OLD RECIPES: HOW FAR BACK DO YOU WANT TO GO?

INTRODUCTION BY PAT PARKER

For those of us who long for the "good old days," we might want to reconsider when we discover some of the methods and remedies prescribed in a recent acquisition by the Society in a book entitled, Dr. Chase’s Recipes, or Information for Everybody, by A. W. Chase, M.D., published by R. A. Beal, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1874. It was donated by Peter Boor as part of the Richardson family collection. The spelling and text are as the author wrote it.

Dr. Chase explains in his preface that after having carried on the drug and grocery business for a number of years, he read medicine and at the age of thirty-eight graduated as a physician. The book is divided into several departments (chapters) such as Merchants’ and Grocers’, Medical, Bakers and Cooking, and Saloon, as well as many others. I have chosen a few samples for your edification, wonderment and amusement, but do NOT recommend or guarantee them in any way. (Nor do I feel they would be covered either by your insurance policy or your HMO).

To make ink: Take 2 gals rainwater, ¼ lb. gum arabic, ¼ lb. brown sugar; ¼ lb. clean copperas; ¾ lb. powdered nutgalls. Bruise all, shaking occasionally for 10 days, and strain; if needed sooner let it steep in an iron kettle until the strength is obtained.

To preserve eggs for winter use: For every three gallons of water, put in one pt. of fresh slaked lime and ½ pt. common salt. Mix well then with a dish let down your fresh eggs into it so they roll out without cracking the shell. If fresh eggs are put in, fresh eggs will come out. Families in towns and cities by this plan can have eggs for winter use at summer prices. I have put up forty dozen with entire success.

To preserve butter any length of time: First, work out all the butter milk. Second, use rock salt. Third, pack in air tight jars or cans. Fourth, keep in a cool place and you will have nice butter for years, if desired to keep so long. A short recipe, but it makes long butter.

To cure a sick headache: This arises from acidity, or over-loading the stomach. When it is not from over eating, all that is necessary is to soak the feet in hot water about 20 min., drinking at the same time an herb tea, such as pennyroyal, catnip, or mint; then get into bed, cover up warm and keep up a sweating process for about an hour, by which time relief will have been attained.

To cure baldness: The decoction of box-wood successful in garden borders, success in cases of baldness is thus made: take of the common box which grows in garden borders, four large handfuls of stems and leaves; boil in three pints of water in a closely covered vessel for a quarter of an hour and let stand in a covered earthenware for ten hours or more; strain and add an ounce and a half of eau de cologne or lavender water to make it keep. The head should be well washed with this solution every morning.

To cure a sore throat: five spoons of the syrup of elderberry; mix with one spoon of honey and as much powdered sal prunella as will lie on a shilling. Take a teaspoon frequently.

Bright eyes: To give brilliancy to the eyes, shut them early at night and open them early in the morning; let the mind be constantly intent on the acquisition of benevolent feelings. This will scarcely ever fail to impart to the eyes an intelligent and amiable expression.

Remove freckles: An excellent wash for freckles is made by scraping some horseradish very fine and letting it stand for some hours in buttermilk, then straining and using the wash morning and night; OR: powdered nitre, moistened with water and applied to the face morning and night will soon remove freckles without injury to the skin.

To make the hair curl: 1 lb. olive oil, 1 dr. oil of origanum, and 1 ¼ drs. oil of rosemary. Mix and apply.

Pain in the back: Apply a plaster and take daily balsam of copaiba; or apply garlic and hogs lard to the feet.

Potato pudding: Rub through a colander 6 large or 12 middle-sized potatoes; beat 4 eggs, mix with 1 pt. of good milk; stir in sugar and seasoning to taste, butter the dish and bake for ½ hour. To be eaten with butter.

Mock oysters: Six, nice, plump, ears of corn, uncooked; grate from the cob. beat 1 egg, stirring into it 1 tablespoon each of flour and milk, season with salt and pepper. Put about a teaspoon of butter into a suitable pan for frying, having mixed in the corn also, drop the mixture into the hot butter, one spoon in a place, turning them so as to fry brown. Serve hot, for breakfast.

Jellies without fruit: Take 1 pt. water and add to it ¼ oz. pulverized alum. Boil a minute or two then add 4 lbs. of white crushed or coffee sugar, continue the boiling a little, strain while hot; when cold put in half of a two shilling bottle of extract of vanilla, strawberry, lemon or any other flavor you desire for jelly. This will make a jelly so much resembling that made from the juice of fruit that anyone will be astonished, and when fruit cannot be got, will take its place admirably.

Apple pie that is digestible: Instead of mixing up your crust with water and lard only, making it very rich as is customary for apple pies: mix it up every way just as you would for bisquit, using sour milk and saleratus (baking soda) with a little lard or butter only; mix the dough quite stiff, roll out rather thin, lay it upon your tin and having ripe apples sliced nicely and laid on, rather thick, and sugar according to the acidity of the apples, then a top crust and bake well, putting beaten egg upon the crusts and you have got a pie that is fit to eat.

But when you make the crust and cook the apples and put them on, it soaks the crust, which does not bake, and no stomach can digest it, whilst our way gives you a nice light crust and does not take half the shortening of the other plan. The pie is digestible, and when it is cold does not taste bad to cut it up on your plate with plenty of sweetened cream.

Old bachelor’s bread, biscuit or pie crust: 1 qt. flour; 2 teaspoons cream-of-tarter; ¾ teaspoon soda; sweet milk to wet the flour to the consistence of bisquit dough. Rub the flour and cream of tarter well together; dissolve the soda in the milk, wetting up the flour with it and bake immediately. If you have no milk, use water in its place, adding a spoon of lard to obtain the same richness. It does well for pie crust where you cannot keep up sour milk.

Surprise cake: One egg; 1 cup sugar; ½ cup butter; 1 cup sweet milk, 1 teaspoon soda, 2 teaspoons cream-of-tarter. Flavor with lemon and use sufficient sifted flour to make the proper consistency and you will really be surprised to see its bulk and beauty.

Artificial cider: To 1 gal. cold water, put 1 lb. dark brown sugar, ½ oz. tartaric acid, 3 tablespoons yeast, keeping these proportions for any amount desired. Make it in the evening and it will be fit for use the next day.

Spruce or Aromatic Beer: For 3 gals. put into 1 qt. water ½ pt. of molasses, 3 eggs well beaten and 1 gill yeast. Into two qts. of the water, boiling hot, put 50 drops of any oil you wish the flavor of: or mix 1 oz. each sassafras, spruce and wintergreen oil. Use 50 drops of the mixed oils, mix all and strain. Let stand two hours, then bottle, bearing in mind that yeast must not be put in when the fluid would scald the hand. Boiling water cuts oil for beer equal to alcohol.

Sham-Champagne: A purely temperance drink. Take 1 oz. Tartaric acid, 1 good sized lemon, 1 oz. ginger root, 1 ½ lb. white sugar, 2 ½ gals. water, 1 gill yeast. Slice the lemon and bruise the ginger. Mix all except the yeast; boil the water and pour it upon them. Let stand until cooled to blood heat, then add the yeast and let it stand in the sun through the day. At night, bottle, tying the corks, and in two days it will be fit to use.

Pat’s Advice: We truly hope none of our members are desperately in need of any of the above "cures" – which just possibly might be worse than the ailment. However, if you are suffering from baldness, I happen to have two boxwood shrubs and for a reasonable price will be happy to sell you a few leaves.