Also available in print.

Merry Christmas! As we move closer and closer to the sestercentennial in 2026, here’s a centennial-adjacent cookbook from 1876. While Mrs. Winslow’s Domestic Receipt Book for 1876 (PDF File, 5.1 MB) was, obviously, designed specifically for 1876, it had nothing to do with the Centennial. It was, ostensibly at least, an almanac. So there was one for every year, including 1876.

“Mrs. Winslow” was not selling a baking product. “Mrs. Winslow’s” had been putting out Receipt Books every year since at least 1863, in the service of selling Brown’s Bronchial Troches¹ and Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup. They’re often classified as quack medicines but I’m not sure that they’re “quack” in the normal sense of the word. Judging from the ingredients and the advertisements in this pamphlet, they did what they were advertised to do.

Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup may not have been the best idea for quieting children suffering “the excruciating pain of Cutting Teeth”, but it probably did reduce the pain: it contained morphine. Most of the adult medicines promise to relieve coughs and sore throats, which they probably did. The products advertised in these almanacs, at least, do not appear to have promised a cure of the underlying ailment, only a refuge from the symptoms. Given the state of medicine at the time, they may even not have been the worst of contemporary methods of relieving such ailments.

This thick tomato jam is about an hour from ready.

Not your grandmother’s strawberry jam.

Tomato jam is great on toast.

And just as great on cornbread!

While this pamphlet is supposed to be an almanac the only content actually nodding to being an almanac is a one-page calendar, without any seasonal or weather info, or even any special dates marked.

The almanac came out yearly, and because it was an almanac it had to come out in the year ahead of the year it was for. So these, if they’re contemporary recipes, were contemporary to 1875.

I can’t find anywhere in the pamphlet that either solicits recipes or explains where the recipes come from. But they are interesting recipes. Of the recipes that I tried before reviewing on Goodreads, all three were worth keeping. The Cocoanut Pie was especially good. It’s like a Mounds candy bar filling in a pie crust! It’s very rich.

Chewy Cocoanut Pie

Servings: 12
Preparation Time: 1 hour, 15 minutes
Mrs. Charlotte N. Winslow
Mrs. Winslow’s Domestic Receipt Book for 1876 (PDF File, 5.1 MB)

Ingredients

• 8 oz dry grated coconut
• 12 oz sugar
• 6 oz butter
• 5 egg whites
• ¼ cup dry vermouth or white wine
• 2 tbsp rosewater
• 9-inch unbaked pie shell

Steps

1. Mix the coconut, vermouth, and rosewater.
2. Beat the butter and sugar well.
3. Mix in the coconut.
4. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks.
5. Fold into the coconut.
6. Pour into pie shell.
7. Bake at 325° for about one hour.

I used homemade rosewater. I don’t know how accurate it was, but it worked well in this pie.

I didn’t try it, but the Irish Potato Pie on page 8 appears to be have exactly the same ingredients as the one in the Horsford book that I did try. That’s an amazing pie, too, and one I don’t see much of today. Mrs. Winslow’s version is made very differently. The eggs aren’t separated. And where the Horsford book calls for the juice of one lemon, Mrs. Winslow’s version adds the zest as well.

The ingredients and measurements mentioned in these recipes are all over the place. While teaspoons are common, one recipe, for Mrs. Bleeker’s Waffles, calls for “enough soda to cover a five cent piece”. Various recipes call for baking soda, baking soda and cream of tartar, baking powder, and saleratus.

Madam B.’s Molasses Gingerbread called for two tablespoons of saleratus. I assumed 1 unit of saleratus is 1-¼ units of baking soda. I also used sour milk, since a handful of recipes specifically called for “sweet milk” and this one did not.

The recipes appear to be pulled from multiple sources, possibly including customers mailing them in. Because of this they have different styles. The gingerbread I made says to “stir in as much flour as you conveniently can with a spoon”, which is a fairly standard instruction for the time period. But I don’t think it has the meaning it sounds like it has. Whenever I follow it I end up with a dense, hard baked good. So this time I made a very wet batter and it came out perfect.

I suspect Madam B.’s Molasses Gingerbread may have come from a leavening advertisement originally, because it contained no eggs but was very light and wonderfully flavored.

This is a very good gingerbread.

Madam B’s Molasses Gingerbread

Servings: 12
Preparation Time: 1 hour
Mrs. Charlotte N. Winslow
Mrs. Winslow’s Domestic Receipt Book for 1876 (PDF File, 5.1 MB)

Ingredients

• 1 cup sour milk
• 4 oz butter
• 1 cup molasses
• 2 tbsp powdered ginger
• 1 tsp caraway seeds
• 3 cups flour
• 1-¼ tbsp baking soda

Steps

1. Warm the milk and the butter together just enough to melt the butter.
2. Stir in the molasses.
3. Whisk in the ginger and caraway.
4. Sift the flour and baking soda into the mix.
5. Spread into a lightly-greased 9x5 bread pan.
6. Bake at 350° for 30-35 minutes.

There are cookies named cookies on page 12 and 13. They’re still classified as cakes but they are called out as cookies instead of just very small cakes or very sweet biscuits.

