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Favorite Dishes in Famous Homes: Cream
Cream sugar and butter, add wellbeaten eggs, then milk. Sift spices and baking powder with enough flour to make a batter that will drop from a spoon, add mixture, stir in nuts and raisins, beat well, then drop by teaspoonfuls on a greased pan and bake in hot oven.
From Mrs. Henry B. Quinby, wife of Governor of New Hampshire.
Breakfast Gems. 3 eggs, 1 teaspoonful sugar, 1 coffeecupful sweet milk, 1 cupful warm water, 4 tablespoonfuls yeast, Flour enough to make a stiff batter.
Beat yolks of eggs and sugar, stir in milk, water, and yeast. Beat well and set in a warm place to rise. When light, beat whites of eggs to a stiff FAVORITE DISHES IN FAMOUS HOMES froth and stir into batter, with a pinch of salt. Bake in greased gem pans.
If wanted for breakfast, mix batter night before.
From Mrs. Edwin Lee Norris, wife of Govenor of Montana.
Molasses Pudding. 1 cupful molasses, 1 cupful butter, 1 cupful hot water, 1 teaspoonful soda, 3 cupfuls flour, 1 cupful raisins.
Cream butter, add molasses, then hot water; beat in flour with which soda has been sifted, stir in raisins, put in a greased mold, and steam three hours.
Sauce for Molasses Pudding. 1 cupful butter, 1 cupful sugar, 2 eggs.
Cream butter and sugar, then add thoroughly beaten eggs. Stir together, set over fire in cold water, let water come to boil, and serve sauce hot. A glass of sherry or brandy may be added, though we prefer it without.
From Mrs. W. M. O. Dawson, wife of Governor of West Virginia.
Chicken Pie.
Meat of 1 chicken cooked, 1 can mushrooms, 1½ pints potato balls parboiled, 6 hard-boiled eggs, 1 heaping tablespoonful minced parsley, 1½ pints cream dressing.
Cut chicken meat as for a salad, put in bottom of baking dish, cover with mushrooms, then with potato balls.
Season to taste. Sprinkle over it minced whites of eggs, then minced yolks. Scatter with minced parsley, and cover with dressing. On top put a cover of small biscuits as large as a finger ring. Bake three quarters of an hour.
From Mrs. F. M. Warner, wife of Governor of Michigan.
Pinafore Cake. 1 cupful sugar, cupful butter (scant), cupful milk (scant), 2 cupfuls flour, 2 teaspoonfuls baking powder, Whites 3 eggs.
Cream butter and sugar, add milk, flour sifted with baking powder, then whites of eggs whipped to a stiff froth, also 2 tablespoonfuls cold water and teaspoonful lemon flavoring. Put half of this mixture into a layercake pan; to what is left add 1 teaspoonful strawberry coloring. When both cakes are baked, put together with following filling:
Several separate contributions run together here, all from the wives of sitting state governors. The measures are turn-of-the-century household ones, and none of the baking directions gives a number.
- Oven heat"Hot oven" in this period is usually read as about 400-425F. No times are given anywhere on the page: watch the drop cakes closely, and bake the Pinafore layers cooler, around 350-375F.
- CoffeecupfulA coffeecup is generally taken in American cookbooks of this date as a full 8-oz cup, where a teacup runs nearer 6 oz, though usage varied. Reading the Breakfast Gems as 1 cup milk to 1 cup warm water is reasonable.
- The yeast in the gemsFour tablespoonfuls of yeast means soft liquid barm or a crumbled compressed cake, not modern dried granules. One 0.6-oz cake of fresh yeast, or about 2 teaspoons active dry, will raise this batter; since the recipe itself allows mixing the night before, an overnight rise in a cool kitchen suits it, though the recipe as written says a warm place.
- Gem pansGem pans are muffin pans, usually heavy cast iron. Greasing and heating them in the oven before the batter goes in (not something the recipe says) helps give gems a crisp shell. An ordinary muffin tin works, with a duller crust.
- Pinafore Cake butter and milkThe butter and milk are given only as "cupful (scant)," which may be as printed or may be a dropped fraction. Against 1 cup sugar and 2 cups flour, half a cup of each reads more plausibly than a full cup of butter.
- Strawberry coloringA bottled pink flavoring-and-coloring of the day, sold beside vanilla and lemon. A few drops of red food coloring with a little strawberry extract gives the same effect.
- Molasses pudding, steamingFill the greased mold no more than two-thirds and cover it tightly before it goes into the pot; on these quantities that means a mold of two quarts or more. Keep the water at a bare simmer for the three hours and top it up as it falls, or the pudding scorches on the bottom.
- The molasses pudding sauceThis is a foamy egg sauce, not a boiled one. The pan sits in cold water that is then brought to a boil, so the eggs come up slowly to about 160F; take it off while it still coats a spoon, since actual boiling will scramble it.
- Chicken pie"Cream dressing" is a thick white sauce; for a pint and a half of milk or cream that means something closer to 6 tablespoons each of butter and flour. The recipe gives no oven heat, only three quarters of an hour; everything in the dish is already cooked, so that time is to brown the biscuit topping and heat the filling through. It serves six to eight.
Books of this kind -- dishes solicited by mail from governors' wives, senators' wives and the occasional actress -- were a staple of American charity and club publishing in the 1900s, and the contributor's title mattered as much as the cooking. The dishes themselves are plain Northern and border-state home fare: drop cookies with raisins and nuts, an overnight yeast-raised gem for breakfast, a steamed molasses pudding that stretches a cup of raisins into a winter dessert. The Breakfast Gems are the oldest thing on the page; gems predate baking powder, and an overnight barm batter baked in searing cast iron was how many households got hot bread on the table before the era of quick muffins. The Pinafore Cake, half white and half tinted pink, belongs to the same moment as bottled fruit flavorings and the fashion for layer cakes with fanciful names -- though whether the name nods to the comic opera or simply to the common garment is anyone's guess.