Vintage Receipts

After pouring through various cookbooks, I couldn’t decide on an entree for this week. Nearly all cookbooks before the 20th century have receipts that, upon reading ingredients, seem quite bland. Either that, or the receipts call for certain parts of animals that aren’t normally found in meat departments of modern grocery stores.

So, I thought I’d try something easy… like pancakes. I came across an 1877 receipt that sounded pretty simple. It was from Every Day Meals: being economic and wholesome recipes for breakfast, luncheon, and supper by Mary Hooper. 

Read More About Pancakes

This week I didn’t have time to experiment with any new receipts. But here’s something I gleaned from one of the vintage cookbooks several weeks ago, before I began this blog. While first viewing several cookbooks from the 1870s and 1880s, I came across mention in one that a famous restaurant served poached eggs on spinach. I thought, hmm….

I know my take on it probably isn’t the same as back then, but I like it. I recently saw a YouTube video for making Poached Eggs with Spinach. But it called for cooking the spinach, where it resembled canned spinach. This is close to the way it was described in several other vintage cookbooks. In my fresher, more appealing version, I use uncooked baby spinach. It’s a great way of having veggies with egg, instead of meat.

BTW, though the toast pictured is not from a vintage receipt, it is homemade, from a more modern Oatmeal Honey bread maker recipe. Eventually I’d like to try adapting vintage bread receipts for my bread maker, posting both original and revised versions here.

I’d like to say the blackberry preserves on the toast were my own creation, too. But they were made in Julian, up the mountain from me, which I bought at a San Diego farmer’s market store. Keep watching, though. Eventually I want another attempt at jam/preserve making. With hope, it’ll be successful next time!