What's That in This Old U.S. Cookbook? Quiz

Answer: blueberries

Whortleberries are various berries of the Vaccinium genus. The word itself goes back to berries across the pond, but American cookbook writers applied it to our Vaccinium species, any of the blueberries that grow here. The 1859 "Dictionary of Americanisms" has an entry: "Blue-berry. (Vacinium tenellum.) A fruit resembling the whortleberry in appearance and taste." Blueberries weren't cultivated in the early 19th century, so the average cook would be purchasing or picking wild ones, something reasonably close to the little ones sold as wild blueberries today. Or if you live where you can pick wild ones, even better and more fun!

Answer: cornmeal

"Corn" was a word that referred to the dominant grain in an area. It might be oats if you were Scottish, or wheat if you were English. In America, maize was the dominant grain, so it was called corn, but to separate it from "corn" back in the old country, it was called Indian corn, the dominant grain of the Indians, or shortened to just Indian.

When ground a little coarser than flour, it was of the coarseness called "meal." Indian meal, or even just Indian, meant cornmeal. Americans today sometimes call that brightly colored corn sold for decorations "Indian corn," but in 19th Century recipe books it's just referring to boring old white or yellow field corn.

Answer: cornstarch

Purists will pounce on me for this, but arrowroot was starch from the arrowroot plant, so any well refined starch will accomplish the same basic goal of thickening a pudding or a gravy. Cornstarch, which most cooks have in the closet, is a suitable substitute. True arrowroot comes from the central American plant Maranta arundinacea.

Other starch sources that can be used are potatoes, corn, or sago. *Ducks and runs from the foodies throwing gourmet tomatoes.* No, really, it's just a temporary substitute! I'll get the real thing later, I promise! They really do perform a little differently!

Answer: make a pie crust, either period or modern

Paste was the word usually used to refer to what we'd call a pie crust made of white flour. There were many variations in 19th Century cookbooks, usually given in recipes standing alone at the beginning of pies or in their own section. You can pick one of the period variations, which may say what it's best for -- a meat pie, a delicate tart, boiled dumplings, fried pies. Or if you have a modern pie crust recipe you're used to, that will do also, if you mainly want to concentrate on making the 19th Century filling.

There wasn't much difference in a basic recipe, although period recipes may be more apt to use lard, or be very buttery. Once you're comfortable with pie fillings, trying period pastes is really worthwhile. Or if you're following an unusual recipe like for boiled apple dumplings in cloth, you may want to see what separate paste recipe is recommended, because a certain kind may hold together better or have some other important quality. For a plain old apple pie baked in a pan, there's more latitude in what paste/crust you use..

Answer: a garden currant, Ribes genus, fresh, dried or preserved or (ssh!) frozen

Garden currants were common on bushes around a 19th Century garden, replacing the British gooseberry, which didn't grow as well here until better varieties were developed. Garden currants are rarer today in the U.S., but still possible to find depending on where you live and the season. Ribes rubrum are red currants, and white currants are the same species name, just a different cultivar. Either one can be used for red currants, and the recipe should say whether it wants fresh, dried, or what form. Nowadays, you may also be able to get frozen ones that can be thawed a little in the microwave and used like fresh ones in baking.

The dark dried currants are a completely different thing, a grape, usually identified as zante currants, and they were around in the 19th Century too and may be identified as zante in a recipe, or you may be left to guess which kind to use. Whatever you do, don't substitute black Ribes currents for red or white Ribes currants.

The black ones have a horribly strong flavor that's fine if you're expecting it, but it's not the typical sweet, strawberry/blackberry flavor of red or white Ribes currants.

Answer: substitute baking soda, whatever amount a modern recipe calls for

All those suggestions are white powders, but only baking soda will do the same thing: react with an acid to produce carbon dioxide gas and make a cake rise. Saleratus referred to carbonate or bicarbonate of potassium, but as time passed, the better bicarbonate of sodium was substituted on store shelves.

Some cooks just kept using the old word, while others switched to saying baking soda. Some cookbooks copied old recipes without changing them, but expected you to use the best modern ingredients. It's hard to tell exactly what a cookbook is calling for, but I've never read a period cook complain that only the old fashioned potassium bicarbonate was best. Cooks at the time just seemed to go with the flow, accepting better ingredients, and you can too, using baking soda rather than tracking down saleratus at a specialty store.

A real improvement was better purity and milling, so there were no chunks or indissolvable pieces in whatever was sold. Old recipes may call for the saleratus to be dissolved in water before being added, to get rid of some of the impurities that wouldn't dissolve, so they could be discarded. Later recipes, circa 1860 and newer, seemed to add the saleratus or soda like we do, with the other powdered ingredients. You can use the dissolving method, but it's no longer necessary. You may find that modern baking soda is purer and therefore stronger, so it may work best to use the typical amount you'd add for a modern recipe of the same size, rather than adding whatever a 19th Century recipe might say.

Answer: half a cup, or 4 fluid ounces

A gil or gill, pronounced like the girl's name Jill, was equal to half a cup. Whew. That was easy. No, I'm not going to go into fluid ounces vs. liquid ounces, volume vs. weight. I'm just going to stop right here. Half a cup.

Answer: there's nothing like rosewater, and it's still made, or you can make it

Some modern cooks suggest substituting vanilla extract for rosewater, and that certainly gets the job done, but omits the unique floral flavor of real rosewater. Real rosewater is still made and sold today in some ethnic sections with rare ingredients, but be careful! I've found that modern rosewater can be much stronger than what period recipe writers were surely thinking of. Whew! I don't think you needed to air out the house after baking cookies. I'd suggest carefully adding it "to taste" at first. You can also make your own rosewater from a few period recipes online or in other 19th Century cookbooks.

The ingredients are just what you'd expect: rose petals steeped in a liquid, often water, to extract the flavor.

Answer: baking soda, a smaller amount

Pearlash was the first artificial leavening and was generally carbonate of sodium, or a very crude bicarbonate, not nicely purified like ours. It could contain impurities that might cause a yellowish cast or bitter taste, but that didn't matter for gingerbread, which was already strong and dark, and could hide such problems. Gingerbread also already included an acid to react with the alkali in pearlash: molasses.

The only problem with substituting modern baking soda is that a 19th Century recipe may call for too much, allowing for impurities. Add the amount of baking soda called for in a modern recipe to raise modern gingergread of similar size, based on the cups of flour used, and that should give a reasonable amount.

Answer: Chocolate cake was like coffee cake, you ate it while drinking hot chocolate

When I was growing up, it took me a while to figure out there was no coffee in coffee cake. I tried hard to taste it, but never could! This is the same idea. Chocolate in the early 19th Century typically referred to what you drank hot, rather than a candy bar. If friends wanted to sit around drinking hot chocolate and nibbling on cake, they needed chocolate cake to nibble on, not chocolate-flavored cake, but cake that would taste good with hot chocolate. Just trust the recipes and make some hot chocolate to drink with them! Or look for a cake recipe that's mid-19th-Century or later, which is more apt to actually be chocolate flavored.