Vegetarian Gothic (1975)

Vegetarian Gothic was published in 1975, after the Moosewood Cookbook had started to become famous. I think that's significant. I couldn't find much on the internet about Mo Willett or Daphne Hofsass, but the recipes are apparently also tied to a vegetarian restaurant (Kitchen of Krishna, once somewhere in Virginia) and the book is hand-lettered (like Moosewood). Beyond that, the differences stick out.

The cover caught my eye when someone posted it online. It's originally a regular trade paperback. The one I have a picture of has been "re-bound" to keep it in circulation at my local library. It's not a very chatty cookbook, and I find the handwriting to be somewhat difficult. I think the cookbook is very much of its time. A couple of the recipes call for cream of mushroom or tomato soup as ingredients, though they do include recipes for making them yourself. The herbs are all dried; the garlic is almost always powdered. I don't think granulated sugar is used at all, but honey is mentioned a lot. Milk powder, too.

I haven't tried any of the recipes. To be honest, I'm not really interested. It all sounds to me like it comes from the days when it was more important for your vegetarian food to be virtuous than for it to taste good. But here are a couple of non-tested recipes so that you can see what it looks like.

Pot Shots From a Grosse Ile Kitchen (1947)

I can't tell you much about Sidney Corbett that isn't mentioned in this book. He grew up in the Detroit area at the turn of the (last) century, went off to fight in World War I, became an executive at General Motors, then spent five years in the hospital with some sort of paralysis after which he was confined to a wheelchair. He took to writing - at least two novels and three books on cooking, the food books all co-authored with his wife, Lucy.

The novels came before World War II, the food books after. At some point in between, Sidney/the Corbetts began a Sunday feature column in the Detroit News Women's section, unsurprisingly titled "Pot Shots From a Grosse Ile Kitchen". That is where much of the material from this book originated.

The book itself is pleasant, anecdotal, and to my mind is written more for reading than for cooking from. Each chapter has a bit of a story about picnicking, guests, the season, or whatever strikes his fancy and inspires a recipe. The recipe is not set out in the text, it is included in his narrative. His wife Lucy will occasionally "take over" to tell her side of things, or just narrate her story for a chapter. If you like a food book at bedside, this is a good one for it. If you'd like more, they followed this in 1948 with Long Windows: Being More Pot Shots From a Grosse Ile Kitchen.

The illustrations are in a woodcut style by an artist named William Thomas Woodward. I liked them, so I looked him up. He was not a well-known artist, but I now have immense respect for him. The one thing I could find about him is (holocaust trigger warning) here.

On a lighter note here is a recipe from the book, one they felt was so important that they put it on the rear flap of the book (the author photo and text being on the back cover).

Lucy Corbett's French Creme Renversee

"Queen of all custards"

In a double boiler, scald three cups of rich milk. In a bowl put five whole eggs, a third of a cup of sugar, a pinch of salt, and mix thoroughly but don't beat. Now slowly pour in the scalded milk and stir in lightly. Set this aside. Next, butter generously a pottery casserole or pyrex baking dish and keep it handy-by.

Now for the caramel! Put four tablespoons of granulated sugar into a bright, clean frying pan. Shake the pan so the sugar is levelled off. Put the pan over a medium flame and let the sugar start to melt. Rock the pan gently to keep the melting sugar moving, but don't stir. This is very important. Remove from fire when sugar has become a golden brown.

Pour this into the buttered casserole or baking dish and let it cool slightly. Then add a half teaspoon of vanilla to the custard mix and stir in. Pout the custard through a wire sieve into the casserole atop the caramelized sugar and do not stir! Put the pudding dish into a pan of water and bake in a slow over (325 degrees) about 40 minutes. The water in the pan must not boil during the cooking so, from time to time, add a half cup of cold water.

When a small silver knife is stuck into the middle of the custard and comes out clean, the custard is done. Chill it thoroughly and turn it out on a flat plate to serve. The glazed brown cap of caramel atop the delicate cream of the custard is festive to regard and delicious to eat.

Six Cups of Coffee (1887)

Six Cups of Coffee: Prepared for the Public Palate by the Best Authorities on Coffee Making

When I went to the Project Gutenberg website and searched for more Catherine Owen, it offered this up to me. Listed as being by Marion Harland, Maria Parloa, Helen Campbell, Catherine Owen, Mary J. Lincoln, Juliet Corson and Hester M. Poole, it immediately made me go "Hmmmmm...". Most of those names are VERY recognizable to me as cooking experts of the day.

