Cooking in the Days of the Modern Model T

By Ginger Wentrcek

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We all take great pleasure in driving Model Ts like our grandparents or great-grandparents did in the early part of the 20th century. By our modern day standards, life was slower paced and everything seemed so simple. Over the next couple of months, we'll look at cooking methods, home remedies, and fashions from the Model T period and hopefully get a glimpse of life back in the days when Tin Lizzies were the modern cars of the day.

Imagine the owners of those first early cars coming home from work or coming in from the fields and walking into the kitchen to see what was on the stove. Was cooking for a hungry family different then from what it is today?

I purchased a cookbook from an antique store years ago and it gives insight as to how these early families lived. It looked like a great cookbook because, after thumbing through it, there seemed to be a number of good, old-fashioned recipes in it, and they were all submitted by local people. But when I got home and selected a recipe to make, I discovered there were no baking temperatures listed for any of the recipes. What kind of cookbook would omit one of the most important steps in the preparation of a dish? Then, I looked at the publication date . . . aaah . . . 1912. You guessed it, people cooked on wooden stoves back then and this cookbook instructed the homemaker to get the oven real hot for some of the recipes or to set a pan of cold water in the oven to cool it down if it gets too hot.

There were special instructions for using chicken in the recipes. The homemaker was instructed to always keep up a chicken for a day and night without food before killing. Never boil a tough chicken.

Take a look at this recipe. The entire directions for a sponge cake directs the homemaker to take 16 eggs, weigh, and add full weight in sugar and half weight in flour. Flavor. Now what it doesn't say is to check your cholesterol level after you eat this cake.

Most of us know what boiling cabbage smells like. Walk into a kitchen and take a whiff and you know someone either has some pretty bad stomach problems or they are cooking cabbage. The recipe for boiled cabbage says to boil the cabbage in an uncovered vessel in salted water with 1/4 teaspoon soda. If any odor remains, suspend bread over kettle to absorb odor, or change water frequently. There is no mention as to how to suspend the bread over the kettle . . . maybe one of the kids had to stand and hold the bread over the kettle.

Now this was interesting. If the homemaker was going to preserve a lot of peaches, she was instructed to put them in a gallon of boiling water that had a tablespoon of concentrated lye added to it. I thought lye was poisonous. A site on the internet said lye can damage and corrode paint, metal, cloth, plastic, and especially skin. But, back in the days of the early Model Ts, a dash of lye added to water seemed to be the easiest way to peel various types of fruits. Were they saying just a little pinch of poison never hurt anyone? If you are reading this, DO NOT add lye to water to peel fruit - not even a drop - nothing. Use a peeler.

Want to make watermelon preserves? After the pieces of fruit have been boiled in water, remove the fruit and add 1 1/2 pounds of sugar to each pint of juice. Now a pint is just 2 cups . . . can you add 1 1/2 pounds of sugar to 2 cups of juice? Then, the recipe says to cool until the scum quits rising. Doesn't that sound yummy?

There were some excellent recipes in the book and some of our favorites are listed below. And, not a single one has an ingredient that is caustic or poisonous.

        

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