KITCHEN POETS – PART 6

KITCHEN POETS
PART 6

The following recipe for making candy came to me by a circuitous route –
From Louise, who now has several blogs of her own, to Becky Mercuri who used to write for the Cookbook Collectors Exchange and now has had several cookbooks published—and who, in turn, sent the email with the recipe to me. We were all subscribers and/or writers for the CCE, back in the day. The following recipe, Louise said, was from a fundraiser cookbook titled “POLISH TOWN FAIR & FESTIVAL, 1984”

CHRISTMAS PEANUT BRITTLE

When it is Christmas candy time
Or any time of year,
This peanut brittle recipe
Becomes especially dear.

You add to one large cooking pan
A cup of each of these —
White syrup, sugar, water too
And blend with gentle ease.

A teaspoonful of table salt,
When it is added too,
Will mean that you have reached the point
When you must cook the brew.

So cook it to the soft ball stage
And then it’s time to add
A tablespoon of butter
And the peanuts to your pan.

It takes one pound of peanuts
That you’ve purchased in the shell,
And shucked yourself ahead of time
To make this turn out well.

With all ingredients in the pan
You cook until it’s brown,
And take your pan from off the stove
Your candy’s almost done.

Stir in one teaspoon soda,
Pour on a buttered sheet,
And let it harden as it will,
Then break in chunks your treat

The rest comes very naturally
Just eat to suit your will,
And have a happy holiday
That’s peanut brittle filled.
**

From Hasbrouck Heights Cookbook, New Jersey, 1948:

HOW TO MAKE A CUP OF TEA

First you take and warm your teapot,
For some minutes two or three;
‘Tis a most important secret,
But you do not spare the tea.
Pour some water in to draw it,
Let the water boiling be;
Then fill up and shake and pour it.
**
This is from a page someone sent to me about Watershed Books:

GOOD MEASURE

Sugar, butter, flour spice.
Plus this little rhyme,
Lots of love, a smile or two.
For sure success each time.
3 teaspoons make 1 tablespoon;
4 tablespoons – 1 quarter cup;
3/8 cup with 6 tablespoons,
8 fills it halfway up.
1 cup is 16 tablespoons,
And 2 cups, as you know,
Make 1 full pint; 2 pints – 1 quart
All ready? Get set – go!

I thought I wrote the following when I was compiling “Eve’s Pudding” for the Cookbook Collectors Exchange – but here’s a newsflash…I was typing from the original copy of this rhymed recipe, which I recognize has having been typed on a typewriter that I had in the 1960s – and turning the paper over, I found the header for Cory Coffee Service—my ex-husband, Jim, worked for Cory Coffee in the mid 1960s. He made a career change when I was expecting Chris, who was born in 1968. So, I was curious about rhymed recipes many years before ever writing about them for the CCE. Amazing!

RICE MEXICANA

For a dish delicious
And really made to order,
The best you’ll find on
This side of the border,
Rice Mexicana will really
Help you score—
With your family
Just watch them ask for more!
Take one cup of rice and wash
And sauté with a little
Minced garlic and one onion,
As fine as you can whittle,
Brown in hot fat,
Add half of a green pepper,
With two teaspoons of salt
And oh! But never, never
Forget the chili powder—
Two teaspoons will quite do.
With one cup of canned tomatoes
Then you’ll find that you
Need only add two cups of
Beef stock
(Bouillon broth is fine),
Cover, simmer, thirty minutes
But in your haste to dine
Don’t forget to take the lid off
For the last five minutes,
After that you’ll proudly serve
And you’ll say that it is
Quite delightful
To your palate
Not too hard to fix—
P.s. in case you’re wondering
This dish will serve just six.
— Sandra Lee Smith

Earlier in Kitchen Poets, I mentioned researching Tartelettes Amandines on Google. The original, I believe, was in French and it may have lost a little in the translation but it’s still a pretty little rhymed recipe, which is taken from Edmond Rostand’s play about Cyrano de Bergerac. According to Google, there really was a Cyrano de Bergerac but the play was very dissimilar from the life of the real Cyrano:

TARTELETTES AMANDINES
Edmond Rostand

Beat your eggs, the yolk and the white,
Very light,
Mingle with their creamy fluff
Drops of lime juice, cool and green;
]then pour in
Milk of almonds, just enough,
Dainty patty pans, embrace
In puff paste—
Have these ready within reach;
With your thumb and finger, pinch
Half an inch
Up around the edge of each-
Into these, a score or more,
Slowly pour
All your store of custard; so
Take them, bake them golden brown—
Now sit down!….
Almond tartlets, Raguneau!
–Cyrano de Bergerac

And for now, that’s all of the rhymed recipes I have available to share with you—but there are plenty of food-related poems from the kitchen poets; The first of these is one about cakes, that appeared in the Rio Brave Farm Home Department Cook Book.

CAKES

And though you can’t such trifles as fair, face and form impart,
It is ever in your power to mold the character and heart;
For those who cannot, gracefully, a kindly moral take,
I embody also in the tale a recipe for cake.

THE CAKE WALK

Said the butter to the sugar, “Will you dance tonight with me
At the cake-walk to be given in the Yellow Bowl? ‘Twill be
The smoothest thing you e’er were in before the evening’s end,
And the swellest, for the Eggs and Rumford Baking Powder will attend
Spring Wheat Flour will come also, and the Sweet Milk too, will be there—
She’s the cream of all the gathering and as rich as she is fair
And both Nutmeg and Vanilla may come as a special favor;
I hope they will—their presence to the whole thing will add flavor,
Tall Granite spoon will lead us through the dance’s mystic maze,
He will take us ‘round and ‘round in a sort of polonaise,
It’s sure to be exclusive, and a very fine affair,
For only the most proper of ingredients will be there,
Yet it’s whispered low that later, after the cake-walk turn,
The party all together to the Oven will adjourn;
And if that’s true I’ll wager a dollar to a dime,
The whole affair will wind up with a very hot old time!
–Carolina Mischka Roberts in “Good Housekeeping”
**
One of the first poems I ever found, about pies, was originally published in the Cincinnati, Ohio Sunday Enquirer, November 10, 1907. Author unknown and I no longer remember where or how I found it, only that I copied it to keep.

DELICIOUS PIES

In spring men sigh
For cherry pie
To soothe their taste capricious,
‘tis with delight
they surely bite
and say that it’s delicious.

But later on
‘ere spring is gone,
they want a change from cherries,
and then they cry
for fragrant pie
that’s stuffed with luscious berries.

In summer days
The same old craze
For pie a new trick teaches,
With strong desire
Men then inquire
For pastry filled with peaches.

In chilly fall
For pie they call
But this time it is noted,
They want the kind
In which they find
Sweet pumpkin thickly coated.

In winter drear
They persevere
For pie they still are scheming
But when it’s brought
They want it hot
And packed with mincemeat steaming.

Thus all year ‘round
Can pie be found
And men are quick to grab it—
Advice they spurn
For pie they yearn,
And won’t give up the habit.
**
No idea where or when I acquired the following Kitchen Poem – but it’s sure cute!

THE BACHELOR’S LEMON PIE

I thought I’d make a lemon pie;
The cookbook told me how,
I gathered it was just a cinch—
But I am wiser now.

I sifted flour, but though I brushed
My handsome tweed suit off,
I still am looking far more like
A snowman than a Prof!

I rolled the pastry just as thin
As any human can
And neatly and with special care
I placed it in the pan.

I baked it like the cookbook said,
Alas! To my surprise,
When it was done, that hateful crust
Had drawn up cookie size!

In wrath I mixed the filling next,
There must have been a trick,
It sounded easy as could be
To “cook till it was thick.”

I stewed the stuff a mortal hour;
It still was pale and thin,
At last I took that silly crust
And poured the filling in.

Well, next I tackled the meringue,
And after seven tries,
I segregated whites from yolks—
But spoiled two good neckties.

And from those egg whites then I beat
The living daylights out;
I added sugar, flavoring—
My masterpiece, no doubt.

In mountain peaks, quite lavishly;
I spread it on the pie,
And placed it on the oven shelf
Beneath a watchful eye.

It did not fall! It did not scorch!
It didn’t let me down!
I took it from that oven shelf
A gooey-golden brown!

Oh, yes! The filling and the crust,
They were not worth a hang;
But folks, I’ll have you know
That I’m
A ringer for meringue!

