Recently, I flew to my hometown of Cincinnati to spend a few days with relatives and friends. Originally, the “plan” was for me to fly to Ohio in August, when my son Steve & his wife were driving to Cincinnati for their vacation. Steve had not been to Cincinnati since he was ten years old and for Lori it was a first. I was to be the ‘in-between’ introducing them to all the relatives on both sides of Steve’s family – although I have been divorced for over 25 years, I have maintained a warm and loving relationship with my in-laws.
However, the health of my significant other, Bob, took a turn in August and I was unable to find anyone willing to check on him every day. We had misjudged when my daughter in law would be returning to the high school where she teaches. So, my son decided to book a flight for himself to California and the new “plan” was for him to be Bob’s caregiver for a week, while I took a short vacation. (Perhaps I should note, I had been Bob’s caregiver 24/7 for the past year without any kind of a break). My daughter in law rebooked my flight and I was scheduled to fly to Cincinnati on my birthday in September.
Even the best laid plans, etc etc – and Bob passed away September 22nd. Steve cancelled HIS flight and to make a long story even longer, I did fly to Cincinnati on September 28 after several hectic days of making arrangements with a mortuary to have Bob cremated. (Steve has rebooked HIS flight and will be arriving October 22nd – my granddaughter is thrilled; Steve is her favorite uncle).
I was reluctant to go, after all the stops and starts and worried constantly about my little Jack Russell terrier, Jackie, that she would be lonely and confused – first Bob’s departure, then mine. But, going to my hometown was healing and one of the greatest rewards was a reunion with two Beckman cousins I had not seen for over 50 years. A third Beckman relative is my cousin Irene with whom I have had a warm relationship throughout our lives. We even made our first communions together, and were partners walking up to the church.
The day after my arrival, the three cousins arrived at my nephew’s house (where I stay when I am in town) and we spent 7 hours talking non-stop and sharing photographs and memories. And Irene – who the family calls Renee—presented me with a birthday present – Grandma Beckman’s cookbook.
Now, a word about Grandma Beckman’s cookbook – I didn’t know it existed until a few years ago, when searching for a particular family recipe. Renee told me that she had Grandma Beckman’s cookbook, into which Grandma had written many of her favorite recipes. I was astonished when I first learned about the cookbook –I had NO idea it even existed. As for my paternal grandmother having a cookbook – that grandmother barely wrote English and all of her recipes were in her head. The wise one in the family was my Aunt Evelyn (whom we all call Aunt Dolly, a family pet name) who learned Grandma Schmidt’s recipes by standing by her side, watching every step of making strudels and noodles and Hungarian goulash. We finally published a family cookbook in 2004 and called it “Grandma’s Favorite” in honor of that grandmother.
But back to Grandma Beckman’s cookbook! The book itself is in a truly battered, tattered condition with the covers falling off and held together with old tape. Published in 1889, “OUR HOME CYCLOPEDIA COOKERY AND HOUSEKEEPING” was published by the Mercantile Publishing Company in Detroit, Michigan. There is no byline but the inside page offers a copyright by Frank S. Burton, 1889. (That being said, my favorite research resource, Google, offers a listing of this cookbook by the Library of Congress and indicates the author as Edgar S. Darling).
It would have been a contemporary cookbook when Grandma B. was a young woman and my copy shows a great deal of wear and tear, with some of the most stained pages are under the Dessert section. Did Grandma B. make a lot of pies? I don’t know. The only thing I clearly remember her making for us were some corn pancakes or fritters, once when she was visiting us. I admit, I am appalled by recipes for collared eels and cods’ head but a recipe for cooking beef kidneys rang a bell in my mother’s long forgotten recipe repertoire. Kidney stew with noodles appeared frequently on the dinner table. (Also bearing in mind, before and during World War II, “organ meats” or “offal” were cheap and unrationed. While browsing through the pages of Our Home Cookery, I also noticed a recipe for “mock duck” that is exactly the way a mock turkey recipe was made by my sister in law years ago. Interesting!
But it isn’t the printed pages of “Our Home Cookery” that captures my attention; it is, at the back of the book, recipes written in Grandma B’s own handwriting. This is really the piece de resistance in this copy of “Our Home Cookery”.
