Home › Popular Dixie Dishes › Pastry and Confectionery
Pastry and Confectionery
GOOSEBERRY PIES. -Mix one pint sugar with one of berries, adding just enough water to prevent burning; cook until it begins to jell, cool and spread over shapes of rich puff paste, already baked. Nice spread with a meringue.
VIRGINIA POTATOE PASTE. -Pare and boil mealy potatoes quite soft, while hot rub through a sive, put oven fire in stew pan with water enough to make thick mush, remove and mix one quart flour with this into a paste, knead until light, roll out thin, fill with any kind of fresh fruit, boil in cloths or cook in steamer for one and a half hours and serve with butter and sugar or wine sauce; apple, blackberries, or stoned cherries are best for these puddings. The sheets of paste can be spread with the fruit and rolled like jelly cake; rhubarb is nice used this way eaten with a very sweet sauce. Potato paste baked is excellent for meat pies. - Mrs. John Martin, Richmond, Va.
SILVER PIE.---Peel and grate one large white Irish potato, add the grated rind and juice of a lemon, the beaten white of an egg, one teacup white sugar and one of cold water; bake in pie tin lined with nice paste, spread top with a meringue, set in oven and brown, then dot with small bits of jelly or jam before serving.
VIRGINIA SWEET POTATOE PIE, (Virginia method.) - Pare, steam or boil, then slice and put in a syrup of sugar and water seasoned with whole cloves or allspice to suit taste, scald and set aside until nearly cool, line a deep pie plate with paste, cover bottom with slices of potato laid in evenly, pour in syrup enough to cover potato, add a tablespoon of butter in bits to each pie, and if liked a wine glass of Maderia wine. Mrs. R. F. M, Fredericksburg.
FRENCH CANDY. - This recipe is used by all confectioners. The whites of two eggs placed in a tumbler; measure with your finger how high it comes up in the glass, pour it out in a large bowl, pour in the tumbler as much cold water as will be equal to amount of the eggs; mix it with them and beat very well; add a desert spoon of vanilla and about two pounds confectioners' sugar if you can get it (it has the appearance of flour) -or powdered sugar well sifted; beat well and the foundation of all your candy is ready; take one half pound dates, remove the stones, put in a piece of the candy dough, roll each one in granulated sugar; split one half pound figs and place a layer of the dough on a board, sprinkled well with powder. ed sugar to prevent its adhereing, and then a layer of figs; again a layer of dough, cut in squares, and that kind is ready. Nuts of any kind may be made up into the candy Almonds put inside and then rolled in coarse sugar; set each kind out in a cool place to harden. For chocolate creams, roll any number of balls from the dough, and when they are hardened, dip with a fork into chocolate melted on the stove; be careful not to allow it to boil; use baker's chocolate. Cocoanut can be made by rolling out another portion of dough on the board, sprinkle cocoanut over it and roll a few times with the roller, then cut in squares. A mixture of cocoanut and particles of nuts chopped fine makes a very delicious candy. The English walnut makes a handsome addition if you are to give boxes of this candy as presents to friends. Split the walnuts, shape some of the dough into round flat balls, and place a leaf on each side; press together firmly. This candy is now being made in society circles a great deal, as there is no cooking to be done and it is very easy and clean work. A dollar's worth of all these ingredients together, will make many pounds of candy.--Mrs. PEANUT TAFFY. - Put a pound of brown sugar and a quarter pound butter with two tablespoons water in a skillet; let boil until taffy becomes a clear, dark color; then stir in a quart of peanuts (toasted light brown), boil fifteen minutes and drop by tablespoonfuls on a marble slab or griddle. POP-CORN.-Drop corn into a kettle containing a little boiling lard, cover until popped, when done have ready a rich syrup flavored with orange or lemon juice; when it simmers pour slowly over corn; take corn up in large lumps and mould in balls or squares and slice like cake, salting corn while hot before adding syrup, is liked by many; some melt a little gum arabic in the syrup. --Sally Powers, New Orleans.
A page of five or six unrelated sweets, written in the compressed style of the 1880s where quantities and temperatures are left to the cook's judgment. Read the notes on the French Candy first: that one item cannot be made today.
- French Candy - raw egg whiteThe entire foundation is uncooked egg white beaten with water and sugar, then shaped, stuffed into dates and figs, and set aside to harden. Nothing in the process reaches a temperature that would kill Salmonella, and the candy is stored at room temperature for days and given away as gifts. The chocolate coating is deliberately kept below a boil, so it does nothing either. Use a current uncooked-fondant recipe built on pasteurized egg white or meringue powder instead.
- Gooseberry Pies - it is a filling, not a pieEqual volumes of sugar and berries, cooked to the jell stage (about 220F on a thermometer), then cooled and spread on puff pastry shells that have already been baked. The recipe specifies neither oven heat nor how many shells a pint of berries will fill.
- Meringue browningWhere the recipes say to "set in oven and brown," use 350F for 12 to 15 minutes for a soft meringue, or a few minutes at 425F if you want a fast, darker top and a looser interior.
- Virginia Potato Paste - a garbled line"Put oven fire in stew pan" is a typesetting error for "put over fire." The sieved hot potato goes back into the pan with enough water to make a thick mush, then a quart of flour is worked in. Mealy means russet or another baking potato; waxy potatoes will not take up the flour.
- Boiling in clothsA floured pudding cloth tied loosely around the roll, lowered into boiling water for 90 minutes, was the standard method. A modern steamer basket over simmering water does the same job with less handling; keep the water topped up. "Wine sauce" here means a sweet dessert sauce of butter, sugar and sherry or Madeira, not a savory reduction.
- Silver Pie"One large white Irish potato" simply distinguishes an ordinary potato from a sweet potato. Grated raw potato, lemon, sugar and water make a translucent, faintly lemon filling - it is a thrift pie, not a rich one. Bake in a lined tin at 375F until set, then meringue and brown.
- Sweet Potato Pie - measuresA wine glass in this period is roughly 2 fluid ounces. The pie has a bottom crust only and is a syrup-and-slices pie rather than the mashed custard now usual in the South; the scalding step firms the slices so they hold their shape.
- Peanut Taffy - the timing is wrongSugar, butter and water boiled to a clear dark color is already at hard-crack stage, about 300F. Boiling a further fifteen minutes after the peanuts go in will scorch the batch. Add the toasted peanuts off the heat and pour at once onto an oiled slab or parchment.
- Popcorn in lardPopping in a shallow film of hot fat is a sound method - the fat should be very hot but no deeper than a coating in the pan, and lard will smoke if pushed too far. Have the syrup and the buttered bowl ready before you start, since the corn must be coated while hot. Gum arabic is still sold as a food additive and would act here as a binder in the syrup.
The Dixie Cook Book belongs to a family of late-nineteenth-century compilations that recycled and regionalized the enormously successful Buckeye Cookery, padding out the standard American repertoire with contributions credited to named Southern housewives - here Mrs. John Martin of Richmond, Mrs. R. F. M. of Fredericksburg, Sally Powers of New Orleans. Two things on this page mark the period sharply. Silver Pie is one of the mock pies - like vinegar pie, mock cherry and mock mince - that used a grated potato and a lemon to imitate a fruit filling when fruit was out of season or out of reach, and the sweet potato pie is built from syruped slices rather than mashed pulp. The French Candy note that it "is now being made in society circles a great deal, as there is no cooking to be done" records a genuine fad: uncooked fondant let young women turn out boxed sweets for gifts without a candy thermometer or a hot stove.