Eating Like a Tenement Family: Day 4

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Fried Polenta!

Breakfast: Fried Polenta and Scalded Milk

Instead on Ms. Corson’s suggested breakfast of Rice Panada, I decided to save a little money by frying up slices of polenta left over from last night’s dinner. This preparation is another suggested meal in Fifteen Cent Dinners, so I’m not straying too far from the path here.

I sliced the cold polenta about 1/2in-1 in thick, and fried them in a skillet with 1 tablespoon hot butter (.15 cents). The edges were crispy and buttery, although a little plain. It could have used some cheese or maple syrup.

Cost: .40 cents

A couple hours later, I was in the shower, and got woozy. Then nauseous. And I had to sit down until the feeling passed.

Now, I want to point out that I’m a videographer by trade, and my work is largely sedentary. Long hours of editing require me to sit on my butt all day. So if I feel woozy on this diet, I cannot imagine how a full-grown male, working 12-15 hour shifts rolling barrels at the Fulton Fish Market would fair.

Lunch: Salt Pot-au-Feu

“Salt Pot-au-feu-Put one and a half pounds of Salt pork (cost eighteen cents,) in three quarts of cold water; bring it slowly to a boil. and skim it well; when it has boiled fifteen minutes, put in with it a two or three cent head of cabbage…and boil both steadily for half an hour…”

After the shower incident, I decided it was time to make lunch. I had not yet had a chance to go to the grocery store, so I had to substitute the salt pork with 3 slices of bacon (about .90 cents) I let them brown up in a pan, then threw half an onion (.05 cents) into the rendered fat. I let it cooked about five more minutes, then added 1/4 of a white cabbage (.33 cents), salt, pepper, and about 2 tablespoons of cider vinegar (about .02 cents). I covered it over with water and let the whole mess boil for 15 minutes. I choked down about half. I saved the broth for supper and tomorrow’s breakfast.

Cost: $1.30

Supper: Lentils Stewed in Stock

I cooked 1/2 cup of lentils (.27 cents) according to the package directions, using the stock left over from lunch as the cooking water. I ate about half of them, before feeling full and uninterested. Simultaneously, I still feel hungry. I also allowed myself one slice of bread (.07 cents).

The cider that I added to the broth at lunch gave the stock a really weird taste. I’m not saving it for breakfast tomorrow.

Cost: .34 cents

I also had an extra cup of milk (.25 cents) and an apple (.33 cents)

Total Cost: $2.04
Approximate Calories Consumed: 796
Running Total: $8.06- $8.60

Try This At Home: Spruce Beer

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From American Cookery by Amelia Simmons, 1798.

Two friends of mine are attempting to make Spruce Beer, a very old recipe for homemade beer. In America’s early days, Beer was an indispensable household drink, being an important source of fresh water, calories, and in the case of spruce beer, vital nutrients received from the boiling of spruce branches.

Simmon’s recipe uses essence of spruce, which can be purchased in most brewing stores. Or, you can make your own by boiling spruce branches in with the hops, which is a great source of vitamin C. I’ve tried to make this recipe once before and it tasted like ass, but I made a few mistakes that my friends are correcting in their recipe.

Their photo slide show tells the story; they’re bottling their brew this Saturday, and tasting it in another couple weeks. I’ll give you the full report when I have it.

***
Spruce Beer

Ingredients

3 gallons distilled water
48 fl oz blackstrap molasses
2.5oz Fuggles hop pellets
1 tbs spruce essence
1 tsp yeast nutrient
1 packet Nottingham yeast

Supplies

Stock pot with lid
Big Spoon
Thermometer
a few small bowls, such as Pyrex measuring bowls
Fermenter (lidded food-grade pail & bubbler)
Ice
Spray bottle with distilled water
small quantity of vodka

Sanitize everything within a 35 block radius. Put 2 gallons of water into stock pot. Add all molasses to the pot and stir until dissolved. Turn heat on and bring to a boil, stirring frequently. some time while the pot is heating place the third gallon of water and the spruce essence In the fermentor, shaking it vigorously for a few minutes (this adds oxygen into the water.) Once the water has reached a boil, add 2oz of hops pellets. There will be a hot break once the hops are added (the pot will foam) so spray the hot break with the spray bottle to keep it from foaming over. Dissolve the yeast nutrient in a small quantity of water. 5 minutes after the hops pellets were added, add the yeast nutrient. Continue to boil for 10 minutes.

