Did you know
This being the 247th Did You Know column I’ve written, I think I have a much better understanding about the people who’ve inhabited Fayette County over the years.
But there is one area about which I’m a little flummoxed. What on earth did those people eat?
It’s probably true that if anybody time-traveled from the late 19th to the 21st century, they’d be just as perplexed about our culinary fare — and the methods we employ to appropriate it.
Who could explain to them our ability to drive up to a microphone, order something that only has a number (“I’ll have the #5, with a Coke”), drive to an open window, pay for it and then pick it up at a second window?
First, we’d have to explain to our time-traveling visitors what a microphone, a #5 and even a car is.
Next, I’d have to explain our inclinations to eat foods that were prepared before we arrive.
But the hardest part would be in trying to explain what a cheeseburger and fries are.
There were no such things back in June of 1889, when the Uniontown Evening Standard published some of the recipes of the time.
“APPETIZING FISH PIE,” was one recipe that doesn’t seem all of that “appetizing” to me.
Another recipe that I’m sure that wouldn’t be for today’s faint of heart was “homemade cottage cheese,” or “schmicrkase,” which was made by taking “loppered” milk and sitting it near or on a fire until it would curd.
That’s not saying that all of the recipes that were published in the 1880s are no longer being made today. I found recipes for cranberry jelly, chicken soup and cauliflower with cheese in the Jan. 11, 1889, edition of the Evening Standard.
But, in many cases, newspapers carried recipes that would probably be aggressively ignored today.
“A FAMOUS RECIPE,” was above the ingredients and methods of making turtle soup, in the Dec. 18, 1896, edition of the Uniontown Daily News Standard.
I’ll admit I’ve never tried turtle soup. Nor would I ever, if it was prepared using that recipe.
“Put in 8 sets of calves feet, and 80 necks of beef.” (This was a reprint of a recipe used by the “Hoboken Turtle Club.” Thus, the enormity of the ingredients)
I was reading along, until a I reached this sentence: “Kill the turtle, scald off the thin outside portion…” and it was off to find a recipe from 1907.
By then, the editors of the Uniontown Morning Herald had somehow realized that women could (I’m saying this with sarcasm) read.
An entire page was devoted, daily, to the interests of homemakers.
“The Women’s Corner” featured menus for breakfasts, lunches and dinners. And there, too, were the popular daily recipes.
The April 30, 1907, edition of the Morning Herald carried recipes for German potato pancakes and spinach salad. But wedged between two recipes, there was an odd one.
“To Make Flypaper,” was a how-to for producing the final resting places for flies.
“A good flypaper can be made by spreading evenly on squares of good, thick blotting paper a mixture of finely ground pepper and thin honey,” it said.
I wonder how many people confused that with an entree?
Back then, the word recipes didn’t have to mean the means and methods to make meals.
Pharmacies weren’t nearly as plentiful as they are today. So, homemade “recipes” to help alleviate all kinds of maladies were published alongside recipes for food.
The “Women’s Corner” in the June 3, 1907, edition of the Morning Herald carried the usual “Menu For The Day,” and recipes for English currant pancakes, and a dessert called “apple Charlotte,” which took an entire two hours to bake. But there was also a recipe that people could use to fight hoarseness.
“The lemon is baked like an apple and a little of the juice squeezed over a lump of sugar,” was the instruction, that just might have made its way to a local dinner table.