Grog to Grits

Cooperative living is an idea that comes and goes throughout history. In its simplest expression, cooperative living is a bunch of roommates sharing a big apartment, each person getting a room of their own and then sharing the expenses of things like food, internet service, etc. For most of the 20th century, cooperative living was not popular on a mass scale because it looked too much like communism.

Back in 1902, though, Good Housekeeping published an account of a cooperative kitchen in a suburb near Chicago. The account is interesting because cooperative kitchens are a logical idea that never really caught on.

This particular cooperative kitchen was located in a house specifically rented by the cooperative group. The group was made up of ten families that included about fifty people in total. The idea was that a hired cook would cook for all the families in the rented kitchen, and the families would eat in the dining room attached to the kitchen (families supplied their own tables). The families committed to eating all of their meals in the cooperative dining room, paying about $18 per month to do so. By doing this, the families would not have to cook their meals, purchase groceries, or plan their meals—all of that would be done by the cook hired by the cooperative.

The author of the article made it clear that this all was something of an experiment, and that the conditions at this suburb in Chicago would probably not carry over to other locations. The group’s finances, in particular, were something of a best case scenario. The cook they hired lived in the neighborhood and happened to be unemployed at the time. The space they rented was actually rented from one of the group’s members, who moved upstairs into her house and just lived in the upstairs. Although the group’s charter stipulated that meals should cost $.30 per person per day, the actual cost was about $.32 per day, and members had to pay extra at the end of the month.

Cooperative living in general has a poor track record–people usually like to go their own way on things. The problem with the cooperative kitchen idea is that in order for it to work, members needed to eat there for every single meal. This is something like committing to go to a certain restaurant for every meal. Sometimes it is nice to just sit at home and eat, and sometimes what is offered may not be that appealing.

Americans tend to be individualistic, and this may be why cooperative kitchens have never really caught on. There was a minor push for them in the early 20th century, but this was usually as a way to prepare cheap food for the poor. The Good Housekeeping article is significant in that middle-class people were doing it for themselves, but it most likely did not last very long. We have something of a love-hate relationship with our kitchens, and making a commitment to eat at one place for every meal is probably too much for most people.

Source: Milton B. Marks, “The Longwood Co-operative Kitchen,” Good Housekeeping, February 1901, 101-103

From the January, 1901 issue of Good Housekeeping comes the image below, titled “UTENSILS WHICH PAY FOR THEMSELVES, SAVING TIME AND STRENGTH.” These are the utensils that Good Housekeeping considered important at the time for the cook to have, some of which are either not used at all today or are fairly unusual (and some of which are so vital today as to be impossible to cook without).

From left to right, the utensils are (with quotes from Good Housekeeping):

-“a stove polisher, with handle to prevent the soiling of the hands, and a cup on the back in which to hold the polish.” Obviously, this one is no longer necessary, mainly because the vast majority of stoves are no longer made from cast iron and so no longer need to be polished.

-“a mayonnaise mixer.” This is the thing that seems to be attached to the table. Refrigeration and the ability to buy prepared mayonnaise has rendered this unnecessary, as has the shrinking popularity of mayonnaise.

-“hand scales.” I’m not sure why these would have been useful at the time, since scales that sit on a counter are on the far right side of the picture–perhaps the hand scales were used for measuring very heavy items, since they only have a hook at the end. At any rate, American-style recipes don’t use measurements by weight, although European recipes do, so scales are rarely used by cooks today.

-“an apple corer.” While this isn’t popular today, it can be quite useful if you cook a lot with apples.

-“an egg poacher with detachable cups into which the eggs are dropped.” Yes, poached eggs are impossible to make if you don’t have the cups, so if you do like poached eggs than you’ll need something like this, but otherwise these simply aren’t that useful.

-“a mixing spoon.” Very useful, along with:

-“a measuring cup, with rings showing halves and thirds.” These are so necessary that it’s impossible to imagine cooking without them. It’s also helpful if you spring for the measuring cups that mark quarters, as well.

-“a potato ricer, standing on its handles, with perforated bowl through which the potato is forced.” A food ricer can be useful for certain tasks, although I’ve never had to use one.

-“a flat skimmer.” I’m at a loss to figure out what this would be for, other than, I’m guessing, skimming froth from something boiling or simmering. At any rate, I’ve never even seen one for sale today (that is, I’ve never seen a modern version of this).

-“a food chopper, operated by a crank.” As the text below the picture in the article makes apparent, this is essentially a meat grinder. This can be very useful if you’re grinding sausages or hamburger, of course.

-“a cake tin, with a knife which cuts the cake out cleanly.” I used to have one of these. It’s a regular cake pan with an L-shaped metal slat on a pivot at the middle of the pan. The slat follows the bottom of the pan, then comes up the side of the pan. After a cake is baked, the cook turns the slat so that it runs all the way around the pan, completely loosening the cake. While it is an interesting design, non-stick cake pans made this a curiosity.

-“a bread cutter, which slices bread in four different thicknesses.” I’m not exactly sure what this is, but from the illustration looks like a cutting board with guides for the knife so all the cook needs to do is cut along the guide to cut the bread in different thicknesses. Obviously, sliced bread made it so people don’t have to slice their own bread anymore, but this would be useful for someone who bakes their own bread since slicing to certain thicknesses can be a pain.

-“a vegetable slicer, over which anything from a carrot to a lemon may be rubbed and cut thin as a wafer.” This is useful and is still used by cooks today.

