Grits, That Beloved Morsel of Grain

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grits

Studying historic foods often means studying the English language, as the meanings of words and terms tended to change over time. 

It wasn’t until the discovery of the New World and of its native grain, maize, that the word corn came to routinely refer to that grain.  In Europe, corn meant the kernals of any grain – rye, barley, wheat, etc.  Likewise, the word grit once refered to the minute particles of any grain.  There were wheaten grits, millet grits, oat grits or groats, etc., but sometime during the late Victorian era the word grit took on the meaning of broken particles of corn, or maize.

To further complicate the study of grits, the gruel made from cracked corn was not always referred to as grits.  In the North it was often referred to as samp, and in the South it could be small hominy.  When the hulls are removed from dried corn by boiling it in a lye solution, and the resulting tender corn kernal is left whole the finished product was known as hominy or large hominy.  Colonists learned to make it by observing Indian food preparation.

It shouldn’t be assumed that the word grits always referred to the cracked corn, and not to the gruel made from it, however.  A survey of early cookery books, agricultural manuals, journal articles, and even novels will show the use of the word, granted perhaps not as often as samp or small hominy, but enough times to justify using it in a historic setting. 

Avoid the use of always or never.  The word grit could, but did not always, refer to corn.  The gruel made from grits was sometimes,  but not always called grits.  Sometimes in reading historic accounts it isn’t clear what is being discussed, but looking to see where the account was published will sometimes help with the determination.

Before grist mills were commonly available, most families had a hominy block with which to crack corn.  It was sometimes a hollowed out section of tree with a mortar that was raised and lowered by hand down into the hominy block repeatedly to pound the grains into small particles.  Another version was similar, but instead of a mortar that was man-handled as previously described, a piece of log was tied to the limb of a tree so that the person pounding the grain could swing it down, and the limb would spring back and pull it back up.

In 1865, a wounded soldier in a hospital in Charleston, South Carolina wrote that their rations consisted of, “corn bread, rice, grits, and occasionally a little beef”.  The footnote states, “Grits are cracked corn, or what some people call “samp”.  His use of “corn bread” rather than corn meal indicates a cooked product, and if we are to follow that train of thought he is most likely referring to gruel made from grits.  The fact that a soldier debilitated enough to be treated in a hospital would not likely be able to cook his own meals supports that logic. (1)

Another reference to cooked gruel being called grits was published in 1875 in an article titled, “Fifty Years Ago”.

Oh, no, I don’t like grits; the no-taste carries me away back to 1811 and ’12, when we had to eat them without salt…I never taste grits without seeing the old hominy mortar, or block, standing in the yard before Uncle Davis’s cabin.  (2)

A reference published in 1834, “They finished up the hominy grits in their kettle” is one of many references to hominy grits.  (3)

Mary Cornelius used the term Carolina hominy in 1846 in a cookery book published in Boston.

Wash a quart of the grits in several waters till perfectly clean, and put them into three pints of boiling water, with two teaspoonfuls of salt, and boil slowly half an hour; then take off the lid and let the water remaining evaporate.  They must be stirred repeatedly.  Eat with butter and molasses, or milk, or meat.  If any is left, slice it the next morning and brown it on the griddle; or add milk, eggs and flour and make it into griddle cakes.  (4)

The latter dish has been termed, at various periods in time and from various locations, fried mush or polenta. 

The dish Mary Cornelius called Carolina hominy, was dubbed Carolina Grits, or Small Hominy by Eliza Leslie in several editions of her cookbook.  She suggested adding butter to hominy, “white Indian corn, shelled from the cob, divested of the outer skin by scalding in hot lye, and then winnowed and dried”.  (5)

Leslie’s description of samp was Indian corn pounded or ground, “till it is smaller and finer than the Carolina grits”.

The terms came about due to the popularity of grits in that state.