Remove the pot from the stove and place in an ice water bath in the sink. Keep the lid on the pot at this point to keep contaminants out. Use the thermometer to monitor the temperature – once the temperature drops down to around 100 degrees, activate the yeast. Follow the directions on the packet, which will tell you to put the packet and a quantity of warm water in a small bowl and wait 15 minutes.

Pour the liquid contents of the pot into the fermenter, making sure not to dump the sludge from the bottom of the pot in too. Give the pot a quick rinse to get rid of the sludge. Pour (most of) the liquid back and fourth between the pot and fermenter 4-5 times to add more oxygen to the environment. The liquid should end up in the fermenter.

Pour in the activated yeast bowl into the fermenter. Put the lid on the fermenter. Fill the 2 chambers of the bubbler with vodka and insert it into the fermenter lid.

Place the container in a cool place, and wait a week. After 2-3 days if the bubbler is not happily bubbling away, you have likely done a disservice to your yeast and it is dead. You can grab another packet of yeast and get a good culture growing and then add it into the fermenter.

If it does bubble, you should spend this week reflecting on life and catching up on your favorite television episodes.

(thanks to Zaite and Mark S.)

Eating Like a Tenement Family: Day 3

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Stewed Tripe.

Breakfast: Toasted Bread and Scalded Milk

Pretty much as it sounds, because nothing wakes me up in the morning like warm milk. Although, I presume they’re boiling all of their milk because pasteurization wasn’t around yet, and there was a contaminated milk crisis in New York City.

Cost: .32 cents

Lunch: Stewed Tripe

Like most middle-class Americans, I’ve had very little experience with offal. Our affluence has afforded us the luxury to ignore organ meats in favor of the succulent muscles of our animal friends. But not today!


“Stewed Tripe.-Cut in small pieces one pound of tripe. (cost eightcents,) half a quart each of potatoes and onions, (cost of both five cent) and put them in layers in a pot, seasoning them with one table-spoonful of salt, and one level teaspoonful of pepper; mix quarter of a pound of flour with water, gradually using three pints of water, and pour it over the stew: (the flour and seasoning will cost two cents) put the pot over the fire and boil if gently for an hour and a half.”

I have had tripe (cow stomach) once before, in a Philadelphia Pepper Pot stew, and it was like springy, tasteless chicken.

I told myself to stop being a baby and went to wash the tripe (.48 cents). Just the feel of it was enough to turn my stomach–like used Kleenex soaked in baby oil. I prepared the tripe using these instructions. I’m assuming its so important to wash and sterilize it because of the risk of digestive tract bacteria; germ theory was probably not something a Tenement family would be familiar with.

It smelled like a fish tank when it was boiling. Or like a cat pooped in a sandbox.

When I was slicing up the tripe, I wasn’t sure if it would be best to go with small pieces, that might melt away into the broth, or larger pieces I could pick out if I wanted. I decided to go small, and also cut up two medium potatoes (.34 cents) and half of an onion (.05 cents). I added the onion to my pot first, to let it get a little color, then the tripe, and lastly the potatoes. I added a little salt and ground pepper.

I had saved the water in which I had boiled the macaroni the night before. Corson recommends drinking the starchy water for breakfast; while I wasn’t up for that, I couldn’t let all those nutrients go to waste. I whisked in 1/4 cup of flour and poured it in my soup pot. I brought the mix to a boil, then turned it down and let it simmer for 30 mins, until the potatoes were tender. It thickened considerably, but still maintaned that fish tank smell.

In the end, I am a big puss. I could handle one bite of the gummy organ meat; It really had some flavor that I associate with contaminated water. I ate out the potatoes, trying to taste them as little as possible.

Cost: .87 cents

Supper: Polenta

“This favorite Itallian dish is closely related to the hasty pudding of New England, and the mush of the South. “

After this afternoon, I was relieved to have something unchallenging for dinner. Polenta is easy and about one of the cheapest foods you can make, costing about .05 a serving. It can be made with water, milk, or leftover stock; and is improved by the addition of onions or cheese.