END OF PART 6

KITCHEN POETS PART 5

KITCHEN POETS
PART 5

My file contains several copies of a rhymed recipe for clam soup. My notes indicate that one was found in “America Cooks” by the Browns
who credited W. A. Croffut with the date of 1877. Another—same poem—was sent to me by a Cookbook Collectors Exchange subscriber named Helen, who wrote that she found it in the Centennial Cookbook by the Women’s Division, Omaha (Neb) Chamber of Commerce and they in turn also had credited W. A. Croffut in the New Buckeye Cookbook, 1904 for the rhymed recipe. The title Buckeye Cookbook rang a bell so I searched through my Ohio cookbooks and voila! It isn’t much but Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping not only attributes the rhyme to W.A. Croffut but also noted that he was the editor of “Daily Graphic”, New York. Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping was reprinted in 1988 by the Minnesota Historical Society Press:

CLAM SOUP

First catch your clams—along the ebbing edges
Of saline coves you’ll find the precious wedges,
With backs up, lurking in the sandy bottom;
Pull in your iron rake, and lo! You’ve got em!
Take thirty large ones, put in a basin under.
And cleave with knife, their stony jaws asunder:
Add water—(three quarts) to the native liquor
Bring to a boil, (and, by the way, the quicker
It boils the better, if you do it cutely!
Now add the clams, chopped up and minced minutely.
Allow a longer boil of just three minutes.
And while it bubbles, quickly stir within its
Tumultuous depths where still the mollusks mutter,
Four tablespoons of flour and four of butter,
A pint of milk, some pepper to your notion,
And clams need salting, although born of ocean,
Remove from fire: (if much boiled they will suffer—
You’ll find that India-rubber isn’t tougher.)
After ‘tis off, add three fresh eggs, well beaten,
Stir once more, and it’s ready to be eaten.
Fruit of the wave! O dainty and delicious!
Food for the gods! Ambrosia for Apicius!
Worthy to thrill the soul of sea-born Venus,
Or titillate the palate of Silenus
**
Another for clams but this one titled Clam Chowder was created by Ed Henry of Coos Bay, Oregon—I have no idea where I originally found this rhymed recipe, however, or when it was written:

CLAM CHOWDER

In case you consider a chowder called clam;
It’s a cinch to create, more exotic than ham.
So if it’s chowder you’re cooking, you’d best listen up:
The first thing you’ll need is clams, ‘bout a cup.
Chop them up fine in grinder or blender—
Big chunks detract from its elegant splendor.)
Water is needed; in amount about a quart,
Or more if desired; don’t cut yourself short.
Take two strips of bacon I add to the lot,
But chop it up fine ‘fore it goes in the pot.
Also, brown it up crisp in a pan over heat.
When added to chowder it makes flavor complete.
Now, an onion is added: your taste tells the size,
For in cooking of chowder, the tongue never lies.
Potatoes are added, cubed up rather small,
Don’t slight preparation, but give it your all.
Seasoning is next with pepper and salt,
Making chowder complete which no one can fault.
Cook until onions and spuds are tender;
Take half a cup and run through the blender,
Ad pour it back in with some milk and some butter,
And let it blend for a moment while you clean up your clutter.
Then serve it while hot to family or guest,
And act humble as they say, “Your chowder’s the best!”
**
One of the earliest references I have been able to find for an entire booklet of rhymed recipes may be Imogen Clark’s “RHYMED RECEIPTS” published in 1912. All I had for the longest time was an author’s name and a title – but while surfing on Google, I found a neat website called LibraryThing. (www.LibraryThing.com). Lo and behold, there is a photograph of Imogen Clark’s Rhymed Receipts cookbook on this site. The best I can do, for now, is share a recipe from Rhymed Receipts:

Take oranges of medium size,
The peel remove, I pray,
From each a round, cut from one end,
And scoop the seeds away.
Fill up the little cups thus formed,
With strawberry preserve,
The flavor mixed with orange juice
Is more than most deserve.
**
The following is from a Milford, New Hampshire church cookbook—title, date, and author unknown. It was featured in the Browns’ “AMERICA COOKS”:

FRIED TOMATOES

If you would fry tomatoes right,
Select large fresh ones, clean and bright:
slice them as thick as are your thumbs,
And roll them well in cracker crumbs;
Add salt and pepper to the taste.
A little sugar too in haste,
Then with a fire hot and bright,
Heat well your pant and do not slight
The lard and butter, lest it burn,
When brown on one side, over-turn;
And when at last, both sides are done,
Hot from the spider* give us one.

*Sandy’s Cooknote: A spider, you may have guessed wads a kind of cast iron skillet back in the day.

Rhymed recipes turn up, sometimes, in the most unexpected places. I was going through my collection of Congressional Club cookbooks recently, trying to determine which ones I have and which ones I’m missing, when I found the following rhymed recipe for

OYSTER COCKTAIL

If the right amount you take,
This will just seven cocktails make.
In each glass three raw oysters toss
And stand aside till you make your sauce.
Take of catsup one-half cup,
Same of vinegar and stir up,
One tablespoon of Worcestershire,
It must be hot and burn like fire.
Ten drops of good Tabasco add,
Of course this last is just a fad,
And if it is not on your shelf
To red pepper help yourself.
Now over each glass of oysters pour
Just three teaspoons and no more,
Serve as first course to your dinner
It will please both saint and sinner.

The contributor was a Mrs. M.I. Garber, Wife of Representative Garber of Oklahoma. This is from one of my earliest Congressional Club Cookbooks.
**
Recently, after I had posted “Those battered, tattered, stained church cookbooks” on my blog, my penpal, Betsy, who lives in Michigan, surprised me with a boxful of old battered, tattered, stained church cookbooks. One of these is a really battered “Twentieth Century Cook Book, A Feast of Good Things” compiled by the Ladies Aid Society of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Montgomery, PA, in 1913. I thought this afternoon to begin searching through these for rhymed recipes – and what was the very first one I found? A rhymed recipe for making bread!

BREAD
When a well-bred girl expects to wed,
‘Tis well to remember that men like bread,
We’re going to show the steps to take
So she may learn good bread to make.

First, mix a lukewarm quart, my daughter,
One-half of milk and one-half of water;
To this please add two cakes of yeast,
Or the liquid kind if preferred in the least.

Next, stir in a teaspoonful of nice clear salt,
If this bread isn’t good, it won’t be our fault,
Now add the sugar, tablespoonfuls three,
Mix well together, for dissolved they must be.

Pour the whole mixture into an earthen bowl,
A pan’s just as good if it hasn’t a hole.
It’s the cook and the flour, not the bowl or the pan,
That “makes the bread that makes the man.”

Some people like a little shortening power,
If this is your choice, just add to the flour
Two tablespoonfuls of lard and jumble it about,
‘Till the flour and lard are mixed without doubt.

Next stir the flour into the mixture that’s stood
Waiting to play its part to make the bread good,
Mix it up thoroughly, but not too thick;
Some flours make bread that’s more like a brick.

Now grease well a bowl and put the dough in,
Don’t fill the bowl full, that would be a sin;
For the dough is all right and it’s going to rise,
‘Till you will declare that it’s twice the old size.

Brush the dough with melted butter, as the recipes say;
Cover with a bread towel, set in a warm place to stay
Two hours or more, to rise until light,
When you see it grow, you’ll know it’s all right.

As soon as it’s light, place again on the board;
Knead it well this time. Here is knowledge to hoard
Now back in the bowl once more it must go.
And set again to rise for an hour or so.

Form the dough gently into loaves when light,
And place it in bread pans, greased just right.
Shape each loaf you make to half fill the pan,
This bread till be good enough for any young man.

Next let it rise to the level of pans—no more,
Have the temperature right—don’t set near a door.
We must be careful about draughts, it isn’t made to freeze,
Keep the room good and warm—say seventy-two degrees.

