Grandmother had a needle for pulling fat bacon through lean meat but she called it a "barding" needle. Wonder if it was just a misunderstanding of the other word or perhaps there is a 'barding" needle. Going to check wikipedia.

This trip to the Past via the old cookbooks has been most interesting. A lot of the recipes just give the ingredients and expect the reader to know enough about cooking to put them together.

Another thing that interested me was the use of CHARCOAL in canning fruits or vegetables. A lump about the size of a nutmeg was place on top of the contents and the jar was sealed. It was supposed to improve the taste and condition of the fruit or vegetable.

I liked the idea behind the name of this one:

CHEAP OMELET

..."One cupful of bread crumbs, two-thirds cupful of sweet milk, two eggs, beaten and stirred in, a pinch of salt and butter. Place in oven until it sets...."

About the round steak hamburger meat, my mom thinks that fifteen cents worth probably means one pound.

She's not that old, but remembers buying amounts of meat described by the price per pound.

According to the site below, pricier meats like bacon and regular steak were 24 and 23 cents per pound, so hamburger might have been as low as 15:

Here is a link that might be useful: 1912 information

I'm assuming the round steak was bought intact and ground at home, since they didn't refer to it as minced. If it were sold as minced beef (burger) the suet would have already been incorporated into it. I buy lean pork loin to make my own chariso and grind it. Well, now that Mexican food is becoming mainstream I can buy it at market.

I remember my Mama sending us to the little corner market with the instructions to buy a quarter's worth of bologna. Don't imagine the author would have ever guessed a pound slab of round would ever sell for five spot.

Grandma wouldn't dream of buying ground meat at he meat market. She always bought a quarters worth of chuck and ground it in a Universal hand operated grinder, I still have that grinder and it is used once in a while. Has to be well over 100 years old. She always said you don't know what they grind in that hamburger. We almost never had hamburger as such but often had meat loaf.

Back in the day, nothing was wasted. In Sweden they made Blood Pudding from pigs blood. Blood tounge in aspic, the aspic at that time was chicken gelatine.
The "Cheap Omelet" sounds like the oven omelet we had in Sweden, but these days we also include bacon . I guess we got "rich" enough at some point to include bacon.
My relative, the hunter, made needles from bones from animals, and "thread" from sinew.
Very interesting thread.

agnespuffin , oh I dd noticed the "BEAT ONE HALF HOUR?" That not going to happen in our house. I may like and use some of the old time recipes, but I'll also use my new time saver appliances.

Another one to ponder on:

EGGLESS, MILKLESS, BUTTERLESS CAKE

..."One cupful of sugar, one cupful of water, two cupsful of raisins, a half cupful of lard. a fourth teaspoon of salt, one teaspoonful on cinnamon, one teasponful of nutmeg, a half teaspoonful of cloves. Mix and boil three minutes. When cold, add one teaspoonful of soda disolved in one tablespoonful of boiling water, one teaspoonful of baking powder and two cupsful of flour..."

The writer doesn't say a thing about baking it.

It might have been boiled in a muslin bag. Gandle makes suet pudding, as do I. It looks to the novice eye like a fruitcake, but isn't. It is not baked, but simmered in boiling water in a bag to give it form. Ours is large and usually takes about five hours to get firm and done, and my parents usually stayed up Christmas eve making it and we children could smell the spicy aroma of it rising up the stairs from the kitchen. Daddy would sometimes hang the bag from a tree branch outside to dry and cool. That night with the pudding cooking and the anticipation made sleep almost impossible. I don't think either of my kids shall carry on the tradition. One likes it, one doesn't and it's an act of love to make one and not cheap. Our family has been making it forever it seems and I don't know if it came from our English or Scot line.

My g'mother made apple dumplings the same way, each one wrapped in its own little muslin tied by butcher's twine and floating in a pot of simmering water. They were heavenly. I made it once that way. Way lot of work.