I made a third of this recipe for polenta. I ate half, and stored the rest away in the fridge for tomorrow. It was great.

Cost: .32 cents

Also had my daily apple and lemon half.

Total Cost: 1.96
Approximate Calories Consumed: 800

Running Total: 6.02-6.56

How to Cook a Wolf

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I came across this excerpt and commentary on How to Cook A Wolf (1942), a book by food writer M.F.K Fisher, that I think is appropriate to my Tenement experiment:

“The book was written when wartime shortages had compounded the problems of the Depression, and Fisher offers sensible advice in each chapter about how to make do, provide nutrition, and even enjoy oneself at table. Along the way she illuminates her times. For true emergencies, the essay “How to Stay Alive” ponders what’s needed spiritually and nutritionally to survive on what was a few cents a day in her time. It includes a recipe for making a slumgullion of “ground whole-grain cereal,” a tiny amount of cheap meat, and loads of vegetables (“wilted and withered things a day old maybe…[or] the big coarse ugly ones”), stewed three or more hours.

‘I know, from some experience,’ she says, ‘[that it] holds enough vitamins and minerals and so on and so forth to keep a professional strong-man or a dancer or even a college professor in good health and equable spirits. The main trouble with it, as with any enforced and completely simple diet, is its monotony. It must be considered, then, as a means to an end, like ethyl gasoline, which can never give much esthetic satisfaction to its purchaser or the automobile it is meant for but is almost certain to make that automobile run smoothly.’

All this sounds more applicable with each morning’s news. “

In the 1870s, proteins and fats had been discovered and taken into nutritional consideration, but vitamins had not yet made an appearance. It’s interesting that by the 1940s, vegetables are introduced as part of a poor man’s diet. But even today, it’s fresh produce that can be prohibitively expensive on a budget. The most expensive item of food I’ve bought so far is a bag of apples, and I anticipate my daily intake of fruit will put me far over budget.

The entire article on historic food writing is intriguing, and is on a blog that is quickly becoming one of my favorites: The Education of Oronte Chum

Eating like a Tenement Family: Day 2

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Breakfast: Broth and Bread:

On the subject of broth, Juliet Corson has this to say:

“I wish to call your attention to the following important fact. The hardy and thrifty working classes of France, the country where the most rigid economy in regard to food is practiced, never use tea or coffee for breakfast, and seldom use milk. Their food and drink is BROTH.”

With this is mind, I pulled last night’s broth from the refrigerator, and poured it into a mug to be reheated in the microwave. It smelled like farts, and there was some sludgy stuff on the bottom I decided I couldn’t stomach, so I threw that out. I added a little water to thin the rest out.

I toasted a slice of bread as well, from a loaf of fresh-baked Italian bread that cost .99 cents. It works out to about .07 cents a slice.

All in all, the broth wasn’t bad. It tasted like a rich soup, which is not necessary what I want to eat first thing in the morning, but it made the hunger headache I’ve had since last night go away. I felt full, but not really satisfied. I give breakfast broth a B+, although I think it will grow on me.

Cost: .07 cents.

Lunch: Baked Beans

I decided it wasn’t cost effective to make baked beans from scratch, as it was very labor intensive and used many items that I don’t usually have in my pantry. So instead, I opened a can of Campbell’s Brown Sugar and Bacon Baked Beans, cost .59 cents. Done and done.

Cost: .59 cents

Supper: Macaroni with Cheese

“Boil half a pound of macaroni…put it into a pudding dish in layers with quarter of a pound of cheese, (cost four cents,) grated and mixed between the layers; season it with pepper and salt to taste; put a very little butter and some bread crumbs over it, and brown it in the oven. It will make just as hearty and strengthening a meal as meat, and will cost about twelve cents.”

Ms. Corson suggests boiling the macaroni with an onion in the water; I have also read other recipes in which you add Mace, a spice made from the shell of the nutmeg. Mace has got a real kick to it, and is often hard to find in modern grocery stores. I’ve decided to add 1/2 tsp of red pepper flakes to impart a similar flavor.

