Food: Cakes correct for time period

[FloridaBelle]

Hello everyone. I'd like to start a discussion on cakes, cookies, and desserts that would be correct to take to an event. I would like to share ideas such as the kinds that are correct to the period, recipes, etc.. In my research so far I have found that Pound cakes, Lemon cakes, Coconut cakes, and Banana Bread would be ok to use. Does anyone have any information, research, links that I could use? Thanks.

[WoodenNutmeg]

Re: Food: Cakes correct for time period

Mmm...

CLICK HERE

[Virginia Mescher]

Re: Food: Cakes correct for time period

Hello everyone. I'd like to start a discussion on cakes, cookies, and desserts that would be correct to take to an event. I would like to share ideas such as the kinds that are correct to the period, recipes, etc.. In my research so far I have found that Pound cakes, Lemon cakes, Coconut cakes, and Banana Bread would be ok to use. Does anyone have any information, research, links that I could use? Thanks.

The Feeding America site at http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/...oks/index.html has many cookbooks that will prove useful to you.

Also, check out Google books, using the advanced search, bracket the date you want and enter the search term. That should give you some additional cook books to use.

[Hank Trent]

Re: Food: Cakes correct for time period

Hello everyone. I'd like to start a discussion on cakes, cookies, and desserts that would be correct to take to an event. I would like to share ideas such as the kinds that are correct to the period, recipes, etc.. In my research so far I have found that Pound cakes, Lemon cakes, Coconut cakes, and Banana Bread would be ok to use. Does anyone have any information, research, links that I could use? Thanks.

There are numerous period cookbooks online, at the links people have posted and also Making of America and Google Books, so there are literally hundreds of recipes for period cakes and desserts available.

More important, I think, is narrowing down the food to the specific situation being portrayed. For example, banana bread. I don't recall seeing a period recipe for it, but if there was, it could only be made where bananas were available. From what I've been able to find, they were primarily sold on the south and east coasts, generally in larger cities, but if you have other information, I'd be curious.

Could you post your research that shows banana bread was period, and what situations it would be found in? Are you saying it would be "ok to use" at any event?

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[FloridaBelle]

Re: Food: Cakes correct for time period

Thank you to everyone who has given me such great information. Hank, here is one link that I found for the banana bread. Originally, I was told by a friend that it was ok, but we all know what happens if we do not look it up ourselves. Since I am from Florida and we grow banana's on our farm, if it is correct to the period it would be easy to use.
http://www.hub-uk.com/cooking/tipsbanbread.htm Please take a look and tell me what you think. As far a Pound cakes are concerned I have the recipe from my Great Grandmother, which through family information was passed down from her mother. That would put it at 5 generations. I will also double check that. Once again Thanks to everyone!!

[estephenson]

Re: Food: Cakes correct for time period

If you are looking for a specific period recipe, I have a copy of Widdifield's new Cookbook and will gladly look anything up.

[Virginia Mescher]

Re: Food: Cakes correct for time period

This is Virginia's spouse commenting.

If you'd like to have a cookbook to keep handy and use for cakes etc and maybe other receipts, check our website (raggedsoldier.com) in the section on reproduction books. We have several period cookbooks.

Michael Mescher

[Hank Trent]

Re: Food: Cakes correct for time period

Thank you to everyone who has given me such great information. Hank, here is one link that I found for the banana bread. Originally, I was told by a friend that it was ok, but we all know what happens if we do not look it up ourselves. Since I am from Florida and we grow banana's on our farm, if it is correct to the period it would be easy to use.
http://www.hub-uk.com/cooking/tipsbanbread.htm Please take a look and tell me what you think.

Being from Florida makes a huge difference! Yep, bananas no problem.

As far as banana bread and the link, I don't see any claim on the website that banana bread was eaten in the mid 19th century U.S. And even if it did say so, do not use web sites like that for research. They're naive, misleading, out of context, and more often filled with wrong information than right, because the authors don't really care about the diet of 1860s Americans.

Just as an example, the site says that modern banana bread uses chemical leavening so it could have been made as soon as chemical leavening was discovered. So what? People could have had pizza in the 1860s, since they had dough, tomatoes and cheese, but that doesn't mean it's okay to cater a reenactment from Domino's.

