Irish Turbet

After the sweetness of the past few days I wanted to try something different. The title of this recipe Irish Turbet has intrigued me from the beginning since I’m not sure why it is considered Irish and I don’t know anything about Turbet. The main ingredient in this Berlin Cook Book (1906) recipe contributed by Mrs. Honsberger is canned salmon. You’ll also need some milk, onion, butter, flour, eggs, salt & pepper and some biscuit crumbs.

Reproductions Cans of Salmon in the Dry Goods & Grocery Store at Waterloo Region Museum

I know that salmon came in larger cans in 1906 but I had the typical size we find in grocery stores today. I confess I’m not a fan of salmon but bought the can to use in recipes like this. I probably should have made half the sauce but I went ahead and made the entire “cream” as Mrs. Honsberger calls her mixture. I opened my can of salmon and discovered there weren’t any bones or skin like I remember from years ago so no picking required.

Next I put two cups (1 pint) of skim milk in a saucepan and added half an onion chopped in pieces. I heated the milk and made the decision to leave the onion pieces in the milk. I’m sure Mrs. Honsberger has her reasons for this rather wasteful practice but since I like onions a lot more than salmon I thought at least I’d be able to eat part of the completed product.

So on to the next step. Is it half a cup of butter before or after melting? I split the difference and measured out slightly more than half a cup of butter and melted it. I poured it into the oniony milk. I was supposed to add four tablespoons of flour but I’d forgotten that I still didn’t have any handy. I have a giant bag of flour but it is sitting in another part of the house waiting to be moved to the kitchen. Instead I had a small bag of buckwheat flour sitting nearby. I’d already gone rogue with this recipe so I decided to use it. After all buckwheat and salmon might go together rather well … won’t they? I cooked the mixture until it thickened and then set it aside to cool. I added salt and pepper at this point. It already looked like it contained pepper but that was from the buckwheat flour.

I really really wanted to skip the eggs. Long time readers of this blog know I really hate eggs. I don’t like their texture or their taste. By adding them to this nicely tasting if oddly coloured mixture was I dooming it to the green bin? I decided to follow the recipe and added two beaten eggs once the mixture was cooler. They blended in nicely. It was time to assemble my Irish Turbet.

I poured have the creamy mixture into a casserole dish and then put the bits of salmon on top. I poured the rest of the cream on top. I didn’t have any biscuits which I assumed meant what we call biscuits rather than the British cookie type biscuit but I did have some dried out quick bread I’d made last week for a video at work. It’s slightly sweet so I thought it might suit. I sprinkled bits of this bread over the top and put it in the oven. I’d preheated to 300 F, since the recipe calls for a slow oven. I left it for 30 minutes.

I was able to pass the time with a social distancing visit. My best friend was dog walking and let me know she was outside. We talked from the sidewalk and porch. It was so nice to see someone in person rather than on a screen or as a voice on the phone even if we were metres apart. And when I went back to my oven it was almost time to take out the Irish Turbet. It smelled good. I removed it from the oven and scooped out a portion to have for supper.

Mrs. Honsberger is probably Alberta C. Stoddard. She was born in Norfolk County, Ontario in July 1867. Her father was an agricultural implement dealer. She married Dr. Jerome F. Honsberger in 1890 when she was 23. Their first little girl Rhea died of scarlet fever when she was two. Shortly afterwards they moved to Berlin where their son Gordon was born and a few years later daughter Nina arrived.

The 1901 census shows a busy household. Not only is there 32-year-old Alberta and Jerome (41) but there is infant Nina and 4-year-old Gordon plus Jerome’s brother Henry plus a 28-year-old lodger named John and a 22-year-old domestic servant named Mary. They are all of German heritage except Mrs. Honsberger who is Scottish. The lodger is a bookkeeper and the brother is a commercial teacher. In the 1911 census the brother and lodger are gone from the household at 97 Frederick street but there is still a maid. You can find out more about the family and their home in this article in the Record. Their home still exits.

And what about that recipe title? Well I suspect it is supposed to be spelled Turbot. That’s a kind of flatfish. As to why it’s Irish perhaps it’s related to Scots and Irish issues. This is one of those dishes that falls into the “mock” category. It uses something easily available and relatively cheap for something harder to acquire and probably more expensive. Considering the Honsberger household in 1906 likely included the brother and boarder as well as two growing children, this dish would be a good choice.

