HFF: Roasts

5. Roasts (February 26 - March 10) They’re a staple of the historic table, in many different shapes and forms and types. It’s also a cooking technique. Try a historic recipe for a roast, or a recipe that involves roasting, and tell us how it turned out.

I picked up a Lamb Belly at my butcher's yesterday. (My husband and I are trying to reduce the high-methane-producing animals in our diet - so beef and pig are out.) Never having cooked this cut, nor much lamb at all, I asked the butcher what she recommended. Apparently, some people roast it, some people braise it, some people fry it on high heat and slice it thin. Roast! Well, that caught my ear, as I had a roast challenge!

The only problem with this lamb roast is that it's not a leg of lamb -- which is the traditional lamb roast. A lamb belly is a wide, thin slab of meat. No biggie, I figure. I'll make a roulade-type thing and stuff it. And lucky me, but my whole meal wound up being recipes printed back to back!

Roast Lamb
A leg of lamb is usually sent from market wrapped in caul; remove caul, wipe meat, sprinkle with salt and pepper, place on rack in dripping-pan, and dredge meat and bottom of pan with flour. Place in hot oven, and baste as soon as flour in pan is brown, and every fifteen minutes afterwards until the meat is done, which will take about one and three-fourths hours. It may be necessary to put a small quantity of water in pan while meat is cooking. Leg of lamb may be boned and stuffed for roasting. See stuffing, under Braised Mutton.
Make gravy, following directions for Roast Beef Gravy on page 202, or serve with Currant Jelly Sauce.

Hmm, see stuffing under braised mutton?

Stuffing
1 cup cracker crumbs, 1/4 cup melted butter, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/8 teaspoon pepper, 1/2 tablespoon Poultry Seasoning, 1/4 cup boiling water.

Directions for gravy on page 202?

Roast Beef Gravy. Remove some of the fat from the pan, leaving four tablespoons. Place on front of range, add four tablespoons flour, and stir until well browned. The flour, dredged and browned in pan, should give additional color to gravy. Add gradually one and one-half cups boiling water, cook five minutes, season with salt and pepper, and strain. If flour should burn in pan, gravy will be full of black particles.

Well that looks like it'll be tasty. But let's cast our eyes over more of this chapter to make sure I picked the right recipe for tonight. Hmm, what's this "Lamb Bretonne"...?

Lamb Bretonne
Serve hot thinly sliced roast lamb with
Beans Bretonne. Soak one and one-half cups pea beans over night in cold water to cover, drain, and parboil until soft; again drain, put in earthen-ware dish or bean pt, add tomato sauce, cover, and cook until beans have nearly absorbed sauce.
Tomato Sauce. Mix one cup stewed and strained tomatoes, one cup white stock, six canned pimentoes rubbed through a sieve, one onion finely chopped, two cloves garlic finely chopped, one-fourth cup butter, and two teaspoons salt.

And thus, my whole meal was easily planned with back-to-back recipes.



Roundup:
The Challenge: Roasts
The Recipe: Lamb Bretonne (Roast Lamb, Stuffing, Beans Bretonne)
The Date/Year and Region: 1922 edition of The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book by Fannie Merritt Farmer, published Boston, MA
How Did You Make It: The alterations I made to the roast lamb were to a) make it a roulade (omg I officially hate tying up a round roast soooo much!) b) stuff it and c) instead of using a rack I used porcelain chopstick rests. I also never noticed the flour browning (I'm cooking at 350F), so I basted it with smaltz starting at an hour in.
The alterations I made to the stuffing were to use corn flake crumbs instead of cracker crumbs, and to use a mix of spices instead of poultry seasoning. (Oregano, Rosemary, Nutmeg, Cayenne)
The alterations I made to the Beans Bretonne were to use one pickled pepper snagged from a pickle jar and some red pepper flakes instead of the six canned pimentos.
Time to Complete: overnight soaking for beans, cooking beans for 2 hours during the day, and then 30 mins prep for beans and 2 hours cooking. 10 mins prep for lamb, 1 3/4 hours cooking for lamb. 5 mins cooking for gravy. Not very much ACTIVE cooking.
Total Cost: $9.90 for the lamb. Everything else was in storage.
How Successful Was It?: Pretty tasty! The lamb was tastiest with lamb + stuffing + gravy + beans/tomato sauce. It was a little too dry otherwise.
How Accurate Is It?: I'd say pretty accurate. All of my alterations are fairly normal ones.

And a final comment from my husband: We should make this again, but with an actual roast, not the stuffed one. And serve it with biscuits. Maybe cheesy ones? (*hopeful face)

HFF: Sweets for the Sweet

4. Sweets for the Sweet (February 12 - February 25) It’s sugar, and maybe spice, and definitely everything nice. Test out a historic recipe for sweets, sweetmeats and candies - but don’t let them spoil your appetite!

Today was a pretty easy shoe-in for this challenge. I had a very close friend and her 3.5 year old daughter over to "test" a new cake pan I bought, shaped like a dragon. We also had the daughter's very first Big Girl Tea Party.


I forgot to take a pic of the cake (although it was displayed to all with much ooh-ing and aah-ing), so here is a stock photo. But my cake came out quite comparably, although I didn't have enough batter to fully fill the pan, so it was a small dragon with no bed to sleep on.