And because the web site is only talking about modern banana bread, it omits the uses of bananas, or more commonly plantains, in tropical areas where they were eaten as a staple the way people farther north ate corn or wheat. I don't know how much of the following also occurred in Florida, but it sounds nothing like modern banana bread, or at least what I know as banana bread in the northern U.S., which is basically a moist, sweetened and spiced, wheat-flour-based bread with mashed bananas for flavoring. If modern banana bread has a different meaning where you're from, please clarify.

The plantain, which is the true food-stuff of all the equatorial region in both hemispheres, is gathered green and roasted as a vegetable, or, to use the more expressive West Indian negro phrase, as a bread-kind. Millions... live almost entirely on the mild and succulent but tasteless plantain. Some people like the fruit; to me personally it is more suggestive of a very flavorless over-ripe pear than of anything else in heaven or earth or the waters that are under the earth--the latter being the most probably place to look for it, as its taste and substance are decidedly watery. Baked dry in the green state "it resembles roasted chestnuts," or rather baked parsnip; pulped and boiled with water it makes "a very agreeable sweet soup," almost as nice as peasoup with brown sugar in it; and cut into slices, sweetened, and fried, it forms "an excellent substitute for fruit pudding," having a flavor much like that of potatoes a la maitre d'hotel served up in treacle.
Altogether a fruit to be sedulously avoided, the plantain, though millions of our spiritually destitute African brethren haven't yet for a moment discovered that it isn't every bit as good as wheaten bread and fresh butter. ("De Banana," The Living Age (March 19, 1870): 753-754.)

If you have more sources for modern-style banana bread being eaten in the 1860s, even if only in Florida, I'd be interested. But for the level of research expected on this forum for events, you want primary sources or well-documented footnotes to primary sources, and nowadays, primary sources are easy to search and find online. There are plenty of period recipe books and travelers' accounts of food at the links mentioned, and there may be websites which are specific collections of original historic Florida documents as well. I know there are collections for Maryland, Kentucky, Ohio and Virginia, up closer to where I live.

Reading what period people wrote about what they were actually eating, is far better than relying on the casual uncaring comments of websites which aren't even focussed on 1860s history.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[LindaTrent]

Re: Food: Cakes correct for time period

I did find a recipe in the Feeding America site for "banana bread," but it's nothing like what I'm used to.

The Complete Confectioner, Pastry-Cook, and Baker: Plain and Practical Directions for Making Confectionary and Pastry, and for Baking; With Upwards of Five Hundred Receipts . . .With Additions and Alterations by Parkinson, Practical Confectioner, Chestnut Street. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1864 p. 153-4, on Feeding America.

"Banana Bread -- is made of the fruit of the banana tree. This fruit is about four or five inches long, of the shape of a cucumber, and of a highly grateful flavour. They grow in bunches that weigh twelve pounds and upwards. The pulp of the banana tree is softer than that of the plantain tree, and of a more luscious taste. When ripe it is a very pleasant food, either undressed or fried in slices like fritters. All classes of people in the West Indies are very fond of it. When preparing for a voyage, they take the ripe fruit and squeeze it through a sieve; then form the mass into loaves, which are dried in the sun, or baked on hot ashes, having been previously wrapped up in leaves."

If I'm reading this correctly, it's basically fried banana slices, or in some cases squeezed fruit formed into cakes. It doesn't mention anything about flour or any other ingredients, so I'm assuming that the cakes would be more like caked banana chips, or something like hardtack?

Linda.

[gweninla]

Re: Food: Cakes correct for time period

Mrs Trent,

Re: Preserved bananas. I'm not sure of the source, but we used to find sticks of imported dried banana in the Los Angeles produce markets up to about 10 years ago. Appeared similar to the product below but cut in strips.

http://www.nutsonline.com/driedfruit/banana-chips/wholebananas.html

They look disgusting, but taste rather good.

I don't know if this is a traditional food of any culture, or suitable for CW era.