Also like other recipes of the era, the cookies on page 12 don’t even mention flour. You’re supposed to know to add it. The cookies on page 13 merely say “knead in sufficient flour to roll out”. And just as “knead” means something different even today when talking about yeasted bread or baking powder biscuits, I’m pretty sure that cookies aren’t supposed to be kneaded in any manner by which we understand kneading today.

I’m not even sure “to roll out” means actually rolling with a pin instead of just dropping on a pan.

The Ginger Cookies also end with an instruction that is both perfectly understandable and not even remotely how we would phrase it today.

Ginger Cookies.

One cup of sugar, one cup of molasses, one cup of butter, one cup of boiling water, one tablespoonful of ginger, one tablespoonful of saleratus. Bake while warm.

The final recipe I made from this book was also the most unique, even more unique than the Cocoanut Pie. Tomato Jam is made with ripe tomatoes, peeled and seeded (I just ran them through a food mill, which had the same effect), and mixed with sugar and “two lemons”, boiled soft (I steamed them) with the pips removed (again, I just ran the soft lemons through the food mill).

…boil slowly, mashing to a smooth mass. When smooth and thick put in jars or tumblers.

Tomatoes have a lot of water. Turning them into jam boils off most of it, so that quarts of tomatoes means cups of jam.

I like it a lot. It is definitely not a modern flavor. It’s a sweet jam that tastes like tomato. At first taste it is a very weird flavor: very much a fresh tomato flavor that’s still a jam for toast or crackers!

Tomato Jam

Preparation Time: 4 hours
Mrs. Charlotte N. Winslow
Mrs. Winslow’s Domestic Receipt Book for 1876 (PDF File, 5.1 MB)

Ingredients

• 5 lbs tomatoes
• 2 lbs sugar
• 2 lemons

Steps

1. Remove skin and seeds from tomatoes, possibly by chopping and then running through a food mill. This should produce about 4 lbs.
2. Steam lemons until soft.
3. Chop lemons fine and strain, or run through a food mill.
4. Combine tomatoes, sugar, and lemons and bring to a low boil.
5. Boil slowly, skimming foam from the top, until smooth and thick, about 220° on a candy thermometer. It will take around three hours.
6. Seal in sterilized pint or half-pint jars. It should make about 4 to 5 cups of jam.

Other historically interesting recipes are a Baked Macaroni that is very obviously a modern mac-and-cheese dish. Instead of ending the layers with cheese or bread crumbs, however, it ends it with a layer of the noodles.

I’m not at all sure how to interpret A Good Salad. It sounds as though the idea of a tomato salad with onion and dressing was considered a new idea.

A Good Salad.

A correspondent of The Gardener’s Chronicle says:—“Here is a salad that will delight those who eat cucumber with bread and cheese: Take a tomato, not over-ripe, and cut it into slices, as you would a cucumber; take a small onion, and cut it up as fine as you can; sprinkle it over the Roma to slices, add salt, pepper and vinegar at discretion, and you will have a salad which, as a relish, puts the cucumber to shame.

Of course, add cucumber to that and you have the perfect salad.

This coconut pie is the best thing out of the book so far.

It is chewy with a crisp top, and delightfully sweet.

The gingerbread was rich with plenty of flavor.

This tapioca custard was also lovely, especially with fresh fruit.

The French Tapioca Custard has an interesting technique that probably reflects the times. Modern recipes—and by “modern” I mean since at least 1922 will tell you to boil the water, possibly with the tapioca, for a few minutes and then let sit for half an hour or so, or cook in a double boiler for a short period. Mrs. Winslow’s recipe calls for letting the tapioca sit in cold water for five hours before starting the double boiler.

It’s possible that the reason is some difference between the tapioca pearls of then and of today. But I suspect it has more to do with the technology of 1875, or earlier if the recipe was an old one. Starting a “stovetop” took a lot more effort then. By letting the tapioca prep slowly, it can be heated along with the other ingredients when needed, probably after some other item has necessitated starting and maintaining a fire.

That recipe is otherwise very modern: it uses specific measurements and specific instructions. Unlike the Cocoanut Pie, Gingerbread, and Tomato Jam I’ve reproduced as recipes on this page, there’s little interpretation required beyond what any modern recipe would require. You should be able to follow it directly from the book (PDF File, 5.1 MB), using a double boiler instead of a “farina kettle”. To “boil” the milk, heat it in a double boiler (or over boiling water, as the recipe says) until it boils. It won’t be a full rolling boil, but it will steam and it will have bubbles coming up. Patience is required! Given modern stovetops, you could probably perform the second boil and maybe even the first much faster by using low heat instead of a double boiler.

Also, a “dessertspoon”, to the extent that it’s anything, is two teaspoons—which you would know if you had a copy of A Traveling Man’s Cookery Book.

I flavored mine with vanilla—about ¾ teaspoons. It is very good over fruit, as the recipe recommends.

I’ve made the book available as PDF (PDF File, 5.1 MB), and I’ve put facsimile up at Lulu if you’d like to buy a print version. The print version is bigger than the original, because the original is tiny and very difficult to read.