Archie's Recipes
January 5, 2013 11:01 AM   Subscribe

Archie's Recipes - When my grandparents passed away my family rediscovered an old family recipe book that my great grandfather wrote by hand in an old ledger. [via mefi projects]
posted by item (16 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's Request -- frimble



 
I love this. And I miss my grandparents.
posted by mudpuppie at 11:13 AM on January 5, 2013


Ooh, egg nog! Going to try this.
posted by arcticseal at 11:29 AM on January 5, 2013


Ah yes, the "low" oven. My college's dining hall kitchen had stoves with controls marked from "Slow" to "Very Fast". A lot of old recipes had such conventions for temperature that have since disappeared. A good thermometer and experimentation are your friends.
posted by tommasz at 11:32 AM on January 5, 2013


"Mock Chicken". Eww.
posted by ColdChef at 11:41 AM on January 5, 2013 [1 favorite]


Aw, I love this. The context suggests he was a careful, provident cook, and a gentle man.

But, yes, outside of a medieval kitchen on Friday, what was the point of "mock chicken"?

The food article by "Sally Lunn" (cute) interests me because of how carefully it introduces the concept of pasta sauce. It is not bad advice, especially for the '50s.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:44 AM on January 5, 2013 [1 favorite]


According to my mother, her grandmother (Chloe Pernie Keith Diegel) was the cook in the family. One day she became too ill to keep up with the kitchen, so Archie, her grandfather, took over for her. He didn’t know how to cook; he had to teach himself. He was an engineer, so he was very precise. He collected recipes and hints from friends, relatives, and neighbors. Some of the recipes were old and handed down. Some were his own discoveries or modifications. He made sure to credit anyone whose recipe he included by name.

My mother remembers him in the kitchen, grinding meat and making his own sausage. He raised his own chickens, kept a garden, and a prolific fig tree.


I like this guy.
posted by The Girl Who Ate Boston at 11:45 AM on January 5, 2013 [3 favorites]


This is wonderful! It reminds me of the handmade recipe book my paternal grandmother made, typed on a manual typewriter (with mistakes carefully corrected) and replete with coffee stains. We still use it from time to time.
posted by 41swans at 12:20 PM on January 5, 2013


Thanks everyone, I'm super flattered.
posted by device55 at 12:25 PM on January 5, 2013


He loved his hot rolls!
posted by Houstonian at 1:23 PM on January 5, 2013


I am making the sketti and meatballs on page 7 asap
posted by maggieb at 2:05 PM on January 5, 2013


It's not like modern ovens, graced though they are with controls marked in 5-degree increments, actually keep their whole interior within 2.5 degrees of the target temperature anyway. Old recipes feature one of three oven temperatures (slow, moderate, fast) and rely on the cook's experience to take it from there. And for most ordinary cooking that's still enough.
posted by eritain at 2:27 PM on January 5, 2013


He had me at 'Cocktail Sauce'. No 'squirt ketchup into mayo, add Tabasco' here.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 3:13 PM on January 5, 2013


Looking at these recipes it occurs to me that maybe lard prevents Alzheimer's.
posted by spock at 7:28 PM on January 5, 2013 [1 favorite]


This egg nog contains no nog!
posted by GameDesignerBen at 8:26 PM on January 5, 2013


We learned to make mock chicken in home ec at school. But it wasn't with tuna fish like this recipe. I find it hard to believe that tuna fish is not too strongly flavoured for this. We made it from mince - I think minced pork, but it might have been beef - together with breadcrumbs, tarragon, sage, onion and chicken stock. I think egg might have been involved too. I also had a vegetarian recipe for mock chicken I used to use sometimes, which makes much more sense. I think the idea with the home ec one, though, was that mince was cheaper than chicken. Not by much, though, I think.
posted by lollusc at 1:30 AM on January 6, 2013


I really hate the layout of that site. It's nearly impossible to read on a normal size screen - the only way I can read the text is by zooming it to the full screen on my 27" iMac. There needs to be a way to hide the image and show only the text.
posted by mike3k at 11:26 AM on January 6, 2013


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