I come from a long line of women who might politely be called thrifty. Packrats, perhaps, maybe even hoarders, to be perfectly honest about it. And we all hoard cookbooks! In the midst of the game called “Let’s Pretend We’re Moving” I culled several pounds of cookbooks, inherited from my Mum, my grandmother and my great-grandmother. I sorted them by 1920s and before, 1930s, 40s, and then just more recent books.
The prize of this stash is a 350 page gem with the above name, published in 1905. My great-grandfather, Robert Lindenmeyer, owned a German restaurant in Baltimore until Prohibition put him, and a lot of other folks, out of business. I am of the firm opinion that this book came from the restaurant. The first two recipes are for oyster stew. Both call for 100 oysters and three pints of “good milk”, plus butter and flour, “rubbed to a paste”. You could have stood a spoon in it!
White potatoes are pared thin, cooked in boiling water to hardly cover them. When they are tender, remove them with a slotted spoon, drop them immediately into ice water to force the heat to the center of the potato, and then return them to the boiling pot to reheat. This method assures them to be mealy and white. My grandmother put a bowl of ice water on the kitchen table and tossed hot potatoes back and forth. It was the only way I knew to cook them, until the Late and Unlamented made such fun of me that I stopped. (He wasn’t worth the trouble, anyway.)
Young green peas should be boiled for half an hour. If full grown allow three quarters of an hour. Asparagus was cooked for 45 minutes to an hour! You didn’t necessarily need a knife and fork as much as a straw.
Here is a Springtime Bill of Fare for a family of five or six:
First course: Green-pea soup
Second course: Baked Shad
Third Course: Roast Lamb with mint sauce. Green Peas, Asparagus, Potatoes, Sliced Tomatoes
Fourth course: Lobster Salad
Dessert: Rhubarb Tart and Boiled Custard.
And quietly roll away from the table.
thisendoftheswamp 