See pioneer-era recipes drawn from a variety of sources.
Historic recipes—and the cookbooks containing them—remain a perennial subject of interest among researchers visiting the Church History Library. In fact, we’ve previously published blog posts about recipes here, here, and here. We recently received a request to highlight pioneer-era recipes found in the Church History Department’s holdings. Thus, here are several sources of 19th-century recipes for food, drink, and folk remedies arranged in chronological order.
First, a disclaimer: we have not tested any of these recipes. We do not know if a modern palate would find these recipes tasty, merely tolerable, or outright disgusting. Additionally, some pioneer-era recipes contain harmful ingredients and are provided here for research purposes only; do not recreate them. For example, several drink recipes in the cookbooks below call for alcoholic fermentation. Moreover, medicinal recipes—which appear in pioneer-era cookbooks nearly as often as standard fare—are often dangerous and should never be consumed. In fact, Brigham Young’s herbal tea recipe, which I found while researching these cookbooks, includes an ingredient that is outright lethal. It is not featured here, for obvious reasons.
Bear in mind that many old recipes use language that is now considered archaic.1 Take, for example, units of measure. Old recipes sometimes use names of measurements that are no longer common, such as the gill/jill, which is equal to a quarter of a pint (or eight tablespoons) in the United States. Names of ingredients can vary as well. For example, fruits and vegetables often have been identified with different names over the years, reflecting the variety of fruits and vegetables available at a given time. American Cookery (below) mentions stone fruit varietals such as white bullace and damson that today are simply called plums. Even many diseases referred to in pioneer-era medicinal recipes are not known by the same names today.2 Thus, whenever possible, notes have been added to the recipes below to provide context and clarity.
Another thing to remember is that pioneer-era recipes often don’t give detailed instructions; many include a list of ingredients and little else (“Mix well”). Of course, in an era when artificial heat came primarily from burning wood or coal, specifying exact temperatures or cooking times would have been a useless concept. However, for the modern chef, this means that guesswork is inevitable when using old recipes.
Lastly, many old cookbooks are handwritten and, as such, can be hard to read. Each cookbook here will be assigned a score for its legibility, from 1 (illegible) to 10 (easy to read). Spelling and usage have been modernized.
Amelia Simmons, American Cookery: The Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry, and Vegetables (Hartford: Hudson & Goodwin, 1796)
While not a Latter-day Saint cookbook per se, this cookbook was one of the first to be printed in the nascent United States. It both reflected and influenced the culinary trends of the day and provides a broad variety of instructions for selecting, preserving, and cooking ingredients that would have been available to an 18th-century American.
Legibility: 9
There are some typos, and the typeface can be unfamiliar—with an S that looks like an F—but, all in all, it’s very easy to read for a 220-year-old document. The document linked here has been transcribed and has no legibility issues.
Sample Recipes
1. A Rice Pudding. One quarter of a pound rice, a stick of cinnamon, [add] to a quart of milk (stirred often to keep from burning) and boil quick, cool and add half a nutmeg, 4 spoons rose-water, 8 eggs; butter or puff paste a dish and pour the above composition into it, and bake one and half hour.
2. To boil all kinds of Garden Stuff. In dressing all sorts of kitchen garden herbs, take care they are clean washed; that there be no small snails, or caterpillars between the leaves; and that all coarse outer leaves, and the tops that have received any injury by the weather, be taken off; next wash them in a good deal of water, and put them into a colander to drain. Care must likewise be taken that your pot or saucepan be clean, well tinned, and free from sand, or grease.
3. To stuff and roast a Turkey, or Fowl. One pound soft wheat bread, 3 ounces beef suet, 3 eggs, a little sweet thyme, sweet marjoram, pepper and salt, and some add a gill of wine; fill the bird therewith and sew up, hang down to a steady solid fire, basting frequently with salt and water, and roast until a steam emits from the breast. Put one third of a pound of butter into the gravy, dust flour over the bird and baste with the gravy; serve up with boiled onions and cranberry sauce, mangoes,3 pickles or celery.
Far West store daybook, 1838 February–1840 December (MS 25616)
This daybook—or ledger—from a general store in Far West, Missouri, lists purchases made by Latter-day Saints over nearly two years. The named customers include W. W. Phelps, Oliver Cowdery, Edward Partridge, and other well-known early Saints. The recipes are found at the end of the book and include a mixture of dessert, condiment, drink, and medicinal offerings.
Legibility: 2
While many of the entries for the store’s transactions are decipherable with some effort, most of the recipes are very difficult to read, owing to the darkened condition of the paper, which is nearly the same shade of gray as the ink.
Sample Recipes
1. Corn[ed] Beef. Put the beef in cold water for twenty-four hours to draw out the blood. Let it drain well before putting it into the brine. Take one gallon salt to eight gallons of water, one half a pound of saltpeter,4 a quart of molasses, a pint of sugar, and [illegible] pods of sea pepper.5 Boil and skim it and when cold put it over the beef. If the we[a]ther is warm add [illegible] quart of salt to the above; if the [illegible] sours, pour it off, boil, let it cool, [illegible] over the meat again. Keep it under the brine by weight.