Wow! I like Irish Turbet (or Turbot). This reminds me of tuna casserole minus the noodles. I like tuna casserole so that means it’s good. In fact tomorrow I might just cook some noodles and add them since my salmon is swimming in sauce. If you make this either half the sauce or double the salmon. Add two cans to equal the 1906 size. Although Mrs. Honsberger preferred onion flavoured sauce rather than actual onions, I’m glad I made the decision to keep them in the mix. My big surprise is that the buckwheat flour is a good substitution. It tastes good and adds an interesting look to the sauce. After all much of Eastern Europe eat buckwheat and salmon. I’d probably use regular bread crumbs next time. Although the sweet taste of mine were okay, plain would be better and they will be crispier. This recipe has time travelled to pandemic 2020 rather well and gives lots of scope for modern cooks to make it their own.

 

IRISH TURBET
Mrs. Honsberger
1 can of salmon, pour off liquid and remove bones, heat one pint of milk with a few pieces of onion, skim out onion, then add 1/2 cup of melted butter, four tablespoons flour, season with salt and pepper, when cool add two eggs well beaten, put layer of cream, then layer of salmon, then cream, sprinkle biscuit crumbs on top, bake in a slow oven half an hour.

Caramel Frosting

I still feel the need for comfort food and I have half a walnut cake calling my name. However, since it doesn’t have any icing I decided to make it even more appealing tonight by topping it with Caramel Frosting. It’s one of several Berlin Cook Book (1906) recipes in the chapter title Icings and Fillings for Cakes. This recipe was contributed by Emma Schenk of Ayton Ontario. It was slightly more appealing than the similarly named Caramel Icing because it includes chocolate! The other ingredients are brown sugar and water. That’s it.

The first step was to grate the chocolate. As mentioned yesterday I have unsweetened Bakers chocolate on hand. It’s one of the oldest branded products in the world and of course chocolate itself is an ancient and powerful foodstuff.

Once the chocolate was ready I mixed it with 1 cup of brown sugar in a saucepan and added the tablespoon of water. I raised the temperature on the stove until the mixture was simmering. This is when issues started to appear. My saucepan was too large and I should have waited until the sugar had melted before adding the chocolate, I think. I stirred every so often to avoid burning but kept it going the required 20 minutes. I could tell I essentially had sugar but I quickly spread some on the cake. Should I taste while its still hot or wait till it cools? Hot won.

I often refer to Emma Schenk of Ayton Ontario when giving presentations about the cookbook. She represents so many of the young country women who came to the big city to work in its factories and homes. Typically a woman who includes her first name in a listing is unmarried and probably younger than many of the contributors. Emma is just such a woman. She was born in 1888 in the Township of Normanby in Grey County (Ontario). She was the second eldest of fourteen children.

At her marriage in 1909 Emma’s occupation is listed as house girl while her new husband is a farmer like her father.  This suggests that Emma is working as a hired girl in someone’s home but whether that’s on someone’s farm or in a home in the city is unclear. I’d always thought she must have been in Berlin at some point to connect with the people creating the cookbook but she is Lutheran like so many others so perhaps there’s another connection. Emma and her new husband George Liebold spend the rest of their lives in Ayton in Normanby Township where they raise their five children.

So I’m not sure if it the recipe or my attempt but I have chocolate flavoured sugar on my cake. That’s not to say it tastes bad but it is grainy and not what I was expecting. The one good thing is that it doesn’t detract from the cake but it doesn’t add anything either. This is a recipe I need to try again when I have access to another cup of brown sugar. This seems to be the kind of icing (or frosting) that would be popular with someone in her late teens like Emma. I wonder if she added Caramel Frosting to her cakes once she was a young mother.

CARAMEL FROSTING
Emma Schenk, Ayton, Ont.
1 cup brown sugar, 1 square chocolate, scraped fine, 1 tablespoon water. Simmer gently 20 minutes being careful not to burn. Spread on while hot.

Chocolate

Today is Monday and I got word that I will be laid off work in a couple of weeks. It’s not a surprise really and I know I’ve been lucky to remain employed this long during a pandemic. However, I feel like today I need some comfort food. For me that’s chocolate. I looked at the chocolate cookie and cake recipes but I still have the Walnut Cake from the weekend. I don’t need even more temptation around. So my chosen recipe from the 1906 Berlin Cook Book is simply Chocolate. It’s in the Beverage section of the cookbook and was contributed by Magdelene Scherterle of Alabama.