Now put I the oven; it’s ready to bake;
Keep uniform fire, great results are at stake.
One hour more of waiting, and you’ll be repaid,
By bread that is worthy a “well-bred maid.”
**
One more for this chapter and it’s a recipe for fruitcake. Years ago—when I still had an old typewriter and hadn’t yet switched to a computer—I challenged myself to write some rhymed recipes. The following is my own rhymed recipe for fruitcake:

For a good many years, a cook has been proud
Of the fame for her fruitcakes, and now has allowed
Us to print this receipt of Old English Tradition—
But before you begin, keep in mind this condition—
A fruitcake is best if its properly made,
And all the ingredients before you are laid.
be precise with amounts—for a pinch or a lot,
May have satisfied grandmother—you it will not.
SIFT five cups of flour and for nice compliments,
Carefully ADD to it these condiments:
One-teaspoon soda, a half-teaspoon salt,
And now ADD these spices to prevent flavor-fault;
One half teaspoon cloves and lest it taste hollow,
ADD the amount of the spices that follow:
ONE teaspoon cinnamon, HALF teaspoon mace,
(Be assured that each spice has well earned its place!)
Now thoroughly CREAM one FULL pound of butter—
In a separate bowl—but don’t splash or splutter!
Gradually add sugar—and make it ONE POUND
But NEVER the white—for THIS should be brown.
Take well beaten eggs—and there should be eight
Of medium size and medium weight…
Combine the eggs with the sugar and butter,
But don’t be a slowpoke—make haste and don’t putter!
Now ADD to this mixture the following things:
(As much to the cake as the song a bird sings)
A HALF pound of cherries, candied and sliced,
A HALF pound of citron (to make it taste nice)
A HALF pound of orange and a HALF pound of lemon peel
All carefully sliced – and then you may fee
That a FULL pound of raisins (seedless will do)
Its part to enhance the full flavor for you!
Add ONE POUND of currants, washed and then dried—
Now don’t skip directions—you’d be mortified!
Add ONE POUND of almonds, blanched and then shredded,
Whatever you do now, please don’t forget it.
Add a HALF CUP of jelly (currant is best)
With THREE FOURTHS CUP of honey—now ADD the zest
Of yummy molasses, and make it ONE CUP
Then roll up your shirtsleeves and beat it all up!
Now ADD the flour mixture and with each addition
Mix well, keep in mind that this English tradition
States that the flour must be poured GRADUALLY
To insure you a fruitcake that’s really tasty!
Two pans you must grease – TUBE pans are correct
To give your fruitcakes a special effect,
Preheat the oven—two-fifty is your
Properly tested and tried temperature.
To present rapid browning of these delicate cakes,
Put brown paper over them to shield, while they bake.
Now you must wait—three and one half hours—
(Do up the dishes or water your flowers!)
Let cakes cool in pans and you’ll find that you
Can wrap in wax paper to keep flavors true,
Store fruitcakes in tins for superb excellence,
And upon yourself please compel abstinence—
For a fruitcake that’s aged most truly will be
A QUITE special treat to serve with your tea!
— Sandra Lee Smith
p.s. And it’s not as easy as it looks–either making a fruitcake or writing a rhymed recipe about it.

KITCHEN POETS – PART 4

KITCHEN POETS – PART 4

Amongst my notes I found a short rhymed recipe for something called TOGUS BREAD. Togus bread takes its name from the word Togue, a Canadian French word of Indian origin. This bread is supposedly as native to Maine as Brown Bread is to Boston:

Three cups of sweet milk, one cup of sour,
Three cups of Indian meal, one cup of flour,
Of soda sufficient a teaspoon to fill;
The same of salt will season it well;
A cup of molasses will make it quite sweet,
And a very good dish for a Yankee to eat.

Interest in rhymed recipes appears to wax and wane; the recipes appeared in quite a lot of community cookbooks a hundred years ago, less frequently throughout the second half of the 1990s – but seem to be enjoying a new kind of popularity in recent years. While trying to track down more information about a recipe called Tartelettes Amandines on Google, I found an article about Morrisons supermarket in the United kingdom hosting a rhymed recipe competition of sorts in 2009. Some “real” poets (as opposed to us amateurs) were invited to write rhymed recipes for Morrisons which they planned to have read over loudspeakers in Morrisons 415 shops around the U.K. They also challenged customers to create their own rhymed recipes. And I would have liked copying some of these to share with you but there must be a block on them on Google because I was unable to copy/paste anything other than 2 pages. That being said, at least we know the rhymed recipe is alive and well – in England, at least.

While exploring rhymed recipes on the other side of the pond, I came across a page copied from “The Raj At Table” (a Culinary History of the British in India) by David Burton. What is interesting about the following rhymed recipe is that Burton attributes the rhyme to Alexander Pope. I have several other copies of the poem, none providing authorship. One copy for Sack-Posset (that I had to explore Google to learn what it was) claims to be from The New York Gazette, February 13, 1744, found in Early American Beverages by John Hull Brown, in 1966.

David Burton writes, “East India Company merchants introduced punch to England where, early in the eighteenth century, milk punch became all the rage. This was the successor to the old English posset, and a verse-recipe for “East Indian style posset” is attributed to Alexander Pope”:

From far Barbadoes on the Western main
Fetch sugar, ounces four, fetch sac from Spain,
One pint, and from the East Indian coast,
Nutmeg, the glory of the Northern Toast,
On flaming coals let them together heat,
Till the all-conquering sac dissolve the sweet,
On such another fire put eggs, just ten,
(New-born from tread of cock and rump of hen),
stir them with steady hand, and conscience pricking
to see the end of ten fine chicken,
from shining shelf, take down the brazen skillet,
a quart of milk from gentle cow and fill it
when boiled and cold, put milk to sac and eggs,
unite them firmly, like the triple league,
and on the fire let them together dwell.

Sandy’s Cooknote: The copy of this that someone else sent to me is slightly different and uses twenty eggs instead of ten and the last four lines have been changed. The same revised rhymed recipe appears in “History of Alcohol in America” and notes that Sack is a special strong dry wine of the sherry family. Also, in Bill Bryson’s “MADE IN AMERICA, An Informal History of the English Language in the United States” he writes that Puritans were in the habit of imbibing an alcoholic concoction known as ‘sack posset’. He writes that the drink was consumed in large quantities at social gatherings such as weddings, christenings, and funerals. Author Jason Earls comments that (after his research on sack-posset) that it seems highly similar to a typical egg nog drink with brandy and sherry added.
**
While we are visiting the other side of the pond, the following is a rhymed recipe for Twelfth Cake as it appeared in Godey’s Lady’s Book, Dec. 1857 & 1859:

To two pounds of flour—well sifted—united
Of loaf sugar; ounces sixteen;
Two pounds of fresh butter, with eighteen fine eggs,
And four pounds of currants washed clean;
Eight ounces of almonds, well blanched and cut small,
The same weight of citron sliced;
Of orange and lemon-peel, candied, one pound,
And a gill of pale brandy, united.
A large nutmeg grated; exact half an ounce
Of allspice, but only a quarter
Of mace, coriander, and ginger well ground,
Or pounded to dust in a mortar.
An important addition is cinnamon – which
Is better increased than diminished –
The fourth of an ounce is sufficient. Now this
May be baked four good hours till finished.

Sandy’s Cooknote: This recipe for Twelfth Cake reflects a time when sugar was bought in a “loaf” and you had to grate it yourself. Nutmegs were also purchased whole and you’d have a tiny little grater to grate you own nutmeg (actually – I have a nutmeg grater). Twelfth night, which in England is also called Epiphany or Old Christmas, falls on January 5th. In medieval times, Twelfth night was a huge celebration. According to Dorothy Gladys Spicer’s “FEAST DAYS FROM MANY LANDS” there were revels, feasting, and all kinds of merrymaking on Twelfth night. Most important was the Twelfth cake. Inside the cake were a bean and a pea. The first man to find the bean in his portion was acclaimed King of the Revle, and the first woman to find the pea became Queen. Then a mock court was established. Twelfth night revels dwindled in popularity after the calendar change in 1752. By the time of Godey’s Lady’s Book, Twelfth cake had actually become more of a fruitcake. Currents, back then, might not be altogether clean and had to be washed, while a gill was a measure for wine equal to ¼ of a pint.

Also English is an “Old English Remedy” reputed to be 6 centuries old:

Put your feet in hot water
As high as your hose,
With a number four dip
Well tallow your nose;
Take a quart of rum’d gruel
When in bed, as a dose.
**

Back on this side of the pond is a recipe for making cake from the
personal collection of Sarah Edmond Booth, collected in a small notebook over 150 years ago. Now in print, it’s helping to support the Cornelius H. Booth Library in Newton, Connecticut.

It was Caroline Stoke, curator of the Newtown library who discovered Sarah’s notebook, hidden among Hawley family memorabilia preserved in a library vault, and saw in it help for the present day library.

Carolyn Greene, a local caterer and the cookbook editor and Michele Grillo, an avid Newtown baker, undertook the monumental task of converting the 150 year old recipes into modern workable recipes.

The Sarah Booth Cookbook was published in 1995.