You could be right! I found two recipes for suet pudding in the book. One was put in a bag and put in boiling water. The other one, simply said, "Steam three and one half hours.

Do you know how they would have steamed something?

You all are lucky...no one in my family on either side were cooks. I learned the hard way...by myself after I got married! LOL

Actually I was not encouraged to cook as a young woman either, although my Mama was one of the best cooks I ever knew. However, I did my share of KP and witnessed her in action. So, I had a steep learning curve too.

I've never steamed puddings so don't know, but did know it was an option. One sees so many desserts in days gone by boiled in bags. I've baked in ovens with no thermostats, and it's tedious and tricky, cracking the doors or damping down. You got around it, if possible and boiling in a bag was an easy option.

As recently as the early fifties, my Mother sent me to the local Safeway with an onion. I'd buy a pound of round steak, ask for it to be ground, and he'd include the onion in the grinding. That seems incredible to me, now--mainly b/c as a teenager, I can't imagine my wanting to do that! :>)

Thanks for the video Minnie. I had no idea what a larding needle was nor how it could be used. Following Minnie's lead, I found "instructions for steaming a pudding."

I'm such a good customer at a local kitchen gadget store that I recently spent a few days working there. I took some of my pay in trade: a lovely ceramic coated non-stick fry pan (I'll never go back to Teflon), some kitchen containers, a magnetic knife blade protector... I even got a gorgeous 8.5" MAC knife as a "bonus." I definitely found my new favorite knife brand in the process. That MAC is a dream!

Count me as another one who left the nest unable to cook. I'm learning fast, and fascinated by the reality that the more I learn, the less I realize I know. I've got at least a few decades of serious study ahead of me.

Tibs, I've added tongue to my repertoire in the last year and am glad I did so. Two words of advice: Pressure cooker! I've done it just plain, thinly sliced, with a parsley, lemon, garlic sauce, and cubed up in tacos de lingua. For the latter, I used this recipe, but adapted it to use my pressure cooker. I definitely liked what slicing and browning did to the texture of the meat. The texture of tongue is definitely "different"... but different is often delicious!

Thanks for the recipe! I have never used a pressure oooker- though my mom used one all the time. The recipe to boil the tongue is way more detailed than my Fanny Farmer.

My son got me a new cook book - the one that is the bible for todays cooks Called How to cook everything - I think- it is on the nightstand upstairs as it is currently bedside reading. It has no tongue recipe. Or any organ meat recipe. Maybe liver.

My mother used to make tongue, and she sliced it thin for sandwiches. I ate it, but with my lips skinned back like when you order a dog to eat a piece of apple. LOL. She fixed kidneys once, and never again. I asked my g'ma how to fix them and she said it was easy........just 'bile' the p*** out of them. The last time I went to a little butcher shop in England and had a piece of pork cut, it was near the end of the day and the clerk whispered she slipped a kidney in as a bonus. OMG. I politely thanked her and left it up to my kids how to dispose of/cook it.

I'm particularly fond of an English dish called faggots, and it's like little tiny meat loaves and there are all sorts of organ meats in it, including the lights or lungs. Waste not, want not. Americans think the national cuisine has ventured away from this type of consumption, but it actually hasn't if you read the labels on some processed foods. The one I thought was particularly funny was a package of hot dogs where cow lips were one of the ingredients.

I have a cookbook from 1878 written by Marian Harland, (a pseudonyme) the most snobbish woman that you can imagine. How she talks down to her readers. Her languag is quite florid and one gets the impression that she thinks of herself as more genteel than anyone else.

In her foreword, she lectures about how you must use every leftover crumb and bone from the platter. that some might put in the "swill-pot". Furthermore, do not be deceived by the pitious whining of the "basketbeggar", he who appears at your base-ment with a sad story. She calls herself a good Christian woman (she was married to a minister) who will decide who is worthy of her charity.