The ingredients are simple: chocolate, sugar, and milk. I have some Bakers unsweetened chocolate handy but what would be a small square? Fortunately I know from my past experience with this cookbook that the size of the squares haven’t changed over the years. They recently changed the shape but that makes them more like they were in 1906. Today four of the squares equals 1 oz so I broke off two squares. I grated the chocolate squares and added it with two tablespoons of white granulated sugar to a saucepan along with 1 tablespoon of hot water. It melted quickly even on low heat. I warmed up 1 1/2 of milk (less than half the indicated amount). I wanted to add water if necessary or to add more milk. I started adding the chocolate to it sampling until I had the nice rich chocolate taste I wanted. It was time to sit back to taste and enjoy my special cup of chocolate.

Magdelene Scherterle was one of the surprises when I started researching the contributors to this cookbook. I couldn’t fathom why someone in Alabama was sharing recipes for a cookbook in Berlin Ontario. And yet she’s not alone. Mrs. Neely of Guntersville Alabama also has recipes in the cookbook and I suspect that Magdeline Scheiterle of Cullman Alabama is the same as today’s contributor. There’s yet a third spelling of her name (Magdalene Schyterle) in records in Alabama but if I assume this is the correct person than she married shortly after she shared her recipes.

Magdelene Rose Scheiterle was born in Württemberg Germany sometime between 1879 and 1888 (yes there’s that much variation in her birth date on various documents). The likely date is 1880. According to what she put in the 1920 census she immigrated to the United States in 1885 so she much have come with her family. That same document says her father was from Switzerland but she was born in the same place as her mother. If I have the correct German baptismal document then Magdelene was also Unehelich meaning illegitimate. It looks like she and her mother came alone to the new world.

Magdelene married German born Carl F. J. Hartung in 1907 and they had three children. Magdelene lived in several places. She was in Cullman, Alabama when she shared her recipes and married Carl. Then the couple went to Crawford, Tennessee where the first two children were born, and then they settled in Bridgeport Alabama where their youngest was born. Magdelene and Carl spent their later years in Chattanooga Tennessee. This movement is most likely due to Carl’s career as a doctor.

This is the classic hot chocolate (or cocoa if you prefer). The recipe is variable enough to suit most people and still echo 1906. In fact I tried the mixture with soy milk too since I shouldn’t have much dairy and it was just as tasty, especially with a piece of walnut cake! We are just on the edge of hot chocolate season. The nights are still cold here so this was a nice ending for an eventful day.

I really wonder what Magdelene’s life was like when she shared this recipe. Her recipe for sweet potato croquettes has become a favourite recipe in my family. We use it for Thanksgiving and for special dinners. I even made them for my sister’s book club meeting last fall. Back in 2012 I didn’t have as much information about Magdelene and I still don’t know anything about her early life in the United States. What did her mother do? Did Magdelene work before marriage? Perhaps someone in Cullman Alabama will know. There’s lots of information about Carl’s mother because she was a well known musician there and the town was named for her family. I’m starting to wonder if Magdelene’s mother married and so she is known by another name at times. It’s all part of the thrill of research.

CHOCOLATE
Magdelene Scherterle, Alabama
Scrape fine, 1 small square of chocolate, add 2 tablespoons sugar and put in a small sauce pan with tablespoon hot water, stir 1 or 2 minutes until smooth, then stir it all into 1 quart boiling milk, 1/2 water may be used. if preferred richer use more chocolate.

Meat Stew

I have leftovers from a pot roast so I’m going to make Meat Stew, a recipe contributed to The Berlin Cook Book (1906) by Mrs. L. J. Breithaupt. The ingredients are leftover meat, butter, carrot, onion, celery, bay leaves and flour.

I browned some 1 teaspoon of butter in a saucepan and then added 1 cup of chopped cooked beef. I know the recipe says 2 cups but I don’t have that much so I’m cutting the recipe in half from this point on. I covered the meat with hot water and brought it to a boil. I left it to simmer while I prepared the vegetables. I scraped a carrot and chopped half of it to put in a separate pan along with half an onion (chopped) and two stalks of celery chopped in small pieces. Bay leaves were a bit more of a challenge as mine are all broken up but I guessed at an amount to equal three bay leaves. I cooked them in some salted water and then drained them and added them to the meat. I thickened the stew with some flour. It was time to taste!

Mrs. L. J. Breithaupt was born Emma Alvarena Devitt in 1860. She grew up in the
village of Waterloo and was raised Church of England  by her mother Nancy although her father was Mennonite. Benjamin was a local merchant and from a significant local family. You can find out more about the Devitts here. This site has a photo of the house where Emma grew up.