RECIPE FOR MAKING CAKE

If there’s a lady in this learned land
Upon her teaboard wishes something grand
Let her take this advice;
Here’s a cake, whose flavor’s past dispute—
The most fastidious palate needs must suit;
Try it-‘tis very nice.
Two pounds of flour from freshly gathered wheat
One half a pound of butter that is sweet
White sugar of the same weight
A pint of milk three eggs a little yeast
Such as is fresh ‘tis said is always best
A relish to create.
Part of the flour and milk and yeast mix well
And let it stand till it doth plainly tell
Tis as the other-light
The butter then the eggs and sugar stir
Together nicely – as you would prefer
Pound cake on bridal night.
The last along with balance of your flour
To the first mixture you should gently pour
And let them once more stand
That the grand compound may become as light
The merest glance assures you it is right
Then put it in the pan.
To rise your cakes fit for a courtier’s table
Requires I judge as near as I am able
Five hours or thereabouts
Then you will have or I’m no judge I ween
As wholesome comfits as were ever seen
For lives or for roule
P.S. A lady at my elbow hints
That as a stitch improves a rent in chintz
Salt makes the dough less tough
Use it or not I deem it little matter
Since cakes like capons never need the better
When they are good enough.
**
Sandy’s Cooknote: Normally, I wouldn’t load you down with so much background information – but I have a copy of The Sarah Booth Cookbook (although I can’t say how it came into my possession) and the background story of how this little book became published is pretty interesting, I think.
**

Remember the Bishop Williams who composed the Boston Baked Beans recipe that didn’t have any molasses in it? The Browns included a second rhymed recipe of Bishop Williams’ in “AMERICA COOKS”. Here is Bishop Williams’ rhymed recipe for

LAKE GEORGE PONE

A forgetful old bishop,
All broken to pieces,
Neglected to dish up
For one of his nieces
A receipt for ‘corn pone’
The best ever known;
So he hastens to repair his sin of omission,
And hopes that, in view of his shattered condition,
His suit for forgiveness he humbly may urge:
So here’s the receipt, and it comes from Lake George:

Take a cup of cornmeal
(And the meal should be yellow);
Add a cup of wheat flour
For to make the corn mellow;
Of sugar a cup, white or brown, at your pleasure,
(The color is nothing, the point is the measure).
And now comes a troublesome thing to indite,
For the rhyme and the reason they trouble me quite;
For after the sugar, the flour, and the meal,
Comes a cup of sour cream: but unless you should steal
From your neighbors, I fear you will never be able
This item to put upon your cook’s table;
For, ‘sure and indeed,’ in all towns I remember
Sour cream is as scarce as June bugs in December
So here is an alternative nicely contrived
Is suggested, your mind to relieve,
And showing you without stealing at all
The ground that seemed lost may retrieve.
Instead of sour cream take one cup of milk—
“Sweet milk”—what a sweet phrase to utter! –
and to make it creamlike, put into the cup
just three tablespoons of butter.
Cream of tartar, one teaspoonful—rules dietetic!
How nearly I wrote it down ‘tartar emetic’!
But no, cream of tartar it is, without doubt,
And so the alternative makes itself out,
Of soda the half of a teaspoonful add,
Or else your poor corn cake will go to the bad.
Two eggs must be broken without being beat;
Then of salt a teaspoonful your work will complete.
Twenty minutes of baking are needful to bring
To the point of perfection this ‘awful good thing.’

To eat at the best this remarkable cake,
You should fish all day long on the royal-named lake,
With the bright water glancing in glorious light,
And beauties unnumbered bewildering your sight
On mountain and lake, in water and sky;
And then, when the shadows fall down from on high,
Seek Sabbath Day Point as light fades away,]
And end with this feast the angler’s long day,
Then, then you will find without any question
That an appetite honest waits on digestion.
**

END OF PART 4

KITCHEN POETS – PART 3

KITCHEN POETS
PART THREE

A few rhymed recipes turned up in Massie’s ‘WALNUT PICKLES AND WATERMELON CAKE” published in 1990 (an excellent book, by the way), chronicling the history of Michigan church and club cookbooks). One of these recipes, Buckwheat Griddle Cakes, in rhyme, was taken from an Ann Arbor cookbook published in 1884, and like a rhymed recipe for doughnuts has often turned up in other cookbooks. To make Buckwheat Griddle cakes (or to recite the recipe for them:

If you fine buckwheat cakes would make
One quart of buckwheat flour take;
Four table-spoonfuls then of yeast;
Of salt one-tea-spoonsful at least; (sic)
One handful of Indian meal and two
Good table-spoonfuls of real New
Orleans molasses, then enough
Warm water to make of the stuff
A batter thin. Beat very well;
Set it to rise where warmth do dwell.
If in the morning it should be
The least bit sour, stir in free
A little soda that
Is first dissolved in water hot,
Mix in an earthen crock and leave
Each morn a cupful in to give
A sponge for the next night, so you
Need not to get fresh yeast to renew.

In weather cold this plan may be
Pursued ten days successfully,
Providing you add every night
Flour, salt, molasses, meal in right
Proportions, beating as before
And setting it to rise once more.
When baking make of generous size
Your cakes; and if they’d take the prize
They must be light and nicely browned,
Then by your husband you’ll be crowned
Queen of the kitchen; but you’ll bake,
And he will, man-like, “take the cake”.
**

Also from “Walnut Pickles and Watermelon Cake”:

BEATEN BISCUIT
By Miss Howard Weeden, from Bandana Ballads

Of course I’ll gladly give de rule
I meks beat biscuit by,
Dough I ain’t sure that you will mek
Dat bread de same as I.

‘Case cooking’s like religion is—
Some’s ‘lected an’ some ain’t,
An’ rules don’t know more mek a cook
Dan sermons mek a saint.

Well, ‘bout de ‘grediances required
I needn’t mention dem;
Of course you knows of flour an’ things
How much to put, an’ when;

But soon as you is got dat dough
Mixed up all smoove an’ neat,
Den’s when youh genius gwine to show
To get dem biscuit beat!

Two hundred licks is what I gives
For home-folks, never fewer,
An’ if I’m ‘spectin’ company in,
I gives five hundred sure!

*Sandy’s Cooknote: Definitely not politically correct in today’s world! I would love to find a copy of Bandana Ballads though! Spellcheck almost had a nervous breakdown over this!
**
Another from Walnut Pickles and Watermelon Cake. Contributor was a Mrs. Josie Morris, Berrien Springs, and is dated 1923:

BILL COOKIES
(Perhaps named after a spouse?)

Bill Cookies—and rightly they are named,
If they are gone in a jiffy, no one can be blamed.
Take one cup of sugar, a half cup of lard;
Cream these together, add 2 eggs and beat hard.
One scant teaspoon of soda, now put in a cup,
Add a mite of hot water, and now ‘twill foam up;
Sift 3 cups of flour and place in a bowl,
Mix smoothly and swiftly, and then neatly roll;
If dough is too soft, a little flour add,
I’ll assure better cookies your husband ne’er had.

Also found in Walnut Pickles and Watermelon Cake:

STEWED KNUCKLE OF VEAL

No name but dedicated to the Rev. W. H. Osborn and dated Battle Creek, 1903:

Take a knuckle of veal;
You may buy it, not steal;
In a few pieces cut it
In a stewing pan put it;
Salt, pepper, and mace
Must season this knuckle;
Then what’s joined to a place—
With other herbs muckle,
And lettuce and beets
With marigold meet.
Put not water at all
In a boiling hot kettle
And there let it be,
(Mark the doctrine I teach)
About—let me see—
Thrice as long as you preach.
So, skimming the fat off,
Say grace with your hat off.
Oh, then with what rapture
Will it fill Dean and Chapter!

Sandy’s Cooknote: I have never seen a knuckle of veal, much less cooked one—and aren’t the ingredients of lettuce and marigold interesting? Old cookbooks have far more recipes for veal that one encounters today. And, I am old enough to remember a time when the butcher would give a housewife soup bones—free of charge. My mother often made a thin soup with soup bones; afterwards my father and brother ate the marrow on crackers.
**

Larry and Priscilla Massie, authors of Walnut Pickles and Watermelon Cake, comment that Joseph Bert Smiley was one of Michigan’s most eccentric rhymesters and he offered his poetic opinion of onions in his first book “MEDITATIONS OF SAMWELL WILKINS” published in his home town of Kalamazoo in 1886;

ONIONS

There is no perfume that I love so well
As onions, fragrant onions.
Creation’s most odoriferous smell
Is onions, fragrant onions.
Nature is beautiful, calm, and bright.
From fruitful valley to lofty height.
She would show good sense if she’d only blight
These onions, fragrant onions.

Sometimes when walking the street you say,
“Onions, fragrant onions!
Somebody’s cooking for dinner to-day
Onions fragrant onions.”
No flower’s pure essence as sweet as they.
No fifty-cent odor could longer stay.
You can smell ‘em a couple of blocks away.
Onions, fragrant onions.

