Vintage Kitchens and Cooking

I remember my Grandmother’s “Vintage Kitchen,” and I have two objects from her. One is a vinegar cruet and the other is a Home Comfort Cook Book. This book has been both a fascination and a help.

I’d visited homes that used wood and coal-burning kitchen stoves, so I knew a little about them when I began researching the late 1800s for the first book in the Mountain Women Series, The Girl on the Mountain. I also consulted Grandma’s copy of The Home Comfort Cook Book, a treasure of recipes you might find nowhere else (and maybe not want) like Calf’s Brains.

Other unfamiliar recipes in this book look interesting, though. For example, I always wondered how cooks made yeast.

When ingredients were scarce (like meat) cooks had to improvise. Here is a “Cottage Cheese Loaf” recipe. I’m sure it’s nourishing, though not appealing. However in poorer times, people ate to live; they didn’t live to eat!

Cottage Cheese Loaf Recipe

“A wide variety of fine cheese loaves made by combining cheese with finely ground baked beans or peas or green vegetables such as spinach, chard, etc., make a good substitute for meat.

“Make into a loaf, or roll, 1 cup cottage cheese, 2 cups kidney or other beans finely ground, season to taste with sale and mix in enough bread crumbs to make the mixture stiff enough to form into shape; bake in a moderate oven, basting with a mixture of butter and water. Season with chopped onions stewed in butter water if desired. Commercial cheese, finely ground, may be used. Loaf may also be made by substituting for the beans an equal amount of spinach parboiled 10 minutes, drained, cooked with the butter until tender, and finely chopped. Also makes a fine stuffing for meats, by adding eggs or additional seasonings.

“This recipe should form a base for many nutritious loaves made from materials at hand.”

In The Girl on the Mountain, May Rose has a primitive kitchen, a wrought-iron woodstove, and a spring house for keeping ingredients cool. Read the first chapter here.

For more old-time recipes, see my Pinterest board at https://www.pinterest.com/CarolErvinAuthor/old-time-recipes/

Thanks for reading!