My roommates were home, so I made a full recipe following Ms. Corson’s directions. 8 oz of macaroni costs about .80 cents, and 1/4 lb of cheddar cheese costs about $1.50. I also used 1/8 stick butter (.15 cents) and a sprinkling of bread crumbs which I had in my pantry. The recipe makes about four adult-sized servings, at a cost of .61 cents each. With enough salt and pepper, it was tastey and fairly flavourful.

Cost: .61 cents

I also ate one apple (.33 cents) and half of a lemon (.12 cents)

Day 2 Total Cost: $1.72
Approximate Calories Consumed: 995

Cost to Date: $4.06-$4.60

Note that all prices are based on a New York grocery store; they will vary by location. Today was better, although for the most part I feel headachey and and somewhat nauseous. I couldn’t imagine doing 12-14 hours of heavy labor on this diet; but I supposed sometimes you just do what you gotta do.

New York, New Year Cakes

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My friend over at New York, Circa 1850 has made some rather pretty New York Cakes, which are traditionally served to New Year’s Day callers.

Here’s what she has to say about the finished product:
“The flavors (nutmeg, cinnamon, rosewater, and caraway seeds) are a bit jarring to the modern palate and the cakes are barely sweet; it has taken me a day or so to find them rather pleasant after all.”

Eating Like a Tenement Family: Day 1

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Corned Beef with Cabbage.

Breakfast: Boiled Rice with Scalded Milk
There was no recipe given for Rice with Scalded Milk, so I added 1/2 cup of rice (this item was already in my pantry, but costs about .39 cents) to 1 cup milk (cost .25 cents). I brought it to a boil, stirring constantly, then turned down the heat to low. I stirred it and let it cook until it was very thick and starchy, then add about 1/2 cup water and let it simmer for 15 minutes.
It was gross and gummy. A tablespoon of sugar greatly improved the taste. The recipe yielded about 2 cups, and I ate half.
Cost: $ .25-$.64
Dinner (Lunch): Corned Beef and Cabbage
The recipe for Corned Beef and Cabbage is based on the recipe for Salt Pot-au–Feu, at Ms. Corson’s recommendation. I’ll be making Salt Pot-au–Feu on Thursday, and will get into the recipe in more detail then.
There were no instructions in Fifteen Cent Dinners (FCD) to make corned beef from scratch, so I assumed they were buying pre-made, possibly potted, beef that would have been less expensive than making it at home. After comparing prices of modern pre-packaged corned beef, I decided on Budding brand slices, costing a total of .86 cents.
I heated 1/2 a piece of bacon (about .15 cents, but I already had this item in my pantry) in a pot, to render some cooking fat and add flavor. I then added 1/2 of a small onion (about .05 cents) and let it cook until soft. I then added the Budding Corned Beef, browned it a little, then poured in enough water to deglaze the pan. I added 1/4 of a white cabbage (.33 cents) and added enough water to cover everything. I put the lid on the pot and let it simmer for 15 minutes.
When I took the lid off, the broth was a rich brown color and it smelled promising. I lifted out the cabbage with a strainer and placed the slices of beef on top.
The results: the Budding beef was a bad choice. Although cheaper than its cousin in a can (which costs about $4.00) it was tough, flavourless and inedible. The cabbage was not bad. I’m not a huge fan of boiled cabbage, but perhaps it will grow on me.
Cost: $1.24-$1.39
Supper: Peas Boiled in Stock
I added 1/2 cup dry split peas (.40 cents) to the leftover broth from the Corned Beef and Cabbage. I brought it to a boil, then turned down the heat, added a little pepper and salt, and simmered it for about 45 minutes, until nice and tender. I strained the peas and saved the broth for breakfast tomorrow. Nutritious, flavourful, and economical!
Cost: $ .40
I also ate 1/2 lemon (.12 cents) and 1 apple (.33 cents)
Total Cost Day 1: $2.34-$2.88
Total Approximate Calories Consumed: 661
Right now, I’m so hungry I’m having trouble thinking.

