My 1881 “Cookbook” — Household Hint From The Past

I call this book my 1881 cookbook, but it really isn’t a cookbook. It started life as a leather covered textbook that was written by a man named Walter S. Cox. His was an interesting life… he was one of the lawyers who defended the group of people who were accused of conspiring to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. After he became a judge and an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, he presided over the trial of the man who assassinated President James Garfield. Later he became a professor in the Law Department of Columbia University and the first Dean of Columbia Law School. He wrote this book, called Questions for the Use of Students in the Junior Law Class of Columbia University, which served as a textbook for law students. Versions of this book came out every few years. This one is dated 1881. It is set up like a study guide, with a summary of various legal principles interspersed with questions and blank pages for the law student’s answers and notes. My law student was very diligent. This book is packed full of responses and essays written in the most beautiful handwriting… it’s all very neat, very legible, and in the very distinctive writing style of that time period.

But apparently this particular law student had extra blank pages left in his textbook after the course was over, and someone else decided to use them to record recipes and various household hints. His wife, perhaps, or his sister? The second batch of writing is obviously feminine and looks equally old, very spidery and precise. The entries are so interesting… the comments give just a hint of what this woman’s life was like.

One of the first hints I came across is my favorite:

“If the vegetable is a root crop that grew beneath the ground in dark, cool soil, start it cooking in cold water and keep the pot covered. But if the vegetable grew above ground in the hot sun, start it cooking in boiling water and leave the pot uncovered.”

That’s good advice to remember, even all these years later!

Filed Under Household Hints