I wonder how Providence came to invent
Onions, fragrant onions.
On what dire mission hath nature sent
Onions, fragrant onions?
It seems too bad that an earth so fair
Should nourish and foster with so much care
A plant with a smell that will raise your hair—
Onions, fragrant onions.
**
I can’t resist the temptation to insert, next, a poem that I wrote about onions quite a few years ago:

Waste not your tears in weeping over
The onion–that hyprocrite!
It mealy-mouths its way around
Begging us to pity it!
It spends its whole life
In sham tears and strife
Begging for some consolation…
Because of the lily, the onion you see,
Is merely a dirt-poor relation.
The onion’s behavior is simply uncalled for
Actually, I think
It’s really quite silly..
Because, after all,
Who’d go to a restaurant
And order steak smothered
With lily?
–Sandra Lee Smith

Onions appear, also, in a short verse that has appeared in many community cookbooks, generally in an introductory page for vegetables:

The onion strong, the parsnip sweet,
The twining bean, the ruddy beet-
Yes, all the garden brings to light
Speaks of a landscape of delight.
(Author unknown)

But while I am on the subject of vegetables including onions, someone had this to say in the Fortnightly Cook Book, Winchester, Mass, in 1922:

I would I had time to the merits rehearse
Of squashes and corn, which I find not in verse,
I wish I could give the potato its due,
In the finest of rhymes and the most tuneful lays.
Cucumbers and cabbage, I also would praise
Or sing of tomatoes, served hot in a stew.
But onions! Oh, onions! Dear me, I suppose,
They should not be mentioned except in dry prose.
(You’ll excuse me for putting my hand to my nose).
While as for that homely old family of beans,
There’s nothing much lower, unless it is greens.
I’ll except that patrician branch from Lima
Than which, in succotash, what could be finer?
Others there are, but we must go on to receipts
If it were not for that, I’d at least speak of beets,
But space is precious, so no more will I write,
Merely wishing you health, and a good appetite.

Also from the Fortnightly Cook Book, pages of which were sent to me by someone back in the 1990s, was a poem about PIES—specifically OLD Virginia Mince Pies, written by a Mrs. Roger Pryor:

PIES

Our much respected Uncle Sam
Loves pies—of pumpkin, fruit or jam;
Potato, apple, lemon, cherry,
Peach, plum, and every kind of berry.
These are but courtiers to the prince
Of pies—the “Old Virginia Mince.”
There is but one right way to make it,
Ere in its flaky crust you bake it;
Use neither tongue nor other meat
(As some cooks do), but boil the feet
of calf or pig, then softly press
through colander the pearly mess.
Of this fill cup with dainty touch,
To mix with fruit and spice and such.
A cup of raisins, stoned, prepare;
A cup of currants then wash with care
(for things that grow in foreign lands
may have been packed by germy hands)
a cup of apple chopped—no rind;
a cup of sugar—heaping, mind!
A cup of finely shredded suet,
A dash of pepper from the cruet;
A pinch of salt, of nutmeg, mace,
Of cloves—to give a zest and grace;
One lemon, orange, juice and rind
(only the yellow grated fine).
Some citron shavings, crisp and thin;
Then pour a glass of brandy in.
Glass large or small, no matter which,
Enough to make all moist and rich.
(Should Uncle Sam object, thus meet it:
”He isn’t asked to drink, but eat it.”)
Line a deep dish with pastry, light
As feathers, soft and creamy white.
Cover as simply as you will
For worth and beauty need no frill.
Five minutes slowly bake, then heat
Your oven three hundred Fahrenheit.
Watching, you rest upon your chair,
And festive odors fill the air!
You almost see the mistletoe!
You almost hear the fiddle-bow!
The rhythmic tap of little feet,
The rippling laughter, low and sweet;
As perfumed incense rises high
From Old Virginia’s own mince pie.
The old-time Randolphs made these pies
For Christmas dinners. They were wise.
They made other things, they tell
Tobacco, laws and made them well.
Our Independence Declaration,
The prop and bulwark of our nation
Standing today, as then it stood
Was writ by one of Randolph blood.
That Democratic son of yore–
Ate a mince pie—the day before.

From “A BOOK OF PRACTICAL RECIPES” compiled in 1907 by the Ladies of the South Side Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh:

CHEESE RELISH

Six Boston crackers split and dried,
And buttered well upon one side,
One pound of cheese, be sure it’s nice—
Cut first in slices, then in dice,
One pint of milk, if fresh use cold,
But scald if it’s a little old.
A baking dish to hold a quart
One of the round and shallow sort.
Now first put in some bits of cheese,
Then crumble cracker over these,
Then cheese, then cracker,
And when you stop
Be sure the cracker comes on top.
With salt and pepper season lightly,
Also with cayenne very slightly.
The milk add last, bake half an hour,
And serve it hot, if in you power.

The following is from Favorite New England Recipes , but I don’t have a date or any additional information as someone copied the page and sent it to me a long time ago:

DOUGHNUTS IN RHYME

1 cup of sugar, 1 cup of milk;
two eggs, beaten fine a silk;
salt and nutmeg (lemon will do)
of baking powder teaspoons two.
Stir enough of flour in
To roll on pie board, not too thin;
Cut in diamonds, twists or rings,
Drop with care the doughy things
Into the fat that swiftly swells
Evenly the spongy cells.
Watch with care the time for turning,
Fry them brown, just short of burning.
Roll in sugar, serve when cool,
This is the never failing rule.

The following recipe is from a community cookbook published in either 1912-1913 in Poughkeepsie New York—the cover and front pages to the cookbook were missing. Author is listed as a Mrs. L.V. Strong:

CORN BREAD IN RHYME

Two cups Indian, one cup wheat,
One cup sour milk, one cup sweet,
One good egg that you well beat,
Half cup molasses, too,
Half cup sugar, and thereto,
With one spoon of butter, new.
Salt and soda each a spoon,
Mix up quick and bake it soon,
Then you’ll have corn bread complete
Best of all corn bread you meet,
It will make your boy’s eyes shine,
If he is like that boy of mine.
If you have a dozen boys
Double then the rule I should
And you’ll have two corn cakes good.
**
And a short recipe for Saturday Night Boston Brown Bread (which I love!) appeared in Jane & Michael Stern’s “Coast to Coast Cookbook – Real American Food” published in 1986 b Alfred A. Knopf:

Three cups of corn meal,
One of rye flour;
Three cups of sweet milk,
One cup of sour;
A cup of molasses
To render it sweet,
Two teaspoons of soda
Will make it complete.

The Sterns note that brown bread goes back three centuries to when it wasa brick oven recipe cooked on a bed of oak leaves and called ‘ryanijun’. A contraction of rye (flour) and Indian (cornmeal). Graham (whole wheat) was a later addition that became an essential element in the dark moist loaf we all know as Brown Bread. The Sterns also noted that the non-brick oven method required a pudding mold – but the mother of my high school girlfriend, Mary, baked brown bread in tomato soup cans.
**

KITCHEN POETS PART 2

KITCHEN POETS

PART 2

As for Bishop Williams, the Browns referred to him as “that New York Rhymster” without providing any additional background information.
The recipe that appeared in their “America Cooks”, originally published in 1940, states that the Boston Baked Beans rhymed recipe was from “Moore’s ‘Rural New Yorker’” which presumably meant something to readers in 1940 but doesn’t enlighten this 2010 writer.

Google searches, while providing newer websites and Blogs referring to rhymed recipes failed to provide any other information about the elusive Bishop Williams. So, unless someone reads this and knows something about the Bishop Williams who wrote the rhymed recipe “Boston Baked Beans” – we may never know.

While searching on Google for more rhymed recipes, I came across a website called The Old Foodie, written by a woman in Australia who immigrated there from England. It reminded me of my two penpals in Australia, also from England, so I wrote to the Old Foodie & she wrote back to me. In one of her Blogs she offered a rhymed recipe from an 1886 “The Woman Suffrage Cook Book…” by Hattie A. Burr and it was one I didn’t have—so here it is:

BREAKFAST DISH

Cut smoothly from a wheaten loaf
Ten slices, good and true,
And brown them nicely, o’er the coals,
As you for toast would do.

Prepare a pint of thickened milk,
Some cod-fish shredded small;
And have on hand six hard-boiled eggs
Just right to slice withal.

Moisten two pieces of the bread,
And lay them in a dish,
Upon them slice a hard-boiled egg
Then scatter o’er with fish

And for a seasoning you will need
Of pepper just one shake,
Then spread above the milky juice,
And this one layer make.

And thus, five times, bread, fish and egg,
Or bread and egg and fish,
Then place one egg upon the top,
To crown this breakfast dish.
**
When I was originally collecting and writing about rhymed recipes in the late 1990s, a fellow subscriber of the CCE found the following for chowder in a book titled ‘SAVORY SUPPERS AND FASHIONABLE FEASTS” by Susan Williams, published in 1985. Louise sent it to Becky Mercuri, another CCE columnist, who in turn sent it to me.

