Category Archives: cookbooks
“Bunns” from the Boston Cook Book of 1883
This week, my quest for retro ways to carbo-load for the modern endeavor of marathon running brought me to the Boston Cook Book of 1883. Its author, Mary J. Lincoln, principal at the Boston School of Cookery, taught cooking as … Continue reading
Mix-in-the-Pan Brownies From My ‘I Hate to Cook’ Mom
As a young mother in the 1960s, my mother never watched Julia Child – or any TV shows, for that matter. She preferred the humor and slap-dash directions in Peg Bracken’s I Hate to Cook Cookbook. This book, inspired by … Continue reading
Canned Peach Salad to “Heighten Appetites and Brighten Meals”
Blame the invention of canned food on Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1795, the French general – who proclaimed that “an army marches on its stomach” – offered 12,000 francs to anyone who could come up with a way to provide his … Continue reading
Hot Chocolate, Cold Meat, Gingerbread: What Washington Really Ate
For George Washington’s birthday, my mother used to buy a supermarket cake overloaded with pink frosting that stuck to the knife. Never mind that the cherries tasted more of chemicals than fruit. Every bite felt patriotic. At my elementary school … Continue reading
‘One of the Housekeeper’s Necessaries’
I am named after my great-grandmother, Clara, whose parents emigrated from a small village in southern Germany to Cleveland, Ohio in the 1870s. She looks genteel in this photo but her family supported itself with the rough-and-tumble Black Cat Whiskey … Continue reading
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