I went onto the Internet to see if the cookbook could be found there. Sure enough, this woman wrote many books including several cookbooks and there is one of hers, published at a later date than the one that I have, that has been fully digitized. Also the one that was written about by tibs, Miss Parlola's cookbook is detailed there.

In the 1878 edition, Miss Harland suggests that one corner of your kitchen should be devoted just to your "tools".

"Have your scoop flour-sifter; your patent pie-lifter, and oyster-broiler; your star-toaster; your pie-crimper, vegetable and nutmeg grater; gravy strainer, colander, biscuit-cutter, skimmers, larding needles, wire, and perforated, and slit and fluted spoons; your weights and measures, and the tiny serviceable tinned and enamaled saucepans, Scotch kettles, frying pans, etc. that will retain tidy and serviceable qualities so long in your care, and so soon come to grief in boorish clutches. Set all these, and as many others as you like and can afford to buy�always including the Dover egg-beater and its "Baby" (made for whipping one egg to more purpose than one egg, or anything else as small was ever whipped before)�in array upon walls and shelves, and let the logic of daily events prove how far they will deprive work of the wearing vexatious attendent upon long searches for the right article and its wrong condition when found. Make your helpers�one and all�comprehend that these are your especial property, to be used�and kept clean�by no one else. Let them be looked down upon as toys of a would-be-busy woman, by the superior intellects about you, should they see fit thus to do, and provide such tools as are suited to coarser fingers for them to use. The chances are many to one that your dextrious manipultion of your instruments; the excellence of the products achieved by yourself and them; even the attractive neatness of the display and your corner, will win skeptics, first, to indulgence, then, admiration, then, to imitation. . ."

I have copied the book exactly as she wrote it, including the punctuation (except that some of the dashes come out as question marks on the screen).

On later pages, she suggests that her helpers are Irish women who can't be trusted. Wouldn't you have dreaded going to work for this woman?

In the later edition, she goes on in great detail about the correct way to set a table and how service should be done by the "servers" - how their uniform must be for each meal, etc. It sounds like an English movie about the rich and titled residents of a vast estate.

An example of a menu suggestion, evidently for those with lesser means than her own:
A calf's head, scraped free of hair and well-cleaned, may be bought in country markets for fifty cents, and can be made
into a dainty dish fit for John and John's unexpected friend.

There is a small slaughter house in the small town near son's farm. He is a friend with the owner and there they used to discard the tongues and tails. They happen to be one of our favorite meats and he gets them free. He has been sharing them with us but I suspect he keeps more than half.

We always serve spinach with the tongue dinner and the leftovers make wonderful sanwiches.

The tails (oxtails) are great braised or in a soup. they have the most delicious gelationius quality. Almost makes your lips stick together.

Been interesting reading how they used to cook and how some still do.

Moving along just a little. The Rumford Complete Cook Book was most likely my aunt's favorite. (COPYRIGHT 1918) She has notes, etc. all thoughout the little book.

One is a recipe clipped from something that dates back to the rationing period of WWII. Its how to substitute Hot Milk and baking Power for the rationed shortning. It saved the precious rationing stamp for meat instead of using it for shortning for a cake.

We lived where there was plenty of fish and shrimp so meat was not a problem. Shoes were. I was at that horrible teen time when I out grew shoes at a fantasic rate. It took rationing stamps from my grandmother and my mother to keep me shod for school.

I also belong to the tongue and oxtail eaters, but they are now hard to find. 20 - 30 years ago they were cheap around here. Last summer I found 1 tongue at a local shop, about 1 1/2 lbs, $ 14.00. Smoked tongue (cooked) makes great sandwiches and one of the things I try to get when vising in Germany. A butcher for a large grocery chain told me that tongues now are mostly shipped to upscale restaurants or used in other products.

I still have my rationing book from those days. Those sure were memorable days.

We were very poor. When we wore the soles of our shoes out, we used newspaper to cover the holes until we outgrew them. When the heels wore out, Dad bought heels from Woolworths and nailed them on himself.