CHOWDER, AN OLD RECIPE, 1834

To make a good chowder and have it quite nice,
Dispense with sweet marjoram parsley and spice;
Mace, pepper and salt are now wanted alone.
To make the stew eat well and stick to the bone,
Some pork is sliced thin and put into the pot;
Some say you must turn it, some say you must not;
When it is brown, take it out of the fat,
And add it again when you add this and that.
A layer of potatoes, sliced quarter inch thick,
Should be placed in the bottom to make it eat slick;
A layer of onion now over this place,
Then season with pepper and salt and some mace.
Split open your crackers and give them a soak.
In eating you’ll find this the cream of the joke.
On top of all this, now comply with my wish,
And put, in large chunks, all your pieces of fish;
Then put on the pieces of pork you have fried-
I mean those from which all the fat has been tried.
In seasoning I pray you, don’t spare the cayenne;
‘Tis this makes it fit to be eaten by men.
After adding these things in their reg’lar rotation,
You’ll have a dish fit for the best of the nation.

Jessup Whitehead
The Stewards Handbook, 1899
**
Rhymed recipes—and kitchen poems– would turn up unexpectedly in my searches, most often in old church and club cookbooks. My inclination in the early days of collecting cookbooks, which I started in earnest in 1965, was to purchase any kind of cookbook in any kind of condition, which led to acquiring many in truly battered and tattered and stained conditions, sometimes sans covers. It was in such a little cookbook, titled Rio Bravo Farm Home Department Cookbook that I discovered a wealth of kitchen poetry. The book is undated but the ads, from Bakersfield California, offer telephone numbers of just three digits. The cookbook’s previous owner spilled and spattered, especially throughout the pages devoted to cakes and cookies, and a child apparently scribbled on some of the pages. No matter.

In the introduction, the ladies of Rio Bravo wrote:

The world is always praising
All the great folks of the time –
The poets and musicians and
The ministers sublime;
But to earth’s greatest heroine
They never cast a look;
I’ll tell you who she is at once—
The blessed household cook.

Commenting on bread, the Rio Bravo ladies had this to say:

A slice of bread with butter on it
May feed a king;
A biscuit with a crust upon it
Is comforting.
The every day necessities, no doubt,
Are those which none of us can do without.

My favorite kitchen poem, from the Rio Bravo cookbook, is titled COOKIES and it goes like this:
]
When Cinda bakes, what odors as from isles
Of clove and citron float upon the air
And in the pantry. Oh! What witching piles
Of crusty rolls and frosted tarts are there;]
A dream of far off eastern light and warmth.
In some strange wise, she mingles in her cakes;
With subtle atmosphere the kitchen fills
When Cinda bakes.

I’ve digressed a bit – as the last three are kitchen poems and not rhymed recipes. I don’t intend to present them separately – I think of all of them as kitchen related, whether kitchen-theme poems or rhymed recipes. Someone loved their kitchen enough to want to wax poetic about it. That’s good enough for me. But for now I’ll return to rhymed recipes.

In a Maryland Home Economics Association cookbook published in 1948, I found the following rhymed recipe for corn pone which the author stated had been used in her family for 65 years. (And my original notes are from 1994, so makes it about 80 years ago).

CORN PONE

Two cu of Indian
One cup of wheat.
One cup of sour milk
One cup of sweet.
One good egg
Which you must beat.
One-half cup of sugar
And thereto
One tablespoon of butter, new.
Salt and soda
Each a teaspoon,
Mix it quick
And bake it soon.
Then you’ll have
Cornbread complete
Best of all cornbread
You meet
Good enough for any king
Which your husband
Home may bring.
**
One of my earliest cookbook acquisitions, “THE EGG BASKET COOKBOOK” compiled by the Petaluma High School PTA in 1927, contains the following recipe (and this may be one of the first rhymed recipe I found, years ago):

ANGEL’S OR DEVIL’S FOOD?

If you would choose the Angel cake
One full cup of EGG whites take,
Beat them lightly, beat them long
To the merry tune of your favorite song.
Put one cup of flour, sugar one and a quarter,
One level teaspoon of cream of tartar
Into your sifter and sift them thru,
(six or seven times will do).
One teaspoon of flavoring, (any kind you choose)
Now not a moment you must lose
But fold all together, don’t beat it a lot
And bake in an oven that’s not too hot
For forty-five minutes, then I’m sure you’ll say
It’s fit for an angel most any day.

But if you choose to eat the devil,
Let your measurements be on the level,
Cream one cup of sugar, Crisco one third,
Two EGGS with a cp of sour milk whipped and stirred,
One teaspoon of soda, of cocoa four
With two cups of flour sifted five times or more.
Now to Crisco and sugar add the mixture of flour
Alternating with EGGS and milk that is sour.
Beat it hard and beat it long
To the rag time tune of a rag time song.
Two teaspoons of baking powder, add
And you’ll get a cake that’ll make you glad.
Bake in an oven that’s moderately slow
Put together with icing white as snow.
**

An anonymous cook-poet submitted the following rhymed recipe to an 1897 cookbook compiled by the Ladies Aid Society of Sewickley, Pennsylvania:

Stand on your legs
And beat four eggs,
One cup of sugar,
And beat like a booger*
One cup of flour,
And bake half an hour.

*Sandy’s Cooknote: I’m not sure what we just created—pancakes? A small cake? A booger, by the way, is a variation from dialectal “boggart” or a hobgoblin. Words no longer a part of our vocabulary.

The following recipe for curry, author also unknown, was published in 1810—and unfortunately, my notes don’t indicate where I found the recipe. It may have been sent to me by one of the many friends who searched for these recipes on my behalf. The author sounds like a doting husband and because of the reference to Epping Butter, is most likely of English origin:

Three pounds of veal, my darling girl prepares
And chops it nicely into little squares,
Five onions next prepared the little minx,
The biggest are the best her Samuel thinks,
And Epping* butter nearly half a pound
And stews them in a pan until they’re browned.
What next my dexterous little girl will do?
She pops the meat into the savory stew
With curry powder, tablespoons three,
And milk a pint, the richest that may be.
And when the dish has stewed for half an hour,
A lemon’s ready juice she’ll o’er it pour.
Then bless her–then she gives the luscious pot
A very gentle boil, and serves quite hot.

*Sandy’s Cooknote: I had no idea what Epping butter was when I first included this poem in my article “Eve’s Pudding and other Rhymed Recipes” in 1994, but back then we didn’t have Google! Thanks to Google I discovered that Epping is a small market town in the county of Essex, England that retains its weekly market and dates back to 1253. The once-famous Epping Butter was highly sought after in the 18th and 19th centuries but is no longer made. (I love being able to tie up loose ends!)
**
The following, written by Ruth Van Ness Blair of Clearwater, Florida, is from a book titled RECIPES IN RHYME:

ARTICHOKE DIP

Take a can of artichokes,
And squash them to a mush,
Add two cups of mayonnaise,
Then sprinkle in the slush
Itaian style Good Season’s mix
One packet is just right.
Then set it in the fridge to blend
Its flavors overnight.

At party time, serve up with chips,
Or crackers, if you wish,
But don’t leave ANYONE alone
With this delicious dish.
For all alone, a reveler,
Might easily go through
A dish of dip you meant to serve
A crowd of twenty-two.
**
The following rhymed-recipe for a kind of rice pudding was another of the first rhymed recipes I ever came across. The author is unknown and I haven’t any idea where I originally found this, but I love the sentiment (it sounds like something I would do—use up a bunch of eggs and things to save a piece of bread! )

I found a little crust of bread
That must not go to waste
So by a famous recipe,
I seasoned it to taste.
I used 6 eggs, a pint of cream,
Some citron and some spice—
Two lemons, dates, raisins, and
A brimming cup of rice.
It took a lot of things, I know,
That’s how the cook book read—
And no one cares for it, but OH!
I saved that crust of bread!
**

THE KITCHEN POETS – PART 1

THE KITCHEN POETS
Part 1

Back in the 1990s, when I was writing articles for the Cookbook Collector’s Exchange (CCE), one of the articles was about rhymed recipes and was titled “Eve’s Pudding & Other Rhymed Recipes”. Another article dealt more extensively with kitchen/cooking poetry themes and was titled “The Kitchen Poets”.

What I want to do now, on my Sandychatter blog, is combine the two and present you with a compilation of everything I have collected on this topic over the years. It will be a series of articles and they will all be posted under The Kitchen Poets. What surprised me not very long ago was the discovery that my interest in this subject is not unique – there are other bloggers and website writers who collect and publish poems of this nature.

