Pecan Pie - A Day to Celebrate!

While working on my breakfast recipe histories I got sidetracked this afternoon. Reading a paper by Andrew Smith on the history of pecans, he mentioned a 1925 cookbook published by the Keystone Pecan Research Laboratory. For years I've encountered numerous references each commenting that the first pecan pie recipe using corn syrup was published in 1925, but no reference to cookbook, nor recipe.

Once before I thought I had located the recipe, in a magazine published in the fall of 1925. A copy of the issue I was seeking was missing in the University of Washington libraries - that whole issue removed from the compiled magazines. Locating a copy in the New York Public Library, I asked my friend, maestro, David Maddux (living in Brooklyn), if he'd go check out the issue for me. He graciously and gladly spent several hours sleuthing for me, but upon reviewing the recipe, alas, no corn syrup. I was at a loss for additional places to look, until this afternoon.

Today, locating a copy of this in-depth compilation of pecan recipes online, "800 Proved Pecan Recipes: Their Place in the Menu" (Keystone Pecan Company, Research Laboratory::Manheim PA) 1925, I quickly downloaded, then examined the recipes for Pecan Pie. Trembling with excitement, turning page after page, I was getting worried, viewing numerous pie recipes, but no recipe using corn syrup, then, with 3 pages to go in the chapter, there it was, "Molasses Pie", p270! 

I've been looking for this recipe for years. It was my curiosity regarding the origins of pecan pie which set me off on this mad journey tracing the history and evolution of recipes. It'll be sometime before this sees print in the work I'm writing, so I'll share the recipe with you here - in a few years, you can read the context and history surrounding it when that volume of history gets published. Without further ado:

[1925] Molasses Pie

1/2 C. sugar                                    1/4 t. salt

2 T. butter                                       1 t. almond extract

2 eggs                                             1 C. white Karo syrup

2 T. flour                                         1 1/2 C. chopped pecans  

Cream butter and sugar, add beaten eggs, flour, salt, extract, and syrup. Stir well. Add pecans,

pour in a crust and bake 1/2 hour in a moderate oven.

-- Mrs. Gus. O. Selbensen

Thank you Mrs Selbensen. Over the years I've found I prefer almond extract to vanilla. I like the stronger taste of dark corn syrup to the use of white. There is actually a lot more to say about this recipe, its predecessors, its popularity on the American culinary scene, but, for the moment, the recipe is no longer lost!

Pâte à Choux

Pâte à Choux? I don't know if you have ever hear of it, but it was a new concept to me. I have now learned that it is a sophisticated, yet simple pastry dough. And though the name is French, it is really much older. I've traced it all the way back to Egyptian Pharaohs and Roman cookery.

In Julia Child's famed cookbook, she identifies Choux paste as a basic recipe, comparing its importance to baking as Bechamel sauce is to saucery.

“Pâte à Choux is one of those quick, easy, and useful preparations like béchamel sauce which every cook should know how to make.” 

It is a twice-cooked dough, initially made on the stove-top, mixing flour into heated liquids, cooling it a bit, adding eggs, then dividing it into individual pastries for further baking, frying or boiling, resulting in a fabulous array of delicious pastries. It is used in many familiar, and even more unfamiliar, pastries. Éclairs and Beignets may be the most well known, While it sounds challenging and difficult to use, in reality it is a relatively simple dough to make and use, whether baking or frying. I explore its history, then leap into other recipes which use it, bringing it to your table.

Pork Cake

I continue to be busy writing recipe histories (which should consume a lot of my time for the foreseeable future), spending some time this week exploring Chelsea Buns, Cinnamon Rolls and Sticky Buns. Still trying to determine what differences, if any, exist between Cinnamon Rolls and Sticky Buns. For those who have never heard of Chelsea Buns (until writing this history I was in that group), they are the probable parent of baked spiral or coiled pastries, such as Cinnamon Rolls and Sticky Buns.

In reviewing many a cookbook I often encounter unexpected recipes. Today I present Pork Cake. At the moment I don't anticipate trying to trace its history.

[1882] Pork Cake

One pound salt pork, chopped fine, one pint boiling water, two pounds raisins, one pound currants, two cups brown, sugar, one cup molasses, one tablespoon soda, five teaspoons cinnamon, two cloves, one nutmeg .and one lemon. - Mrs. Smith [De Graf, Belle, “California Practical Cook Book”, p28 (Pacific Press Publishing Co::Oakland CA)]

I don't find the salt pork appealing, but if swapped out for bacon, who knows.
-------
Update 17 Sep 2015

Ok, I've tried some salt pork, added it to a home-made slow-cooked Bean Soup. OMG, so good, really added to the flavor, and was good itself. Never thought I'd enjoy eating blobs of fat, but so tender and flavorful. I will have to try salt pork in other ways. With this recipe, maybe not, but now I have to think about it.

You can make English Muffins at home, who knew? A Chef Rufus Estes recipe ...

I've pretty much wrapped up writing my history of English Muffins, the parent of the sweet quick muffin eaten across the United States. Most Americans, if they eat English Muffins, buy them, but recipes have been published since the mid-1700s. They have a long history of being made in the home, though some of those early kitchens more closely resembled the one at Downton Abbey. This is one of the recipe clippings which didn't make the final cut, but an excellent recipe never-the-less, so I'm sharing it with you. 

    The author of this recipe was a distinguished African-American chef, serving U.S. Steel's Executive Dining Room at their Chicago Headquarters, when he penned this recipe. Rufus Estes had been born a slave, worked for a long stretch on Pullman cars, beginning as an attendant, but rising to the position of Chef, during which he served Presidents Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland.

