Also available as a printed copy.

My Independence Day post this year presented a collection of recipes celebrating the 1876 Centennial. I couldn’t find as many such books as I could find for 1976. I’ve continued to find Bicentennial cookbooks well after my inaugural 2023 post. Most likely, improved and more economical printing technology over the century between 1876 and 1976 opened the opportunity for more organizations to publish.

As a result of the dearth of source material, though, I had a few automatic searches set up on various sites to find Centennial books. Not all of the results were about the Centennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. A lot were about state centennials. Some were apparently just because “centennial” is a cool name.

The New Centennial Cook Book (PDF File, 4.7 MB) appears to be one of the latter. It came up in my searches because the seller thought that the “centennial” in the title meant that was the year of publication. And yet, there’s nothing else in the book to bolster that assumption.

It really looked like the word “centennial” in “New Centennial Cook Book” was referring to something else. A search on newspapers.com seemed to confirm my suspicions. The same company that produced this pamphlet also produced a line of (apparently cheap) kitchenware. L. E. Brown & Co.’s “patent Centennial Cake Pan” first appeared in August 1877, in an advertisement aimed as much at sales agents as at bakers:

BUSINESS FOR EVERY ONE.—Our attention has been called to a new cooking utensil, recently invented, which makes baking a pleasure, instead of a dreaded necessity; the inventor of which has conferred an everlasting blessing upon every housekeeper. We refer to the Patent Centennial Cake Pan, with which by raising a hook, you can remove the sides of the Pan from the cake without breaking or injuring it—how annoying it is, after making up a nice cake to have it break to pieces getting it out of the pan—this can never occur in using the Patent Centennial Cake Pan. It can also be converted into a plain bottom pan for baking jelly or plain cakes, bread, etc. They are sold exclusively through agents to families, and every housekeeper should by all means have them. A splendid opportunity is offered to some reliable lady or gentleman canvasser of this county to secure the agency for a pleasant and profitable business. For terms, territory, etc., write to L. E. Brown & Co., 214 and 216 Elm Street, Cincinnati, Ohio.

This same ad with the same text appeared in newspapers throughout at least the eastern half of the United States.

You’ll notice that there’s no mention of a cookbook. I doubt there ever was an “old” Centennial Cook Book. I could find no evidence for it. Most likely the company thought “New” would sell more cake pans.

The first reference to a cookbook by the name of “The Centennial Cook Book” (which is the name of this book on its front page) in L. E. Brown & Co. ads comes in 1881, although there is an odd unnamed offer from one of their individual agents in Kansas in 1878, and a book of nearly the same name and tagline—“Helmick’s Centennial Cook Book, containing over 100 valuable receipts” from a W.F. Helmick, also of Cincinnati, in 1877.

My guess is that some individual agents began including a pamphlet of recipes, L. E. Brown noticed that it was an effective tactic, and “produced” a “new” cookbook in 1881 for all of their agents. If I’m reading how agentry worked, it would mean something else for agents to have to buy from L. E. Brown.

That was moderately interesting, if not what I was looking for. But L. E. Brown & Co. had a very poor reputation. I wondered about them taking the initiative to write a cookbook. Further, while the book seemed unlikely to be from the 1870s, the recipes themselves seemed to be even older. Because the pamphlet was meant to help sell cake pans, the recipes are all for baking, and mostly for desserts.

A couple of Internet searches on recipe text showed that most of the recipes are taken verbatim from a much larger 1864 cookbook, The American System of Cookery.

Plain Rice Pudding

Servings: 4
Preparation Time: 2 hours
The Centennial Cook Book and General Guide (Internet Archive)

Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• 1 quart milk
• 1 tsp salt
• ¼ cup rice
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 1 tbsp melted butter

Steps

1. Bring the milk and eggs to room temperature.
2. Beat the eggs until light.
3. Mix the salt and rice into the milk.
4. Beat the milk and eggs together.
5. Add the sugar, nutmeg, and butter.
6. Pour into a 1-½ quart casserole.
7. Bake uncovered for 60-90 minutes at 400°.

