A Cheap Seed Cake

“It was the pleasantest tea-table in the world. Miss Clarissa presided. I cut and handed the sweet seed-cake — the little sisters had a bird-like fondness for picking up seeds and pecking up sugar; Miss Lavinia looked on with benignant patronage, as if our happy love were all her work; and we were perfectly contented with ourselves and one another.”

-Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, 1850.

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Spice Roll

This recipe comes from The Settlement Cookbook, first published in 1901. The book was initially created as a charity cookbook to raise funds for the Jewish Settlement House in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and was so successful that the proceeds of the first two editions were enough to purchase a site for the new Settlement House. The cookbook presents a variety of recipes influenced by German, Eastern European, and Jewish cooking, reflecting the culinary traditions of the immigrants served by the Settlement House.

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A Christmas Cookey

Amelia Simmons’ 1796 cookbook American Cookery, the first cookbook written by an American to be published in the United States, was also one of the first English-language cookbooks to use the word “cookie.” While British cookbooks used the terms “small cakes” or “biscuits,” in America the word “cookie,” derived from the Dutch word “koekje,” came to be used instead.

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Pumpkin Cakes

One of my favorite things about fall is cooking with pumpkin – whether it’s pumpkin pies, pumpkin cakes, or pumpkin sauces, I will pretty much try anything with pumpkin in it. As a result, I almost always have small amounts of leftover pumpkin purée sitting around. This recipe for pumpkin cakes, from Lettice Bryan’s 1839 book The Kentucky Housewife, is just the ticket to use up any pumpkin remnants. Although they are baked in an oven instead of on a griddle, these are very similar to hoe-cakes or pancakes; Lettice Bryan includes them in the chapter “Warm Cakes &c. for Breakfast and Tea.”

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