…a large covered dish of small hominy (for this bolted corn grits is the standard breakfast of South Carolina), piling plates of rice waffles, and johnny cakes, and sweet potato fritters, and corn flannel cakes, and fried young drum fish, and whiting, and mullet, completed this family breakfast.  (6)

Elizabeth Collins, on the other hand, had this to say:

There is another dish worthy of observation, which is called hominy.  The corn having been ground, and the grits well sifted through a wire sieve, which then divides the flour from the coarse grits, the former is reserved for making bread, and the latter transferred to a pot of cold water and let boil until  the water is nearly gone; then the little water, which is only left to keep it from burning, is poured off, and the hominy is ready for the table.  It is generally eaten for breakfast, when, if people choose to be stingy enough, the overplus can be deposited in a vessel with the flour, and mixed with a quantity of water or clabber, put to ruse until the evening, when a couple of eggs or a sweet potato must be well stirred in, and, of course, a little salt.  Bake it…  (7)

A family living in the Ozark mountains in 1858 called the gruel made from grits homony.  Pounding corn produced “coarse grits, which are boiled soft, and it then bears the name of homony.  Of this nutritious dish our meals generally consist, with boiled or fried bear’s bacon, and a decoction of sassafras tea”.  (8)

The process of making grits and another name for them was discussed in Debow’s Review in 1845.  “Wash a pint of grist (particles of flint-corn reduced to the size of the coarsest sand by grinding, the fine parts and husk being sifted off), in two or three waters, giving in each instance settling time.  In pouring off the water, let the grits be well rubbed with the hand to separate flour.  Put into a pot with one pint of water, and boil slowly for half an hour, stirring and skimming the mixture as it boils.  It should come up on the table dry and gritty, and perfectly white”. 

The size of the grains of ground maize varied depending on how it was to be prepared.  The larger the grains the longer they took to become tender, thus cooking times in early cookery books  are much longer than would be necessary with today’s smaller ground grits, and so-called quick grits take even less time to prepare.  The larger the grits, the more likely references instructed soaking prior to cooking.

In general, the grits or larger parts of the meal, should vary from one-fourth the size of a grain of mustard to that of a grain of rice, according to the uses to which they are to be applied.  (9)

The New York Tribune published an account of what the product was called in New York in 1854.

Then there is the article known at the South and West, where it is extensively used, under the name of hominy.  Here it is called samp, and is sold at $2.50 a bushel, and one bushel is worth more than four bushels of potatoes.  It is a good, palatable, wholesome, economical food.  But a more generally acceptable article is called hominy here; at the West, grits.  The first is hulled corn, the grains left nearly whole; the latter is hulled corn, cracked into grains about the size of bird-seed shot, or coarse gunpowder.  It sells for three and three and a half cents a pound.  Both are cooked by soaking and slow boiling for hours, in clear water, and when eaten as a substitute for vegetables, with meat, are seasoned with salt and a very little butter.  Both are very good with meat gravy, or with sugar or molasses.  (10)

An interesting account of hominy was recorded in a letter home penned by William MacKean, a Scot, who was touring America in 1875. 

The box is filled cram-full, and the grindstone set in motion with considerable speed.  The friction of the stone on the grain rubs the skin off, and, splitting the lobes asunder, sets the acrospire free.  When the abrading action is continued long enough, which is not very long, the mixture is separated by sieves into human food and horse feed.  The lobes, like misshapen pease, and resembling horn in their hardness and semi-transparency, are set aside to make ‘samp’, ‘grits’, and ‘hominy’, of which several elegant preparations for the table can be made.  The bran and growths make valuable cattle feed, which is very fattening from the large proportion of oil, and is agreeably sweet to the taste, containing as it does so much sugar.  The lobes are further prepared, by grinding merely, into grits or flour; or are cooked whole, and eaten like boiled pease.  I have got all these dishes, which are excellent to my fancy, not only from their merits, but their novelty.  Besides these, there are other things presented at table which we know nothing of at home.  (11)

By the late 19th century grits were used in any number of recipes.  Hominy was sometimes mixed with beans to prepare a dish of succotash.  “When the hominy is half cooked, add one-fourth as many beans as there was dry hominy, and cook until both hominy and beens are tender.  Salt, and serve warm with the usual dinner dishes”.  (12)

Confused over what to call your morning grits?  If it is any consolation, great grandpa was probably confused too.  Perhaps the best way to close this discussion of the South’s favorite breakfast food is with a description penned in 1874.