 At twenty years old Emma married Louis Jacob Breithaupt. The Breithaupts owned a successful tannery in Berlin and eventually Louis went into politics becoming the mayor of the Berlin and an MPP in the Ontario government. The couple had eight children who went on to various successful careers including politics and art.

I was very surprised to see such a recipe from a woman like Mrs. Breithaupt. This is a prosperous and prominent family but it is clear that thrift runs through her veins. I added a touch of salt to the stew after my first taste but otherwise it is fine. My mother always added bay leaves to her soups and stews and that was often the only seasoning other than salt and pepper. It is a familiar taste. This is an very fast recipe to make so great for busy days. Mine involved several Zoom calls – a bit like all the socializing people did on Sundays at the turn of the century.

MEAT STEW
Mrs. L. J. Breithaupt
Brown a teaspoonfull of butter in a stew pan, add two cups of left over meat, cut in small dice, and enough hot water to cover it, boil well for a few minutes. Take 1 onion, 1 carrot, 1 head of celery (all small), 6 bay leaves, cook till tender in a little salt water, then add to above and thicken with a little flour.

Walnut Cake

There are several nut or walnut cake recipes in The Berlin Cook Book (1906) but for some reason I’ve never tried to make them. I decided it was time to fix that oversight. Today I’m going to make the Walnut Cake recipe contributed by Mrs. G. Bergmann. I thought it would make a good treat for the weekend.

I creamed the butter and sugar and then added the eggs. I mixed the flour and baking powder and then added the walnuts and raisins so that they were well coated in the flour. I alternated adding the milk and flour to the  rest of the mixture. Once it was well blended I spooned the batter into a well greased square cake pan and put it in a preheated 350°F oven. I decided to check on it after 30 minutes. It needed just a few minutes more and then I took it out to cool. The cake looked and smelled good. Soon it was cool enough to taste.

Anna Elizabeth Frost was born in 1874 in Berlin (Kitchener) Ontario. Her parents and older siblings were from Germany. She was one of seven children although three died while young. Her father worked as a labourer and later he’s listed as a tanner. By the time she was 17 Anna was working in a shirt factory. Anna married George Bergmann a local tailor sometime between 1891 and 1897 when their first child was born. The 1901 census shows the three person family living in Berlin with neighbours who work in the various factories. George’s tailoring business is listed at Wellington Av N. in the 1910 Vernon Business directory. Soon after George moves his tailoring business to Chatham Ontario as that’s where we find the little family in the 1911 census. I lose track of the family for a while until their daughter Freida gets married in Toronto in 1920 and George and Anna are the witnesses. By the 1921 census widowed Anna is running a boarding house at 29 Isabella in Toronto. There’s six lodgers who are working as clerks and nurses. I wonder what the future brings for her.

This is a good basic cake. It might be better with a touch of vanilla but it is nice and light with just the right amount of walnuts and raisins. I can see Anna making this cake for her family since it isn’t a big cake. It is fine as a plain cake but some icing would fancy it up for tea or some special event.

WALNUT CAKE
Mrs. G. Bergmann
2 eggs, 1 cup sugar, 1/2 cup butter, 1/2 cup sweet milk, 1 cup chopped walnuts, 1 cup chopped raisins, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1 1/2 cups flour, flour nuts and raisins before mixing. Bake in a square pan.

Cream of Bean Soup

Are you “pandemic” cooking? I stocked up on dried beans so I could make various recipes including a Cream of Bean Soup from the 1906 Berlin Cook Book. The recipe was contributed by Mrs. H. A. Germann.

Dried white beans would have been a staple for many households in the early 20th century. Whether grown in their gardens or purchased from a local store, they were a useful pantry ingredient. It does require some planning as they need to be soaked overnight. I put 1 cup of beans in a bowl last night and made sure they were well covered in water. It’s important to ensure they can soak up water as this will shorten cooking time later. The other ingredients are a carrot, an onion, baking soda, butter, flour, milk, and salt and pepper.

I’d planned to have the soup for lunch but ended up doing other things this morning so I started making the soup in the afternoon. I drained the water and rinsed the beans again before adding them to a deep saucepan. I added 1 quart (5 cups) of water and put them on the stove to start simmering while I prepared more ingredients. I chopped an onion and a carrot and added them to the pot. In checking the recipe I noticed it mentions adding soda but doesn’t give an amount. The Bean Soup recipe appearing above this one in the cook book is similar but uses double the ingredients so I decided to add 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda to the water. I covered the pot and left it to simmer for an hour.