Sometimes these poems can be found in old cookbooks. For example, my favorite cookbook authors the Browns – Cora, Rose, and Bob Brown—were apparently interested in rhymed recipes too. Their book “AMERICA COOKS” contains several rhymed recipes which enchanted me, and may have been when I started a quest to find more recipes like these. One of these was devoted to the subject of cooking beans, which appeared in Moore’s “RURAL NEW YORKER” and was reprinted in “AMERICA COOKS”. One interesting note on Bishop Williams’ poem about baked beans, as noted by the Browns, is that the Bishop left out the molasses and mustard.

”And to think,” the Browns lamented, “This recipe was perpetuated by being copied in church cookbooks all across the wide band of territory made by New York Staters moving westward!” We’ll get back to Bishop William’s rhymed recipe for beans later.

What I would like to do for now is present you with a little background on the topic of rhymed recipes. Perhaps the oldest one we know about is “Eve’s Pudding” which dates back to colonial times. It goes like this:

”If you want a good pudding, mind what you’re taught,
Take of eggs six in number, when bought for a groat,
The fruit with which Eve her husband did cozen,
Well-pared and well chopped, at least half a dozen,
Six ounces of bread, let Moll eat the crust,
And crumble the rest as fine as the dust;
Six ounces of currants, from the stems you must sort,
Let you break out you teeth and spoil all the sport;
Six ounces of sugar won’t make it too sweet,
Some salt and some nutmeg will make it complete;
Three hours let it boil, without any flutter,
But Adam won’t like it without wine and butter.”

This rhymed recipe, as I noted above, dates back to colonial times when half a dozen eggs could be bought for a mere groat (an old English silver coin equal to fourpence) and a pudding—such as this one for apples—was put into cheesecloth and either boiled or steamed until cooked, like plum pudding (which is more accurately described as a cake to us, while pudding – well, pudding is something like chocolate pudding or tapioca.

It may surprise you to learn there was a very practical reason for rhymed recipes. A recipe in rhyme, once memorized, provided the cook with an easy way of recalling the ingredients and method of preparing a dish. While cookbooks were being published in the 17th and 18th centuries, as you might expect, only the well-to-do and educated could afford to buy them. Few cookbooks were published for Americans; we know that most of the cookbooks available in the colonies were from Europe and none of them contained recipes using American-grown foods.

The first printed in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1742 was “The Compleat Housewife” by Eliza Smith. At the time it was the most popular cookbook in England. “The Compleat Housewife” was reprinted again in New York in 1764. In 1772, a cookbook titled “The Frugal Housewife” by Susannah Carter, was published in Boston, while “The New Art of Cookery” was published in Philadelphia in 1792. These were all basically English cookbooks, however, even if they were published in America. None of them contained recipes using American foods and in fifty years, there were only seven editions of these three cookbooks. For one thing, cookbooks were not in demand in America. For another, young girls or servants were expected to learn the art of cooking by observing and helping in the kitchen. On colonial plantations, favorite family recipes were treasured and kept secret, handed down from mother to daughter. In higher-class homes, the lady of the house often kept her own “receipt” book, as they were called.

Then in 1796, along came Amelia Simmon’s “AMERICAN COOKERY”, which is considered to be the first truly American cookbook. It was so successful that it was reprinted and plagiarized many times. Even so, many American housewives didn’t own cookbooks and many couldn’t read. You may remember learning, in history classes, how only boys were educated in the early days of America’s development. It was considered unnecessary and even frivolous for girls to be educated. So, it isn’t surprising that rhymed recipes served a practical purpose. A young girl could memorize a recipe (even if she couldn’t read) and if it was a rhymed verse, it was easier to remember.

Just how many rhymed recipes exist is almost impossible to guess. In my own collection of cookbooks I have found them on occasion, often in church or club cookbooks. When I began researching for the original “Eve’s Pudding and Other Rhymed Recipes” and “Kitchen Poets”, both published in the CCE in the 1990s, friends and email pals, and some of the other writers for the CCE sent me contributions they had found. Recently, I came across the folder containing all of my notes and copies of the original articles – and thought they might be considered interesting to share in Sandychatter.

As noted above, the Browns included a few rhymed recipes in their marvelous cookbook, “America Cooks”. Along with Bishop Williams’ rhymed recipe for beans, there was another by the Bishop as well as a quite frequently reprinted recipe for salad dressing, by the Reverend Sidney Smith that I have found in dozens of cookbooks.

Here, then, is Bishop Williams’ rhymed recipe for Boston Baked Beans:

“If my dear Rural, you should ever wish
For breakfast or dinner a tempting dish
Of the beans so famous in Boston town,
You must read the rules I here lay down.
When the sun was set in golden light,
And around you fall the shades of night,
A large deep dish you first prepare;
A quart of beans select with care;
And pick them over, until you find
Not a speck or mote is left behind.
A lot of cold water on them pour
Till every bean is covered o’er,
And they seem to your poetic eye
Like pearls in the depth of the sea to lie;
Here, if you please, you may let them stay
Till after breakfast the very next day,
When a parboiling process must be gone through
(I mean for the beans, and not for you);
Then if, in the pantry, there should still be
That bean pot, so famous in history,
With all due deference, bring it out,
And, if there’s a skimmer lying about,
Skim half of the beans from the boiling pan
Into the bean pot as fast as you can,
Then turn to Biddy and calmly tell her
To take a huge knife and go to the cellar;
For you must have, like Shylock of old,
‘A pound of flesh’, ere your beans grow cold;
But very unlike that ancient Jew,
Nothing but pork will do for you.
Then tell once more your maiden fair,
In the choice of the piece to take great care,
For a streak of fat and a streak of lean
Will give the right flavor to every bean!
This you must wash, and rinse, and score,
Put into the pot and round it pour
The rest, til the view presented seems
Like an island of pork in an ocean of beans;
Pour on boiling hot water enough to cover
The tops of the beans completely over,
Shove into the oven and bake till done
And the triumph of Yankee cookery’s won!”

I have a couple of after-thoughts about Bishop Williams’ rhymed recipe. One, I assume you know, is that the beans are navy white dried beans that in olden times might not be very clean and might even contain some dirt or pebbles. Most dried bean recipes advise the cook to rinse and check them over even today but I rarely ever discover anything that shouldn’t be with the bag of beans. Another thought crossed my mind – that perhaps Bishop Williams’ omission of molasses and mustard might have been deliberate – not much rhymes with molasses or mustard!
And, it also occurred to me that this rhyme recipe isn’t much different from the way my mother in law, who was from Bluefield Virginia, cooked pinto beans. The pinto beans were often cooked with nothing more than a piece of salt pork and water, then served with cornbread and chopped raw onion. (I have to admit, I was horrified the first time I saw crumbled cornbread on a plate, topped off with beans and onion! The BEAN SOUP cooked by my mother and grandmother was always made with white navy beans, with onion and some tomato sauce, sometimes some celery or bits of carrot tossed into the pot). However, I learned to make corn bread and beans and got pretty good at it).
**
The Browns considered Bishop Williams a ‘worthy rival’ of the Reverend Sidney Smith (no relation) whose rhymed recipe for salad dressing as appeared in part or in its entirety in hundreds, if not thousands, of cookbooks—and even appeared in a 1968 edition of Gourmet magazine, although they omitted the first couple of lines. All of which led me to wonder – just who WERE Bishop Williams and Reverend Sidney Smith?

I discovered part of the answer in Jane Grigson’s “FOOD WITH THE FAMOUS” published by Antheneum, in 1980. The Reverend Sidney Smith rated an entire chapter devoted to his life (1771-1845). Says Ms. Grigson, “He learned to cook, loved good food, and felt that he could feed or starve a man into virtue or vice”. Ms. Grigson also said that the salad dressing was not too satisfactory as it ends up like a mud pack.

According to my original typewritten notes, written over 30 years ago, a version of the salad dressing also appeared in Marion Harland’s 1873 edition of “COMMON SENSE IN THE HOUSEHOLD”, and Ms. Harland stated that HER version of the rhymed recipe had been pasted in her scrapbook at least twenty-five years prior. A copy of the recipe was also sent to me by a CCE subscriber who said she acquired the rhymed recipe on a trip to England or from an English magazine.

As nearly as I can determine, the rhymed recipe goes like this:

To make this condiment your poet begs
The pounded yellow of two hard-boiled eggs;
Two boiled potatoes, strained through kitchen sieve,
Smoothness and softness to the salad give.
Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl,
And, half-suspected animate the whole
Of mordant mustard add a single spoon.
Distrust the condiment that bites so soon;
But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault
To add a double quantity of salt;
Four times the spoon with oil of Lucca crown,
And twice with vinegar procur’d from town;
And lastly o-er the flavour’d compound toss
A magic soupcon of anchovy sauce.
Oh, green and glorious! Oh, herbaceous treat!
Twould tempt the dying anchorite to eat;
Back to the world he’d turn his fleeting soul!
Serenely full, the epicure would say
‘Fate cannot harm me, I have dined today”.