Tongue was cheap and we had it often, served with horseradish. Nowadays, ox-tails seemed quite expensive when we last priced them. It used to be common to see Ox-tail soup on a restaurant menu; now we seldom do.

And that is why, if one can't butcher their own, a local abetoir is so nice. It's where I get my big bags of ox-tails. Still pricey, because of their rarity. Heck, we had it a lot when I was growing up and it's still my fav soup, but most people younger than me just go eeeewwww and make a face when you tell them about it. Clean kidney suet is even harder to find. I buy the whole chunks intact and peel the membrane and grind my own.

Forgot to mention that that is where e get our suet and beef bones. Hard to find beef bones in a grocery store. Kidney suet is for our use, the other is bird food.

I'm fortunate that I live in a place (Santa Clara County, CA) that has a varied population so the foods reflect that population.
We have a very large German population. (See the stats below). Even the national grocery stores around here carry the old-country foods. Tongue, ox-tail, suet, marrow bones etc...
Yum.

Population by First Ancestry

1,633,640 (94.46%) out of the total population of 1,729,378 reported first ancestry.
Santa Clara County % of the Total Population California U.S.
Arab 10,147 0.59% 0.66% 0.50%
Czech 4,819 0.28% 0.27% 0.54%
Danish 9,406 0.54% 0.55% 0.49%
Dutch 15,988 0.92% 1.19% 1.68%
English 109,924 6.36% 7.02% 9.29%
French 40,782 2.36% 2.56% 3.90%
German 145,915 8.44% 9.93% 16.89%
Greek 6,820 0.39% 0.38% 0.45%
Hungarian 5,612 0.32% 0.37% 0.52%
Irish 108,817 6.29% 7.79% 12.01%
Italian 81,889 4.74% 4.33% 5.91%
Norwegian 18,872 1.09% 1.14% 1.55%
Polish 22,692 1.31% 1.45% 3.32%
Portuguese 29,219 1.69% 1.05% 0.48%
Russian 20,955 1.21% 1.25% 1.04%
Scotch-Irish 16,675 0.96% 1.23% 1.77%
Scottish 25,289 1.46% 1.61% 1.97%
Subsaharan African 9,405 0.54% 0.71% 0.88%
Swedish 20,581 1.19% 1.28% 1.45%
Swiss 7,107 0.41% 0.32% 0.34%
Ukrainian 4,867 0.28% 0.27% 0.32%
American 29,297 1.69% 2.66% 6.43%
Welsh 8,212 0.47% 0.52% 0.65%

Another tongue and tail lover! The taails have gotten pricey since many are sent to Asian countries. The cheapest I have seen them in chicago is $3.50/#. Beef tongue is right up there also.

Several years ago a local Greek market must have bought a truck load. he sold them for .99/# and I kid you not, I bought 6 and froze them. My Mom was in heaven. I have one in the freezer now, and I think I will make it next weekend. And I will remember my Mom and hope she peers over my shoulder when I make the gravy. Ours is a tomato based and has a good splash of maderia in it.

My mom was a good cook having learned on the farm with a big family and we had tongue, liver and onions, and many other dishes that are not common today. I learned to cook watching her and I like to eat with no limits on types of food. Any thing new is an adventure.

Used to have a cook book that was so complete it was hard to believe. It had the description of how each ingredient was grown, harvested, brought to market, how to choose store and prepare each and recipes they were used in. To me it was the ultimate definitive cook book. Will get a new one one of these days.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Wise Encyclopedia of Cookery: One of the World's Most Definitive Reference Books on Food and Cooking.

