Anyone who holds a creased and stained recipe handed down from a grandparent or favorite aunt can feel its connection to family and history. Valerie J. Frey, a foodways researcher based in Athens, Georgia, takes that connection deeper and wider in her new book, Georgia’s Historical Recipes, which spans the state’s culinary evolution from the colonial era to World War II. Frey dove into tattered community cookbooks and faded newspapers and surfaced with illuminating stories and throwback kitchen tips that might be worth revisiting. She shares some of them here.
How did you find most of the material you catalogued in Georgia’s Historical Recipes?
As an archivist I know how to do research, which is helpful. But some of it was serendipitous—like being in an antique shop and coming across The New Annie Dennis Cookbook, a 1915 paperback I’d somehow never heard of. Turns out Dennis was kind of the Martha Stewart of Atlanta in her day. Other people and groups might put out one cookbook in that era, but she turned it into a career. Her brother worked for a publishing house, so she had that connection, but she was also a pretty big self-promoter. She cooked at the Bell House, a prestigious boarding house for bachelors where even the mayor lived. She ran newspaper ads for “lady agents” who would help sell her cookbooks, and would set up a booth at exhibitions. She also received testimonials from women’s clubs and early female journalists. They were in cahoots, making connections and lifting each other up. Apparently Dennis had lots of marriage proposals and turned them all down—she had a good thing going and didn’t want that to change.
How vital were community cookbooks to your research?
They are very important. We know that a lot of publishing took place in cities, but cookbooks from smaller communities really pick up the echoes of what was going on in other places, especially with women, because they didn’t always have a foot in the public sphere. Georgia’s first one was put out in 1880 by the Second Presbyterian Church in Augusta, a community coming together because it needed to raise money to pay for their church. Interestingly, the Presbyterians really had a bead on community cookbooks until about the turn of the century before other groups got in on it. I think a lot of people with family roots in Georgia have no idea that their great-grandmothers put recipes into these cookbooks.
Did you encounter food fads, like how people these days have decided they want matcha in everything?
Believe it or not, celery was a craze in the Gilded Age. If you invited guests over, there would be a nice celery vase to display cut celery so people could pull out a stalk.
Did you notice changes to recipes when major innovations were introduced, like iceboxes?
Absolutely. In the 1850s most recipes might call for two ingredients not readily found on the farm. By the turn of the century, recipes often called for brand-name ingredients such as Fleischmann’s yeast and Cox’s gelatin. By 1920 there was a recipe calling for canned peaches—in Georgia!
Did you personally test some of the bygone recipes?
I kept encountering recipes for jelly cake in old newspapers and discovered that bakeries also sold them for a long time. You bake just a little bit of batter in a lot of pie pans, with fine white sugar sifted over the tops, so that you end up with many thin, crisp layers. And then you spread jelly between the layers. It’s really good if you use a tart jelly like blackberry, or lemon curd. It’s pretty easy and makes a pretty cake. Now I take them to potlucks and people are like, “What is that?”
Any epic fails?
Ha! I tried a recipe for Mabel’s Delicious Honey Cakes that caught my eye in a folder at the Georgia Historical Society’s research center in Savannah, collected from the historic Green-Meldrim House just four blocks away. In the oven, the top formed a crust almost immediately while the batter below was still barely warm. Then I got a whiff of burning honey. I covered the pan with foil, but the whole thing turned into lava and flowed out everywhere. I still don’t know what I did wrong. It set off the smoke alarm.
Are there things modern cooks can learn from our forerunners in the kitchen?
Some techniques, but especially flavor combinations and spice mixes. It’s fascinating to see what fruits and spices got put together to create a flavor profile we’ve now forgotten about. They’re waiting for us in these cookbooks.
A RECIPE FOR ORANGE DROPS
From The Southern Housekeeper: A Book of Tested Recipes, published by Atlanta’s Central Presbyterian Church, 1898
Grate the rind of one orange and squeeze out the juice, taking care to remove the seeds. Add to this a pinch of tartaric acid; stir in confectioner’s sugar until it is stiff enough to form into balls. This is a delicious candy.
Frey’s notes: An average orange yields 4 to 5 tablespoons of juice. For each tablespoon of juice you’ll need at least 1 cup of powdered sugar. Granulated citric acid derived from citrus fruits can be used in place of grape-derived tartaric acid, but be sure it is labeled “food-grade.” Because tart candy is a cultural norm for modern kids, I use up to a teaspoon of acid. An electric stand mixer is the fast tool for this recipe, but hands or a potato masher is the old-fashioned way.