[LindaTrent]

Re: Food: Cakes correct for time period

Last night I looked through Google books, Making of America, and Feeding America, and anything else I could come up with. I was unable to come up with a banana bread made with wheat flour, leavening, etc. clear into the early 20th century. Most of the hits were for something like, "banana, bread-fruit,orange, lemon..." However, after that I went to do a Google search on banana bread and found two different sites that support my lack of findings. Those sites are:

Wikipedia which basically says, it became a standard in American cookbooks in the 1930s, and boomed in the 1960s. It also says that "The origin of the first banana bread recipe is unknown." And I would have to agree with it.

And Joy of Baking "Banana Bread recipes became very popular in the 1960s when hearty breads were all the rage."

So, for the majority of the US I'd say that banana bread is not typical, common, everyday. For Florida and the tropics? I'd want to see documentation before I'd go with a modern banana bread recipe.

Linda.

[Csayankee]

Re: Food: Cakes correct for time period

Great Thread I some great links. I am sure Bridget will love this.

Just a quick reminder, always sign your full name to every post.

[Virginia Mescher]

Re: Food: Cakes correct for time period

Like Hank and Linda I haven't found any 19th century recipe similar to modern banana bread. The earliest recipe for banana bread I found was by Pillsbury in 1933.

I did find a number of references to bread made with banana flour starting as early as 1881 and it continue into WWI as a substitute for wheat flour. In 1918 it was suggested that wheat flour be combined with banana meal because when used with yeast the bread with only banana meal did not rise as well. The same publication suggested using baking powder as it never failed to rise when this was used. (Commerce Reports, 1918) This flour was also made from bread fruit or plantains.

In 1859 I found an account of "banana bread" in Fiji made from bananas cooked in a pit then mixed with coconut and baked.

Recipes using bananas started appearing in cookbooks in the 1870s and 1880s but the majority of recipes didn't start to appear until the turn of the 20th century.

Even though bananas were available in FL in the 1860s, I expect that they were eaten fresh or maybe fried or mashed but I didn't find recipes for fried bananas until the 1870s.

[Southernlady1862]

Re: Food: Cakes correct for time period

Please correct me if I'm wrong with my post....

Buttermilk pie was supposedly Jeb Stuart's favorite....

Here's the recipe I use for it:

1 1/2 cups white sugar
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup flour or baking mix
1/3 cup butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 eggs


Mix all ingredients..... pour into any 8 or 9 inch pan you like (greased first of course!)
Cook at 350 for 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean...... will look golden and with a jiggly texture but it's done!

The so called "Jeb Stuart family recipe" I have includes a tsp of lemon juice..... but I personally like it much better without.

[markj]

Re: Food: Cakes correct for time period

"Silver cake." Henry A. Kircher (9th IL and 12th MO) mentions receipt of it from home in "A German in the Yankee Fatherland" (1983). I made it a few years ago and it was delicious.

Some sample recipes, of which there were many:

One pound of sugar, three quarters of a pound of dried flour, six ounces of butter, the whites of fourteen eggs. Add mace and citron. Beat the sugar and butter to a cream, and add the whites, cut to a stiff froth, next the flour, and then the mace and citron. Bake in a [square, flat] pan....

SOURCE: "Mrs. Cornelius." The Young Housekeeper's Friend, rev. & enl. Boston: Brown, Taggard, and Chase, 1859, p. 53.

*************************

1 pound powdered sugar.
3/4 pound flour.
1/2 pound butter.
Whites of 11 eggs.
1 teaspoonful essence of bitter almond.

Cream the butter, gradually rub in the flour, then the sugar; add the flavoring; last of all, stir in the whites of the eggs beaten to a stiff froth. Flavor the icing with vanilla or bitter almonds.--Mrs. S. T.

One cup sugar.
1/2 cup butter.
1 1/2 cups flour.
1/2 cup milk.
1/2 teaspoon of cream tartar, and half as much soda.
Whites of 4 eggs.

Beat the butter and eggs to a cream, then add the milk and flour with the soda and cream tartar; whisk the whites of the eggs to a froth, and stir them in gently at the last. Flavor with lemon.--Mrs. C.

SOURCE FOR THE LAST TWO: Marion Cabell Tyree. Housekeeping in Old Virginia. Louisville KY: John P. Morton and Company, 1879, p. 310-311.)



Enjoy,

Mark Jaeger