Review: New England Breakfast Breads, Luncheon and Tea Biscuits, 1891

 

Swett Lucia Gray. New England Breakfast Breads Luncheon and Tea Biscuits. Boston, Lee and Shepard 1891.

The illustration opposite the title page of a New England kitchen that was already anachronistic when the book was published. 

The picture of a woman cooking over a fireplace reflected nostalgia for a way of cooking used by colonial grandmothers.  In 1891 housewives much more likely to do their cooking one of the coal or wood-burning kitchen stoves that were common in the late 19th century.

Lucia Gray Swett’s cookbook is a carefully written and original book.  In an era where recipes were often copied word-for-word from one cookbook to another she introduces the book by saying, “Nearly all these recipes have been in one New England family several years, many of them half a century. There are only a few exceptions, and these I have carefully tried.”

The author also promises that, “If the directions seem too explicit, it is because I have tried to word the recipes so that they could be understood by a young housekeeper or made by any one not experienced in cooking.”  This is followed by detailed instructions for working with yeast, mixing, kneading, rising, shaping, and baking bread.  These include instructions on how to manage a coal-fired oven while baking.

It is unfortunate that there are no illustrations.  Many recipes for various rolls are similar but either shaped a unique way.  In order to replicate these it would be helpful to see that a picture of the final bread.  Others are baked in special pans, like gem pans or gem roll pans.  Images for these are fairly easy to track down online.  Collectors of cast iron cookware or digitized mail order catalogs contain helpful pictures.

1912 Sears Roebuck catalog

There are fairly routine yeast bread recipes, but the quick breads recipe dominate in so many varieties. There are small breads shaped like scones or American biscuits, fried breads, breads baked in little tins, breads baked in cake times, waffles, griddle cakes (or pancakes),  In additional to wheat flour there are recipes calling for rye flour and graham flour.  A wide range of recipes calling for the addition of rice or potatoes or hominy or oatmeal  Indian meal (corn meal) is the main ingredient in fourteen recipes.  And, of course, because this is a Boston cookbook, there are many recipes for Boston brown bread.  I decided to try out one of the recipes for blueberry bread.

My version is a fairly straightforward interpretation of the published recipe. Because home kitchen ovens at time did not have a thermostat to regulate oven temperature, I’ve guessed at a likely temperature.

Blueberry Bread
1 egg
3/4 cup milk
2 cups flour
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
pinch salt
2 tablespoons melted butter
1 cup blueberries, fresh or defrosted frozen

Beat the egg until light.  Toss the berries with 1 tablespoon of the flour.  Sift together the remaining flour, baking powder, sugar and salt.  Alternately add the sifted dry ingredients and the milk to the beaten egg.  Fold in the berries. pour the batter into a greased cake pan and back at 350° F. (175° C.) and back for about 35 minutes or until the bread pulls away from the sides and is lightly browned.

The result looked very nice and the texture was great, but the flavor was a bit bland.  Increasing the salt to 1/2 might help.  Also, adding spice, such as cinnamon or cardamom, would give a bit of interest.