rabbit, if they can be known by their smaller size. Boil the large ones in a pot of seasoned stock about two hours, then put in the young ones and let stew half an hour longer. Take up the pieces into a baking pan, put in half a cup of butter and a cup of milk, dredge with salt and pepper and flour and set in a hot oven. It is an object to get a brown outside on the pieces of rabbit as quickly as possible, which is the purpose of the milk and butter, for they both cause a quick brown. If not so managed the meat is dry and stringy and nobody cares for it. When slightly colored on all sides pour in the remainder of the liquor the rabbits were stewed in and serve it as gravy with each dish.
Backbone Stew, Egg Dumplings
2 pork backbones.
4 leaves of sage.
1 onion.
1 teaspoonful of minced red pepper.
2 cups of milk.
Flour thickening
Dumplings:
2 eggs
2 cups of flour
Chop the backbones in pieces and wash in cold water to get rid of the splinters of bone. Boil about 2 hours in water, just enough to cover, with the seasonings in it, and when boiled down low put in the milk and thicken to the consistency of cream. To make the ribbon dumplings, mix two raw eggs with an equal amount of cold water, add a little salt and stir in flour enough to make dough. Knead on the table, roll out as thin as the back of a knife and cut in narrow ribbons with a rolling paste-jagger; divide in suitable lengths, drop into a saucepan of boiling water and cook about 10 minutes. Dish up the stew in deep dishes and place the dumplings on top with a fork. They are yellower, and easier to place if cooked separately this way than if mixed in the stew.
Baked Corn Custard.
2 cans of corn – dry, solid packed.
½ cup of butter.
1 rounded teaspoonful of salt.
½ teaspoonful of white pepper.
6 eggs.
1 quart of milk.
Empty the corn into a pan and mash it a little; melt the butter and stir it in; mix eggs and milk together, stir them into the corn, put in a 4-quart pan and bake until just fairly set in the middle. Too long baking makes it watery.
Pumpkin Bread.
1 pumpkin
Corn meal
A little salt
A little lard
Bake a pumpkin in large pieces in order to get pulp very dry. Mix with the mashed pulp all the corn meal it will take up, adding a little salt and a little lard, or some small broken cracklings from the rendering kettle, if in the season. Take up large spoonfuls and place them shaped like goose eggs in a greased pan and bake about an hour.
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