Hominy, or Samp.  The ‘samp’ of the New York market is the hominy of the South and West.  It is made of the Southern white corn, and is hulled (for the market) by machinery.  In the South it is usually pounded by hand, the grain being moistened a few hours previously, so that the hulls loosen during the operation; or if it is ground, the hulls are washed out.  Some of the best that we have in the market is simply hulled, and not broken.  It would be very appropriate to call it ‘hulled corn’, if people would understand what is meant by it.  Unfortunately, the names of some of this class of goods are sadly confused.  The hominy of the South and West is samp in New York (‘small hominy’ in the South) is very much the same thing as the samp of New England.  This in the United States Commissary Department is designated ‘corn grits’.  ‘Hulled corn’ and ‘corn grits’, then, would designate the articles appropriately.  But, as a rule, we prefer to take words as we find them, and Webster’s definition favors the use of ‘hominy’ for the coarser, and samp for the finer article.  So, as we prefer to be cosmopolitan rather than metropolitan, we would fain accept his authority.  (13)

Bibliography:

1.  Abbott, A. O.  Prison Life in the South.  1865.  NY.

2.  Arthur’s Illustrated Home Magazine.  July 1875.  Vol. XLIII.  No. 7.

3.  Harmon, Neil Swanson.  The First Rebel.  1834.  Philadelphia.

4.  Cornelius, Mary.  The Young Housekeeper’s Friend.  1846.  Boston.  Charles Tappan.

5.  Leslie, Eliza.  New Receipts for Cooking.  1852.  T. B. Peterson.

6.  Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe, Mrs.  The Black Gauntlet.  1860.  J. B. Lippincott. 

7.  Collins, Elizabeth.  Memories of the South.  1865.  Taunton.

8.  Schoolcraft, Henry.  Scenes and Adventures in the Semi-Alpine Region of the Ozark Mountains of Missouri and Arkansas.  1858.  Philadelphia.

9.  Fifth Annual Report of the American Institute.  1847.  Albany, NY.

10.  Friends Intelligencer.  July 14, 1854.  Philadelphia.

11.  MacKean, William.  Letters Home During a Trip to America.  1875.  Paisley [Scotland].

12.  Household and Agricultural.  1874.

13.  Household and Agricultural.  1874.

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PRIZE CAKE RECIPES

Continuing with the thought of lost recipes, their origins, and the happy occasions where the dishes were served, let’s continue with two cake recipes found with the ones that inspired the previous post in the Rumford Complete Cook Book.  They are not dated, but my guess is that they date to about the 1940’s.

Mrs. G. E. Sherrill won a prize for the following recipe.  We can’t say where Mrs. Sherrill lived because there is a street address, but no city or state in the clipping.  It does say that the recipe came from a German family friend who lived in Santa Barbara, California.

German Potato Cake

1 cup cold mashed potatoes, 1 cup butter, 2 cups sugar, 3 cups flour, 1 cup milk, 1 cup chopped nuts, 1/2 cup grated chocolate, 3 eggs, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 teaspoon cloves, 1 teaspoon nutmeg, and 2 teaspoons baking powder.

Cream together the butter, sugar, chocolate, and potatoes.  Add eggs one at a time and beat well with each addition.  Sift dry ingredients and add alternately with the flour to the first mixture.  Dredge the nuts with flour and add last.  Do not cut until a day old.  This cake will keep fresh a week.

The following recipe is credited to Miss Frances Rollins of Lebanon, Tenn., but no date is given. 

Never-Fail Sponge Cake

1 cup sugar, 1 cup flour, 1 cup sweet milk, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 2 egg whites, 3 level teaspoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract.

Set milk into kettle of boiling water and bring to the boiling point.  Put sugar, flour, baking powder and salt in sifter; sift together four times.  Into this dry mixture pour the hot milk and stir until smooth, folding in as follows:  carefully draw the spoon (or spatula) first forward, then back; then draw the back of the spoon from right to left, repeating these motions until the whites are evenly folded into the batter.  add vanilla and bake in an oven (350 degrees)  for fifty-five minutes.  Take from oven and lay a wet cloth over bottom of pan and let steam a few minutes.  The cake loosens immediately.  Serves six. 

Neither recipe mentioned frosting. 

Blissful meals, yall,

The Historic Foodie

Loose Recipes

I have purchased several antique cookbooks which have loose hand-written recipes or recipes clipped from newspapers or magazines in them over the years.  It tugs at my heart strings to see a cookie recipe written hastily on the back of a bank deposit slip because I know for someone to have taken the time to write down that recipe it reflects a time of joy and happiness in the author’s life.  Had she not liked the dish and wanted to prepare it for her own family she wouldn’t have taken time to record it, and the fact that the only available paper was on the back of a check, deposit ticket, or other item attests to the fact that she probably wrote it on whatever was in her purse with enough blank space to fit the recipe.

I have done the same at times under just such circumstances.  Some day will my cookbooks live on another cook’s shelves and the recipes I’ve copied onto the partial blank pages make the owner wonder what the occasion was that made me determined to keep the recipe for future use? 

