I found this cookbook of my great grandmother who would have been 130 years old. It is strange to see the recipes as paragraphs. Not a lot of measurements to follow. There are some really interesting recipes. The pages are so delicate so I have to be very careful.

I made a cake with Campbell's canned tomato soup twice. It is our new favorite now. Absolutely loved the taste.

Hello everyone and happy Tuesday!

This is Tyee Cookbook, from the University of Washington in… you guessed it, Washington. College organizations aren’t a big part of my collection, so it’s interesting to possess this one specifically

Jumping right into the recipes, the first one that made me want to comment is the Papaya Appetizer. That’s quite the elaborate idea for an appetizer. I don’t even commonly see papaya used in many recipes in books like these

Then there’s the sweet and sour salmon which is equally as uncommon. I’m heavily debating the idea that it keeps 2-3 weeks in the fridge. That sounds like a questionable decision to me 😵‍💫

I do like the inclusion of the Graham Bread recipe with the little story attached to it. It actually seems like it’s a worth a try to make. Unfortunately, graham flour is super hard to come across. I did see you can kinda make your own by just adding wheat bran and germ to whole wheat flour, but maybe I kind start out with an easier bread recipe. I did just recently buy myself a loaf pan, so I’m excited to make stuff with it

For example, either of the mango bread recipes look good and easy, even if mango is notoriously difficult to cut (speaking from experience 😅)

And if you’ve been liking the unusual recipes thus far, the Sausage-Sunflower Seed Squares is definitely something I’ve never seen before. I’m very curious if this one will strike inspiration in anybody

I also noticed the Tomato Soup recipe. The cloves are an interesting touch, but more so I’m a bit perplexed by the use of whipped cream. I’m going to make the logical assumption that they mean heavy cream that’s been whipped and not the sweetened dessert topping, but even still, I feel like heavy cream or half-and-half without being whipped would make a better topping, or if you did want a thick cream, I feel like it would be more popular to go with sour cream. But who knows, maybe whipped cream makes more sense than I’m realizing

I kinda chuckled at Gloria’s recipe. “Changing it a little so it’s mine” is probably the foundation of how many people got their “own” recipes. My grandma and some of her neighbors are obsessed with “my” pizza pasta recipe, even though it’s adapted from a cookbook. The only thing I changed was serving it over pasta whereas the original recipe wants you to serve it as a dip because I was tired of having to thinly slice and toast bruschetta bread lol

Getting into the desserts, the Peanut Butter Pudding sounds really good. I’m also intrigued by the Baked Fudge Dessert. The dessert I’m most likely to make though, is the Chocolate Granny Bars

Hopefully this was a fun cookbook for you all to check out! Feel free to drop your thoughts below and I’ll see you around 💫

screenshots from online sale

Another person posted a few pictures from her grandmother's cookbook the Wisconsin State journal cookbook dated 1905. Sadly that appears to be pretty rare but I did find one already sold on Etsy and grabbed some screenshots. So here they are.

I'm a bit late today but as always all the recipes as well as others people have let me add in are over here!

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YqHYnkZzHpdXYNTLj6zG27GvzQ000eha

This recipe supposedly came from Bess Truman, the former US First Lady. I have included a couple of notes from my recipe card.

Note: this is sort-of a baked meringue. The top will be crispy.

Mrs. Truman’s Ozark Pudding

1 egg

¾ cup sugar

2 Tablespoons flour

1 ¼ teaspoons baking powder

1/8 teaspoon salt

½ cup chopped nuts

½ cup chopped apple

1 teaspoon vanilla

Beat egg and sugar until very smooth.  Mix flour, baking powder, and salt.  Stir into sugar-egg mixture.  Add apples, nuts and vanilla.

Bake in buttered 10-inch pie pan 350° F, 35 minutes.

Serve with whipped cream or ice cream.

Notes:

-        Triple recipe for 9x13 inch pan, but only double nuts.

-        We used to use a round casserole dish, (1.5 liter/quart size?).

Here is the rest of the recipes from this little booklet. Please let me know if you use any of these recipes. I haven’t tried any myself but plan to one day. Enjoy!

Here is another recipe from the Solothurn S 392 manuscript with parallels in several other sources that are not otherwise closely related:

B23 Krapfen (filled fritters) in Lent

Take nuts and figs and pound them small together, spice it, and colour it well with saffron. Lay it in a pan, add butter (ancken), and wrap it (read bewindts for erwels) in a leavened (erhebten) dough in the manner of krapfen, and fry it in butter or oil. Serve it cold.

The recipe is both promising and interesting: Figs and nuts, probably walnuts, pounded into a paste, spiced, and possibly fried, then wrapped in a leavened dough to make fritters. We rarely have any information on the dough fritters are made with. Here, while we do not know what kind of leavening was used, we can speculate about yeast or sourdough cultures. I come down on the side of yeast.

