I had a German grandmother who could cook, but she lived in Michigan. During our summer and holiday visits, this silly American girl didn’t know how to appreciate her cooking. I thought meat wrapped in pancake was weird and wondered why the potato salad was pink. When I finally realized what I could have learned, it was too late. I have a copy of the Baltisches Kochbuch from which many of her recipes came, but it isn’t her original copy, the one with her scrawlings in the margins. My grandfather didn’t think anyone was interested, so he gave it away.
Not long after my grandmother’s death, I began to search antique stores and musty old bookshops for copies of the book. Part of me thinks I will find her copy someday. In the meantime, I have found a diversion: collecting vintage cookbooks.
My first was The Modern Priscilla Cook Book: One Thousand Home Tested Recipes, published in 1928. The crackled cover and yellowing pages caught my eye. Inside were recipes for dishes I could barely imagine: Wild Rose Mousse, Shrimp Wiggle, Chicken Timbales, Grand-mother’s Piccalilli. I was hooked immediately. Although many recipes, such as Pork Cake, Hot Lettuce Sandwiches, and Fried Calves’ Brains will never come out of my kitchen, Ada’s Famous Gingerbread, Eggs Baked in Whole Tomatoes, Tosca Sauce, and Zephyr Potato Squares have inspired me to work through the terse, sometimes vague directions to bring forth an arcane taste of the past.
I am not alone in this odd hobby. In 1999, the Wall Street Journal called the antique cookbook sector the hottest in the rare book field. Collectors range from food historians and book lovers to beginning cooks and professional chefs. Probably the most rare collectible would be American Cookery by Amelia Simmons, which was published in 1796, and is known to be the first American cookbook. Collectible cookbooks are hard to find in good condition. A first edition of The Sun Also Rises might have been read once and then stacked on a shelf for years, but you can bet The Modern Priscilla was consulted daily, splattered with buttermilk, and used as a coaster. For rare book dealers and hardcore collectors, this detracts from the value of the book. For me, it only adds to it.
There was something else, besides the recipes, that enchanted me about my Modern Priscilla. It was Miss Myrtle Finden McIntosh, presumabley the original owner of the book. On the inside cover she inscribed her name, followed by “Should this book take a notion to wander, box its ears and send it home.” Her graceful handwriting can be found throughout the book, reminding herself to add one cup of sour milk to the sugar cookies, checking off and rating the good dishes (“yes sir!”), and re-naming the oatmeal cookies “rocks.” Once-blank pages are covered with hand-written recipes for versions of Overland Banana Pie, Scalloped Oysters, Honey Pumpkin Pie, even a “Hands-Off” recipe for soap. And then there’s the phone number for Dr. Chowning, the addresses of friends, and the small, seemingly quick notation that Marie died on the 6th of February in 1935. Miss Myrtle Finden McIntosh not only used this book, she loved this book. And now, so do I.
I began hunting down the tattered and worn old cookbooks. I wanted only books that had lived in a kitchen. I came across a Text-Book of Cooking by Carlotta Greer, published in 1915, which instructs the reader not only in the preparation of food, but in its scientific composition. A discussion of starches and carbohydrates is followed by a number of practical experiments and a recipe for Cream of Wheat. Mary Tretter dutifully penciled notes throughout, checking off the questions she’d been assigned, working through a chart of one-hundred-calorie portions of food, and doodling a caricature of, I assume, her instructor. On October 25, 1921, she mastered French Toast.
My copy of The Household Searchlight Recipe Book, published in 1935, has only one or two handwritten notations, including a name I can barely read as Mrs. A.J. Slemin. The recipes are interesting, but it was the four four-leaf clovers pressed in separate parts of the book that really attracted me. Did she think it was a safe hold for her good luck? Was it the singular site she could call entirely her own, where no one else would look?
I started out searching for a grandmotherly figure in old cookbooks, the kind of figure many famous cooks claim as their inspiration. But I never found her. Instead I found a collection of women who were closer to my own age, doing what I am doing, cooking and learning. Without glossy photos or guidance from celebrity chefs, they invented, adapted, and grew confident. Their cookbooks were as significant to them as any diary, marking their successes and failures, giving them a place to record daily life. I feel tied to these women when I cook something that fails, and then turn to Priscilla for an easy molasses cookie recipe that I know will work and bolster my bruised ego. Most of my recipes are stored on my computer and I am guilty of countless glossy cookbook purchases, but, if I ever find a four-leaf clover, I’ll press it between the pages of Priscilla, right next to my favorite Miss Myrtle notation: “Abra-ca-dab-ra, one two three, magic magic, come to me.”
Eggs Baked in Whole Tomatoes
adapted from The Modern Priscilla
3 medium-large tomatoes
3 eggs
salt and pepper
3 T toasted bread crumbs
1 t chopped rosemary
1/2 t garlic salt
3 slices prosciutto, diced
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Slice off top of tomatoes and carefully scoop out centers. Break one egg into each tomato, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Set in shallow baking dish. In separate bowl, mix bread crumbs with rosemary and garlic salt. Cover each tomato with some of the bread crumb mixture and top with pieces of prosciutto. Bake for 30 minutes. If prosciutto isn’t crisp enough, place under hot broiler for less than a minute.
