Archive.org has a host of old cookery books (from mid-19th to mid-20th Century) available in many formats and on a host of topics. I happened across a few in my Pinterest feed and gone completely down the rabbit hole in this treasure trove of information. Sure some ideas might be out of date, but you never know what you might find when you explore these books. I’ll be sharing more books as I find them in the coming weeks. –Douglas
Historical Cooking Books: The American pastry cook by Jessup Whitehead (1894) – 8 in a series
Introductory in the National Hotel Reporter.
For any apparent presumptuousness there may be in spreading these cooking receipts and instructions before the professed cooks of the country in the most widely circulated and most influential hotel journal, I have to offer as apology that 1 was long ago impressed with the singular fact, that among all the excellent cooks, hardly any could be found who worked by any rule or measure. This was especially the case with American cooks. They knew how themselves, but could not have given exact instructions even to their sons without first instituting a series of experiments, and their knowledge perished with them. I simply set to work to reduce my portion of the general knowledge to exact figures, and the merit claimed, therefore, is not for very extraordinary skill, but rather for the painstaking industry that has never allowed a receipt to be put away marked O. K., without being satisfied that it was quite reliable.
Another consideration offered is, that the stewards, and others, who buy for cooks to use, not being, in the great majority of cases, practical cooks themselves, are apt to consider many of the demands of the cooks for certain kinds of materials necessary to good work, as but unreasonable whims, not worthy of notice, and it is difficult to see how the requisite explanations are ever to be made, unless through some such means and medium as the present,
J. W. Daily National Hotel Reporter, Oct., 1878.
15. Hickory Nut Cake.
8 ounces of sugar.
S ounces of butter.
8 ounces of whites of eggs (9 whites.)
1/2 cupful of milk.
1 rounded teaspoonful of baking powder.
1 pound of flour.
12 ounces of hickory nut kernels.
Don’t beat the whites to a froth. Warm the butter and sugar together and rub them to a cream the usual way, then add the eggs, then milk, powder, and the flour.
When well mixed stir in the hickory nuts. Flavorings may be added at option. If brandy be used the baking powder should be left out.
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