Pork Cake

Yesterday I did something I’ve been meaning to do for several years. I went to Plymouth Congregational Church to photograph a nineteenth century cookbook. I had looked forward to this day for two years and a month—really. Cookbook research is my favorite part of my job as supervisor and dinners coordinator. Geeking out while studying 100-plus-year-old recipes may not be something to which you can relate, but if you are a baseball fan, it’s probably similar to knowing the name and stats of every Yankees pitcher since the team’s inception.
Anyway, I was at this church to take pictures of every last recipe in a cookbook named by the ladies who assembled it back then, most appropriately, ‘76’ A Cookbook, and I needed those recipes to prove that all the recipes I’ve read in cookbooks from New England and the South from the 1870s were also used in Iowa. After all, I spend nearly every day trying to recreate foods eaten in 1875 Iowa. I can’t think of better documentation than a local cookbook.
I got to the church and discovered two things: 1) the cookbook I could photograph was the eighth edition printed in 1887, not the 1876 edition, and 2) they had another cookbook for me to look at and photograph. The first was slightly disappointing. The second was very, very exciting. This meant that my work was doubled, my desire to prove definitively that certain recipes were appropriate for 1875 Iowa was thwarted, and I got to make the acquaintance of two very interesting books. I enjoyed thinking that except for one historian writing for the “Annals of Iowa” twenty years ago I was the only person who had looked at these books in at least fifty years.
The books were not in great shape due to age and use. “76” had obviously belonged to someone who loved to cook. Brown spots from grease, sugar, and other food dotted its pages. The owner wrote recipes and comments in the margins and on blank pages. The cover’s printing was worn off, and the binding had completely disintegrated. The second book, Adeline Club Cook Book, was compiled by a Plymouth girls’ Sunday school group who used its sale as a fundraiser. The edges of its blue paper cover threatened to dissolve if I looked too closely at them. Still, I was up for the challenge. I spent most of the day bent over the books trying to take pictures that would be clear enough for me to read later. (I was mostly successful.)
While taking pictures, I was inevitably distracted from my work by the recipes. Cranberry ice, olive sandwiches, baked beans, salad dressing, and queen of puddings caught my attention. Some recipes made my mouth water; some grossed me out. Still, none of them were as memorable as the first recipe on page 158 of “76”. As I turned the page, my eyes fell on “PORK CAKE”. In disbelief I read, “Pour over one pound of pork chopped fine, one cup of boiling water, and add two cups of molasses, one cup of sugar, two teaspoons of soda, spices to the taste, one and a half or two pounds of raisins, one pound of citron, two eggs and flour to make as stiff as pound cake.” YUCK! Pork flavored fruit cake?! I don’t think I’ve ever eaten fruit cake and thought, “You know, this would be greatly improved by some bacon.” To make it worse, the recipe underneath read, “PORK FRUIT CAKE”, which means at least two Victorian ladies thought this recipe was tasty and worth sharing with their fellow Congregationalists.
Even while my stomach churned, my curiosity got the better of me. What if pork cake really was tasty? After all, I do have an unspoken rule that I must try something before I decide I don’t like it, and I discovered I like stewed cucumbers and dill pickle soup while following this rule. This means I’ll have to try the recipe this summer at the TH. Hopefully my staff won’t mutiny and will instead be intrigued like me. However, I get the impression pork cake is more likely to join aspics and melon on my short list of foods I consider inedible. Fortunately I’ll have a chance to try and enjoy some of the other thousand edible recipes in these cookbooks as well.