I think any cook who shared recipes among friends would be delighted to know that long after she’s gone to her reward her recipes are still being enjoyed and appreciated, and in that spirit I will share with my readers.  The following were found in a copy of the Rumford Complete Cook Book.  The book was purchased at a local Alabama antiques store, but since most of the papers on which the loose recipes are written feature addresses in North Carolina (mostly Aiken and Ashville) it is a safe bet the book was once the property of a North Carolina cook.

Loose recipes are meaningful and tangible ties to the past, however, from a historical standpoint one must have an open mind as they are seldom dated. 

NUT BREAD

3 cups flour, 4 teaspoons baking powder, 1/4 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 cup walnuts, chopped, 3 tablespoons soft butter, 2 eggs, 1 1/2 cups milk.

Measure and sift dry ingredients together.  Add broken or coarsely chopped nut meats, butter, unbeaten eggs and milk.  Mix to a smooth dough; turn into well buttered loaf pan and let stand 15 minutes.  Bake in a moderate oven (350 degrees) 45 minutes. 

BROWN BETTY

3 cups soft bread crumbs, 1/2 cup melted butter, 3 cups thinly sliced apples, 1 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, grated lemon rind.

Mix bread crumbs with melted butter.  Fill baking dish with alternate layers of buttered crumbs and sliced apples, sprinkling each layer of apple with sugar, cinnamon, and grated lemon rind.  Have top layer covered with crumbs.  Bake about one hour in moderate oven (350 degrees).  Uncover dish last twenty minutes to brown top.  Serve hot with plain cream.  This dessert is delicious when served with hard sauce.  Try it for a change.

HARD SAUCE

3 tablespoons brandy, sherry, or rum flavoring; few grains nutmeg; 1/2 cup butter, 1 cup powdered sugar.

Cream butter, add sugar gradually and cream until light and fluffy.  Add flavoring drop by drop.  Pile lightly in glass dish and sprinkle a few grains of nutmeg over the top. 

Blissful meals, yall,

The Historic Foodie

Cooking Hominy

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hominy

When in your kitchen using some newfangled labor saving device, have you ever thought that our ancestors were capable of devising their own labor saving methods of food preparation?  Periodically I find accounts that leave me wondering why I never thought of doing something, and this is one of those instances.  It should be noted that when this instruction refers to hominy it is referring to what we would call grits.  Southerners love their grits, whether it be for breakfast, or as a bed for grillades or shrimp, but anyone who has ever had to wash a pot in which grits were cooked, without benefit of an unending supply of hot water, knows clean-up can make even the most devout Southerner think twice about making them.

After the hominy is well washed, instead of putting it into an open pot or kettle to boil, as is the usual practice, get a tin kettle of the size wanted, put the same into a common iron pot that will hold about one-third more, which will leave a space around the tin to be filled with water.  Then put the hominy into the tin kettle with a suitable quantity of water, fill the pot pretty full of water, put the lids on the kettle and the pot, and let the hominy boil upon the stove, stirring it two or three times while boiling.  By so doing, it will be found that the quality of the article will be much improved; more than half the usual work of stirring and tending will be saved, together with a large part fo the work in cleaning the kettle after using, which has heretofore been the chief objection to cooking this dish.  The tin kettle should be kept from touching the bottom of the pot, by means of a large wire crooked for the purpose, and laid in the bottom so as not to have the tin and iron come in contact while boiling.  By this means, none burns to the kettle, and the burnt flavor, which is so noticeable in that cooked in the old fashioned way, is entirely avoided.  – The New England Farmer, April 1861.  Boston.

Blissful meals, yall,

The Historic Foodie

Economy in the Kitchen

All we hear on television or read in the papers is how bad our economy is, were we to dwell upon it we might find our future quite dreary, however, a far more productive reaction would be to learn ways to stretch our food dollars without sacrificing quality in our meals.  Our ancestors were no different.

Housewives who are in a habit of using only steaks and roasts, make a great mistake.  A capital dish may be made out of the “chuck” as the butchers call it, or the neck, when well prepared.  Select a piece of meat as large as the demand of your table may require, wash it well to remove all the blood or soil from the outside, have your dinner pot perfectly clean, salt and pepper the meat well, lay it in the bottom and cover it with water; boil it from two to three hours, or till it is thoroughly tender; add half an onion, a sprinkle of sage, thyme or summer savory.