Taking recipes from previous books isn’t a big deal now and was probably less of a big deal then. For example, one of the recipes I made was their Rice Pudding Without Eggs. Ellen Myers’s The Centennial Cook Book and General Guide also contains this recipe, calling it “Plain rice pudding”. Other than calling for three eggs instead of two or more, it is nearly the same text as in The American System of Cookery and definitely the same recipe. Three eggs is, after all, more than two. But Myers’s version doesn’t contain the exact text in the exact format as The American System of Cookery. The New Centennial Cook Book does. Here’s how they compare:

The New Centennial Cook Book

Rice Pudding—With Eggs. Beat two or more eggs light and stir them into a quart of milk, with a teaspoonful of salt and a wine-glass of rice well washed; put to it two tablespoonfuls of sugar, half a nutmeg, grated, and a tablespoonful of butter. Bake one hour in a quick oven.

The American System of Cookery

RICE PUDDING, with Eggs.—Beat two or more eggs light and stir them into a quart of milk, with a teaspoonful of salt and a wineglass of rice well washed; put to it two tablespoonfuls of sugar, half a nutmeg, grated, and a tablespoonful of butter. Bake one hour in a quick oven.

The Plain Rice Pudding on page 54 of the Centennial Cook Book is obviously the same recipe as the rice pudding with eggs in American System, but unlike The New Centennial version, Myers’s recipe is not a verbatim copy:

Plain rice pudding..

TIME, ONE HOUR.

Beat three eggs light, and stir them into a quart of milk, with a little salt, and a wineglass of rice well washed; put to it two tablespoonful of sugar, half a nutmeg grated, and a tablespoonful of butter. Bake one hour in a quick oven.

The rice pudding is indeed very plain. The rice settles on the bottom—and may be there mainly to soak up the liquid that drains out of the pudding. This recipe could, in fact, be the base for many other dishes: some with vegetables and savory spices and others with fruit and dessert spices.

I also tried the Cheap Batter Pudding and it’s a good example of why rice pudding—or bread pudding—of that sort might have been popular: it was a decent pudding with a lot of juice on the bottom that could have been soaked up by bread or rice. This pudding also uses eggs, a little flour for thickening, presumably, and a lot of milk. It’s flavored with lemon juice and nutmeg. It was disappointing when I made it for breakfast, which may be because I don’t know how to eat this sort of pudding. It was much better the next morning, after it had cooled and gelled a bit more.

The Rich Batter Pudding doubles the number of eggs and doesn’t flavor it: you’re expected to eat it with brandy or wine-sauce. Because you’re rich!

The rice pudding looks good, and is okay, but it looks better than it is.

It was creamy on the top, with a layer of rice on the bottom that didn’t quite constitute a crust.

Fewer eggs than the rich batter pudding, and meant to be eaten without hard sauce. Because you’re not rich!

The cheap batter pudding turned into a mess when turned out.

In an odd way, an even better example of their culinary plagiarism is their recipe for Cocoanut Macaroons. The text is the same in both books:

Cocoanut Macaroons. Make these the same as almond macaroons, substituting grated coconut for powdered almonds; finish the same as almond macaroons.

That the text for such a small recipe is verbatim is one thing. That there is no recipe for almond macaroons in The New Centennial Cook Book is another thing entirely. There is no recipe for almond macaroons in The New Centennial Cook Book because there was no recipe for almond macaroons in The American System of Cookery.

This kind of copying was probably not a copyright violation. Even if the first publication of those recipes was 1864, and thus would have been copyrighted until at least 1892, recipes can’t be copyrighted. Further, there is very little commentary in these recipes. They’re about as basic as you can get and still have it be a recipe.

None of this makes the book worth paying lots of money for. It’s an undated reprint from the 1880s, not a celebration of the centennial from 1876 and not even with unique recipes.

Not all of the recipes are from The American System of Cookery. The very first recipe is for a titular “Centennial Cake”. I haven’t tried it, but it looks like a fine cake, using beaten egg whites as well as “two teaspoonfuls baking powder” as the leavening. It’s much simpler than the other two “Centennial Cake” recipes I was able to find (in the 1898 Compendium of Everyday Wants and the 1901 Physical Culture Cook Book), which include dried fruit, coffee, and multiple colors of batter.