This has been a fascinating thread; I've read every post, and learned a lot, but haven't contributed a thing. I confess, even at my advanced age--or perhaps b/c of it-- my taste buds are so common-placed, unrefined, plebian, etc., there is nothing I could add. Maybe grits 'n gravy, but I really don't even want gravy on my grits! :>)

Perhaps 60 years ago we used to be able to buy sweetbreads in a grocery store in North Platte. We loved them sauteed with mushrooms. Haven't seen any in any store for a great many years. Of course the same store had brains which we did eat once in a while. Brains with scrambled eggs was very good but you didn't want to dwell on what you were eating.
We did have tripe when I was a child, never really liked it very well. Texture was kind of like chewing on a bicycle tire. Head cheese was always made when a hog was butchered. Now I really liked that. Slightly vinegary taste in a jellied buch of meats. About the only thing we didn't eat were the eyeballs

Found another one that I want to try:

PINEAPPLE CREAM

...."Rub a pound each of butter and sugar to a cream. Stir in a pound of grated pineapple. Then add the yolks of three eggs, well beaten, and a cupful of milk. Beat tbe whites of the eggs stiff and light and add them last. Line a pudding dish with a rich pie crust rolled very thin. Fill it with the prepared custard and bake in a moderate oven.."

There's one thing for sure...it would be rich and sweet! I am guessing that the pineapple would be fresh, not canned.

Only just reading this thread: Gandle, it's known as barding in the UK, where we still 'bard' game birds like pheasant etc with bacon, to keep it moust while roasting. We often do the same with roast turkey too, to keep the breast meat from drying out.

My grandmother also always ground her own mince (we don't call it ground meat) and I have her mincing machine and still use it too.

Adding squeezed out bread to meat is a standard thing in Italian households when making meatballs. Ideally, the bread slice is soaked in milk then squeezed. It really does make the meatball lighter and 'fluffier'.
My mother used to make oxtail soup a lot when I was a child.

Exactly, to keep it moist. Good to do with leaner meats, e.g. rabbit. Bard it with goose or duck or goose fat and it's divine!

So how can it a squeezed piece of bread make it lighter and/or fluffier?! Wow. That's exactly the opposite of what I envisioned, and why I commented. Hm.

I don't know exactly, but I've done it myself and it works - I think the bread can't absorb any more moisture, but its texture (you need stale bread) allows it to separate the meat bits a little or something. At least, that's my theory. But I agree, it sounds entirely counter-intuitive.

Now lets start the discussion about whether you cook the meatballs first, or put them raw into the sauce to cook . . . . :) (I've watched my MIL and her sister have this argument many, many times).

Caliope had to look up "ab'at'toir" Word I never saw before for a slaughter house or butchery. Living on the edge of Amish country and a big hunting county (first time in 5 years that we were not the number one white tail deer kill county, one over got the prize) we have quite a few butchers. Next year when I get my 1/4 of the longhorn steer I am going to ask for the tail!

My 1940 something Poultry Association cooking pamphelt's recipe for chicken stock is to use the.....feet! That brought a EEUUUCH from me. Anybody ever do that?

We put a handful of quick cook oatmeal in our hamburger patties. I guess it works like bread in the meat balls. It seems to soak up the meat juices and then swell a little and hold the juice in instead of allowing it to cook out.

Try this for a great Hamburger Steak. (my recipe, not an old one)

BIG steaks for two. Medium steaks for three or four.

1/2 lb of ground meat
handful of quick cook oatmeal
1 egg, beat well before adding
finely chopped onion, celery and garlic.
Salt and pepper

Mix it all together, divide into portions and fry or grill.

tibs, there was a thread on the cooking forum which showed a step by step for using chicken and feet and everyone proclaimed it the best. So there you go. It is good. Probably a bone marrow thing. That always makes things better.

I've made stock with feet many times. It "has legs" in that it is so rich and supple, it develops a jello-like consistency at room temp. The flavor is awesome. Before I switched to only buying chicken whole from a local producer (which led to a constant supply of carcasses for stock) I used to buy chicken feet from a local Asian market for stock making. They were inexpensive, and it amused me they were always labeled as "chickens paws."

I get such a kick out of reading this thread because it seems to be so universal. We're talking about food from several areas of the world.

chicken paws. HA! I love it.

No one has mentioned Chicken Gizzards.