First there is a recipe for Blackberry Wine, followed by recipes for mustard pickles – there are some pages of recipes clipped from newspapers or magazines – a recipe for “stuffed and baked mangoes” (but the mangoes in this recipe are bell peppers…in Grandma B’s time—as well as my mother’s –bell peppers were called “mangoes” and I don’t think that was common anywhere else in the USA (write to me if you know otherwise!). Grandma’s stuffed and baked mangoes appear to be the same recipe my mother used. This is followed by a recipe for Upside Down cake, then one for Apple Sauce cake and a third for Angel Food cake—both of these pages are heavily stained . The following page contains recipes for “Hungry Cake”, one for cookies and another for cream puffs. (my mother made cream puffs; they may have been the same recipe—I will do my best to type up some of these recipes.) Next page contains recipes written in pencil for lemon snaps and “Churngold Dutch Apple Cake” – Churngold was and still is a brand-name for margarine. Margarine has been around since 1869.
Some of the pages are missing, ending on page 395 with directions for “keeping apples fresh all winter” and “curing ham or other meat for smoking”. Per Google and an entry for the cookbook by the Library of Congress, the book should have had 400 pages.
Here is the recipe for stewed kidneys, as directed in “Our Home Cyclopedia”:
Split the kidneys and peel off the outer skin as before (in a previous recipe titled Kidneys, Broiled or Roasted); slice them thin on a plate, dust them with flour, pepper and salt; brown some flour in butter in a stewpan; dilute with a little water; mix smooth and in it cook the sliced kidneys. Let them simmer but do not boil. They will cook in a very short time. Butter some slices of toast and lay on a hot dish and pour over it the stewed kidneys, gravy and all.
*Sandy’s cooknote: my mother cooked noodles to place the cooked kidneys onto. And I may be mistaken but I think my mother soaked the kidneys, like liver, in a bowl of vinegar before cooking it).
GRANDMA BECKMAN’S BLACKBERRY WINE
To every gallon of berries take one gallon of water; let stand 2 days and 2 nights covered with mosquito bar [netting] then strain.
To every gallon put 3 lbs of crushed sugar [before granulated was invented—you had to do your own crushing of the sugar) and dissolve & stir well; bottle and let stand open 2 days, then put the corks on loosely until fermentation ceases then put corks on tight but not too tight for fear of bursting bottles.
STUFFED AND BAKED MANGOES*
½ lb each ground pork and beef
½ cup of rice
1 onion, chopped fine
2 tomatoes
Cayenne pepper
1 egg
Mix with cracker crumbs and fill mangoes* put into pan and cover with tomatoes or pureed tomatoes.
(*Sandy’s cooknote: I have written about bell peppers being called “mangoes” in several of my earlier posts. As far as I know, bell peppers were called mangoes only in the Midwest or around Cincinnati. I remembered seeing bell peppers advertised as “mangoes” in supermarkets when I was 18 or 19 years old. In 1961 when Jim & I first moved to California, we met a wonderful couple named Teresa and Jim Keith. Teresa was a seasoned cook from Louisiana. When she asked me what I cooked, I mentioned “stuffed mangoes” (not KNOWING that mangoes are a fruit and well known in California). “Oh?” she said. “How do you make those?” and I proceeded to describe mixing together ground meat, rice, tomato sauce and egg and “putting that into the mangoes and cooking it in tomato sauce”. I don’t know how we ever figured out that MY mangoes were not HER mangoes. But this begged the question, in my mind, HOW bell peppers came to be called “mangoes” in the Midwest. I finally found an explanation in one of my canning cook books. See footnote below.) Meanwhile, here is Grandma
Beckman’s Applesauce Cake recipe:
GRANDMA B’S APPLESAUCE CAKE
1 ½ CUPS sugar
¾ cup shortening
1/8 tsp allspice
½ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp cloves
¼ tsp nutmeg
1½ cups unsweetened apple sauce
1 ½ tsp baking soda
¼ cup water
1 cup raisins
2 cups flour
Bake ¾ hour. Makes 1 large loaf
(*Sandy’s cooknote: Grandma doesn’t offer any directions. SHE knew how to make her applesauce cake and the cookbook wasn’t intended for other eyes.
So, what I suggest is this: cream together sugar and shortening. Sift together the flour, baking soda and spices. Add it the shortening and sugar mixture. Mix well. Stir in the raisins, applesauce and ¼ cup water. Mix well. Place into a large greased and floured loaf pan (or two smaller ones) and bake at 350 degrees.)
I had a second thought – maybe you should plump up the raisins with the ¼ cup water and then let it cool before adding to the cake.
Grandma’s Churngold Dutch Apple Cake
2 cups flour
½ tsp salt
3 tsp baking powder
2 TBSP sugar
1 egg
1 cup milk
3 TBSP melted churngold (*use margarine or butter)
Beat egg until light and add milk alternately with dry ingredients. Add churngold and beat light. Spread dough ½” thick in greased tins. Arrange with apple slices in rows sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. (presumably, then bake @ 350 degrees until the cake is done.)