The beans had softened in an hour but the time will vary depending on the size of beans and whether they have been stored for a long time. I’m not keen on milk based soups or pureed soups. I like a bit of texture in my soups so I decided to only put half the soup through a sieve. This is a time consuming process but produces a smooth textured soup.

Before I divided my soup in two portions I added the salt and pepper. The recipe seems to call for 2 tablespoons of each. I was anxious to get started on sieving and didn’t really think this through. That is a lot of salt and pepper for this quantity of soup!! I think there is a mistake in the recipe. It is likely 2 tablespoons of flour and perhaps 2 teaspoons of salt and pepper. It was too late to turn back. I divided the soup in half, and worked to get a smooth portion ready for the next step.

NOTE: This is for half the recipe.
I melted 2 tablespoons of butter in the saucepan and added 2 tablespoons of flour. The recipe mentions flour but like the soda doesn’t give an amount. However, typically a roux like this is made with equal amounts of fat and flour. Next I slowly mixed in a cup of milk. I left it to reach a boil and then added the smooth bean mixture. I stirred and brought it back to a boil before removing from the heat. It was time to taste … something I was dreading a bit.

Lenora Laurette Heller married Henry “Harry” Allen Germann in 1905. The newlywed Mrs. H. A. Germann shared seven recipes for the cookbook and her sister was also a contributer. Their father Herman was a hotel keeper while Lenora was a milliner (hat maker) before her marriage. Harry worked as a salesman in a dry goods store. In 1911 the couple lived on Park Avenue in Waterloo and had their first child Louise. Their second child wasn’t born until 1920 and by 1921 they lived at 38 Duke Street, in Kitchener.

Knowing I’d added too much pepper and salt, I was surprised that the soup was okay. Yes it was peppery and salty but still edible. With the correct seasoning this would be a very comforting soup. It’s reasonably quick to make and doesn’t need too much fussing. It reminds me of Campbell’s Bean with Bacon Soup, one of the family favourites when I was growing up. Bacon or ham might be a nice modern addition to this soup along with some fresh herbs but even without those touches it is still a soup that can time travel to 2020. Just be sure to season to your taste and not follow that part of the recipe.

CREAM OF BEAN SOUP
Mrs. H. A. Germann
1 cup of beans, 2 cups milk, 1 quart water, 1 onion, 1 carrot, 4 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons salt and pepper [sic]. Wash beans and let stand over night, then drain and add 1 quart water, soda, onion and carrot chopped fine, simmer until soft, press through a sieve into a bowl, melt butter in a pan, add flour, stir until smooth, add milk and stir constantly until thickens and boils. Add beans and reheat it.

Lemon Pie

There are three recipes for Lemon Pie in the Berlin Cook Book (1906). Back in 2012 I made Mrs. Oscar Rumpel’s recipe. So which of the other two should I try?  I have to watch how much dairy I consume so I’m going to try Mrs. Chas. Adloff‘s recipe for Lemon Pie. Her recipe uses water while the other other one uses milk. Otherwise they are quite similar. You should appreciate that tackling this recipe takes bravery on my part. I make terrible pastry and don’t really like most pies. The exception is lemon meringue pie. I would love to make a pie as well as the ones my grandmother served long ago.

I’m going to leave the pastry to you. Use your favourite recipe – even the one on the Crisco package is fine for early 20th century baking. Crisco came out with their first recipe booklet in 1912. Now on to the filling.

I took the lemons and butter out earlier to warm up a bit. I washed the lemons and rolled them on the counter to release more juice before grating them. Once the lemons were at room temperature I squeezed the juice.  I separated the four eggs while they were still cold and then left them to sit.

Now it was time to put it all together. I added 2 cups of sugar to 2 cups of water in a saucepan and turned up the heat. Once the sugar and water had boiled I turned down the heat and added the tablespoon of butter. I added the zest and lemon juice next. But what to do with the corn starch and egg yolks. If I added them in to this boiling hot mixture they could become scrambled eggs and lumpy cornstarch. I left the pan to cool a bit as I measured the two tablespoons of corn starch into a small bowl. I added some of the liquid to the cornstarch to create a liquid. Then I poured it slowing into the pot and kept stirring. It was basically the same with the eggs. I beat the egg yolks. Next I added a bit of the hot mixture to the yolks and stirred well. Then I slowly added the yolks to the mixture stirring the entire time. I wasn’t sure what to do next. Do I cook it for a while? I decided to let it simmer while I blind baked my pie crust.

