Fried Pears Recipe

18-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:

Friday, October 10, 1913: About the same as other days.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

Since Grandma didn’t write much a hundred years ago today, I’ll share a recipe for Fried Pears that I found in the August, 1913 issue of Farm Journal.

Fried pears—Fried pears are delicious. Prepare in the following manner: Remove peel, seeds and core. Slice and fry to a delicate brown in drippings or melted butter. Arrange upon a dish and sprinkle powdered sugar on each piece.

I fried the pears in melted butter. At first I used a medium temperature, but then turned it up to medium high to brown the pears. This was hotter than what I normally use when frying with butter—but the pears won’t brown until I turned the heat up.

I used a spatula to turn the pears—and probably cooked them for about 3-5 minutes on each side. Since I used such a high temperature, I watched the pears like a hawk—because I wanted them to brown but not burn.

The powdered (confectioner’s) sugar sweetened the Fried Pears slightly—but did not garnish them for very long. The sugar dissolved in less than a minute.

The Fried Pears were yummy—though very similar to what I think hot canned pears would taste like. If I made this recipe again I would skip the sugar.

Stuffed Acorn Squash Recipe

18-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:

Wednesday, September 24, 1913: Nothing much continues.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

Grandma, I know that you were writing the diary for yourself . . .and that nothing much happened, AGAIN.

But for those of us glancing over your shoulder a hundred years later we care about even the little things like, what did you eat for dinner?

It’s getting to be Fall, maybe you ate winter squash from the garden. . . . and if it was a small squash perhaps it was stuffed with meat, vegetables, and cheese.

—

Here’s a recipe I often use to stuff acorn squash. It’s not an authentic hundred-year-old recipe—they definitely wouldn’t have had sliced American cheese back then—but I like it and it gives a sense of how people used miscellaneous fall vegetables and other common ingredients to stuff squash.

Stuffed Acorn Squash

Delicata or other small winter squash can be substituted for the acorn squash.

1 acorn squash

1/4 pound ground beef

1/2 cup celery

1/4 cup onion

3 slices American cheese

1/4 cup Parmesan cheese

butter

salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Halve and seed squash. Place cut side down in shallow baking pan; pour approximately 1/2 inch very warm water in pan around squash. Bake until tender—about 1 1/4 hours.*

About 10-15 minutes before the squash has completed cooking, brown ground beef in skillet. Add celery and onion; cook until tender. Add cheeses and stir constantly just until cheese melts. Turn squash up on serving dish; dot with butter, sprinkle with salt and pepper, then fill cavity with meat mixture.

*Or squash can be microwaved until tender—about 15 minutes.

Yield: 2 servings

Old-fashioned Crab Apple Jelly Recipe

18-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:

Thursday, September 11, 1913: Nothing much.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

Grandma, you must have done something. Were you too tired to write much because you spent the day in the kitchen helping your mother with the canning?

I made Crab Apple Jelly last week-end. It’s the season for crab apples—maybe you also made some a hundred years ago.

Crab Apple Jelly

5 pounds (approximately 10 cups) crab apples

8 cups water

Sugar

Remove stem and blossom ends from washed crab apples, cut in halves and place in large pan. Add water and cook until fruit is very soft, about 10 minutes.

Strain the mixture through a jelly bag. Do not squeeze or force just through bag.

Measure juice. There should be approximately 7 cups. Pour into a large pan. Stir in 3/4 cups of sugar for each cup of juice. Bring to a boil quickly and cook rapidly until the “jellying” point is reached. This is when the hot liquid coats the spoon and falls from the spoon in heavy drops (two drops forming side by side along the spoon edge that run together and fall off together). Immediately remove from heat. Do not overcook or the mixture will become a syrup rather than a jelly.

Skim off foam and pour into hot one-half pint jars to within 1/4 inch of the top. Wipe jar rim and adjust lids. Process in boiling water bath for 5 minutes.

Makes about 5 – 6 half pints.

Old-Fashioned Apple Cookie Recipe

18-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:

Saturday, September 6, 1913: I made some cookies this morning—and fortunately we all have pretty good teeth.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

Hmm—I wonder what kind of cookies Grandma made, and what went wrong.

Maybe Grandma made Apple Cookies. They’re wonderfully moist—and a little chewy (but I don’t think that they’d require good teeth to eat.) 🙂

Old-fashioned Apple Cookies

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 1/2 cups brown sugar

1 egg

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon cloves

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/4 cup milk

1 cup walnuts, chopped

1 cup unpared apples, chopped

1 cup raisins

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cream sugar and butter, then add egg. Stir in remaining ingredients except nuts and fruit. Add walnuts, apples, and raisins. Drop by teaspoonful on greased cookie sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned.