Sandy’s footnote: *In Jeanne Lesem’s cookbook “Preserving Today” she writes,[about Mock Mangoes] “Mangoes were a popular nineteenth century pickle in the United States—not the aromatic tropical fruit we savor today, but stuffed fruits and vegetables in a sweet-and-sour sauce, somewhat similar to authentic Indian mango pickles. William Woys Weaver writes in A Quaker Woman’s Cookbook (1982)’They became popular in England during the eighteenth century, mostly as a less expensive substitute for the real imported article…the pickle was popularized in this country through English cookbooks…Green bell peppers were generally used for ‘mangoes’ in Pennsylvania and western Maryland, and muskmelons in Tidewater Maryland. Other cooks used tomatoes, peaches or cucumbers.”
**
Coincidentally, “Our Home Cyclopedia” was reprinted in 2010 and is available on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble websites. Barnes & Noble prices start at $23.26 while Amazon offers the book for $26.41 new or $19.95 used.
Happy Cooking and Happy Cookbook Collecting!
Sandy
Sandy's Chatter 
How wonderful to have that cookbook! I have a post about stuffed mangoes in the Cincinnati area which were green peppers stuffed with slaw and pickled – sounds like the ones in the “Preserving Today” reference.
Lillian, I think your family recipe of green peppers stuffed with slaw and pickled – are the REAL origin of stuffed mangoes…I have to find a canning cookbook I found somewhere in my travels –and that author explained how we came about calling stuffed bell peppers “stuffed mangoes” – if I remember correctly, anything that was stuffed and pickled was “mangoed” well that recipe underwent a lot of revisions until(at least in Cincinnati) bell peppers stuffed with a mixture of ground beef (or pork or lamb) with uncooked rice was cooked in variations of tomato sauce or canned tomatoes…baked until done. This is a favorite recipe of my son Steve. — Sandy
” Bell peppers ” were called mango peppers here in Oklahoma too. My mother fixed stuffed mangoes quite often and Daddy planted them in the garden. I was a young mother when the ” change-over ” in name became bell peppers. It took me several years to call them bell peppers though, they’d been mangoes all my life.
Penny, I am just now finding these messages and was surprised to find your comment on here–leads me to think that bell peppers aka mangoes were kind of widespread at one time maybe southern Ohio to Oklahoma at least. I stopped calling them mangoes when we first moved to California and became friends with this one couple whose wife was a wonderful cook from around New Orleans–she was baffled when I told her how we made “stuffed mangoes” lol – I wonder how many other misnamed foods are out there! – sandy
Quilt32 & Penny – thanks to both of you for witing and shedding more light on “stuffed mangoes”–per “Preservng Today” apparently the suffed mock mangoes started out as a pickled dish but somewhere along the way was transformed into a main dish stuffed with meat, usually beef but in my childhood often contained a little ground pork as well, rice and egg and whatever seasoning. My Aunt Dolly always made hers with a paprika based tomato sauce & I will have to dig out that recipe & share it with you also. what I CAN’T figure out is when or how the transformation took place. Based on Grandma Beckman’s handwritten recipe in her cookbook, I would date it back, at least, to the early 1900s. She was born in 1881 and passed away at the age of 86, in 1967.
Sandy, I so enjoy your reports of your youth. I especially relish your explanation of Cincinatti “mangoes.” Oddly, I do, indeed, think that I had heard the word mango used to describe a food other than the tropical fruit, just as the “avocado” once was referred to as an “alligator pear.” (Think about it; that description fits.)
I have a question which you or one of your readers may be able to answer.
My mother, who was born in Manhattan and died last year at age 92, had vivid recollections of her maternal grandmother.
That grandmother had come to the States as a young bride from what she always had said was Hungary. On her admission papers to this country, she gave her nationality as “Austrian”, as in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. (My great-grandfather had come here ahead of his family.)
Between the two world wars, her town (“Kosice,” a/k/a “Kassa” a/k/a “Kunsdorf”) was part of the former country of Czechoslovakia and, today, it is in the modern country of Slovakia.
Several of her brothers emigrated to Cleveland, as seems to have been a trend from their town, though my branch of the family remains in New York.
“Grossmutter,” as my mother always called this grandmother, was a terrific cook. I still use many of her recipes today: an modernized adaptation of her Sacher Torte, her cucumber salad, her brisket. Her brisket recipe is, even now, a great deal of effort, but it is the best.
