Some Tips on Charleston Receipts

Charleston Receipts has a few quirks to it. Some of it is due to its age. Certain ingredients appear to have fallen out of favor in the past 60 years. (for example, I don't see too many people drinking sherry these days, but every other recipe in this cookbook has some sherry in it). Some of it is due to the fact that I think a lot of these recipes were really prepared by cooks in the kitchen and not housewives. These would be ladies with help, and I am guessing that for receipts that involve slautering calves or turtles, that the cooks in the kitchen were more involved than the housewives. I of course could be wrong on that fact, who knows. Also, the cookbook itself was designed in a manner that is not quite the norm for cookbooks. For example, the very helpful index is sorta hidden away in the back. Meaning the ladies often leave out pretty key info like what temperature to cook the roast.
   For ingredients, the cookbook focuses repeatedly on a few that I was not familiar with. An ingredient that the ladies love is mace. What is mace?! I figured they weren't referring to any anti-attack solvent. From the gourmet sleuth mace is "A product of the Myristica fragrans tree - mace is the exterior web-like membrane that surrounds the nutmeg. Mace is normally sold in dried, ground form and used in many cuisines including Indian, Asian and Europe." If you cannot find it in your local grocery store, nutmetg pumpkin spice, and allspice are good substitutes. Another popular ingredient in several recipes is benne seeds. If you are reading this (since you know one of us), you likely grew up eating benne seed cookies and know what they are. Benne seeds are simply sesame seeds.
And finally, to address an issue I know Lauren has faced. A lot of the receipts use the old fashioned term for oven temperature being moderate or slow. The appendix on pg. 351 addresses these temperatures. Who knew that very slow meant 250 degrees? I wish I knew why slow means low, but moderately hot means, well hot. Perhaps it has something to do with how ovens functioned in the late 19th century.  By the time the cookbook was written the gas stove was commonly used. But some of these receipts were definitely date back to the days of another era. The picture below is a common 19th stove called a box stove.  And I think cooking in a New York Kitchen is a challenge!