2. Pain Killer
Alcohol 1 qt6
Gum guaiac 1 oz7
Gum myrrh 1 oz
Gum camphor 1 oz
Cayenne pepper ½ oz
Pulverize mix, shake well, strain through a thin cloth, let stand for a week.
3. Rattle snake bite
One ounce of indigo
One ounce of soda vinegar,8 enough to dissolve [the indigo] to apply to the bite.
Sarah L. Mendenhall notebook, circa 1854–1856 (MS 6976)
Sarah Mendenhall was a pioneer-era Saint who lived in Springville, Utah. Her notebook contains recipes for various dishes and remedies of her time.
Legibility: 5
Some entries are more legible than others.
Sample Recipes
1. Pickled plums
½ peck of plums
1 quart of vinegar
3 lbs of sugar
1 ounce of cinnamon
1 ounce of cloves
Boil all together and pour over the plums and let them stand until the next day. Pour the syrup off. Boil it again and pour it over. The third day, put them all in and let them simmer, then let them stand to get cold. Then put them away in glass or stone jars.
2. Apea9 Cakes
1 lb of sugar
6 eggs, yolks and whites separate, well beaten
1½ teaspoon full of saleratus10
½ lb butter
Add flour by a small quantity.
Work all well together.
3. Recipe for making canker11 medicine
Take 2 pounds honey, strained, boiled, and skimmed.
2 oz. of copperas12 burnt red and pulverized.
4 nutmegs grated.
A teaspoonful of goldenseal13 and a small piece of borax about the size of a hazelnut
4. Recipe for making pills
1 oz of mandrake root14
1 oz of gamboge15
1 oz of nervine16
½ oz of blood root17
Mix with molasses or honey
“Old Folks Day at Liberty Park, Salt Lake City, Utah,” 1882 June (PH 1999)
Emily K. Whitworth recipe book, circa 1890–1924 (MS 31081)
This book of recipes (mostly desserts) collected by Emily Whitworth shows a collection of pioneer-era recipes collected in her native Idaho, as well as recipes from England, courtesy of her mother, a British convert to the Church.
Legibility: 7
Emily’s cursive was quite good, but the book has deteriorated some over time.
Sample Recipes
1. Sour milk chocolate cake
Dissolve 2 oz. bitter chocolate in ½ cup boiling water.
Beat 2/3 cup of butter to a cream with 1 cup of sugar & 3 well-beaten eggs.
1 cup of sour milk18 or cream
1 teaspoon soda
Beat in 2 cups flour then the chocolate & 1 teaspoon vanilla
2. Rocks19
1½ cup brown sugar
1 cup butter
½ cup water
1 cup chopped nuts
1½ cup raisins
1 cup currants
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 oz mace
½ oz cloves
3 eggs
3. Corn fritters
1 can corn
1 cup flour
2 eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
Chop corn and add dry ingredients mixed and sifted, then add yolks of eggs beaten well until thick and fold in whites of eggs beaten stiff. Fry in hot lard.
Florence B. Pinnock, “It Will Never Be 1869—or 1969—Again,” The Improvement Era, May 1969, 92–97 (M205.1 I34 v. 1-73 1897-1970)
Articles referencing life in the pioneer era occasionally appear in older issues of Church magazines such as The Improvement Era. Part nostalgia, part admonition to remember our forebears, they sometimes feature historic recipes. Fortunately, thanks to the new ability to search the Church History Catalog for digitized Church periodicals, it’s easier than ever to browse through back issues of these magazines and search for recipes.
Legibility: 10
Sample Recipes
1. Johnny Cake
2 cups buttermilk or clabber20
2 cups cornmeal
½ cup flour
1 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon molasses
1 cup cracklings (crisp bits of fat after the lard had been rendered from them)
Put the soda in the sour milk or buttermilk, and while it is foaming, stir in the other ingredients. Pour into a dripper and bake in a moderate oven for about 30 minutes.
2. Horehound Candy
Boil 2 ounces of dried horehound21 in 3 cups water for 30 minutes. Strain and add 3 pounds of brown sugar; boil until sufficiently hard; pour out on flat, well-greased tins, and mark into sticks or small squares. Break into pieces when hard and crisp.
Even the word recipe itself is a relatively modern development. Well into the 20th century, the word receipt was used instead, which makes sense, since most recipes begin with a shopping list (i.e., an itemized receipt) of needed ingredients. Thus, don’t assume that people couldn’t spell recipe back then—it just wasn’t what they were trying to say.
For additional information on pioneer-era medical terminology, see Douglas C. Heiner, Evan L. Ivie, and Teresa Lovell Whitehead, “Medical Terms Used by Saints in Nauvoo and Winter Quarters, 1839–48,” The Religious Educator , vol. 10, no. 3 (2009), 151–62.
In this context, mangoes are pickled melons, not the tropical fruit. A recipe for making mangoes appears later in the book.
Saltpeter (or saltpetre ) is another name for potassium nitrate. It is also an ingredient in fertilizer, gunpowder, and toothpaste.
