More than Just Family Recipes, A Look into Our History

My mother collects cookbooks.

Not to cook but to read. And not the ones written by famous chefs but those written by a collective group of ordinary people. Schools, churches, non-profit organizations, women’s organizations, the list goes on. I never thought about it until I started reading some of them myself.

The recipe book was published in 1963 by the Warrenton VA, Antiquarian Society. My grandmother grew up in Warrenton.

Cookbooks contain the stories of our history in the foods that were available during a year and season. As a kid my mother made chipped beef on toast. I considered it a salty delight of savory deliciousness when I was young. I never thought about where the recipe came from. But on a visit to spend time with family in Virginia, it struck me as my cousin served up chipped beef on toast for breakfast — of course this would have been a recipe my mom learned to make from her own upbringing. I hadn’t tasted it in many decades.

My mom grew up in the 1940’s. Chipped beef on toast grew in popularity in the early 1900’s through World War II. It was a staple particularly in the military with dried beef being easy to store. Just add flour butter and milk to make a white gravy and pour it over toast!

Two versions of my kitchen island.

On the island in my kitchen are recipes and photos of my grandmother and great grandmother. One of those is my great grandmother’s applesauce cake.

I bake this cake for my mom every year on her birthday. I was young when my great grandmother passed away but I religiously follow her recipe using shortening, applesauce, raisins, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, nuts, etc. The recipe calls for it to be baked for two and half hours at 250 degrees. While my great aunt changed it to allow for faster baking at a higher temperature, I bake the cake as my great grandmother did even though I use a modern oven.

I want my mom to be brought back to her childhood and the memory of telling her grandmother that it was perfectly fine to have applesauce cake for breakfast because it had eggs and applesauce in it.

Those family recipes aren’t just about the Applesauce cake, chocolate pound cake and others made by my great grandmother. They hold the secrets to a time when pickles were made from cucumbers in a large crock in a cool place. When summer seasonal foods weren’t available in winter and they had to be preserved in jars during the peak of the season and stored away in a cellar. When chickens on the farm were raised for their meal. When after boiling and cleaning them plucked feathers stuck to my mom’s hands as a child. To this day she doesn’t like the feel of wet hair on the back of her neck.

The applesauce cake cooling before spreading the icing.

One of my favorite sandwiches growing up was cream cheese and olive. In researching where this sandwich creation came from, I read that it appeared as early as 1909 in a cookbook written by Eva Greene Fuller called “The Up-to-Date Sandwich Book: 400 Ways to make a Sandwich.” (It’s now available online in the public domain if you would like to check it out.)

Her recipe is as my mom made them but without the paprika. In doing more research it turns out that this sandwich has worldwide roots which had slight variations to it, but the basics of the sandwich remained the same.

Have you watched the six-part series called “No Taste Like Home” on Hulu? I absolutely loved that show. It starts with a visit to the kitchen of a celebrity’s mother or grandmother, making the foods the celebrity grew up with, foods that held a story of their ancestor’s home and life. My favorite was with Awkafina. Having lost her mother at age four, Antoni Porowski gave her an incredible gift as they traveled to South Korea, to where her mother grew up cooking foods of her heritage all along the way. I won’t give it away, but my tears flowed as I watched that episode. It was incredibly heartwarming.

What family foods did you grow up with? What historical hidden stories are there for you?

Suddenly, I have a craving for a cream cheese and olive sandwich. ☺