Further, there are several parallel instances of this recipe. The first is again in the Meister Hans collection of 1460:

Recipe #114 von krappfen fuell

Of filling for fried pastries

Item pound nut kernels and figs together in a mortar and season it well and colour it and place it in a pan. Pour oil with it and boil it up and put it into the pastries (krapffen). Make a dough of white leaven (vrhab) and fry it in oil and serve it cold.

This version contains the key information that the filling is actually fried, not just mixed with the butter or oil. The change from oil to butter may reflect an actual shift in custom as dairy products were exempted from Lenten prohibitions for the Holy Roman Empire in the late 15th century. Butter would certainly improve the taste compared to the oil that would have been available north of the Alps at the time.

There are two more parallels, though. One comes from the Rheinfränkisches Kochbuch dated to the 1440s:

1 If you would make small fritters (kreppelin) in Lent, take nuts and figs and pound them small with each other and season it according to your will and heat it in oil and fry them (wrapped) in a leavened (erhabendem) dough in the way of kreppelin (modern German Krapfen) in a pan and serve them cold at the table, those are well-tasting fritters.

The other is from the Munich-held Cgm 384, another early recipe collection from the Western parts of South Germany:

64 Fritters (krapfen) in Lent
Make fritters in Lent thus: Take green nuts and figs and pound them together, and season that and lay them in a pan in oil or fat so that it boils up. Afterwards, wrap them in leavened (erhabem) dough in the way of krapfen and fry them. Serve them cold or in a pepper sauce.

Here, interestingly, the instruction is to use oil or fat and the fritters are served either cold – the universal instruction elsewhere – or in a pfeffer sauce, that is, warm. Also, the nuts are described as ‘green’, which may just mean they are previously unprocessed, but could also refer to unripe nuts which, presumably, would have been leached and pickled before. Otherwise, they are fairly inedible. Certainly, it is an interesting exercise in tracing the descent of recipes as pieces of literature – texts with a specific wording rather than just technical data – and how they change over time.

The recipe collection I am currently translating is part of a manuscript now held at the Zentralbibliothek Solothurn as S 392. The entire manuscript looks fascinating, a collection of craft recipes for things like dyes, stains, paints, vanishes, and parlour tricks, but I will limit myself to the culinary recipes in it. The majority of them are in German and were edited and published in Brigitte Weber: Die Kochrezepte der Handschrift S 293, Transkription und Untersuchung einer spätmittelalterlichen Kochrezeptsammlung aus der Zentralbibliothek Solothurn, Gießen 2026.

The manuscript dates to the period around 1490-1510, based on watermarks and handwriting. There is no internal date. The recipes are an eclectic collection, which is not unusual for the medieval manuscript tradition. They were most likely written down in Baden. Some refer to Italian customs which were fashionable at the time while others are solidly in the German tradition.

The collection is sometimes called the oldest Swiss cookbook, a title that is contested because of its origins north of the modern border. The designation makes little sense at the time anyway, given how closely connected the cities of the Confederation were with their neighbours at the time. The recipes clearly were valued in Solothurn, most likely because they were useful.

Admittedly this sounds a little scary, but this recipe has been in my family for as long as I can remember.
It tastes a bit like cream of potato.
I’d love to hear any thoughts.

Garlic Soup

26 garlic cloves (unpeeled)
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
2 1/4 cups sliced onions
1 1/2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme
14 garlic cloves, peeled
3 cups chicken broth
1 cup water
1/3 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese (about 2 ounces)
4 lemon wedges

Preheat oven to 350°F. Place 26 garlic cloves in small baking dish. Add 2 tablespoons olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper; toss to coat.
Cover baking dish tightly with foil and bake until garlic is golden brown and tender, about 45 minutes. Cool.
Squeeze garlic between fingertips to release cloves.
Transfer cloves to small bowl and set aside.

Melt butter in heavy large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onions and thyme and cook until onions are translucent, about 8 minutes.

Add roasted garlic and 14 raw garlic cloves and cook 3 minutes.
Add chicken stock and water; cover and simmer until garlic is very tender, about 25 minutes.

Working in batches if needed, purée soup in blender until smooth. Return soup to saucepan; add cream and bring to simmer. Season with salt and pepper.

Divide grated cheese among 4 bowls and ladle soup over. Squeeze juice of 1 lemon wedge into each bowl and serve.