Experiments in Culinary History: Eating Like a Tenement Family

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I recently came across a reference to an 1877 pamphlet titled Fifteen Cent Dinners. Thanks to the wonder of the internet, I found a copy of the pamphlet online, and I got curious if the meals were as filling, nutritional, and cheap as the authors purports.

The pamphlet, according to it’s author Juliet Corson (founder of the New York Cooking School), is meant as a guideline for the poorest working class families to provide a nutritional meal on the cheap. She proposes a meal plan that can feed a family of six for three dollars a week, about $57 in today’s money.

In New York, a poor, working class family usually meant a life in the tenements. My curiosity stems from the desire to understand a small part of what life was like for these families by preparing and consuming the foods that made up their daily lives.

Although these families were also likely to be immigrants and were probably cooking some of the foods of their homelands, Corson assures her readers that the recipes are based around “…articles in common use among the working classes.”

I’m going to start my experience with Ms. Corson’s suggested menu. Here is my Bill of Fare for the next seven days:

I was struck by how efficient the menu is: the stock created at lunch has vegetables added to it for supper, then reheated for breakfast. Ms. Corson leaves an extra 62 cents ($11.94 our money) which she advises is for the purchase of “extra bread, milk and butter.” I’ve decided it would be wise for me to use this money to purchase apples (because I would like to poop sometime this week) and lemons (to prevent scurvy). I’ll also be taking a daily multi-vitamin.

I’ll be working with 1/6th of Ms. Corson’s given budget, so I plan to eat this week for about $10. I’ll be keeping a running tally of the groceries I buy and each day I’ll post recipes and photos of the foods I cook.

Ms. Corson says that “The cheapest kinds of food are sometimes the most wholesome and strengthening…” A statement that does not seem to hold true in today’s society. The poorest classes are often the most obese, and the cheapest foods in the grocery store seem to be those that are the worst for you. Through cooking Ms. Corson’s recipes, I hope to tap into an older, and perhaps wiser, way of eating on a restricted budget.

Or I might just end up constipated. I begin on Monday.

Fifteen Cent Dinners for families of six. (pdf)

The Fruit Drop Cake Debate

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Photo by Sarah T.

me: Friday i’m going to bake christmas cookies with Kyle.

Sarah T: that’ll be fun…period appropriate or modern?

me: modern; but what a delightful question. I hate period appropriate cookies.
they’ve all got crap in them. ugh.

Sarah T: I lOVE them. In fact I just made a batch of fruit drop cakes not too long ago. mmmm currents.

me: uuuuuuuulllgh
i actually made that noise out loud, here in new york

Sarah T: I want to give fruit drop cakes a fighting chance, and exhibit their true deliciousness.

***
FRUIT DROP CAKES (photos pending)
from Miss Beecher’s Domestic Receipt Book, 1846 (click here for the original recipe)

1 batch yields about 36 cookies

1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp lemon abstract
1 tbsp brandy (or peach brandy)
4 cups flour
1 cup dried currents (or you can play it safe with raisins, or be adventuress with any other variety of dried fruit)

This recipe can be made in an electric mixer, or by hand.

Preheat oven to 375. Cream together butter and sugar. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs until frothy. Add eggs to butter and sugar and mix until combined. Add brandy and lemon extract. Gradually add flour, with the mixer on a low speed, and mix until combined. Stir in currants. Drop by the spoonful onto a greased cookie sheet and sprinkle a little sugar on top. bake about 10 minutes, checking halfway through.

Eggnog Goes Better With Booze

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From Jeff via NPR: Many old cocktail recipes contain raw eggs, including this recipe for Egg Nogg. It’s a practice that died out probably around the time salmonella came into the picture. But never fear! NPR shows us that the alcoholic content of, in this case, Eggnog is enough to inhibit the growth of harmful bacteria.

Video: More Evidence That Eggnog Goes Better With Booze (NPR)

And for further old-timey cocktail reading (via Graham): Ladies United for the Preservation of Endangered Cocktails

Their cocktails.

“This site is dedicated to the Gin Fizz, the Widow’s Kiss, and the Singapore Sling – the drinks our mothers and grandmothers drank, the drinks we strive to save from extinction as a small measure of remembering those great women and their great cocktail parties.”