Initially I assumed that this was made up of sections from books by each of them, the coffee-making portions being excerpted for this. I haven't checked, and I may be wrong.

The publisher is listed as Good Housekeeping Press, Clark W. Bryan & Co., Springfield, Mass. A trip to Wikipedia tells me that Good Housekeeping magazine was founded in 1885 by one Clark W. Bryan. So far, so good. Among the multitudes of ads at the end of the book (which remind me that the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval is still in the future -- quackery abounds!) I find an advertisement for the magazine itself, which includes a long list of contributors to its pages. Included in that are the seven ladies whose work was brought together for this book.

To the book itself! It's not very long and I suspect this was a stapled booklet. The preface, written by someone at Good Housekeeping explains that there is a lot of bad coffee out there, and given how much of it America drinks, it really should be the best. It also says of the "six cups of coffee", "They are not made from old grounds re-heated for the occasion, but are as fresh as the intelligence and the experience which have produced them." I guess that told me!

While this booklet may have really been too much information for anyone who wanted to make a simple pot of coffee, it is very interesting in how it illustrates the ways the different authors went about it. Maria Parloa probably does the best overall summary. Beginning with a plug for Guatemalan coffee (?), she quickly explains the different types of coffee, how to buy and store them, how to roast your own, and four different ways of making coffee, depending on whether you wanted to start with cold or boiling water, and if you were going to filter it or not.

Marion Harland is next, and she very briskly explains to you the one and only best way of making coffee. As a small concession, she does give you instructions for two different pots.

Helen Campbell takes a different tack, and uses two stories to illustrate the bad way and the good way to make coffee.

Juliet Corson gives several ways of making coffee, but gives special attention to the coffee's effects on one's digestion.

Mrs. D.A. Lincoln explains that bad coffee is a very slapdash affair, then gives exceedingly precise instructions how to make good coffee. Think parody hipster barista.

Catherine Owen gives recipes and expands on them, then explains how to troubleshoot your coffee problems.

After our six cups, we get 'The Story of Coffee' by Hester M. Poole which is what it says it is, a nice overview of the history of coffee, plus a look at the coffee industry "today".

We finish with a section of advertisements. The first spot is, of course, given to The Schnull-Krag Coffee Co., advertising their coffee and the "QQ common sense condensing coffee pot". A quick look for Schnull-Krag on the internet today finds me only ephemera for sale, all of it suggesting that the S-K Coffee Co. never made it into the 20th Century.

Gentle Breadwinners: The Story of One of Them by Catherine Owen (1888)

Yes, that's a screenshot. This lovely little book I have found (so far) only as a free e-book online, and I can't even find a picture of the cover.

The two young Misses Fortescue -- Dorothy, 25 and May, 20 -- find themselves in dire straits upon the death of their father. They move to the country where their elderly aunt and uncle, well-bred but horribly poor, have a house.  But how will they make a living? They try their hands at one thing and another, then the eldest discovers that her former hobby of baking can be more useful than she realized. Not only that, she seems to have a talent for it, and the business that ensues. At the very end, however, she is tendered a marriage proposal, seemingly to assure the gentle reader that even an old maid of 25 who lowers herself to cooking for other people and becoming a businesswoman can still get a man. In the author's defense, there is no suggestion that marriage will make her quit the business. (Whether that would be the assumption of the day or not is something else.)

I love this sort of book. It's a cozy read with nice characters and a message of "if she can do it, so can you". I'm not likely to cook from it at any point soon. Trying to do that would be a project, and require a bit of research on my part. Some of it would be translating the recipes (What is that temperature? What is that measure?), some would be translating terms. For example, what she describes as "marzipan" sounds different than what I am used to. And then there's ingredients. Can you still get "bitter almond oil"? And if I tried it, would my husband move out immediately, assuming I was trying to poison him?

The recipes in the main portion of the book are primarily baked goods, but also candied fruits and other confections as she branches out. There is an added section at the back, "The Contents of Dorothy's Notebook", which contains recipes of the Aunt, and are therefore recipes that can be made on very little money (in 1888).

Cooking With the Dead by Elizabeth Zipern (1995)

This is not a zombie cookbook. This is a cookbook made up of the stories and recipes of the folks who followed the Grateful Dead around from show to show, and frequently acted as food vendors to pay for their travel.