-“a pair of weigh scales.” As stated above, measuring by weight is common in Europe but not America, but a scales would be useful for measuring meat, since recipes often measure meat by weight.

Source: “Emancipation in the Kitchen,” Good Housekeeping, January, 1901, 80.

I wrote about corn beer last week, so it seems natural for me to write about the Whiskey Rebellion this week. The Whiskey Rebellion is one of the few times in American history that food has directly led to violence (food riots in the South during the Civil War would be another example, and I’m not counting the Boston Tea Party because there was only minimal violence).

The Whiskey Rebellion took place shortly after the American Revolution, and occurred because the federal government raised taxes on whiskey to pay off the debts from the American Revolution. Unfortunately, this particular tax hit one group of people particularly hard. Not, as you might think, whiskey drinkers, but farmers in western New York state.

The situation was this: corn farmers in western New York had to ship their corn east across the Appalachian Mountains, to the cities where people lived. Shipping costs were very high because the roads across the Appalachians were terrible, so instead of shipping the bulk corn, the farmers first converted the corn into whiskey and then shipped the whiskey. A lot of corn makes a little whiskey, so the shipping costs on the whiskey were much lower.

The whiskey tax passed by the government upset the farmers in two ways. First, it was a tax only on whiskey, not rum, which was the favorite drink in New England. Farmers were mad that their liquor was taxed but rum was not. Second, it was not a sales tax but a production tax. The tax was collected when the farmers converted the corn into whiskey, not later when the consumer purchased the whiskey.

Farmers were so upset they rioted in western New York state and chased tax collectors out of town. The rebellion was in the early 1790s, when George Washington was president, and his response was to personally lead federal troops into New York to put down the rebellion. This showed that the new country would not take rebellions lightly, but unfortunately, it also showed that the federal government wasn’t really paying much attention to the complaints of common people. The farmers did, after all, have a legitimate complaint, but the government’s response was to force them to pay the tax anyway. The poor farmers had to deal with the problem for another few decades, until the Erie Canal made it much cheaper to ship bulk corn to the East Coast.

I have  a lot of old cookbooks and cooking magazines downloaded from Google Books and converted into text files on my computer, and when I search for “Corn Beer” I get exactly one result: The Southern Gardener and Receipt-Book, by Mrs. Mary L. Edgeworth. I like looking at the old recipes they used for beverages back in the day, and this one really makes me wonder what it tastes like.  Here’s the recipe:

Boil one pint of corn, until quite soft, in enough water to cover it well, and pour it into a jar. Add a quart of syrup or good molasses, a pint of sugar, a quart of dried apples, two ounces of pulverized ginger, a cup of solid yeast dissolved in a little warm water, and three gallons of water. Set it in a warm place in winter, and a cool place in summer. It will be fit for use in a day or two.

Whiskey is a liquor made from corn (as, for that matter, is ethanol), and this may be considered to be something of a first step in making the liquor, although you still need to distill it after this. This beer would certainly have a corny taste, probably helped by the dried apples, but, like walnut ketchup, this is a taste that has disappeared with time.

Source: Mrs. Mary L. Edgeworth, The Southern Gardener and Receipt-Book (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1860), 264.

Back in 1902 The American Kitchen Magazine had a regular feature titled “Gas Stove Department,” which was exactly what it sounds like: at a time when gas stoves were just becoming popular (replacing wood- and coal-burning stoves), readers could send in their questions about the new type of stove and an expert answered those questions and wrote in general about using gas stoves.  The author of the column extolled the ease and convenience of using gas, which was fairly obvious, since gas could be lit and extinguished with the flick of a dial, unlike the earlier stoves that required either the building of a new fire or the use of still-lit coals from a previous fire.

Reading the column, though, shows that some cooking traditions were getting lost in the transition. The October, 1902, issue of the magazine discussed Halloween traditions that might fade with the conversion to gas. Specifically, the roasting of apples, potatoes, popcorn, and chestnuts over an open fire (yes, the line from the song has its basis in reality). Using a gas stove meant that, apparently, cooking those things was going away.

Of course, apples, potatoes, and chestnuts can easily be roasted over or near a gas flame, and popcorn can be popped in a pan over the flame. The problem with the conversion to gas wasn’t that those things couldn’t be roasted, but rather, the location of where things could be roasted was changing. The conversion to gas involved not just a new fuel, but a change in where cooking happened.

The wood-burning fireplace in the main room of the house could be used for many things. Obviously, it was used for heating, but it could also be used for cooking, particularly for items that were simple to cook. A potato placed near the coals would cook over the course of an hour or so, and an apple could also be roasted on a stick.

The transition to gas meant that the multi-use fireplace gave way to the gas stove (that is, the gas heater) which could only be used for heating. This, in turn, helped push all cooking into the kitchen. In many American houses, kitchens didn’t exist as separate rooms in the early 1800s; the cooking was done in the fireplace of the main room, and cooking ingredients and utensils were stored around that. By 1900, though, cooking was more and more being done in a kitchen, and the transition to gas helped this.

As the article points out, though, some things were lost in the transition. The article in The American Kitchen Magazine suggested that guests gather in the kitchen to cook around the gas stove, which is certainly a possibility but could be much less relaxing than simply sitting on a rocking chair and roasting an apple over the fire. There’s a reason no one ever wrote a song about cooking chestnuts over a gas fire.