Yield: approximately 48 cookies

Hundred-Year-Old Directions for Boiled Ham

18-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:

Thursday, September 4, 1913: I guess most any one could guess what followed for today.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

This modern ham is NOTHING like hams a hundred years ago. Old-time hams were smoked in smoke houses, salty, and very flavorful (and probably had lots of nitrates that weren’t good for us). (Picture Source: Real Simple)

The threshers were at the Muffly farm. The previous day Grandma wrote that the threshing machine had arrived.

Neighbors and the threshing machine operators would all be helping with the threshing. And, the men who came to help expected a big meal. Grandma, her sister Ruth, their mother, and perhaps some neighbor women would have spent the day cooking and serving a huge meal—and then they would have washed mountains of dishes.

What did foods did they serve? . . . desserts . . . potatoes . . .meat. . . .

Ham was popular back then. I bet they served incredible ham that had been cured and smoked on the farm the previous winter.

Here are the directions for cooking a ham in a hundred-year-old cookbook:

Boiled Ham

Select a medium-sized ham; soak overnight in cold water. Clean and wipe; cover with cold water; bring to the boiling point, and then simmer until tender, allowing thirty minutes to the pound. Cool in water in which it was cooked. Take off the skin, sprinkle with sugar, and cover with seasoned cracker crumbs. Bake twenty to thirty minutes. Decorate with cloves, garnish with parsley and lemon, and serve hot or cold.

A more aromatic flavor is given to the ham if a bouquet of sweet herbs and one half cup each of onions, carrots, and turnips are boiled with it. Many baste the ham, when baking with cider.

Lowney’s Cook Book – Revised Edition (1912)

Here’s a few previous posts with recipes for seasonal foods that may have been served to the threshers:

Open-faced Apple Pie

Pickled Cabbage (Pepper Hash)

Pickled Beets and Eggs

Spiced (Pickled) Crab Apples

Hundred-Year-Old Suggestion for Serving Watermelon

18-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:

Monday, August 11, 1913: Am busy planning.

Source: Ladies Home Journal (July, 1911)

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

Grandma was planning for the Sunday School picnic. The previous day she wrote:

We have decided to have our S.S. picnic next Wed. . .

I wonder what she needed to plan. . . . activities? . . . what food to bring?

August would be the perfect time for watermelon.

Grandma probably wouldn’t have done anything as fancy as the suggestion for serving watermelon in Ladies Home Journal:

An unusually nice way to serve watermelon is to have the pulp removed from the whole melon which has first been cut in halves, and replaced on cracked ice in half of the rind arranged in bowl fashion. Cone-shaped portions may then be served individually in sundae glasses, or cut in cubes in sherbet-cups.

Ladies Home Journal (July 1911)

Hundred-Year-Old Directions for Making and Marketing Sun-Preserved Preserves

18-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:

Wednesday, August 6, 1913: That’s all.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

Yesterday, I shared an article about “new’ gadgets a hundred years ago that can be used to making canning easier. Since Grandma didn’t write much in this diary entry, I’m going to dig deeper into one statement in that article. It said:

Canning is a great improvement over the old-fashioned way of preserving fruits pound for pound, and if canned properly fruits will retain their fresh and natural flavor.

Ladies Home Journal (May, 1913)

I wondered what that meant and then came across another article about Sun-preserved Preserves. That article contained a letter from a reader explaining how to make and market sun-preserved preserves.

Sun-preserved Preserves

The thing I knew I could do better than most people was to make preserves. My specialties were sun-cooked strawberry and cherry preserves.

I chose only the finest, most perfect fruit, seeding the cherries carefully by hand. I weighed the fruit and made a syrup of an equal amount of the best granulated sugar, using just enough water to melt the sugar and prevent burning. When the sugar was melted I dropped the fruit in carefully and let it boil, about five minutes in the case of the strawberries and ten minutes for the cherries.

I then removed the preserves to a large platter and placed them out in the sunshine, covering closely with large pieces of glass. It may be necessary to use mosquito netting also. About two days of direct sunshine usually cooks the preserves sufficiently. I tried to put them in glass jars while still hot from the sun’s rays. This is not necessary, but they are nicer if canned before the juice sets.

The next problem was to find a market for my wares, which were strictly first class, and, beautiful in shape and color. For these I must ask a good price.

I lived about a hundred miles from a large city, in a village where there was no market for my goods at any price, so I took to scanning the society columns of the city papers and thus listed the names and addresses of the people I wanted to reach. To these I wrote personal letters describing my preserves and setting my price. To a few prominent ladies I sent small samples. The responses were numerous enough to give me several very busy summers.

Ladies Home Journal (July, 1913)

Sometimes when I read old recipes like this one I just roll my eyes and throw up my hands. These directions don’t sound like they would produce a safe, sanitary food—yet Sun-preserved Preserves apparently were considered a gourmet food a hundred years ago. So I googled “Sun Preserves” and found a New York Times article that explains how to make them using modern processes and procedures.