Once the crust was ready I poured my somewhat thin cooked mixture into the one pie shell and discovered I had lots of the filling left over. Perhaps this is supposed to make two pies despite the recipe saying one crust. Or did that mean without a top crust. Too late now. I only had one crust ready. I put my filled pie back in the oven at 350F and left it to bake for about 20 minutes. While it baked and I hoped it would solidify, I started the next step.

The recipe calls for frosting the pie. It doesn’t mean a nice butter cream icing. It means meringue and that’s another of those baking processes that I don’t do well. At least not on pies. I added some cream of tartar to the egg whites and began whipping them until they were nice soft peaks then I added sugar and whipped some more until I had a nice fluffy meringue. It was time to add it to the top of the pie. It looked lovely. Back into the oven. I got distracted and the meringue browned a bit too much but it still looked good. This gave me hope. I had to wait for it to cool a bit before I could try a sample.

I’m assuming Mrs. Chas. Adloff is not a young woman. Her recipe is just a little too vague to come from the domestic science generation. I was correct. Sophia Hopp was born in Berlin Ontario in 1869. Her parents were from Germany and must have lived for a bit in Wisconsin as the eldest child was born there. By the time Sophia was born they were living in Berlin and her father worked as a labourer. Sophia had one brother and four sisters (three also have recipes in the cookbook). Most of them worked in local factories. The 1891 census indicates Sophia was working in a button factory. By the 1901 census she was working as a stitcher in a shirt factory. A few months later 31 year old Sophia married upholsterer Charles Adloff (age 39). His first wife had died the year before so Sophia became step mother to his 15 year old daughter Matilda. Sophia was still a relatively new wife when the cookbook was published in 1906. By 1911 the household included her mother-in-law as well as 22 year old Matilda who was working as a collar turner in a shirt factory. They lived at 56 Alma Street in Berlin. Ten years later the household remains much the same although her mother in law has died.

Soon it was time to taste my pie. I cut through the pie and discovered liquid! Further baking had not improved my filling. The end result is ugly and messy but very delicious. Someday maybe I’ll make the perfect Lemon Pie but it won’t be with this recipe. Instead I’ve made a delicious lemon sauce which will be useful as a cake drizzle or on ice cream. That filling is sweet but also has the wonderful tart lemon flavour. I certainly hope Sophia had greater success with her Lemon Pie than

LEMON PIE
Mrs. Chas. Adloff
Take the rind and juice of 2 lemons, 2 cups white sugar, 2 cups water, yolks of 4 eggs. Boil sugar and water, then add 1 tablespoon butter, then the lemons and eggs and 2 tablespoons cornstarch. Use the white for frosting. Bake with 1 crust.

Fruit Cake (without eggs)

I keep hearing that eggs are in short supply in grocery stores right now. Ironically, in 1906 people would find it difficult to find fresh eggs in early April too. So I’m going to use Mrs. August May‘s recipe for Fruit Cake (without eggs) from the 1906 Berlin Cook Book. The plan is to serve this as part of my Easter dinner tomorrow … if all goes well.

I decided to make this fruit cake like any other by creaming the 1/2 cup of butter and the 1½ cups of brown sugar. My brown sugar was quite hard so I left it to sit a bit in the butter to soften. Next I added the 1 cup of sour milk. These day we have to artificially sour milk so I added 1 teaspoon of vinegar to the milk. I mixed the spices and baking soda with the flour and then added the raisins to it. Flouring the raisins this way helps them stay dispersed in the cake instead of sinking to the bottom. Finally I added the dry mixture to the wet and stirred well. I spooned the thick batter into a greased loaf pan. I’d preheated the oven to 350° F. so it was nice and hot for baking. I let the cake bake for 30 minutes before peeking at it. It needed another 30 minutes before it was close to ready. I left it to cool a bit and then took it out of the pan to cool further. Finally it was time to taste.

Mrs. August May was in her 40s when she shared her recipe for fruit cake. She was born Hannah Hertel and married August May when she was —-. Her mother was Mennonite but her father was a German born Lutheran. Hannah was listed as a servant before her marriage. She was the second youngest of eight children in her family. She had six children. In 1911 she and her husband were were living at 30 Ellen Street West in Berlin with five of their six children. But by 1916 Hannah and two of the children show up on the special Western census as residents of Main Street in Kindersley, Saskastchewan. Her son Alton is a teller in a bank and her daughter Hannah Jr. is a saleslady in a store. Interestingly the man her daughter will eventually marry is their boarder. However, I have no idea — yet — how they ended up out there. The 1921 census shows Hannah and August living with their daughter Viola and her family.

