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Strange Old Recipes
or, How Many Eggs in a
Hundred-Year-Old Cake?
Way back in the 1890s, a woman named Miss E. Neil wrote The Everyday Cook and Recipe Book. At that time, most people cooked with wood or coal. Since they couldn’t set their ovens for exact temperatures (like 350 degrees), they had to decide what was “a slow oven” or “a brisk fire.” Recipes often called for “a bit” or “enough” of an ingredient, instead of a teaspoon or a cup. People made their own bread and ketchup, and they ate foods like calf’s head, graham mush, and macaroni pudding.
Here are four recipes from The Everyday Cook and Recipe Book. Three are foods and one is a medicine. You probably won’t want to make them. But your great-great-great-great-grandparents may have made them! ee if you can answer the questions following each recipe.
(The answers are at the bottom of this page.)
Keeping Eggs Fresh
"Eggs may be kept good for a year in the following manner:
To a pail of water, put of unslacked lime and coarse salt each a pint; keep it in a cellar, or cool place, and put the eggs in, as fresh laid as possible."
Questions:
A. If you want to preserve 6 pails of eggs, how many pints each do you need of lime and salt?
B. How many quarts do you need of each? (Hint: 2 pints = 1 quart)
BONUS: How big is a pail?
DOUBLE BONUS: How do you think these eggs will taste after a year?
Noodles for Soup
"Rub into two eggs as much sifted flour as they will absorb; then roll out until thin as a wafer; dust over a little flour, and then roll over and over into a roll, cut off thin slices from the edge of the roll, and shake out into long strips; put them into the soup lightly and boil for ten minutes."
Questions:
A. If your noodle roll is 12 inches long, and you cut it into 1/4-inch slices, how many noodles will you get?
B. If, when you shake the noodles, 3 fly out of your hand and your dog eats them, how many noodles will go into the soup?
BONUS: How thin is a wafer?
To Cure Tape-worms
"Tape-worms are said to be removed by refraining from supper and breakfast, and at eight o’clock taking one-third part of two hundred minced pumpkin seeds, the shells of which have been removed by hot water; at nine take another third, at ten the remainder, and follow it at eleven with strong dose of castor oil."
Questions:
A. If a boy eats 1/3 of the 200 minced pumpkin seeds at 8:00, how many pumpkin seeds does he eat?
B. How many pumpkin seeds does the boy eat by 9:59?
BONUS: How old will the boy be before he wants to eat pumpkin seeds again?
White Pound Cake
"One pound sugar, one of flour, half pound butter, whites of sixteen eggs, teaspoon baking powder sifted thoroughly with the flour; put in cool oven with gradual increase of heat."
Questions:
A. Can you write this recipe without using the word pound? (Hint: 1 pound sugar = 2 1/4 cups. 1 pound flour = 3 3/4 cups. 1 pound butter = 4 sticks.)
B. If, while separating the 16 eggs, you break 1/4 of the yolks and they mix in with their whites, how many eggs must you separate to get 16 unmixed whites?
BONUS: If you also break the yolks of 1/4 of the replacement eggs, how many eggs do you need altogether?
DOUBLE BONUS: Since the recipe doesn’t say how hot or how long to bake the cake, how will you know when it’s done?
EXTRA CREDIT: Do you think Miss E. Neil ate a lot of eggs?
Answers:
Keeping Eggs Fresh:
A. 6 pints lime, 6 pints salt
B. 3 quarts lime, 3 quarts salt
BONUS: It depends
DOUBLE BONUS: Pretty bad
Noodles for Soup:
A. 48
B. 45
BONUS: Probably about 1/8 inch
To Cure Tape-worms:
A. 66 or 67
B. about 133
BONUS: 86
White Pound Cake :
A. 2 1/4 cups sugar, 3 3/4 cups flour, 2 sticks butter, (then same as recipe)
B. 20
BONUS: 21
DOUBLE BONUS: Top is golden, sides pull away from pan, toothpick stuck into center comes out clean. (If you answered this, you’re already a cook!)
EXTRA CREDIT: Yes
Recipes adapted from: Miss E. Neil. The Everyday Cook and Recipe Book. New York: Ogilvie, c. 1890-1900.