Another old method of food preservation, Mrs Andrea begins her chapter with an anecdote about her grandmother not knowing the dangers of bacteria when drying out apples in her garden shed. Dried fruit is still today a very common way to consume out-of-season produce, and many consider it a healthy candy alternative. Mrs Andrea suggests […]
This penultimate chapter begins with the advantages and disadvantages of salting as a preservation method for vegetable products — as one of the oldest ways of preserving vegetables, it is flexible and requires very little hands-on attention. One can use any container when salting, and Mrs Andrea suggests that the method is best saved for […]
Mrs Andrea’s chapter on canning meats begins with a warning: “In no kind of canning is it more important that each step in the process be carried out promptly than in canning meats.” Returning to her conversational style, she suggests that “if you have a farmer friend find out when he is planning to market […]
Canned fish is common today — it is cheap, easy to transport, pre-cooked and easily procured. However, it is less commonly made in the home, according to Mrs Andrea. The most important point to note, she suggests, is that “fish should never be canned if there is the slightest doubt of its being fresh.” A […]
Soup is easy to make — I know it, and can be backed up by Mrs Andrea. She offers recipes for different meat stocks, and uses these as a base for all recipes. Even the vegetable soups use beef stock, which brings to mind questions about vegetarianism and its lack of prevalence during this period, […]
This is another of the few chapters that include photos — this time of fruits canned in honey in place of sugar. Photos are printed on thicker, shinier paper which is reminiscent of card stock. This chapter introduction brings the reader to the exact timeframe in which Mrs Andrea was producing this book — she […]
Another short chapter, this is one that I would love to try making all the recipes from — they include ginger beer, elderberry wine and pineapple syrup. According to Mrs Andrea, the purpose of a syrup is to make sure of the fruit that is not in a perfect condition. This way, no fruit is […]
Pickling is one food preservation technique that many people still carry out today. Even in student-aimed recipe books, instructions are provided for making kimchee and sauerkraut, both of which use pickling techniques. This section has a comparatively small introduction relative to the sheer amount of recipes — all of which are similar, using the vegetable, […]
Jelly making is an art, according to Mrs Andrea. Reading the recipes in this section, what this recipe book calls a “jelly,” I would have grown up calling a jam — the section brought to mind memories of trying our hardest to make strawberry jam in our kitchen, using pectin and burning the fruit so […]
This chapter is just two pages long, but interesting as a “fruit butter” is perhaps not something we are accustomed to seeing or making. Mrs Andrea begins by saying: “This is a popular way to do up fruit, especially useful where school lunches are to be prepared.” The acknowledgement of the fact that these are […]