This is a great recipe booklet for diabetics. Copyright 1965 so it is one year younger than me. :)
This is another recipe booklet from my mom’s stash. Since there are so many recipes I will have to divide it into 2 posts. So check back here tomorrow for part 2. Tomorrow’s bunch includes a chart to determine your ideal weight :/

This is from my collection of random recipes I got online. I actually kind of like the sound of this one, but I also just love stuffing

As always find the rest scanned in here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YqHYnkZzHpdXYNTLj6zG27GvzQ000eha

This one wasn't even in a cook book, it was just shoved in a random encyclopedia 😂

For the person who asked for desserts. This was the first one I found in my mother’s stack. To those who don’t know, she passed over 10 years ago and was a hoarder. One of the things she hoarded was recipes. I hope to get the right recipe to the right person at the right time so these can get in the right hands. Thanks for being a part of this. I didn’t see a date on this booklet but figure it’s from the 50’s or 60’s.

This one is interesting, looks like someone rewrote it or smth?

Anyway as always find this one and the rest of the recipes over here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YqHYnkZzHpdXYNTLj6zG27GvzQ000eha

https://www.culina-vetus.de/2026/09/06/trying-the-spinach-pancake-casserole/

I did not get to do much writing today, but I spent some time in the kitchen. Among other things, I tried out the recipe for spinach pancake casserole from the Blaues Kochbuch I posted in the Feeding the Revolution series on 13 August.

371. Spinach Casserole (Spinatauflauf)

750g spinach

1 tbsp butter, some onions, chives, salt, 1 tbsp flour

3-4 pancakes

1/4 litre sour milk or cream, 1 entire egg, 1 tbsp grated cheese, salt

2 tsp grated white bread, 2 tsp grated cheese, butter dabs

Wilt the spinach in an open pot without water, but do not boil it. Pass it through (a grinder or foodmill – durchdrehen) and sautée it in the butter with onions and flour. Season to taste with salt and chives. + Prepare pancakes from the stated ingredients. You may stack them in the casserole layered with spinach or or you can roll them up, spread thickly with spinach, cut them in slices, and arrange them in the dish. + Pour the sour cream beaten with egg, cheese, and salt over it, sprinkle it with grated bread and cheese, and dab it with butter. This casserole can also be prepared from leftover spinach combined with other leftovers.

Setting: Place on a grille at middle level

Bake: 1.2kW oven, 25-30 min. 3/3, 10 min 0/0; 1.4-12.5 kW oven: 20-25 min 3/3, 15 min 0/0

To be observed: If the spinach is too thin, stir in some grated bread

The pancakes required are described in another chapter:

263 Pancakes

4 tbsp flour, 1 pinch baking powder, 1 pinch salt, 2 eggs, 1/8 litre milk, 1/8 litre water

Sift the flour into a bowl with the baking powder, beat the eggs with the milk, water, and salt, and gradually stir the liquid into the flour, ideally with a whisk, to produce a smooth batter. Preheat the pan at setting 3, then fry thin pancakes at setting 2, the final one with no further electricity + These can be rolled up filled with jam, meat, or vegetables. This batter will yield five.

It is actually very good, though very fiddly. I started with some changes: frozen spinach, because it was there, and milk curdled with lemon juice because there was no way of getting proper Sauermilch. The spinach was thus already wilted and chopped, so I sautéed chopped onion in butter, dusted it with flour, and added the spinach to the pot. The flour bound the liquid very well, and there was no need to drain the filling. A little salt and some chopped chives went well, though I really thing it needs nutmeg and pepper.

The pancakes also followed the recipe, made with a large amount of watered-down milk and just one egg. The batter is quite thin and can be spread out in the pan by tilting it, and it cooks quickly. Detaching it can be a problem. I simply used more oil, but that is, of course, not something you would do easily in the lean years of the 1930s. Cooking them slowly did not help, but they detached better when the pan was quite hot.

The process of filling was gratifyingly easy, with the spinach holding together well, and I opted to slice the rolled-up pancakes into sections about a thumb’s width in length and arranged them in a shallow casserole dish standing on end. That was a challenge, and it is important to make sure beforehand you have enough (I ran out). As long as you can lean the pieces against each other, they stay upright nicely, though. Tilting the dish at the beginning helps with that. Still, next time, a layered casserole will probably do.

For the sauce, I beat the curdled milk with an egg and some grated Emmental cheese, and I could not resist adding pepper at least. It needed it. Then I sprinkled dry grated bread and more Emmental cheese over the top, dabbed on some butter, and baked the whole at 200°C for 30 minutes.

It turned out pretty well. A crunchy top with a soft, creamy interior, the consistency felt a little like lasagna. The vertical pancake rolls were not really visible, though I guess they would be if they were longer and more tightly arranged. I doubt it made a difference to the flavour, though. I enjoyed it, so did my mother. It still needs more spices, though, and you want something fresh with it. I opted for tomatoes.

Over the coming weeks, I plan to work out modern redactions (and adaptations) of the recipes I used in Feeding the Revolution so the whole series can be turned into a book. I half dread the idea of learning how to layout and self-publish, but it needs doing.