Sea pepper appears to be a period name for a chili pepper—possibly cayenne pepper, given its popularity in other recipes of the era and its association with the US Gulf Coast, where it has historically been cultivated.
Please do not consume this recipe; one wonders whether its purported analgesic effect comes from the herbs or from simply being intoxicated.
This recipe is unique in that it requires gum guaiac (or gum guaiacum), the resinous extract of the Caribbean lignum vitae ( Guaiacum officinale ) tree, as well as myrrh, the plant resin from Africa that the Wise Men famously gave to Jesus. While ingredients from such far-flung locales would certainly have been costly on the American frontier, they were, apparently, available and common enough to include in recipes.
The phrase soda vinegar is ambiguous; perhaps it refers to dissolved sodium acetate, the byproduct of mixing baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) and vinegar (acetic acid), just like the foaming science experiment many school-age children perform to learn about pH levels. Soda was often used on snake bites because it was believed that snake venom was acidic and the alkaline soda would neutralize it. (It does not.) Indigo, too, was a common remedy for snakebites, sometimes even being sprinkled on the wound without dissolving it first. However, there is no evidence that indigo treats snake venom. See Eugene D. Fleharty, “Apply Salt, Gunpowder, and the Yellow of an Egg: The Treatment of Rattlesnake Bites by the Western Kansas Settler,” Kansas History , vol. 21, no. 1 (1998), 18–29.
Apea (pronounced ay-PEE, like the letters A and P) cake—also known by alternate spellings, such as apie, apee, apies, apeas, or AP cake—comes from Pennsylvania. There, it is associated with the Amish and Pennsylvania Dutch communities. The origin and meaning of apea is debatable. Lori Fogg, a Pennsylvania native who collects recipes from the coal mining regions of the United States, suggests on her blog that it could refer to the all-purpose flour (literally, “AP”) used to make the cake; she also found an article in the Allentown Morning Call from June 12, 1954 asserting that “apea” comes from the Pennsylvania Dutch word “eepikuche” (pronounced ay-pee-KOO-chuh), meaning a spice cake.
Saleratus is another name for baking soda, sodium bicarbonate; occasionally, it can refer to potassium bicarbonate, which also works as a leavening agent. (Potassium bicarbonate was also used in agriculture to neutralize overly acidic soil.) The word saleratus comes from the Latin words salaeratus , meaning “aerated salt.”
Canker refers to ulcers, usually in the mouth (see Heiner, Ivie, and Whitehead). When combined with malnutrition, cankers can turn into gangrene and become fatal.
Copperas is ferrous sulfate, a green chemical salt used to make ink. Medically, it is still prescribed as an iron supplement.
Goldenseal ( Hydrastis canadensis ) is an herb native to northeastern North America. American Indian tribes traditionally consumed it as a stomach and cancer remedy. However, goldenseal also has a long list of side effects, including digestive and central nervous system problems.
Mandrake is the root of plants from the Mandragora family. Folklore has long considered mandrake to have curative—even mystical—properties. Consider, for example, Genesis 30, in which Reuben finds mandrakes (דודאים, or “love plants”) in a field and gives them to his mother, Leah, who uses them to barter with Rachel, who, tradition holds, may have wanted them for help becoming pregnant. However, don’t ever try mandrake. Ingesting it can cause dizziness, hallucinations, vomiting, tachycardia, asphyxiation, and death.
Gamboge is a pigment made from the dried resin of trees in the Asian Garcinia family; it creates a saffron color that has historically been used by Buddhist monks to dye their robes. It is an extremely powerful laxative; in large doses, it is fatal.
Nervine is a difficult term to define, as it is a category of herbs rather than a specific ingredient. A nervine is any herb that is believed to help the nervous system. Common nervines in herbal medicine include oat tops, skullcap ( Scutellaria lateriflora ), chamomile, and lavender. It is unclear which specific nervine Sarah was referring to.
Blood root (or bloodroot, Sanguinaria canadensis ) is a flowering North American plant with reddish sap—hence the blood in its name. Bloodroot was a traditional American Indian emetic. However, it is possibly carcinogenic and should not be consumed.
Sour milk results from letting unpasteurized milk ferment slightly; the naturally occurring beneficial bacteria in the milk eat its sugar (lactose), creating a sour flavor. Sour milk is generally no longer available in countries that pasteurize milk, as the pasteurization process kills all bacteria. Milk no longer sours; it just spoils. While sour milk generally was not consumed raw, it was often used in cooking. The fermentation process also produces lactic acid, which, when mixed with baking soda, creates leavening gas.
Aside from a list of ingredients, no further instructions appear. Based on the name of the recipe, perhaps it is intended to mix the ingredients together into balls—rocks—and bake. If you try this recipe, please let us know what you discover .
Clabber is related to sour milk; however, it is often thicker, like yogurt. In this instance, since it is being used interchangeably with buttermilk, it is likely that the author meant to say sour milk, the term appearing later in the recipe.
White (or common) horehound ( Marrubium vulgare ) is an herb in the mint family ( Lamiaceae ). Its flavor is similar to root beer, albeit slightly spicier.
