“This is a Cook Book by the people and for the people.” So begins the preface of The Chicago Record Cook Book, published in 1896 and reprinted the same year under the title The Daily News Cook Book. Like cookbooks put out by parishes, schools, or civic organizations, The Chicago Record Cook Book was comprised of recipes from homemakers—but on a grander scale. The newspaper, the morning counterpart of the afternoon Chicago Daily News, conducted a contest beginning in 1895, asking the women of America to submit menus for an entire day—breakfast, lunch, and dinner. According to the first page of the volume, 10,000 manuscripts came in, and the “cream”—1,100—were included in the book, which has complete bills of fare for every single day of the year.
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Most winning menus also appeared in the daily editions of the Record, along with “meritorious” nonwinners, with a cash prize of $5 for the day’s best. The rules were simple. Dishes had to be within the means of a family able to spend a maximum of $500 a year to feed five people—the size of the average family at the time. And each bill of fare was to be similar in form and treatment to those already published. “Preciseness and conciseness are desirable qualities and will be considered in the award,” the paper added. Contestants were asked to send all communications by mail, addressed to the Household Editor. (Copies of the book I’ve seen don’t list an author or editor, but a few sources credit Mary Mott Chesbrough, the daughter-in-law of Ellis Sylvester Chesbrough, who designed Chicago’s water intake and sewer systems.)
The preface refers readers to the “complete classified index” (organized into “animal food” and “vegetable food”) to fill in any gaps and ends by explaining that, to avoid redundancy, daily menus don’t include recipes for all the dishes. This, coupled with techniques that have been lost over the last 115 years and “conciseness” that can be confounding, make the book a challenge for anyone who tries to cook from it nowadays. Exacerbating the problem, recipes are written in paragraph form, and ingredients aren’t listed separately. Also, cooking instructions are for coal- or wood-burning stoves, whose temperature was hard to regulate, so temperatures simply aren’t given.
Graves cooked up an asparagus dish from the May 4 menu for the Reader. Here’s the original recipe, followed by his version.
Troy Graves’s Asparagus in Ambush With Prosciutto-Parmesan Biscuits
2 t salt
Combine all dry ingredients and mix together. Saute prosciutto so it’s crispy then add to dry ingredients. Add all the other ingredients to the dry and mix well. Knead until all ingredients are incorporated together. Let rest for an hour. Roll out so the dough is 1 ½ inches thick and cut into circles. Bake at 375 degrees until browned, about 15 minutes.
