Watkins Mill SHS Files
Sausages
To forty pounds of meat, add one pound of salt, three ounces of pepper, half a pint of pulverized sage. Warm without water. For preserving, put them in muslin bags, about six inches wide and nine inches long that have been immersed in hot lard and wrung dry. In this way they will keep six months, if desired. This recipe should provide a winter’s supply of sausage for a family of twelve to fourteen. (1850s)
Excerpt from letter (Waltus Watkins to his daughter Martha Scruggs, December 18, 1874)
“Lizzie and Carrie have been practicing cooking recently to some extent they cooked a rabbit yesterday on the following plan viz. they took a rabbit (whole) and salted him and buttered him and wrapped him up in wet paper and covered him up in hot embers and cooked him dun and thought it was quite an improvement on the old and they think they can cook birds in the same way.”
Miss Carrie’s Lobster Salad
Make dressing of eight eggs, one pint vinegar, four tablespoons melted butter or sweet oil, one tablespoon mixed mustard, one tablespoonful salt, and one teaspoonful black pepper. Mix altogether and put it over the fire to cook. Do not let it boil, it will thicken when done. Stir constantly. Chop lobster not fine, and lettuce the same, mix with dressing but not until about time for eating. Add as much of the dressing as seems necessary to make the salad creamy, and then spread on a little over the whole. The dressing will keep bottled a long time. It is nice with any meats. (Late 1880s)
Cantaloupe Pickles
Take cantaloupe just when they begin to turn yellow, but while flesh is still solid, pare, cut up into slices ½ inch thick, pack in jars with spices (1/2 cinnamon stick, and 1 teaspoon each of allspice and cloves per jar), and cover with a good pickling vinegar. In a week you will have as delicate and fine flavored a pickle as was ever made. (1860)
Preserving eggs
There are several ways to preserve eggs. The object of them all is to keep the eggs from drying out. Only eggs less than 24 hours old should be used in preserving.
Varnish – dissolve gum shellac in enough alcohol to make a then varnish. Coat each egg and pack, small end down in clean dry bran, sawdust, or sand. Eggs kept this way have reportedly been hatched after two years.
Lime – to four gallons water add a pint of unslaked lime and pint of course salt. When these are dissolved add the eggs making sure that the water covers them all. Be sure that none of the eggs is cracked. Eggs preserved in lime can last for years.
Salt – cover the bottom of a container with a layer of fine salt about two inches deep. Place eggs in the salt, small end down. Do not let them touch each other or the container. Cover with a layer of salt and repeat until container is full. This is a good way to save eggs for market. Eggs kept this way are excellent for boiling
Wax – Melt one part wax to two parts spermaceti, boil and mix thoroughly and maintain at a temperature of 100°. Rub new laid eggs with salt and fine rice starch. Wrap each in fine tissue paper leaving a twist at the top end. Holding it by the twist dip the egg rapidly in the wax mixture. Cool and pack broad end down in dry sand or sawdust.
Boiling water – dip eggs into boiling water from 20 seconds. Remove and pack in sawdust. This will keep them for several weeks or even months.
The Omelet (by J. Payne Lowe, in Pen and Plow, December 1875
Many persons think they have made and eaten omelets when they have not. Anything that is made of eggs stirred up and solidified over the fire is supposed to be an omelet, but it isn’t. I have heard of people who put flour in it. Flour takes fifteen to twenty minutes to cook, and an omelet is made in one minute; and raw flour is not wholesome or appetising.
The true omelet is a pile of terror-stricken eggs and milk; it trembles with every jar, and crouches in a delicious quivering mass upon the plate; he who puts a silver knife into it will find a porous, flaky material, almost impalpable to the touch, that will melt as quickly as a snowflake in his mouth. Upon reflection he will be willing to admit that hens were not made in vain.
Proceed in this way if you wish to make an omelet: have some fresh eggs, not omelet eggs. All eggs that will not by any possibility do to boil, are put away in restaurants to make omelet with. Break them into a china bowl. If they are fresh, the white will be as clear as a maiden’s eye, and the yolk as round as the pupil of it. Add a tablespoon of milk for ever egg, and whip the whole as thoroughly as you would for sponge cake. The omelet pan has previously been put on the fire and made so hot that butter will melt and almost brown in it, but not quite. When in this condition, you are to turn the whipped egg and milk into the pan and put it directly over the fire. Get a thin bladed knife and run it carefully under the bottom of the egg, so as to let that which is not cooked get below. If the fire is right the whole mass will swell and puff and cook in a minute; if it is not carefully attended to it will burn on the bottom and burned egg is the most offensive to smell and taste. It is not necessary to wait until the wholl mass is solid, as its own heat will cook it after it has left the pan; but begin at one side and carefully roll the edge over and over until it is all rolled up, and then let it stand for a minute to brown and turn it out on a hot plate and serve it, or, what is better, eat it yourself-immediately.
You must not put one grain of salt in it while it is cooking, or all your hopes and your omelet will flatten down together. If it is properly made it will be like a summer sunset, rich with crimson and yellow hues, and the savor will gladden the heart.