The fruit cake smelled good and so did my kitchen! The spices are an important part of this cake. I would suggest tasting the batter to help adjust the spices. My container of ground cloves was new and so that taste dominates. I like cloves but you might want to ease back a bit on this spice if its not a favourite. I don’t recommend baking this cake as a loaf. I think a cake pan would be better. This is not the dense fruit cake found at Christmas instead it is more a spice cake. I ate my slice of fruit cake warm and liked it. I think it will taste just as good cold. Modern cooks could make this vegan using a vegan margarine instead of butter. I think right now this is a great choice if you want cake but are out of eggs. Rather like war cakes of the past perhaps this is a pandemic cake.

FRUIT CAKE (without eggs)
Mrs. August May
1 ½ cups of brown sugar, ½ cup of butter, 1 cup sour milk, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 teaspoon cloves, 1 teaspoon allspice, 1 teaspoon soda, 1 cup chopped raisins, 3 cups flour.

Meat Balls

It’s been a long time since I touched this blog or even did any historic type cooking. We are in the midst of a pandemic and much like when I started this blog project back in 2012 I am working from home and missing the chance to interpret. So I decided to dip back into the 1906 Berlin Cook Book on my own time once again. I doubt I’ll be posting every day but who knows … watch this space.

Part of what got me thinking about it today, is that I have some leftovers to use up after my Good Friday lunch of fish. What better way to get the last remaining value from our precious food supplies right now than to use every last bite of food. It’s a philosophy people knew well in 1906. Many of the contributors would have eaten fish today too. So tonight I’m making Meat Balls. It’s a recipe submitted by Florence Cook. She lived in Berlin Ontario but you might know it better as Kitchener.

Miss Cook’s recipe is very flexible calling for bread crumbs or mashed potatoes, cold cooked fish or meat, an egg, salt and pepper, tomato sauce, and some oil or butter for frying. I have it all. Do you? I didn’t have quite enough fish or potatoes so I’m cutting the recipe in half I started by beating one egg in a bowl and then pouring half into another container to use later. Next I chopped some leftover fish until I had about 1/2 cup. I put it in the bowl with the eggs and 1 cups of left over mashed potatoes, salt and pepper and mixed well.

What size should I make the meat balls? I decided to experiment with a tablespoon of the mixture and making one smaller and one larger. The mixture was quite moist so the balls were a bit blobby. Once I had an array of meat balls ready, I heated the frying pan. But should I add some fat to the pan? I decided to add a tablespoon of butter and put all the balls in the pan. As they started to get browned on one side I turned them over. I soon realized I’d added a bit too much fat to the pan but eventually they were all browned.

Once the balls were almost ready I heated some tomato sauce. I placed some balls on my plate and poured some sauce over them. It was time to taste!

Back in 2012 I made several recipes contributed by Florence Cook and discovered that she was among the younger women sharing their favourites. Since then I’ve done more research on many of the contributors as more resources became available and there was more time to consult them.

Florence Cook was born Florence Charlotte Koch in 1890 to Jacob and Mary. Her father was a mason/bricklayer here in Berlin Ontario and by 1911 he was the Fire Chief. The family were using the surname Cook rather than Koch soon after Florence was born. Florence was 16 when The Berlin Cook Book was published so I assume she was one of the Domestic Science students at the local high school. As far as I can tell she didn’t marry but in the local 1910 Vernon’s Directory she’s listed as a stenographer at the Bank of Hamilton. The family lived at 21 Church Street in Berlin Ontario.

Ready to eat!

These Meat Balls are quite good. It will depend on any seasoning you’ve already added to your potatoes and fish but I really liked my fish balls. The tomato sauce wasn’t really necessary but probably would be good if the meat balls were made with leftover beef. My mixture was so moist that I ended up cooking the rest as a hash which was also good. This isn’t fancy cooking but then right now we aren’t supposed to be entertaining. It is just fine as home cooking and a good way to use up leftovers.

MEAT BALLS
Florence Cook
1 cup bread crumbs or 2 cups mashed potatoes, 1 cup cold cooked fish or meat, 1 egg, ½ teaspoon salt and pepper. Egg well beaten, add bread crumbs or potatoes and the meat, mix thoroughly, and roll mixture into balls, and fry. Serve with tomato sauce.

