Important: Safety Warning
This page contains a formula or preparation using substances now known to be dangerously toxic, such as arsenic, mercury, lead, or cyanide compounds. Exposure to these substances can cause severe poisoning, permanent injury, or death.
In addition, this recipe calls for animal brains or related nervous-system tissue. Cattle brain and spinal tissue can transmit bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the cause of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, which is fatal and has no treatment.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
Weird & Unusual Recipes
Some of what follows is startling because it is so modern; some because it is so emphatically not. All of it was ordinary enough in 1906 to be printed without comment. The notes are ours.
Macaroni And Cheese
Who would have guessed they were eating mac and cheese in 1906? There are eight macaroni recipes in this book — including one served as a vegetable, steamed in a mould.
Hamburg Steak
A hamburger patty, in 1906, before anyone thought to put it in a bun: chopped round, salt, pepper and grated onion, fried in hot fat. That is the entire recipe.
Tea Ice Cream
Green tea ice cream — in a Chicago household manual, in an era when the ice had to be cut and hauled. Somebody was paying attention to the wider world.
Beer of Sulphuric Acid
We suggest NOT making the sulphuric acid beer. The book cheerfully calls it 'entirely harmless, even if taken in considerable quantities.' It is not; dilute sulphuric acid does not belong in a summer drink.
Savage Club Canapes
Anchovies rolled up inside pitted olives, standing on rounds of fried bread. Named for the London club — startlingly cocktail-party for a book that also tells you how to black a stove.
A Curry Of Hare Or Rabbit
Curried rabbit finished with a cup of wine and served on rice — and the book expects you to mix your own curry powder from scratch, which it also tells you how to do.
Imitation Chutney
A pound of chillies, two pounds of tamarinds, half a pound of garlic and five bottles of vinegar, all ground with a stone. 'Imitation' is doing a lot of work in that title.
Creole Gumbo
A real gumbo — okra, crab and shrimp, browned bacon to start — contributed by one 'Madame Laura,' sitting quietly among the Midwestern boiled dinners.
Squirrel Pie
A pair of squirrels, two slices of salt pork, and a nice pie crust. Squirrel was ordinary meat, not a novelty.
Frogs
'The green frog is the only kind used for the table.' Good to know, should the question ever arise.
Brains And Tomatoes
Calf brains stewed with tomatoes and parsley. Organ meats were everyday food; nothing was wasted.
Terrapin
Turtle was luxury dining in 1906 — there are three terrapin recipes here. Diamondback terrapin was later eaten close to extinction.
Angels' Food
Not the cake. This is whipped cream and sweetened egg whites tinted pink with jelly — contributed by Mrs. Gov. Ross of Austin, Texas.
Spruce Beer
Home-brewed beer, in a family cookbook, three days from jug to glass. Hops, ginger, molasses and essence of spruce.
Potato Yeast
You made your own yeast. This is the sort of thing the book assumes without comment, along with roasting your own coffee.
Artificial Cream for Coffee
When the cream ran out: one egg beaten with sugar, scalded milk poured over. Made the night before.
Uncle Tony'S Recipe For Cooking 'Possum
A possum, hung in a tree two or three nights, then baked flat on a bed of sweet potatoes. Printed in heavy dialect — see the editor's note on the recipe itself.