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When cooking was a workout
By JANET K. KEELER, Times Staff Writer
First of all, there were no appliances and possibly no kitchen, at least not one inside the house, when machinery began to change the way we lived in the late 1700s. The main kitchen tool was the hearth, whose fire required regular stoking. There was equipment, all right, but it was muscle-powered, and some of it quite menacing. Razor-sharp steel cleavers chopped meat for sausage, which took considerably more time and effort than pushing a button on a Cuisinart. If you wanted toast, a fork was your tool. The bread, homemade of course, was skewered on the tines and held in the fire to brown. In very fancy households, a wrought iron stand that stood in the hearth held slices of bread close to the flames, and when one side of the bread was toasted, the stand was turned around so the other side was exposed to the heat. This way, more than one slice could be toasted at a time. No doubt, cooking was a lot of work 200 years ago. A little history tells us we've got nothing to complain about. "It was not fast food. It was very slow food," said Michael McManus, an adjunct professor of folk art at the University of Miami, at a recent program at Heritage Village in Largo.
About 50 people braved dreary skies and steady rain to attend McManus' Florida Humanities Council program "Down Home Eating: The Tools and Instruments of Edible Folk Art." Several people brought antique or collectible kitchen tools, handed down from parents or grandparents. A "celebrated noncook," McManus took the audience on a photographic slide tour of old kitchen equipment, some of which looked downright frightening. On the other end of a 100-year-old mincing cleaver was a "steak maul" used to tenderize meat by pounding the heck out of it. "People today would hide something like this," McManus said. Cooking for a family before microwave ovens and George Foreman grills was an all-day affair. Nothing was instant; even morning tea was a chore that required someone to rise early and start the fire. Crockpots were earthenware vessels in which stew bubbled all day with constant tending. Today's electric slow cookers operate much the same way, except we leave them alone to make dinner while we are at work. For the cooks of yesteryear, cooking was a full-time job. McManus said that the family cook was almost always a woman. To survive in the kitchen in those days, it was necessary to be creative and to be in touch with nature, he said. Before the Industrial Revolution brought machinery to much of America, the nation was largely made up of rural communities. "There was a direct association with the place where you lived," he said. "You knew the woods, the pastures and the streams. You knew by smell and touch when food was ready, something we've lost today." It has only been in the last century that agricultural, technological and transportation advances made it possible for food to be shipped from one side of the country to the other. There were no mangoes in Maine, and cranberries were not a staple in the Deep South in the 1800s. Cooks worked with ingredients grown, raised or made in their area. Regional foods begat culinary traditions that are still celebrated around the country. Occasionally, those same dishes turned up in several places with different names. For instance, in New England an apple dessert with a sugary, crumbly top is called apple pandowdy. The same dessert in the South is apple brown Betty. Many of the slides that McManus showed were of items often seen in antique shops. Some of the more common pieces are the earthenware vessels, easily mistaken for pitchers or even chamber pots. If they are cook pots, they should have dark char marks on the bottom where they were pulled in and out of the flames, McManus said. Vessels used to preserve foods are likely to be chipped around the mouth, because the tin lids that were glued to them had to be pried off. Corinne Bridge of Largo played show and tell with a one-of-a-kind contraption her father-in-law made in the early 1930s. The rectangular wooden box with a crank has been used every Thanksgiving since to shred bread for stuffing. A cylinder in the box is studded with small dowels that rip through the bread as the crank is turned. No one, including McManus, had ever seen anything like it. Marilynn Profitt of St. Petersburg brought along "Grandma Rauch's hachmesser," a German-made, crescent moon-shaped chopping knife with two handles. Grandma Rauch used it for a lot of things, but Profitt pulls it out when she wants to make hash. "It's great for mincing the meat," she said. McManus encouraged anyone with old kitchen equipment to write what they know about it. So much of history is lost in the back reaches of kitchen cabinets. "There was a time when there was a kinship between cooks and their equipment and ingredients," McManus said. "Today, we buy anything we want, when we want." We never have to wait a month for brandied cherries, either. But then, they probably aren't as tasty. Pickled EggsDuring warm months, it was customary to put up a large jar of pickled eggs to have on hand during the cold months, when hens stopped laying. Those were the days before heated chicken houses. And in those days, pickled eggs were not a substitute for fresh eggs; they were a table relish eaten with other foods, chopped into winter salads or sliced for garnish on platters of cold meat.
Put the eggs in a sterilized, wide-mouth quart jar, scattering the ginger and spices around them. Scald the vinegar, sugar and salt for 5 minutes, then pour over the eggs. Seal and cool. Set in refrigerator for 1 to 2 weeks before using. -- Source: "The Agricultural Almanac for 1869," Lancaster, Pa., from "America Eats: Forms of Edible Folk Art" by William Woys Weaver (out of print). Ham and Parsnips
Put the parsnips and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer, covered, for 5 minutes. Add the ham and simmer until the parsnips are tender (about 10 minutes). While the parsnips are cooking, melt the butter in a small saucepan over low heat. Stir in the flour with a whisk and cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Add the milk, sugar, mustard and salt. Stir in the vinegar and bring to a simmer. Drain the parsnips and ham and transfer to a serving dish. Top with the mustard gravy and garnish with the parsley. Serves 4. -- Source: Marion W. Harmer, handwritten recipe, Moorestown, N.J., 1914, from "America Eats: Forms of Edible Folk Art" by William Woys Weaver (out of print).
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From the Times Taste section From the features wire |
