Two or three years ago, there was a good amount of discussion on this thread about old cookbooks. I've always known that there are people who like to collect paper-based cookbooks, but it seems that there are some MobileReaders who like old cookbooks just for the humor that they find in seeing the outmoded recipes, and finding so many dishes that are just simply not made anymore. You don't have to have paper-based cookbooks to do those things anymore, though--so many old cookbooks are available through the magic of digitization, and are freely available all over the Internet.
With that in mind, I wanted to tell you about
an old (1879) cookbook that I ran across on the Internet Archive this morning. It is
The Practical Recipe Book, for Families, Confectioners and Bakers, written/compiled by "C.L. Quinn" (Interestingly, Quinn was a man).
There are gazillions of old cookbooks on
the Internet Archive; I found this one interesting (as perhaps most are). One reason is the fact that so many of the recipes sound like they would make delicious items! Why did they ever go out of style??? I'd love to sample some of the creations made from these recipes!
During that discussion two or three years ago, that I mentioned earlier, I remember a couple of issues that people brought up, that would make it difficult actually to make dishes from old recipes. One that I remember is that so many of the ingredients in the recipes are very difficult to find now, or they go by a different, unknown, name now than they did then. Another issue, if memory serves me correctly, is that the recipes specify units of measurement that people no longer use, and would-be cooks of the recipes don't know how they correspond to current units of measurement.
To those two issues, I'll add a real oddity. I've got the book opened in the cake section at this moment. I happened to have noticed that the recipes for each one of the (three) cakes call for one teaspoon of ammonia. Yes,
ammonia! (I suppose that if you dropped batter on the floor, it would be easier to clean up, that way, what with the cleaner already in it
). So maybe you would find
the book interesting, if nothing else.
Maybe one or more of ya'll will enjoy the book. Unfortunately, two of the MobileReaders who I think might enjoy this book the most--"Cinisajoy" and "Koland"--have been in absentia for quite some time.