The common mistake in making omelets is to merely stir the eggs with a fork; to put no milk in it; to put salt, flour and bread crumbs in; to cook them too slow, and to turn them out on cold plates, a clammy, skinny waste of eggs. Thus made, they are as unwholesome to eat as they are repulsive in appearance.
If anyone has a fancy for mixing finely minced ham with the egg batter, they will make a ham omelet; or for surrounding it with stewed kidneys and smearing a little of the sauce thereof about the egg after it is cooked, they will have a kidney omelet; or by pouring rum over it and setting the same on fire, they will have an “Omelet au rhum”; or by sprinkling granulated sugar over it will be an “Omelet sucre”; but all these are simply inventions of the enemy to see how vilely they can ill-treat a good thing, and yet not utterly ruin it.
Graham Biscuits
Take a small sized pan of brown flour, the usual quantity of buttermilk, soda, and salt; mix the two former thoroughly together and having two beaten eggs and a teacupfull of cream, roll out as soft as possible. The stove must be hot for to have light biscuit. (1861)
Vanilla Ice Cream
2 cups sugar
14 oz. Eagle Brand condensed milk (Gail Bordon started making this in 1851 and patented it in 1856)
2 teaspoons vanilla
Pinch of salt
6 eggs beaten
1 pint rich cream
Cold milk
Mix sugar, condensed milk, vanilla, salt, and eggs. Add cream and mix well. Pour into 1 gallon ice cream freezer and add enough milk to fill 2/3 full. Freeze. Makes 1 gallon. (1885)
Miss Carrie’s Plum Pudding
One cup suet chopped fine or ½ cup butter: cup raisins: 1 cup molasses or sugar: 1 cup sour milk: 3 cups flour. 1 table spoonsful cinnamon, ½ teaspoon cloves. 1 teaspoonful soda. Steam three hours. To be eaten with sweetened cream or hard sauce
LETTERS
This is an excerpt from a letter written to Kate Watkins from her brother George while he was studying at Madison University in Hamilton, New York in December 1856.
The letter below is transcribed with original punctuation and spelling.
******************************************
...And now sister Kate are you going to Ky in the Spring if you are I am glad of it for you will see a great sight of curious and pretty things you will also see how fashionable ladies dress and act. They dress very gay and seem very proud and are no doubt as heartless as a brick bat. I dont know whether hoops have yet been introduced in Mo for the special benefit of the ladies. I dont mean barrel hoops but gal hoops. They are really disgusting If you have never seen any you will not understand what they are like. I cant tell you just what they are like but I can tell you the nature of the critur. They are possessed of a certain property that causes a ladys dress to swell to an enormous diminsion so that when two ladies are walking the pavement they have to go indian file and walk one hind tother The young men here who wait on the ladies very often are heard to complain that the hoops are so large they cant get close enough to offer the lady their arm. There is a young man here from mo who was with a young lady a short time since and by some means or other he got his feet entangled in her hoops he struggled like a young mule to extricate himself but with out success for some time at last with a most prodigious bound he cleared the skirts and was free again and then with many apologies and courtesy he begged her pardon for my part I know nothing about it from experience I only know from sight and hearing and I think that is enough...
Letter was written to Mattie Watkins Scruggs in 1875 by her sister Carrie Watkins. Transcribed with original punctuation and spelling.
May 6th, 1875
Dear Sister
I am about “laid up” with the spring fever, so prepare for a lazy letter. I have nothing interesting to write as every thing is so very dull here. The same old monotonous life that you used to know so well It seems to me as if it had always been so and I had lived through it a thousand years with out the slightest variation. The wind coming through the closed shutters is laden with the most melancholy music which gives one the horrors and I feel like jumping up and running off, only I dont know where to run unless I go and hang the cloths out for ‘tis wash day. Father has been so near starved for greens that he has been having dandelions for a substitute. You remember what you used to call them? I tell mother she ought to be ashamed to have such articles served at her table. We have had several meals of asparagus, and I thought it Tasted right well Porter Whorton has purchased an organ for his lovely and accomplished daughters to perform on. I have been reading Children of the Abby aloud to Lizzie. have about finished it, and I sincerely hope I will never come across such another exciting tale. Amanda went through more trials and tribulations than any girl I ever heard of to be both “pretty and smart.” I have a new cage and two bran new squirrels. Have not seen the Gill girls for about a month think they act real shabby about coming to see us. Sallie is corresponding with an old widower in Colorado. (Hush!! not one word of this must be repeated) He has “two sweet little boys” and a very good fortune, and his name is Fry. I have lots of little secrets to divulge if you would only come home like you had some sense. Tell Brother Dick I rode his fine stock to church Sunday but dont think I want to try her any more. her gait is too straight up and down for me. oh, Martha when are you coming home? I almost die with the blues these long days, ought to have you here to fuss at me. If you can read this, you are welcome, too. All send love, be a good girl and keep your nose clean.
Lovingly,
Carrie
Please dont get mad because I wont divide this elegant paper with you. I could write lots more but ‘tis moonlight almost midnight time I was in bed two hours and a half ago.