Thanksgiving Recipes of Long Ago

From Everyday Housekeeping, Volume 18, 1902.

The accompanying recipes have been selected from several cook-books from fifty to one hundred years old [in 1902]. If modern housekeepers do not care to avail themselves of them, they serve to show the methods of our grandmothers.

From “The Frugal Housewife or Complete Woman Cook,” by Susannah Carter.

A Fowl or Turkey Roasted with Chestnuts

Roast a quarter of a hundred of chestnuts, and peel them; save out eight or ten, the rest bruise in a mortar with the liver of a fowl, a quarter of a pound of ham well pounded, and sweet herbs and parsley chopped fine. Season it with mace, nutmeg, pepper, and salt; mix all these together and put them into the belly of your fowl. Spit it, and tie the neck and vent close. For sauce, take the rest of the chestnuts, cut them into pieces, and put them into a strong gravy with a glass of white wine. Thicken with a piece of butter rolled in flour. Pour the sauce into the dish, and garnish with orange and watercresses.

To Fry Sausages with Apples

Take half a pound of sausages and six apples; slice four about as thick as a crown, cut the other two into quarters, fry them with the sausages of a fine light brown, and lay the sausages in the middle of a dish and apples round. Garnish with the quartered apples.

Stewed cabbage and sausages fried is a good dish; then heat cold peas pudding in the pan; when it is quite hot, heap it in the middle of the dish and lay the sausages all around edgeways, and one in the middle at length.

Minced Pie

Shred a pound of neat’s [beef] tongue parboiled with two pounds of beef suet, five pippins, and a green lemon peel; season it with an ounce of spice, a little salt, a pound of sugar, two pounds of currants, half a pint of sack [a fortified white whine, similar to sherry], a little brandy, the juice of a lemon, a quarter of a pound of citron, lemon, and orange peel. Mix these together and fill the pies.

From “A New System of Domestic Cookery,” by A Lady (1817).

To Roast Turkey

The sinews of the leg should be drawn, whichever way it is dressed. The head should be twisted under the wing; and in drawing it take care not to tear the liver, nor let the gall touch it.

Put a stuffing of sausage meat, or if sausages are to be served in the dish, a bread stuffing. As this makes a large addition to the size of the bird, observe that the heat of the fire is constantly to that part, for the breast is often not done enough. A little strip of paper should be put on the bone, to hinder it from scorching while the other parts roast. Baste well, and froth it up. Serve with gravy in the dish, and plenty of bread sauce in a sauce tureen. Add a few crumbs and a beaten egg to the stuffing of sausage meat.

Mince Pies Without Meat

Of the best apples six pounds, pared, cored, and minced; of fresh suet and raisins stoned, each three pounds likewise minced; to these add of mace and cinnamon, a quarter of an ounce each, and eight cloves, in finest powder, three pounds of the finest powder sugar, three-quarters of an ounce of salt, the rinds of four and juice of two lemons, half a pint of port, the same of brandy. Mix well and put into a deep pan.

Have ready washed and dried four pounds of currants, and add as you make the pies, with candied fruit.

Different Ways of Dressing Cranberries

For pies and puddings, with a good deal of sugar.

Stewed in a jar, with the same; which way they eat well with bread, and are very wholesome.

Thus done, pressed, and strained, the juice makes a fine drink for people in fevers.

From “American Cooking,” (1819).

To Stuff and Roast a Turkey

One pound of soft wheat bread, three ounces beef suet, three eggs, a little sweet thyme, marjoram, pepper and salt, and some add a gill of wine; fill the bird therewith, and sew up, hang down to a steady solid fire, basting frequently with butter and water, and roast until a steam emits from the breast; put one-third of a pound of butter into the gravy, dust flour over the bird, and baste with the gravy; serve up with boiled onions and cranberry sauce, mangoes, pickles, or celery.

From “The Frugal Housewife” (1830), by the Author of “Hobomok” (Mrs. Lydia Maria Child).

Pumpkin Pie

For common family pumpkin pies three eggs do very well to a quart of milk. Stew your pumpkins and strain it through a sieve or colander. Take out the seeds, and pare the pumpkin or squash before you stew it, but do not scrape the inside; the part nearest the seed is the sweetest part of the squash. Stir in the stewed pumpkin till it is as thick as you can stir it round rapidly and easily.

If you want to make your pie richer, make it thinner, and add another egg. One egg to a quart of milk makes very decent pies. Sweeten it to your taste with molasses of sugar; some pumpkins require more sweetening than others. Two teaspoonfuls of salt, two great spoonfuls of sifted cinnamon, one great spoonful of ginger. Ginger will answer very well alone for spice if you use enough of it. The outside of a lemon grated in is nice. The more eggs, the better the pie; some put in an egg to a gill of milk.

Cranberry Pie

Cranberry pies need very little spice. A little nutmeg or cinnamon improves them. They need a great deal of sweetening. It is well to stew the sweetening with them; at least a part of it. It is easy to add if you find them too sour for your taste. When cranberries are strained and added to about their own weight in sugar, they make very delicious tarts. No upper crust.

From “The Physiological Cook Book,” by Mrs. Horace Mann (1857).

An Innocent Plum Pudding

Ten or a dozen soft crackers may be broken into a quart of good milk or cream. Let it stand thus all night, and in the morning rub the whole through a cullender. Add eight eggs, a pound of sugar, a cup of molasses, a cup of wine, a tablespoonful of salt, the grated rind of a lemon, half a teaspoonful of mace, a quarter of a pound of citron, a pound of currants, and a pound and a half of stoned raisins.

Let it be boiled for five hours, and served with a cold sauce of braided sugar and butter and white of an egg. Leave out the suet, cloves, nutmeg, and brandy, that render plum pudding so deleterious.

Chicken Pie

Put the chickens into boiling water for fifteen or twenty minutes, having only as much water in the kettle as will barely cover them. Cut them up carefully in a dish and remove the skin if it is very thick. Put it into a deep dish covered with paste already baked, in layers, mixing in the chopped hearts and livers, and sprinkling each layer with flour and salt and a little mace.

When you have filled the dish, pour over it as much of the liquor, in which the chickens were boiled, as the dish will hold. Wet the edges of the pastry with water, lay on the top crust, close it carefully at the edges, prick it well, and bake it till the top crust is done. The crust for a chicken pie should be thicker than that for a fruit pie. Rich cream added to the liquor will improve it.

“Thanksgiving Recipes of Long Ago.” Everyday Housekeeping, Vol. 18. October, 1902 to March, 1903, pp. 50-53

Everyday Housekeeping

Recipes of the World

A collection of delicious recipes from around the world. Please feel free to add your own family recipes here!

View Group