My copy of the pamphlet has what looks like a printer’s smudge or fold where the ink didn’t catch on page three. The Pound Cake on that page is from The American System of Cookery, so I was able to fix the text. However, the problem goes through the third cake on that page and that cake doesn’t appear to be from American System (neither does the second cake although it’s readable enough to decipher) Nothing in American System requires “twelve eggs”. It looks a little like Dundee Cake to me, so that’s what I put in the PDF’s table of contents. But I was unwilling to make such a wild guess in the text itself.

Fried Apple Slices

Preparation Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

• Apples
• Lard

Steps

1. Quarter apples and remove cores.
2. Slice apple quarters no more than an eighth of an inch thick.
3. Fry in hot (350°) fat until golden brown and crisp as desired, about 5-8 minutes.
4. Remove to platter and sprinkle with salt.

Other than that you could get the same recipes elsewhere, it’s a nice collection of dishes. The first recipe I tried were the Fried Apples. Of the three recipes I tried, these were the standout, and a very unique treat to modern palates.

Fried Apples. Wash fine, fair apples without paring, and cut them in slices an eighth of an inch thick, and fry in hot lard or pork fat; serve with fried pork.

I quartered them before slicing, but I’m not sure they needed to be. I interpreted “without paring” to mean “without removing the skin”. I still removed the core, with the hard part and seeds.

I set my deep fryer to 350°, because that’s what the manual said to do for fresh potatoes. Which, I’ll admit, is a wild guess. It seemed to be a good choice, however.

I ate them as a snack, after sprinkling them with salt, and as a sandwich on brown bread. I recommend sprinkling the apples with salt. Treat them like a vegetable, in other words.

Lemon Marmalade Pie

Servings: 12
Preparation Time: 3 hours

Ingredients

• six lemons (1-¼ lb to 1-½ lb)
• 1 lb light brown sugar
• ¾ cup (lemon) water
• double-layer 9-inch pie crust

Steps

1. Boil or steam lemons until very soft.
2. Reserve lemony water for syrup and crust.
3. Chop lemons fine, removing seeds, possibly running through a food mill.
4. Boil sugar and lemon water until it forms a nice syrup, about 220°.
5. Pour the finely-chopped lemons into the syrup and let cool to room temperature.
6. Prepare a double-layer 9-inch pie crust, using reserved lemony water if making from scratch.
7. Pour filling to the lower layer of the crust.
8. Top the pie with the upper layer.
9. Cut a slit in the center of the top crust.
10. Bake at 425° for 15 minutes.
11. Reduce heat to 350° and bake about another 45 minutes.

Another unique standout is the Lemon Pie, which I’m calling Lemon Marmalade Pie. It’s nothing like the smooth lemon pudding or custard-like pie, topped with meringue, that we’re familiar with. The lemons are boiled until soft, chopped fine, and mixed with a brown sugar syrup. It uses both a bottom and a top crust.

The lemon pie took a long time to cool. Warm, it was closer to a cobbler than a pie. If I wanted to serve it warm I would probably make it in an 8x8 square pan if I make it straight next time. Otherwise, let it cool all day or overnight and you’ll have a lemon pie that holds together.

You might even add some eggs and turn it into a pecan-pie-style lemon pie. I suspect that would be amazing.

The fried apple slices make a great sandwich.

Once it cooled, this was an amazing and beautiful pie. You could easily make it as a square pie.

The lemon marmalade pie must be allowed to cool. If served warm, it will be a mess.

There was a little lemon pie filling leftover—perfect for toast!

One recipe I haven’t made that I plan to is the Common Cup Cake, which looks decidedly uncommon. It’s flavored with either lemon or brandy, and nutmeg. I can guarantee you I’m going with the latter.

I’ve made this pamphlet available as a PDF (PDF File, 4.7 MB) and I’ve put a facsimile on Lulu.com if you prefer printed copies. The print copy is larger than the original. First, I try to use the closest size that matches the ratio of height to width; and, second, these pamphlets tended to be very small, with correspondingly small text.

Enjoy! I definitely recommend the fried apple slices and lemon marmalade pie.