PDF Dishes and Beverages of the Old South Illustrated Edition Martha McCullochWilliams Russel Crofoot 9781974538331 Books

Product details Paperback 158 pages Publisher CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (October 2, 2009) Language English ISBN-10 1974538338

Dishes and Beverages of the Old South Illustrated Edition Martha McCullochWilliams Russel Crofoot 9781974538331 Books Reviews

• I bought this as a curious cookbook and it is fantastic. It was originally printed in 1913. So when the author tells of sitting in the kitchen watching Mammy cooking, Mammy may have been a slave.
  It contains a lot of old recipes written in sentence and paragraph style. It has directions written as "Sift a quart of flour with a heaping teaspoonful of baking soda. Add a good pinch of salt, rub well through lard or butter the size of the fist, then wet with sour milk to a moderately soft dough, roll out, working quickly, cut with small round cutter, set in hot pans, leaving room to swell, and bake in a quick oven just below scorching heat." If you want to make these recipes you will have to try to decipher the terminology, This was probably an old iron stove heated with wood or coal.
  There is also good instructions on how to butcher a hog and cut it up and pack in barrels with salt and then smoke in a smoke house, how to judge the best smoke and leave it for 5 to 6 weeks.
  If you are the least bit interested in the past you'll love and it will make you thankful you live in the now with all of our conveniences.
• An interesting montage of old style cooking and vernacular. Many different dishes and items prepared in an old fashion way unlike the modern prepared items we can find in our grocery or specialty stores. Some dishes I've never heard of. I appreciate the collection and may try a few that sounds pleasing to me. Grits goes along with nearly everything on my table and I suggest this book if your adventurous.
• I'm sorry but this book was boring. She wrote in old English and I am educated but it was still hard to read. Her recipes were old time recipes and I wish I could have read them but after wading thru two chapters I just put the book into my bookcase. I wouldn't buy again and I wouldn't pass it on to anyone else.
• I had expected a traditional (both context-wise and style-wise) cook book with recipes which I intended to use purely for research purposes. But this is not a strict "recipe" book. Nor is it a more loosely styled recipe book with text.
  
  It is straight prose styling and absolutely delighful. It contains mountain vernacular - but not to the extreme. The recipes that it contains are narrative - more suggestions - as in "To it was added the whole array of giblets...." and "They made heaps of rich gravy to add to that in the turkey pots".
  
  While you probably wouldn't cook Sunday dinner directly from the book, it will surely make you wish you were back there having Martha McCulloch-Williams do the cooking for you.
• If you read from covere to cover, which most people don't on a cook book, you will notice there are LOTS of old tips and tricks revealed that have not been taught for a long time. Often not the recipe that is important as much as the tips given that make the difference between a good cook and a great cook. I think this is a MUST in every cooks library just for the advice handed down. It's like getting lost secrets and advice from great grandma.
• I am quite sure that I would not be happy with the kichen as described in this book. HOWEVER, there are things in this book that I really, really, really wish we could still have. Raw milk sales are illegal almost everywhere or labeled must be as "pet food". Nobody has a smokehouse full of hams and almost all bacon is flavored by brine injection. Even if your neighbor did have a smokehouse, the government would not allow you to buy anything.
  
  This is a book about real food. I love my fridge and freezer and stovetop burners and temp controlable oven. Sometimes I even appreciate the microwave. I just wish we all had a better grasp of what it takes to put a meal on the table and the freedom to choose what we want.
• I really enjoyed this book. So much in it that I remember "the old folks" talking about 50 + years ago.
• The antebellum Southern table, kitchen, entertaining and homemaking well written and described. The recipes and menu ideas are there to boot!