All of this is a long way of introducing my question. My mother never was a woman of any curiosity; in fact, most of her life, her only curiosity was why I would be curious about some specific thing.
When her grandmother made apple strudel, it was a big event for the family. Of course, she had an oversized marble-topped table in her oversized kitchen to roll out the dough. My mother loved watching this. (Grossmutter died long before I was born.)
Here’s the part I don’t understand, which I’ve never understood, and which never occurred to my mother to question: She always said that when Grossmutter made strudel, she put on her best hat. Yes, a hat –but not just any hat. No, always her best hat.
Let us assume that the hat was to assure that none of her hair escaped into the strudel. Yet her best hat? Would you wear your best hat to cook? It seems to me that I would want to save that hat for important events and use an old hat instead.
Have you ever heard of this? Could she have worn her best hat in tribute to the strudel or the amount of work it took to make?
By the way, I make a spice cake (or muffins) that is identical in every way to your applesauce cake, with only two differences: I use honey where you use applesauce, and I use double-strength coffee (at room temperature) instead of water.
Thanks, Sandy. Great posting, as always.
Hello Judy–I apologize for not responding to your email (four years ago! yikes!) – I think this hap pens when I don’t get notified by WordPress that I have a new message–and there can be a lot of messages that I don’t know about–I really would have responded to a message about strudel–my grandma Schmidt made apple strudel the most often–she had apple trees, tart apples like todays Granny Smith apples–but she also made a pumpkin strudel that was one of my favorites — I have never found the right recipe for the pumpkin strudel which was spicy – I always thought it had pepper in it–that was only made in the fall when pumpkins were available ( I don’t know if canned pumpkin was available in the 40s, 50s. She also made a cheese strudel that I’ve discovered was very similar to a Jewish girlfriend’s cheese pastry (I cant think what it was called right now) but it was similar to my grandmother’s cheese strudel. We also had cherry strudel on occasion but the apple strudel was the most common. ** I believe my grandmother was original from an area close to the Black Forest – this is what she told me when I was doing a family tree in high school. My grandfather, we know, was from Hungary; they immigrated to Roumania–and I think they owned a house there because my grandmother always thought she would go back there someday. of course she never did. To the best of my knowledge my grandmother never wore any kind of a hat when she was in a hot kitchen baking something. It would be interesting to learn the origin of this.
I apologize again for not writing back to you sooner. – regards, sandy
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Hi, Judy–wow, the hat has me stymied but maybe someone who reads my blog will have an answer. Maybe my cousin Renee who comes up with some good answers. I imagine she wore the hat as a tribute, like you said, so the strudel would be perfect. If yu had asked me ANYthing about the making of the strudel I think I could have answered your question. lol. the hat has me baffled. I dont recall ever seeing my grandmother wear a hat except when she was going somewhere, always to church, but also to go downtown too. I think it might be fun to do as tribute to Hungarian cooks with a blog post of recipes. I have perhaps half a dozen Hungarian cookbooks including one that one of the Gabor sisters compiled. My grandmother’s strudels went into a very large pan into which she shaped the strudel kind of like an S–apple was the most popular but she had sour apple trees in her back yard. MY favorite was a pumpkin strudel that I have never been able to find a recipe for. I dont think the pumpkin was cooked and the recipes I’ve found all use cooked pumpkin. No, this was more like thinly sliced raw pumpkin with a peppery taste. Thanks for writing!
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Hello are using WordPress for your blog platform? I’m new to the blog site world but I’m trying to get started and create my own. Do you need any coding expertise to make your own blog site? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
yes, this is WordPress and I have been very satisfied with it.
Hi Sandy, Don’t know if you are checking this post anymore, but I would love to get the Hungry Cake recipe. There was a woman who lived in my home town in the early 1900s that kept a daily diary for years and a neighbor posts her daily entries each day on the date a hundred years ago on a list serve for neighbors. Every so often she writes that she baked a “hungry cake” and I’ve just been curious about what that is. I’ve been googling for recipes. Have found one reference, one recipe that is fairly cryptic, and your mention. If you could post it, I’d be so happy. Thanks.
Hi, Denise — I don’t remember ever seeing of a an old recipe for Hungry Cake but you have piqued my curiosity; let me look into my oldest cookbooks –such as my Grandma Beckman’s cookbook. the time frame would be about right and I have some other very old cookbooks I can check. The good thing is that recipes (or receipts) were copied and passed along in detail – whereas recipes for vegetables or meats had more flexibility I wonder if Hungry Cake was similar to recipes such as War Cake, recipes that used very few or common ingredients that everyone had on hand even in poor times.
Will see what I can find! = Sandy