Popular Dainties

A 48 page booklet, Popular Dainties, was written by Mrs. Minnie Sanner of Lorain, Ohio in 1906. The booklet contained recipes for salads, relishes, garnishes, beverages and desserts. The same publication was given away by churches, clubs, and civic groups, but the individual organizations could put in their own advertising pages. The Sandusky edition of Popular Dainties contained advertisements from Sandusky area businesses.

Page 6 features several recipes with fruit and vegetables.

Recipes for several varieties of egg salad are found on page 14.

Notice the ad for expensive shoes at the bottom of the page. A $3.50 pair of shoes was the equivalent of $100 today. 

Instructions for how to make India Vinegar and French Fondant are found on page 34.

The last three pages of Popular Dainties were devoted to suggestions for church suppers, including several Mexican and Asian dishes.

You can read the Carson City, Nevada version of Popular Dainties at the Internet Archive.

The Enterprising Housekeeper

The 1897 edition of The Enterprising Housekeeper, by Helen Louise Johnson, was published by the Enterprise Manufacturing Co. of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The 80 page booklet featured recipes for breakfast, lunch and supper. Also included in the booklet were advertisements for household goods that were manufactured by the Enterprise Manufacturing Company. Coffee mills, irons, raisin seeders, and ice mills are just some of the products which were made by the Enterprise Manufacturing Co.

Helen Louise Johnson was educated at the Philadelphia Cooking School. She wrote a chapter on “Cooking as an Art” for the Congress of Women which was held at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The Enterprising Housekeeper was printed in several editions between 1896 and 1906. Copies were carried by hardware stores and general merchandise stores all across the United States. The 1897 edition sold for fifty cents, and was carried locally by the J. J. Butts & Son Hardware Store.

The J. J. Butts store was on Columbus Avenue in Sandusky, Ohio from 1892 until May of 1920. Mr. Butts was considered a pioneer hardware merchant of Sandusky, having first worked for Barney and Ferris. His first business operated under the name of Butts and Whitworth from 1881 through 1892. Mr. J. J. Butts died on September 15, 1927, and he is buried in Oakland Cemetery.

A local resident donated a copy of The Enterprising Housekeeper to the Archives Research Center of the Sandusky Library. If you have vintage booklets or photographs, consider donating them to the Archives Research Center for future generations to enjoy.

Congregational Church Cookbook

In 1909 a committee was formed to publish a cookbook by the members of the Congregational Church in Sandusky. It was printed by the Register Publishing Company.The preface read, in part: “We endorse all the literature between these covers, and hope that young housekeepers may find it a subtle oil for the cog-wheels of domestic machinery, and that older housewives may find it a refuge when harassed by the cry, ‘Can we never have anything new?’” The cookbook is filled with recipes that are arranged in over twenty categories. Throughout the book are blank pages, so that owner of the book could add their own recipes to the book. There is an index at the back of the book, and many advertisements from local businesses are scattered all through the cookbook.  Below is an excerpt from page 20,  which gives information about how to make roast meat and gravy.

Accompanying the recipe for almond cookies is a poem about how many weary mothers wish for a cookie bush or a doughnut tree.

Five ways to prepare cabbage are provided on this page from the vegetable section of the Congregational Church Cookbook.

Koehler Brothers and Weier Brothers were just two of the local companies that placed advertisements in the cookbook.

Looking through the pages of the Congregational Church Cookbook gives us a look into the lives of past residents of Sandusky, indicating where they may have shopped and what kind of meals they made for their families. Visit the Sandusky Library Archives Research Center to view this vintage cookbook.

Books to Help the Sandusky Homemaker in the 19th Century

In 1874, Mrs. Oran Follett, the former Eliza Gill, wrote a book entitled The Young Housekeeper’s Assistant, published by the press of the Register Steam Printing Company. Mrs. Follett wrote in the introduction to the book, that the book was written from the perspective of an experienced housekeeper, who had “endeavored with patience and economy to minister to the wants of a family.” All recipes were intended to be practical, and had been tested by Mrs. Follett or by other experienced housekeepers. A recipe for graham flour gems is found on page nine:

Instructions on how to pickle tongues is included in the meat section:

       

Tips on house cleaning, laundry, and mending were included The Young Housekeeper’s Assistant, as well as information on how to care for the sick. Several recipes for cough syrup are found on page 134.  

Another book for Sandusky homemakers was published in 1888 by I.F. Mack, the publisher and editor of the Sandusky Register. The book, The Sandusky House-Keeper, was created as a fund raising project of the Ladies’ Library Association of Sandusky. Housekeepers from Sandusky and beyond contributed to the cookbook, including Mrs. Follett, the author of the Young Housekeeper’s Assistant. Salad dressings and a recipe for “cold slaw” are found on pages 162-163.

At the top of page 159, in the section of the book which featured recipes for salads and pickles, is a funny quotation by Douglas Jerrold: “My dear Mr. Pepper, how glad you must be to see all your friends mustered.” Well known banker Jay Cooke contributed to the chapter that includes additional recipes. He gave instructions on how to fry trout, a skill he probably used quite often.

In the back of The Sandusky House-Keeper is a section of lined blank pages, where the owner of each book could jot down additional recipes. As in The Young Housekeeper’s Assistant, there were several pages devoted to housekeeping tips and caring for the sick. These two books show us the types of meals that may have been prepared by our ancestors, and provide an indication of the way housekeepers handled daily chores in a bygone era. Both The Sandusky House-keeper and The Young Housekeeper’s Assistant were included in a bibliography entitled Preserving the History of United States Agriculture and Rural Life: State and Local Literature, 1820-1945, compiled by The Ohio State University in 2004.

Mrs. Willard A. Bishop’s Cookbook

Mrs. Mary Mathews Bishop was born about 1857 in Worcester, Massachusetts, and moved to Sandusky with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. John Matthews. She married Sandusky photographer Willard A. Bishop in 1884. She was an active member of Grace Episcopal Church.

Mrs. Willard A. Bishop’s cookbook was given to the Sandusky Library’s historical collections in 1985, from the Estate of Ethel Herman. Most of the recipes were handwritten, but a few were clipped from printed sources and pasted in the book. Some of the names of the recipes are unfamiliar to today’s world, such as “calves head hash” and “ragged britches,” which was a combination of milk, lard, soda, and salt that was combined and then fried. Often the title of the recipe reflected the person who gave it to Mrs. Bishop, including “Em Keyes’ Cocoanut Cake” and “Fannie Melville’s Sheet Cake.”

Below is a recipe for Oyster Cocktails (top of page).

Transcribed:

Oyster Cocktails

To ½ doz. oysters (Blue Pearls preferred) add one tablespoon of catsup, ½ teaspoon Worcestshire sauce, one dash of horseradish, lemon juice, salt and red pepper to suit taste.

(Mrs. Peterson’s Receipt)

It is interesting to read the various ingredients and cooking terms listed in Mrs. Bishop’s cookbook. In the era it was written, home cooked meals were the norm, and dining out occurred  only for special occasions. Mrs. Bishop died in 1925, and Willard A. Bishop in 1942. Both are buried in Oakland Cemetery. Mr. Willard A. Bishop’s obituary in the 1942 Obituary Notebook provides a detailed look at his sixty year career as a photographer in Sandusky.