[1911] English Muffins

One pint milk, two level tablespoons shortening (butter or lard), two level teaspoons sugar, one level teaspoon salt, one yeast cake dissolved in one-fourth cup lukewarm water, flour. Scald the milk and add the shortening, sugar, and salt. When lukewarm add the yeast and sufficient flour to make a good batter. Here one's judgment must be used. Beat well and let rise until double in bulk. Warm and butter a griddle and place on it buttered muffin rings. Fill not quite half full of the batter, cover and cook slowly until double, then heat the griddle quickly and cook for about ten minutes, browning nicely underneath. Then turn them and brown the other side. When cool split, toast and butter. [Estes, Rufus, “Good Things to Eat”, p81 (Printed by the Author::Chicago IL)]

Selecting which recipes to include in my book to illustrate a recipe's history is challenging. While this ended up in the leftovers, it is a great recipe, one which should not be neglected (I'll be sharing Chef Estes's story with another recipe).

Learn the whole story of the English Muffin in my book.

Announcing the Sleuthing of the recipes of Breakfast

I have begun submitting my cookbook tracing the origin and evolution of Breakfast recipes to publishers. I still haven't settled on a title, so would welcome ideas. Eatamology, Edimology, Recipe Sleuthing, Origins and Evolution of Recipes? But how does Breakfast, or other themed recipes get into the title?

As one of my friend's describes it, I've been sleuthing the origin of recipes and their subsequent changes. He is correct, researching these recipe origins is like being a detective, examining cookbooks centuries old to newly published, combing through literature, letters, diaries, newspapers, magazines, plays, songs and more, scattered through the attics and chests of the internet, as well as shelves, archives and dust bins of libraries from around the world. Clues may be obscure, but they are everywhere.

And what happened is influenced by not only cooks of yesteryear, but the trade of nations, daily and seasonal weather (accumulatively known as climate), the ever-changing technologies of food preparation, preservation, transportation and more, as well as the continual evolution of individual taste. The encounters between the civilizations of the eastern and western hemispheres which began with the voyages of Columbus totally revamped the cuisines of the world. The influence of the foods of the Aztec, Maya and Inca continue to echo in the kitchens of today. Can one imagine Italian food without tomatoes, many Asian cuisines without the hot spicy flavors provided by chili peppers, Southern cooking without cornbread, sweet potatoes or grits, Thanksgiving without turkey, cranberry sauce or pies pumpkin and pecan, a summer evening without corn-on-the-cob, or a world without chocolate?

Originally my intention was to write ONE book tracing hundreds of recipes, but most recipes require several to many pages to detail their individual stories (I already have many hundreds of pages drafted). I recently decided to not give up on my vision, but rather to rescope, and am now planning a series of books, each focused around a common recipe theme, the exact shape of the series remains in flux. The recipes of Breakfast will be the first theme to exit my word processor.

Each recipe opens with one or more quotes, a brief description, an introduction, a modern interpretation, then dives into the biology, history, etymology, archaeology, technologies, and the so many other influences on why that recipe came into being at that time. Then, each recipe is traced through time, with one or more versions, variations per century, with explanations exploring and reviewing any changes. In closing, one or more additional modern interpretations or variations are again shared, along with a thought about the recipe's future.

Not every recipe I have discovered in my research can be included in my book(s), but even so, many of them should not be forgotten, so some which are cut, not making the final copy, will find a home here, the 'clippings' left on the editing floor, so to speak. I will be sharing those leftovers here, once I persuade myself that any given recipe won't make the cut to be part of the narrative I am weaving and explaining.

Bon appetit,

When did the idea for the hole in a doughnut, or bagel, occur?

Researching and writing history is akin to working a crossword puzzle or sleuthing a murder mystery. Clues are provided, each of which have to be tracked down and further researched.

In answer to the question in my title, no one really knows, nor ever will, but we can speculate.

Recently, beginning to figure out the history of the bagel, I began reading Maria Balinska's "The Bagel". In talking about ring-shaped baked goods of the past she mentioned the "twice-baked circular buccellatum" which was a staple of the Roman Centurions. There are so many clues in those few words. She had already mentioned that the buccellatum had a hole in their center - and I have recently been chasing the origins of the doughnut (and bagel) holes. Twice-baked or course could be a choux pastry, which is the foundation dough for many delicate and elegant pastries, including eclairs, beignets and fritters. Circular, just adds to the mental image of a doughnut or a bagel.

So, looking through my reference histories and using google to browse the internet, I ended up learning about the kaak, or kahk, depending on the source, the Arabic word for a pastry popular in Egypt and throughout the middle East - it is part of Christmas and Easter celebrations of the Coptic Christians, and Muslims enjoy it when they celebrate the end of Ramadan. However, its roots go back to the days of the Pharoahs, the XVIIIth dynasty to be more exact. Archaeologists have found tomb paintings which depict the making of a pastry, using a choux-like dough which resembles today's kaak.

I have already been attuned to another archaeologist who found remains in the Oklahoma panhandle of acorn cakes shaped as rings, like our modern day doughnut. While the Oklahoma acorn cakes would not be in the lineage of today's doughnut or bagel, the kaak could be. I'm working with the museum which houses the collection from the digs to get a better handle on the dating of the acorn cakes find.

One of my next steps is to try to locate those tomb pictures of the Egyptian pastry, as well as learn more about the buccellatum and the kaak.

I'm still asking questions and seeking answers. To learn of my results, read my book tracing the history of Breakfast recipes. No, its not yet in print, but I have begun submitting it to publishers. I am confident that a publisher will see the merit in my work and want to include it as part of their publishing catalog. When one does so, I'll let you know here. Until then, its back to my research and writing. I'll drop more tales of the trails I'm chasing and exploring as I continue to learn and record recipe histories.