Me, I'm not much of a Grateful Dead fan. Their music was okay, but I never sought it out. I picked up this cookbook because I found the fan culture interesting, the way people would travel on the road with them and feed each other. I keep it because of the stories of the people. They talk about how and why they do what they do. Some are constantly on the road, some hit half a dozen shows in the summer, and all of them talk about what they make and why and how they make it. There's usually a picture of the person who contributed the story and the recipe.

The recipes are all vegetarian. They sound like perfectly good, way-too-healthy recipes.  I have made none of them. I have no problem with vegetarian recipes, but these hit a slight phobia of mine: that of "happy hippie food". I have no problem with hippies either, but when I come across a lot of recipes with tofu, hemp seed, "vegan", I flash back to my earliest experiences with hippie/vegan food in my youth.  It took me a long time after to believe that lentils could be enjoyable things. I have no problem with hippies or vegans, but LEARN TO COOK BEFORE YOU FEED OTHER PEOPLE.
Bleah.  Brown rice and lentils are both wonderful ingredients, but when cooked in plain water with no other items they can taste like wet cardboard.

I got way off topic there. There is nothing about this cookbook to suggest that the recipes would taste like wet cardboard. They look delicious. But it is the stories of the people that keeps this one on my shelf.

Dad's Own Cookbook (1993) by Bob Sloan

At first glance, this comes across as a slightly more sexist (but possibly less obnoxious) version of "Cooking For Dummies". I hate being called a dummy. But by the time I started to dig into it, I was going "Hey! My mother never taught me most of this either! Why single out the guys? I want this too!"

Yes, it's a starter cookbook. But it's a starter cookbook that is simple and has nice friendly pictures (by Paul Hanson) that never talks down to you. It has pages to discuss ingredients in detail, it talks about tools and techniques, and gives shopping tips. There are also suggested menus for special occasions. And unlike some starter cookbooks, these are foods you *want* to eat.  Yes, he will tell you how to fry an egg and make a grilled cheese sandwich (nothing wrong with those). But he will also tell you how to make Pasta Puttanesca, Jambalaya and Grilled Swordfish. *And* give wine tips to help you decide what you want with them!

Bottom line -- while it's not a book I'm going to curl up with for a nice read, if you're looking for a good starter cookbook, whether you be Dad, Mom, or a starving college student, this is a good one.

Now, as I am not the target audience, I pestered my husband (a better cook than I am) into giving me a few words about it.

"The dad part is a little hokey, but it's a fine intro to cooking cookbook. Mix of base techniques (each veg or protein gets an intro and a quick how to broil, pan fry, steam, bake, etc. overview) along with recipes that look good but aren't too challenging skill wise.

I'm not big on how they organized some parts (e.g. section on Lunch while others are by food), but nothing bad.

So overall o.k. intro cook book."

Aquavit (2003) by Marcus Samuelsson

Ouch. Okay, first of all, let me apologize for the photo. I thought the worst thing about it was going to be the lighting. But since I have downloaded it onto my computer, every method by which I look at is has it oriented normally...except this. For some reason, it wants to stay rotated 90 degrees.  But enough of that.

So...Aquavit.  I like Marcus Samuelsson on TV, and I had the good fortune to eat at Aquavit here in Minneapolis a couple of times.  The food was delicious.  But I have to admit to not being a big fan of the coffee-table book cookbooks, with lots of expensive glossy photos and not a lot of text. So when our cookbook dinner group (every two months someone hosts and picks the cookbook) chose this as our cookbook for this month, I didn't have it and had to get it from the library.  It's big, it's beautiful, and I have to admit that the food was all quite good.

Our menu (if I remember everything): Cured Tenderloin of Beef with Mango Ketchup and Fruit and Berry Chutney

Gravlax Club Sandwiches

Swedish Meatballs

Honey-Glazed Pork Ribs

Roasted Caramelized Root Vegetables

Quick Pickled Cucumbers

Spicy Sauerkraut

Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Blueberry Soup

Carrot Parsnip Cake

Delish. And while I love my mother's not-terribly-Swedish Swedish Meatballs recipe*, I thought these were great and could have made a whole meal out of the mashed potatoes and meatballs. Much better than Ikea. I haven't decided yet whether or not I'm going to buy us a copy of this cookbook (originally $45, but I think it's OP), but I'm definitely copying a few of the recipes for later use.

*I don't know the origins of my mother's meatball recipe, but I'd love to find out. Have any of you run across an all-beef meatball recipe that includes chopped up dill pickle? Let me know!