If the meat is fat, let the water all stew out a half hour before it is put on the table, and when your meat is browned well on the lower side in the gravy, turn it over and brown the other side.  When ready, take it up, add a little flour thickening to the gravy, or if you have a dredge box shake the flour into the hot gravy and brown it, then add boiling water, and you will have a dish equal, and to my mind superior to the common roast beef, upon boarding-house tables.

Care must be used to turn it; and equally necessary is good judgement in having it thoroughly well-cooked.

– The New England Farmer, June 1861.  Boston.

Lost Recipes

I recently purchased a cookbook published in 1857.  Inside I found several recipes cut from the newspaper, none of them dated, unfortunately, but judging from the way they read I’d estimate 1860’s.  There is a lemon pie recipe written on an old tablet sheet in pencil that I have tried unsuccessfully to read in order to preserve it.  Between the fading of the pencil over the years and the difficulty reading the handwriting parts of it are purely conjecture.  I will share a few from the newspaper clippings.

Molasses Gingerbread.

1 cup of molasses; 1 of sugar; 1 of sour milk; 1/2 of butter; 4 of flour; 2 eggs, well beaten; 2 teaspoons saleratus; 2 teaspoons of ginger.

Saleratus was sodium or potassium bicarbonate – a leavening agent like baking powder. 

There were no instructions for mixing and baking, but I will share my method when I recreated the gingerbread.

Cream softened butter and add the cup of sugar.  Add the beaten eggs and mix.   Mix in the molasses.

I used baking powder for the leavening.  Stir the baking powder and ginger into the flour. 

To make sour milk add about 2 tablespoons lemon juice or vinegar to a cup of milk and let sit for maybe 5 minutes. 

Add the flour and the sour milk alternately to the creamed mixture, and mix until blended.  Bake at 350 until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. 

For a pretty as well as tasty touch, serve the gingerbread with lemon curd and fresh whipped cream.

Brew a pot of coffee or tea, invite a friend over, and enjoy this gingerbread.  Good food is meant to be shared. 

Blissful meals, yall,

The Historic Foodie

Sawmill Gravy

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Southern foods

These times they are a changin’.  Until recently you would have been hard pressed to find a recipe in any cookbook for sawmill gravy.  That doesn’t mean that it wasn’t eaten, and eaten often.  It was low fare, the food of Southern country working class people, and as such putting instructions on how to make it into a cookbook just wasn’t done. 

In recent times it has become sort of a novelty in restaurants from fast food to sit-down eateries, and the internet is full of recipes.  Celebrity chefs and cooks such as Alton Brown and Paula Deen have made it on TV, and perhaps it was that exposure that was responsible for its resurgence in popularity. 

Any Southerner old enough to have lived through the Depression era, and those who grew up listening to their parents’ stories of the poverty associated with the Depression knows all about sawmill gravy and biscuits.  Some families were known to eat biscuits and gravy three meals a day and be happy to get it.  My grandparents who lived on a farm were luckier than city dwellers in that there were pigs, chickens, cows, eggs and other farm goods to go with the ever-present biscuits and gravy.

In the 50’s things changed somewhat.  Cooking wasn’t a joy for my mother, it was (and still is) a dreaded chore she had to do in order to eat, and baking was even worse.  Her sawmill gravy was served on light bread.  It just wasn’t the same as when my aunt made fluffy hot biscuits to drizzle that beautiful white gravy with specks of black pepper dispersed throughout.  Even as a child it seemed to me like sacrilege to serve warm milky gravy on lowly store-bought bread.  Needless to say, one of the first things I learned to make as a child cook was biscuits to go underneath the gravy and the bread was forever after reserved for another purpose, like fresh tomato sandwiches in the summer.  Speaking of tomatoes, sawmill gravy is mighty good on sliced garden tomatoes too.

For anyone who doesn’t know – sawmill gravy is one of the simplest things in the world to make.  Now a days it usually has chunks of sausage meat in it when you order it out.  Purists may opt to leave that out, and that’s perfectly fine, after all, you’re cooking to please your palate, not mine or anyone else’s. 

To about a quarter cup of melted fat in a large skillet, and you know in the South that’s a well seasoned iron skillet, add about a quarter cup of flour.  Stir that around for a minute or two to rid it of the raw flour taste, and stir in about 2 cups of milk.  If you’re worried about your waist line use 2% milk (ignore the quarter cup of fat you just put into it).  Season to taste with salt and pepper, and bring just to a simmer, after which it is ready to serve.