Banana Pudding

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, my work schedule is variable right now which is not an excuse for missing two weekends of posts but is part of the reason. I was in New York for one weekend and last weekend I was catching up on all the chores left undone by time away. I almost decided to skip this one as well since I’ve just received some news about a death in the family but I tend to find comfort in cooking. I’d planned a more elaborate dish but I can’t concentrate well enough for it. Instead I’m making a very simple and hopefully comforting dish. It’s a Banana Pudding recipe from the 1906 Berlin Cook Book that was submitted by two different women. I used Hilda Rumpel‘s since it makes a smaller quantity. Mrs. H. Graeber‘s version is simply double of all the same ingredients.

Sometimes people are surprised to see recipes using bananas in an early 20th century Waterloo County cookbook but they were available here. I have a rather sad looking but still ripe banana to make this recipe. I have a feeling that it might be a bit similar to the ones in 1906.

I started heating 1 cup of 2% milk on the stove. I’ve visiting my father so have access to a gas stove. I find it heats quickly just like a pot on a wood fired cook stove thus the need for a double boiler. While the milk heated I mixed 4 tablespoons of white granulated sugar in a small bowl with 3 tablespoons of cornstarch. Then I added some of the heated milk to the bowl and stirred. My brother was watching and pointed out I had lumps and that so far it all looked disgusting. I stirred some more until the lumps were gone and then added it to the rest of the milk in the pot. It quickly thickened and yes it did look a bit glutanous. Adding the 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla did not help its appearance as it took on a bit of a grey tinge. I sliced one banana into a pretty glass bowl and then spooned the pudding on top. I decided to taste while it was still a bit warm.

Hilda Rumpel as Miss Ontario at the switching on of hydroelectricity at Berlin Ontario October 11, 1910

Hilda Rumpel was 15 year old when she shared this recipe. Her mother and sister were also contributors along with some classmates at Berlin High School. Her father George owned one of the large factories in Berlin Ontario. Rumpel Felt made all sorts of felted products. Hilda was the youngest in her family and spent a year attending a girls boarding school Glyn Mawr in Toronto. In 1910 when she was 19 she participated in a special ceremony in Berlin. It was the launch of hydroelectricity power produced by Niagara Falls and the town of Berlin was the first place to receive this new public utility. Hilda carried the ceremonial button to the stage where various dignitaries were ready to “switch on” this new Power for the People. Hilda eventually married Stanley Reade and had four children.

Mrs. H. Graeber is likely the same Mrs. H. Graber who contributed other recipes, especially as there are no Graeber’s in the 1901 or 1911 census for Berlin. The spelling of German names is quite fluid during this era. So, Mrs. H. Graber is likely Elizabeth “Louisa” Hopp wife of Henry Graber. Their daughter Eleanora also shared recipes and was probably Hilda’s classmate at Berlin High School. However, their families were in different worlds. Henry Graber was a factory worker rather than an owner. The couple married in Preston (now part of Cambridge) before moving to Berlin. They had four children and remained in this community for the rest of their lives.

So what about the pudding? Well it tasted okay. In fact I sort of liked it. The vanilla flavouring was a good fit with the bananas and it is a very comforting pudding. It is the texture of the pudding that is less appealing. It is very thick. I think reducing the cornstarch just a little would be an improvement and allow it to be cooked a little longer. That would help eliminate the hint of cornstarch that lingers on the tongue.

This is an incredibly quick dessert and likely appealed to both families. The girls could make it easily as beginner cooks and the mothers could whip it up quickly and multiply it for greater numbers. I suspect the duplication was missed because the recipes appear on different pages (Rumpel on p. 146 and Graber on p. 145).

Give this recipe a try when you have a couple of bananas to use up but keep the modifications in mind. Let me know how it works for you!

Update: I served the leftover banana pudding for last night’s dessert and my father loved it and I liked it too.

BANANA PUDDING
Hilda Rumpel

     1 cup milk, 4 tablespoons sugar, 3 tablespoons cornstarch, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, 1 banana sliced thinly; heat the milk in the top part of a double boiler, mix sugar and cornstarch thoroughly in a bowl, stir into them the heated milk and return to the heat, and stir until it thickens; add the flavoring, slice the banana thinly into a pudding dish, then pour the mixture over them and set away to cool. Serve cool with milk or cream.

NOTE — Level measurements are used.

 

BANANA PUDDING
Mrs. H. Graeber

     Heat 2 cups of milk in the upper part of a double boiler, mix 1/2 cup sugar and 6 tablespoons cornstarch thoroughly in a bowl. Stir into them the heated milk and return to the heat and stir until it thickens; add a teaspoon vanilla, slice 2 bananas thinly into a pudding dish, then pour the mixture over them and set away to cool. Serve cold with milk or cream.