For years (YEARS) I have been telling museum visitors “sorry, I don’t have recipes to hand out. I can give you the cookbook names but the directions will be 19th century language. I really should put them on my blog”. Time to make myself do what I keep saying I should do.
A change in kitchens this year also gave me a chance to do a little personal experimentation with myth busting. I spent the weekend cooking in Old Bethpage Village Restoration’s Conklin House. I’m not going to go through the whole history, the general idea though is that Joseph Conklin and his wife weren’t exactly high on the economic scale. It’s a cute and cozy house with everything a young family needs but nothing extra. The kitchen is small, the hearth is very small, and work surfaces are quite limited. More times than I care to count I have listened to museum staff, at multiple museums, talk about kitchens like this saying that all meals were one-pot dishes hung over the fire. I’ve never quite bought into this idea and I haven’t felt it was supported by mid century literature. I wanted to see if I could get a slightly fancier meal on the table.
My Menu, My
Plan, and How it Varied From a Probably Reality
My menu was roast chicken, stuffed, roasted root vegetables, pumpkin pie, and sweet potato rolls. I was also making a turkey pie using leftovers, not something that would have been on their Thanksgiving day table. What more might Mrs Conklin have cooked? Probably some more vegetables (pureed squash, creamed onions, etc.), cranberry or applesauce, maybe a chicken pie, maybe another pie or a boiled pudding. Mrs Conklin would have had the benefit of using a kitchen she was used to cooking in and was equipped for how she cooked, and not using a hearth and bake oven for the first time. I did three bits of prep in a modern kitchen: I cooked and sieved the pumpkin (no sieve at the museum and it needed time to cool). I made the dough for the rolls, for good flavor yeast bread just really needs a longer rise than you can accomplish in the hours we have. I unpacked the chicken to make sure it wasn’t frozen through and dried it enough that I wouldn’t have to deal with a drippy raw chicken mess. One more bit of saved prep, I used commercial bread crumbs instead of grating stale bread. Mrs. Conklin likely would have made the pies, and maybe the rolls, ahead. Things like cranberry sauce or applesauce would likely have also been already made, boiled puddings would also be made ahead and reheated. I got the chicken off the fire later than they would have eaten dinner, but I couldn’t start my fire when she would have, she also didn’t have to haul equipment and set up a rarely used kitchen. She also didn’t lose about 20% of her kitchen to a traffic path for visitors. I don’t think the little I did at home gave me any advantage in the end.
The Result?
By the end of the day I had a nicely roasted stuffed chicken with root vegetables, rolls, and two pies on the table. A “fancy” meal? No, there were certainly more complicated foods in cookbooks of the day. For the particular holiday there might have just been more, especially if they had company, my chicken was closer to the size of their turkeys and not enough for a larger party so their might have been a beef or pork roast of some sort, maybe a fish or shellfish dish (true for any household on Long Island but especially for the Conklins as Mr. Conklin was a bayman). Success? Yes, clearly these really small kitchens could produce a nice, multiple component, meal using multiple different cooking methods.
Recipes, or,
Receipts in 19th Century Parlance
The pumpkin pie and sweet potato rolls were new receipts to me. Both worked
well, the pumpkin pie especially was a hit. I started with a Long Island Cheese
pumpkin, an heirloom variety that was available in the mid 19th
century, which has a nice sweet flesh.
Pumpkin Pie
The Improved Housewife: Or, Book of Receipts; with Engravings for Marketing and Carving, 1847, Mrs. A. L. Webster, A married lady, https://books.google.com/books?id=6G4EAAAAYAAJ
1 cup pumpkin puree
2 cups milk
3 eggs
½ cup sugar
Peel of half a lemon, shredded finely
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon ginger
Beat eggs, add remaining ingredients. Pour into pie crust and bake @ 50 minutes at 325. Or, blind bake pie crust @ 15 minutes, fill and drop temp to 325 not waiting for the oven to cool and bake for @ 40. The center should be jiggly but not liquidy, a knife inserted in the center should come out clean.
Mrs. Cushing’s Sweet Potato Rolls
The Improved Housewife: Or, Book of Receipts; with Engravings for Marketing and
Carving, 1847, Mrs. A. L. Webster, A married lady, https://books.google.com/books?id=6G4EAAAAYAAJ
2 Tablespoons very soft butter
½ teaspoon salt
1 packet yeast
¼ Cup warm water
4 Cups flour, with extra
Oil
Sprinkle yeast on warm water. Add salt, butter, sweet potato, and @ 2 cups of the flour, mix until everything is well incorporated. Mix in another cup of flour mixing until incorporated, continue adding flour until no longer sticky. Flour a work surface and knead until a dent from poking the dough bounces back. Place in a very lightly oiled bowl, turn to oil all sides, cover and let rise until doubled. Punch down. A second rise is optional but may give a better flavor. Shape into rolls about 1 ½ in diameter and place on an oiled sheet or pan, let rise about 20 minutes and back at 350 for @ 25 minutes.
Roast Stuffed Chicken with Root Vegetables
This is a conglomeration of multiple mid 19th century receipts. I
need to add that modern food safety experts will tell you not to stuff your poultry.
1 roasting chicken
@ 2 Tablespoons minced salt pork (or bacon, or sausage)
@ ¼ Cup minced onion
@ ¾ Cup bread crumbs
1 egg
water
@ ½ teaspoon sage or other dried herbs (I used Bell’s Seasoning which hit the
market just a few years later)
4 – 5 cups potatoes, carrots, and parsnips cut into large chunks
Remove neck and any giblets from chicken, pat dry. Sautee the salt pork (historically
they used it raw but I prefer to precook any meats going into stuffing), onions
can be sauteed along with it or used raw. Beast egg and add pork and onions, mix
in breadcrumbs and seasoning. Add water to moisten, how much depends on how moist
you like your stuffing, anywhere from wet crumbles to more like cooked oatmeal.
Close with skewers or toothpicks (or sew shut with cotton kitchen string,
either dispose of needle or scrub it well afterwards) and tie legs. Scatter
vegetables around the chicken. If the bird is small and will roast in less than
@ 1 ¼ hours first parboil them to ensure they cook through. Roast at 350 for @
15-20 minutes a pound, temperature at thickest part of thigh should be 165.
