Among the recipes in 19th century cookbooks, you’ll often find advertisements for hats and gloves, ovens, groceries, jewelry, horse accessories and more. Between the ads and the recipes, you could get a sense of a gilded life in the city, full of consumer longing and delicious viands. What is easy to forget- especially with the recipes distracting you with rich gravies and dainty cakes- is that in 19th century life, death loomed large.
Stories of disease, food poisoning, criminal and accidental violence are splashed across the “local matters” in old newspapers. In the back pages of many old cookbooks you will find the dark shadow of “pure historic cooking” in the form of home remedies for cholera, broken bones, and even cancer. An untested recipe for cake could lead to disappointment and waste. An untested recipe for “cure for Dysentery” could lead to death.
Many scholars have been careful to point out that this familiarity with death did not lessen the grief and trauma that people experienced. A family plot in Greenmount cemetery filled with little granite lambs reflects a life of tragedy and human endurance.
It is the day before Thanksgiving and I am once again struck with the cognitive confusion surrounding our sacred holidays. Is it a celebration of the harvest? How can it be that when Thanksgiving has also been associated with the genocide and displacement of native people by colonists? How can we celebrate when the people who harvested our food might live in squalor? How can we breathe in the autumn air when the skies are hazy with smoke from the horrifying fires in California?
I for one have a disproportionate amount of things to be thankful for this year, partially thanks to this blog. But my year hasn’t been without loss, and any success I experience is always tempered when people in the city that I love are still enduring needless suffering and injustice.
One thing my research has given me, which I am most thankful for, is the ability to live with and even embrace contradiction.
To survive the future of climate change disasters, overt xenophobic hatred, and reckonings of injustice, more of us are going to have to learn to take the celebrations and repentance side by side. A fortunate few may have found distraction in the hats and gloves and jewelry, but for most people, that is not a sustainable way to get through life. I’ll place Giving Tuesday over Black Friday or “Cyber Monday,” thank you very much.
“Why the self-righteous screed?,” you may ask. Well, I’ll confess:
I made this cider pot roast from “Maryland’s Way.” The recipe note said “Mrs. C.H. Steele’s Book, 1870.” Mrs. C. H. Steele would be Charlotte Rider Murray of Anne Arundel County, who married Charles Hutchins Steele. I believe the Steeles enslaved at least 22 people – quite a lot for this part of Maryland.
That was all I could find. I couldn’t figure out where this recipe manuscript is kept – nothing at the Maryland Historical Society or the State Archives seemed to fit the bill. It may have been kept in a private collection of someone involved in “Maryland’s Way.” Who knows where it is now.
The roast was fine; there’s not much else to say. After my fruitless research, I proceeded to read the usual assortment of pre-holiday gripes where people think they can’t wring their hands and eat pie with them later. I assure you that you can, and your hands will remain intact for you to do good deeds with.
Recipe:
- 3 to 4 lb roast
- salt pork or bacon
- finely chopped parsley
- 1 clove minced garlic (lol no I used like.. 10)
- 2 Cups cider
- 2 onions, chopped
- .25 Teaspoon ginger
- 3 cloves
- .25 Teaspoons cinnamon
- salt and pepper
- flour
- 2 Tablespoons butter or drippings
Roll small strips of salt pork or bacon in chopped parsley and minced garlic, and lard pot roast with them. Combine the cider, chopped onion and spices, and let meat rest in it for several hours, turning occasionally. When ready to cook, remove meat from liquid, pat dry with paper towel, season with salt and pepper and dredge with flour. Melt butter or drippings in a heavy iron pot, and when it is hot, sear meat all over until it is well browned. Pour over it the cider mixture in which it was soaked, which should be about 2 cups. Cover pot closely, reduce heat, and simmer gently 2 to 3 hours, until meat is very tender. Strain stock and thicken it with flour to make the sauce.
Recipe from “Maryland’s Way,” “Mrs. C. H. Steele’s Book,1870”
