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Northfielder is Cooking Up History With 19th Century Cookbook

Northfielder's video series shows how to cook like it's 1877.

When Monica Caldwell stumbled upon the old, falling apart cookbook among a collection passed down to her by her fiance’s mother, it had her at the dedication:

"To those Plucky Housewives, who master their work instead of allowing it to master them, this book is dedicated," read the folio page of what Caldwell believes is an 1877-1879 edition of Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping.

Caldwell, who works at and blogs about foraging, gardening and cooking at her website Minnesota Plenty, grew more fascinated as she read through the book and tried the recipes. People should learn how to cook like this, she thought.

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“It’s truly ‘from scratch’ cooking,” Caldwell said, of the book which gives instructions on how to butcher the chicken as well as roast it. “It’s a lost art form.”

Caldwell plans to launch a new series of online videos cooking from the book, which is considered a classic of Midwest cookery and a historically significant manual for homemaking. Look for the first video in the new year, where her fiance, Dan Irwin, serves as camera operator and food taster.

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A 19th Century Bestseller

“It’s the first standard cookbook of the Midwest,” said Wendy Biorn, executive director of the Carver County Historical Society and a researcher into old cookbooks. “Buckeye Cookery changed the way people did things. It’s extremely important.”

The book was first published in 1876 by church ladies from the Maryville, OH, First Congregational Church as a fundraiser to build a new parsonage. It also celebrated the 100th anniversary of United States independence.

One of the ladies, Estelle Woods Wilcox, soon after moved with her husband to Minneapolis, where he edited a local newspaper. Seeing its potential, Wilcox bought the copyright to the cookbook. Under her stewardship, it took off, going through 32 editions between 1877 and 1905, and selling more than 1 million copies. Spin-offs of the book include a southern edition and one written in German.

Unlike modern cookbooks, Buckeye Cookery gives recipes in paragraph form.

“You really have to know how to cook to use it,” said Biorn, and deciphering old-fashioned terms like “quick oven,” “gill” and “teacup full” requires some historical knowledge. The book also functioned as a manual for homemakers, with instructions on everything from removing stains to butchering animals to churning butter. 

While some of the advice in the book is at the root of modern products—removing grass stains with the liquid from a cow’s gallbladder is an old fashioned application of using enzymes to remove stains—other advice is downright dangerous. 

"I think we know better than to rub kerosene on children to keep off mosquitoes," said Caldwell.


Still Practical

It’s the practical applications of the book that inspired Caldwell, whose website includes seasonal recipes and advice on how to cook seasonally.

"A lot of the how-tos in the book relate to the how-to questions we have today," she said.

Menus—“bills of fare” in the book—offer suggestions for meals in spring, summer, fall, and winter, and the menus show how limited the diets were at some times of the year.

“Lots of meat and potatoes,” said Caldwell, "I was really surprised how little variety there was with vegetables, even in the summer."

In her first episode, Caldwell cooks Swiss Soup, Chicken Fricassee and Ada’s Sugar Cookies. The soup is simply chopped potatoes and turnips, boiled in water, with butter, salt and pepper added at the end of cooking.

“It was bland,” Caldwell noted, “but I could see how it would be warming and filling on a cold winter night. It's interesting to go back in time."

Biorn, who cooked from the book extensively while working as a guide at the Oliver H. Kelley Farm in Elk River, says that many of the recipes are delicious. The gingerbread recipe is one of the best she's tasted. But it’s important to use the exact ingredients as much as possible, because they do affect the flavor.


Beyond Cooking

The book also gives a peek into the domestic lives of Midwesterners in the 19th Century. In addition to recipes (or reciepts, as the book calls them), the Buckeye cookbook includes sections on housecleaning, dealing with water wells, managing servants, nursing the sick and dozens of topics that homemakers needed to understand.  

"It's interesting to go back in time," Caldwell said.

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