If you want to use the sausage, crumble it into your skillet (yeah, that same cast-iron job), stir as it cooks and browns, and then add the flour, and follow directions as above.  Serve over nice hot fluffy biscuits.  Oh, come on back next week and we’ll discuss biscuits, in the meantime reach for the light bread or serve your gravy over a perfectly browned chicken fried steak.

Blissful Meals, yall,

The Historic Foodie

Carrabas’ Chicken Bryan

Historic foods are my passion, but I can get equally excited about something as good as Carrabas’ Chicken Bryan.  Recently on an outing with my sons and daughters-in-law we enjoyed this dish so much I had to have the recipe.  It is not difficult to make and the contrast between the sun-dried tomato and warm goat cheese is simply amazing. 

1 Tablespoon minced onion, 1 Tablespoon minced garlic, 2 Tablespoons butter (no substitutes), 1/2 cup dry white wine, 1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice, 2/3 cup cold butter sliced, 1 1/2 cup chopped sun-dried tomatoes, 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil, 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt (I always use Kosher salt), 1/2 teaspoon pepper, 6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, extra virgin olive oil to brush on the chicken breasts, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon pepper, 8 oz. goat cheese at room temperature.

You can pound the chicken breasts with a flat mallet so that they are all about the same thickness.  Brush the chicken breasts with olive oil and sprinkle with the salt and pepper.  Grill until done.

Saute the onion and garlic in 2 tablespoons of butter in a large skillet over medium  heat.

Stir in the wine and lemon juice; increase the heat to medium high and reduce by half.

Reduce to low heat and stir in the cold butter, a slice at a time. 

Stir in the chopped sun-dried tomatoes, basil, kosher salt, and the remaining pepper.  Remove from heat and set aside.

Place one chicken breast on each plate, and top with the sauce.

Get prepared for an explosion of flavor in your mouth.  This one is right on the money.  Hey – some day it will be a historic recipe, and when it is I’ll make it again! 

Blissful meals yall,

The Historic Foodie, Victoria Rumble

Champlain Valley Fair

After the segment on WGN, channel 9, I will travel to Vermont where I will demonstrate and discuss historic foodways at the Champlain Valley Fair August 29th through Sept. 7th.  I will also have books and spice blends available for sale. 

This is a new venue for me, and I am very much looking forward to it.  My friend, Betty, is going up with me and we naturally will visit every museum possible in the New England area before actually starting work at the fair. 

The Historic Foodie, Victoria Rumble

Prohibition Era Frozen Desserts

Ice cream and ice cream treats have a long and varied past, and the 1920’s saw the creation of new flavors and techniques producing delectable treats that were available most any time at the local soda fountain.  The following recipes were published in Jan. 1922 in The Soda Fountain journal, a trade journal for the soda fountain industry.  I’ve passed along those that lend themselves to preparation in a modern setting.

CAFE PARFAIT

Two cups of ground coffee, two quarts of cold water, one and one half pounds of sugar, the yolks of eight eggs, two quarts of thick cream, and the grated rind of one orange.  Steep the coffee in the water until the strength is thoroughly extracted.  Beat the egg yolks with the sugar and orange rind, and a pinch of salt, and the hot coffee.  Cook in a double boiler until thick and smooth.  Whip half the cream.  Cool the ocffee and egg mixture, pour in the unwhipped cream, and lastly fold in the whipped cream.  Pack in salt and ice for four hours.

FROZEN NECTAR

One quart of grape juice, one pound of sugar, two quarts of milk, and the strained juice of two lemons.  Dissolve the sugar in the grape juice, add the milk, and lastly the lemon juice.  Mix and freeze.

LEMON CREAM SHERBET

The strained juice of six lemons and the grated rind of two, one and one-half pounds of sugar, and two quarts of milk.  Scald the milk with the sugar.  Cool.  Add the lemon juice and the grated rind.

TUTTI-FRUTTI ICE CREAM

Three quarts of cream, one and one-half pounds of sugar; make a pound and a half mixture of preserved cherries, pineapple, chopped raisins, chopped figs, with a little candied citron and orange.  Add to this two ounces of chopped almond meats, and two ounces of chopped walnut meats.  Scald half the cream and the sugar.  Cool.  Combine wiht the rest of the cream, the fruits, and the nuts.  Freeze.

Blissful meals, yall – The Historic Foodie