A brown stew made of gizzards is great....the problem is finding a store that sells them

I love chicken gizzards! My local grocer sells them. Sometimes. And liver, I love liver. Course, I eat whatever doesn't eat me first.

:)

I also like liver, liver and onions is yummy. But I have given up buying liver because I don't know where that liver comes from. After all, the liver is a filter. Does it come from a country where they use pesticide,hormones etc...
Re the chicken gizzards, I buy whole chickens and freeze the gizzards, when I have enough, I make chicken stock/soup.

Thank you but no thank you on the gizzards. They're like chewing through the little rubber wheels on a Tonka truck.

None of the cats will eat the gizzards, so I figure they are not fit for human consumption. Now chicken hearts, the kids use to fignt over who gets it. You know what really irritates me is when I buy a whole chicken and the little bag inside does not have gizzards, heart, liver and neck, but maybe 3 gizzards and neck, or some other alien combination. Obviously they have a big vat of the "innards" and just grab a handful of what ever. I want my chicken's own parts.

Lol tibs, I know what you mean. A few times I've gotten whole chickens with "alien" parts like three kidneys, two necks etc...but I dealt with it. But after your post, I'm thinking that there might be a chicken gizzard "business" going on. Who knows where the gizzards come from?

I'm laughing at Tibs' comments too. I was going to mention my cat experience with them, but it's indelicate. I once cooked them up nicely and fed them to my kitties, who ate them and them promptly barfed them back up. That's when I also decided they might not be fit for human consumption.

What irritates me is that I used to buy a lot of packs of chicken backs and necks for soup broth. They are non-existant now in the local markets. Sometimes they'll cut off the backs with the breast sections so you end up paying premiums prices for the scraps parts.

One also doesn't see a lot of whole frying chickens at market anymore. Roasters, maybe. Used to be every young woman could snap the joints and cut up a nice frying chicken in a matter of minutes. I'll bet that's becoming a lost art. Don't even address how to clean and pluck one.

Sitting here wondering how Suzi knows
what the rubber wheels on Tonka trucks taste like.....

I can't look at a gizzard and not think of what we used to find in them when we cleaned poultry on my uncle's farm when I was young. Chickens eat all sorts of weird stuff. I've pulled Christmas light bulbs, dimes, tacks, beads, screws, washers, and all sorts of nonsense out of the gizzards. It's been a long time since I've cleaned and plucked one. (And I've almost managed to get the stench out of my hands!)

My freezer is was full of backs and necks. (I got around to making and pressure canning a batch of stock the other day. The next batch is going to be noodle-less chicken noodle soup.) I love to spatchcock, so I accumulate backs and necks pretty quickly.

I cook up the little bag o' goodies in my chickens for the dogs, and they love me for it (though I suspect they'd love me even if I didn't). But I learned the hard way to halve the kidneys and to eschew the microwave when I do this. What's the hard way? I nuked the giblets (whole kidneys included), and when one exploded in the microwave, I ran to the door to open it. The second I stuck my nose inside to figure out what had happened... BLAMO! Another kidney sprayed my face with, um, shrapnel. Seriously... cut them in half and cook them in a skillet, people!

West, with the exception of some of the fish, I know where the livers of every animal in my freezer come from, and what those animals ate. :o)

I too want to be acquainted with the animal whose liver I am eating.

jazmynsmom , I know what you mean about what chickens eat and how it ends up in the gizzards. I've been there and done the cleaning of the gizzards of all kinds of "stuff". But the regular "stuff" is not I'm worried about. I'm more worried about the unknown.

Agnespuffin, I found some downloadable online copies of The Rumford Complete Cookbook -- check the link below under the author's name; Wallace, Lily Haxworth:

Here is a link that might be useful: Wallace, Lily Haxworth

Well GPer's, I blame you all for the spend today at H Mart for 2 very large packs of oxtails. Dad is in heaven at the thought of the stew to come. And so am I. It is a two day process to make so I will be busy next weekend.