*Sandy’s Cooknote: For an adaptation of the Reverend Smith’s recipe, cook well two scrubbed potatoes, in their jackets. Remove the skins. Cool completely. Slice thin. Mince crisp green scallion ends; toss with potatoes. Add salt and pepper to taste. To make the dressing, combine7 tablespoons of a good olive oil, 3 TBSP vinegar, 2 rice egg yolks (cook egg yolks alone, reserving the whites for another purpose, by separating the eggs and sliding the yolks into boiling water), 2 tsp mustard and if you wish (optional) a tsp of anchovy paste. Mix in the blender for a few seconds. Makes 2/3 cup. Use as you would mayonnaise with the potato salad.

Another Sandy’s Cooknote: this doesn’t seem like very much to me. When I make potato salad I usually boil a ten pound bag of potatoes…but you know how frugal the English are.
**

THE WEDDING GOWN

The dress had been her mother’s
And her grandmother’s, before her,
And grandmother had sewn the gown herself.

It had been kept safe in a box
With layers of tissue paper,
In mama’s room, high up on a shelf.

There were yards of handmade lace,
And tiny pearls along the sleeves
That buttoned tight to fit a young bride’s wrists,

It was a gown made of white satin
With a train that trailed the floor,
And a petticoat that when you walked, it swished.

Grandma also made the veil,
With a cunning floral crown
And tiny crocheted rosebuds all around,

With lace and net she wove the veil,
Flowing so it touched her heels,
Long enough to almost reach the ground.

It was a gown for all to see
That it represented purity,
It made a silent statement to them all.

A statement that a bride proclaimed,
As she took her husband’s name,
And he walked alongside her, standing tall.

It was made to last forever
For the brides within the family
She known someday she’d wear the gown with pride.

But when came her wedding day
She found she couldn’t say
She would wear the dress, for it would be a lie.

–Sandra Lee Smith

IN MOTHER’S KITCHEN

IN MOTHER’S KITCHEN

In my mother’s kitchen
At 1618 Sutter Street,
We all sat around an old white wooden table
That was covered with oilcloth,
And it was there that my sister
And brothers and I
Did our homework,
While my mother did the ironing,
And a small Crosley radio
On top of the refrigerator
Was tuned to the radio “shows”
We listened to every night,
Shows like The Lone Ranger and
Mr. & Mrs. North,
The Shadow and
Lights Out,
And one of my favorites,
Baby Snooks,
My Friend Irma and
Our Miss Brooks;
These programs were on every day
And every night
Along with shows like Jack Benny
And Amos and Andy.
There were dozens of these programs
Which we listened to
While working on essays or
Our arithmetic lessons.
My Mother’s kitchen was not, actually,
A very large room
But along one wall, on the left side,
There was a stove, and a tall narrow cabinet
Where my mother stored spices
And bottles of things like vinegar and
Kitchen Bouquet;
Next to it there was a
Large built-in cupboard with
Curious stained glass in the upper cupboard doors,
And then an open space
Underneath which there was a drawer
Where all sorts of things were tossed, from rubber bands
To Wilson Evaporated milk labels (which could be redeemed
For free things like dish towels or pot holders),
As well as paper clips and crayons and bobby pins,
Pencils and erasers and old used envelopes,
My mother’s one and only cookbook, Ida Bailey Allen’s
Service Cookbook that she bought at Woolworth’s,
A pair of kitchen scissors and
World War II ration books for each one of us
That she kept long after the war was over.
Whenever you needed something like string or
A rubber band, you looked inside the kitchen drawer.
Next to this big build in kitchen cupboard
There was a narrow built in cupboard
Where canned goods and staples were stored
And where my father ingeniously cut a square
Hole into the floor so that my mother
Could drop soiled laundry collected
From the second floor bedrooms.
In the basement, my father built large
Cupboards, one of which contained
The laundry that had been dropped in the hole from above.
Once, my brother Biff got stuck in the
Hole when we were playing hide & seek.
There was a back door, outside of which
There was a box where the milkman
Left bottles of milk,
And a kitchen window that looked out
Onto the back yard. In the corner
Along that wall was the refrigerator
On top of which was the little radio;
There must have been
A window on the other kitchen wall,
The long wall opposite the great kitchen cupboard
But I can’t quite envision it. My mother had
A mangle ironer that she seldom ever used
And it was a catchall for things piled on top of it.
On the 4th wall, opposite the back door,
Was the kitchen sink
Where my sister and brother and I
Washed, dried and put away dishes
And learned the lyrics to popular songs
From a songbook Becky bought each week
For ten cents from Carl’s Drug Store.
This was my mother’s kitchen,
Where we ate supper every night
At six o’ clock sharp
And you did not eat
If you were not at the table.
I never missed supper
And sat to my mother’s right
At the kitchen table.
It was in my mother’s kitchen
That I learned to cook,
Studying recipes in the Ida Bailey Allen cookbook
And making sure we had all of the ingredients
In the pantry.
It was in my mother’s kitchen
That I began making muffins and brownies,
Peanut butter cookies and a cookie called
Hermits and another called Rocks.
If you could read directions, I discovered,
You could cook.
It was also in my mother’s kitchen
That I began to write stories
On an old under wood typewriter
That my father bought for my brother and me
To use; it was too heavy to carry upstairs
And so I typed, two-fingers, while sitting
At the kitchen table.
These are the things I remember about
My mother’s kitchen.
It was, I think, the hub of the house.

–Sandra Lee Smith

EAT CAKE!

EAT CAKE!

What is any better than
A homemade chocolate cake?
The smell warms up the kitchen as
I wait for it to bake.

There’s Lemon cake and Yellow cake
And Angel Food Cake, too,
Apple Cake and Walnut Cake
Or cakes made with berries, blue.

There’s Spice cake and there’s Fruitcake
(At least a hundred different kinds),
Banana Cake or Pumpkin Cake,
Both favorite ones of mine.

And up-side-down cakes, fun to make,
Pineapple is the best,
There’s Cherry Cake and Cracker Cake,
They all will pass the test.

There’s Marble Cake and Devil’s Food,
Red Velvet Cake and Prune,
Cakes you’ll want to take and eat
The batter with a spoon;

There’s Wacky Cake and Mayonnaise Cake,
And War Cake, so I’ve heard,
There even is a special cake
Named for a Hummingbird!

There’s Coconut Cake and Rhubarb Cake,
Cakes made with buttermilk,
Cakes you make with applesauce,
And frostings light as silk;

There’s Coffee Cake and Ice Box Cake,
And Cheese Cake rich and creamy,
There’s Bundt cake and there’s Whiskey Cake,
And Egg Nog Cake that’s dreamy.

There’s Orange Cake and there’s Sponge Cake
There’s Praline Cake and Streusel,
(With a perfect crumble crust
You’ll find is really crucial).

There’s wine cakes and there’s beer cakes,
And there’s cakes you make with rum,
There’s cakes you make for company
Or cakes you make for fun;

There’s Wedding Cake and Groom Cake,
And cakes made with lots of honey,
There’s Beet Cake and there’s Pork Cake,
Ingredients you’ll find funny!

There’s Almond Cake and Fudge Cake,
And cake made with persimmons,
Dried Apple Cake and BEAN cake
But all of them are winners!

There’s Blitz Torte and there’s Dobos Torte,
The kind my grandma baked,
There’s Lane Cake and there’s Jam Cake
And a Kraut cake fun to make!

There’s Orange Slice Cake and Poppy Seed,
And Poor Man’s Cake and Pound,
But when mama baked my birthday cake
It was the best around!

–Sandra Lee Smith

SOME DAYS THERE’S PIE

SOME DAYS THERE’S PIE

Some days there’s not a lot to eat,
Maybe soup made from a bone
And ma will make up sandwiches,
That I like to eat alone.
Some days there ain’t no jelly,
And I gotta eat it plain,
And ma keeps saying things’ll get
Better soon again.
I feel my stomach growling
As I’m walking off to school,
I think that I could eat a horse,
But I’m nobody’s fool
No one eats a horse, you know,
How would you get around?
My stomach’s growling louder,
I hope no one hears the sound.
I think of eggs and bacon
Of bowls of shredded wheat,
I think of all the different things
That I would like to eat,
Some days we don’t have nothin’
But I wouldn’t tell a lie,
When things are not so tough at home,
Well, some days we have pie.

–Sandra Lee Smith