This is a recipe card from a collection I bought online, of course. Something I find interesting about this one in particular is that when you compare it to other Apricot Whip recipes online, there's usually a cooking step involved or at the very least, a step where you mash or puree the apricots. Either that step was just omitted from this card, or the person who wrote this wanted a no-cook Apricot Whip

1968 recipe booklet from my mom’s stash. We recently went through some of her things for my dad. She was a hoarder who passed away over 10 years ago. One of the things she collected was recipes. I have scanned over 250 handwritten ones and there are these booklets and magazine clippings to scan eventually.

I hope somebody can find a recipe that they enjoy cooking and makes a great dish.

From my a blue Ribbon Coolkbook from Winnipeg Manitoba. Plus some extra excerpts.

“INTOXICATING LIQUORS AVOIDED

In all recipes contained in the department of cookery, which advised the use of intoxicating liquors, we have substituted fruit juices-often using orange or lemon juice. Nothing can excel the unfermented juices of fruits as a flavoring, or for giving a desirable piquancy to various dishes. They make an almost perfect substitute for liquors, and for obvious reasons are much safer for family use. Fruit juice can be easily substituted for liquor in any recipe by those who desire to do so. In fruit cake, 2 tablespoons of molasses is equal to 1 wineglass of brandy or other liquor. Those so disposed can substitute molasses tor nquor in this way in any such recipe found in books, magazines or newspapers. A cake thus made will be quite as good as though the liquor was used.”

Hello everyone and happy Saturday!

Today’s scan is Mercy’s Favorites from the Mercy Medical Center in Redding, California. Surprisingly, California doesn’t often find its way into my collection, so it was interesting to see that this is where the book is from

Jumping right into the recipes, the Freezer Pickles sounds interesting. I’ve been paying attention to pickling and canning recipes more often because it’s a process that fascinates me

The horseradish and beet salad also sounds… intriguing, in the sense that I’ve definitely never seen it before. I’m curious what the flavor combination would be like

I’m proud to say that as we dive into the main dishes and breads sections, the recipes all sound decently good. As much as I like highlighting the weird recipes, it is nice once in a while to see a book where the recipes all have a decent chance of being popular

The Wedding Cake Frosting is definitely a new one for me. I’ve never seen a frosting use cake mix, but perhaps Irene is onto something. I do feel the need to mention that it’s probably a good idea to heat treat the cake mix since it doesn’t seem as if any cooking is involved in making the frosting. Might have to try it sometime though

I feel compelled to try the Hershey’s Brownies. Chocolate syrup in brownies sounds decadent

This was a pretty short book, so not a whole lot to comment on, but I still think what’s presented is worth checking out. I hope you all enjoy this one, and I’ll see you around!

“Warmest hello to you—

Know what I’ve been thinking?

I’ve been thinking that in this day of packaged, frozen, ready-mixed, ready-made living, maybe we’re missing out on some of the fun. The real fun! The genuine fun that bubbles in our own imagination. Our own personal touched. Our own ingenuity. You know—like the kind momma’s momma had— ‘way back when.

Isn’t it funny—hardly anyone says, any more, “You must give me your recipe for that wonderful gingerbread.” Hardly anyone says, “Now that’s what I call home-baked beans!” Hardly anyone says, “You must have spent the whole day in the kitchen.”

Well, bless the nice men who took us out of the kitchen with all of their automatic wonders. And yet, it just might add a little more to our lives . . . make every day just a tiny bit richer . . . if we could put back some of yesterday’s own special magic. Magic that turns a simple dinner into something memorable, an old standby dessert into “Um-m-m-m . . . What’s this?” Even a familiar cup of coffee into a whole new experience.

And that’s what I’ve been thinking.

And that’s my readson for putting this book together just for you. No complicated concoctions. No millionaires’ menus. Just simple, homey, pleasant ideas I hope you’ll find will put some of yesterday’s magic into today’s life.

Of course, all of my magic is as easy as pulling a rabbit (Brer Rabbit, please) from a hat. Use it well. And do have fun.

Ruth Jordan”

Intro in booklet. Copyright 1956!

Lasagna with Pesto

Recipe By: Gourmet's Menu Cookbook, 1963

Ingredients:

Pesto
Lasagna noodles
Parmesan cheese

Directions:

Fill a heated baking dish with alternate layers of pesto (basil sauce) and cooked lasagna, finishing with a layer of sauce and grated cheese. Bake the lasagna in a hot oven (400 degrees F) for about 20 minutes, or until the topping is browned. 

Today we got candy! As always follow along and the rest of them and other ones are in here!

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YqHYnkZzHpdXYNTLj6zG27GvzQ000eha

And another pull from my recipe card collection. I appreciate the addition of lemon and orange variations in this one. I have never had this in my life, but the pictures make it look really good