Roundup: The Challenge: Sweets for the Sweet
The Recipe: Newport Pound Cake
The Date/Year and Region: The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book by Fannie Merritt Farmer, Boston, MA, USA 1934
How Did You Make It:
Newport Pound Cake
-- 7/8 c. butter
-- 1 1/2 c. flour
-- few grains salt
-- 5 eggs
-- 1 1/2 c. powdered sugar
-- 1 tsp. vanilla
-- 1 tsp. baking powder

Cream butter, add flour gradually. Beat egg whites until stiff but not dry, and beat in half the sugar, salt, and vanilla. Beat egg yolks until thick and lemon-colored, add remaining sugar gradually, and add to butter and flour. Beat well. Fold egg whites into mixture. Sift over baking powder. Beat thoroughly. Bake 1 hour in moderate oven (350ºF) in buttered deep pan.
Time to Complete: 2 hours including baking
Total Cost: $0 all was already in house
How Successful Was It?: This was the first time I'd ever added the FLOUR to the creamed butter. It was interesting. The amount of having to move mixtures around so they could get under my mixer was a mild inconvenience, but the toddler helping me thought it was GREAT. Also, I only had 3 eggs, AND punctured one of the yolks. So I was only able to beat 2 egg whites, and I threw two tablespoons of mayo as egg substitute for the other two needed. My cake probably didn't rise as much as it should have. As stated, it didn't completely fill my cake pan, so I wound up with a small cake. I perhaps overbaked it, but even so, it had a very tender crumb. Really, one of the better "pound cake" type cakes I've ever baked.

Also, I oiled and then floured the pan so that the design came out well. Again, this worked wonders and my cake design came out perfectly. Nothing stuck to the pan.
How Accurate Is It?: I don't know if that was a common egg substitute in the 30s, but otherwise, everything turned out well and quite accurately.

HFF: History Detective

Cue the world's ugliest looking meal

3. History Detective (January 29 - February 11) For this challenge, you get to be the detective! Either use clues from multiple recipes to make a composite recipe, or choose a very vague recipe and investigate how it was made.

I opted to make a soufflé from Traité General de la Cuisine Maigre by August Helié (1897). Original text:

Soufflé à la Parmentier:
Beurrez un moule à Charlotte grassement, chemisez-le légèrement avec de la chapelure blonde; faites cuire des pommes de terre à la vapeur ou au four; lorsqu'elles sont cuites, les passer au tami, les beurrer en les maniant à la cuillère dans une casserole, leur adjoindre une bonne poignée de fromage de gruyère râpé trois jaunes et trois blanc fouettés; emplissez votre moule et faites-le cuire à four modéré; lorsqu'il est cuit, démoulez-le sur un plat et arrosez-le avec du beurre noisette.

My translation:

Soufflé à la Parmentier:
Butter a Charlotte mold well, cover lightly with breadcrumbs; cook the potatoes either by steaming or baking in the oven; when they're done, run them through a sieve, butter them with a fair amount of butter [E.N. direct translation is apparently "butter them with the amount wielded in a spoon in a pot" so I'm going with a cooking spoon's worth of butter], mix them with a good handle [E.N. HA!] of grated gruyère, three yolks and three whipped egg whites; place them in your mold and cook it in a moderate oven; when it's cooked, unmold it onto a plate and sprinkle with hazelnut butter.

So, for all that I own many many useless (or single use) kitchen items, I do not own a Charlotte mold, or a large-size soufflé pan. (I own mini ones!) So I'm using a round clay cooking thingamer. I buttered it really heavily, then dusted it with corn flake crumbs (don't have breadcrumbs). I baked two good-sized baking potatoes (the size I'd be overjoyed to get at a steakhouse), and rubbed them through a steel strainer with a wooden spoon. I have to say, I'm a fan of this method of making potatoes. I'm considering investing in a potato ricer, as it makes a lovely texture. I put a large blob of butter (probably 2 tablespoons at least) in with the hot potatoes, and started dealing with the difficult items. I grated the gruyère (Husband only found smoked, so smoked it is), about 1.5 oz, and added that to the potatoes. I separated my eggs, and put the yolks straight in with the potatoes. Then I started beating the eggs. I wanted them somewhere between soft and stiff peaks, and I hate using the stand mixer for something small like this. Famous last words. I DID discover that twirling the whisk between my hands is much more energy efficient than the traditional whipping motion. But halfway through, I tagged my husband in. And so while he finished beating the eggs, I mixed everything else together. When the eggs were whipped, I folded them into the potato mixture, and put it into my baking container -- evening out the top. I then put it in the still-heated-from-potatoes oven at 350F.

As I write this, it is still in the oven. I'll post an update, but I'm so excited about this I want to post early.

Amusingly, but not surprisingly, my husband both wished we could stick a whisk in the cordless drill (ha!), and said that we should get an egg beater. I've long wanted one, but have so rarely needed one... This is one of the many reasons why I love my husband. :-D

UPDATE: It is delicious! Nice and potato-y. Smells more cheesy than it tastes. The hazelnut would have gone well, as it's a little dry. But light and fluffy! I've never made soufflé, and they're rumoured to be difficult, but this was a success! Also, didn't have the huge dome of soufflé that I was expecting, but I am in no way upset with my meal. 10/10 would make and eat again.

Roundup:
The Challenge: History Detective
The Recipe: Soufflé à la Parmentier
The Date/Year and Region:France, 1897
How Did You Make It: see above
Time to Complete: 75 mins for baking potatoes, 35 mins for prep time, 40 for baking soufflé Total Cost: $6.99 for Gruyère, $4.89 for eggs, everything else was in the house already
How Successful Was It?:DELICIOUS. Although it stuck to the bottom of the pan when I tried to unmold it, and my foolish decision to NOT photograph it while in the baking container means that I only have ugly pictures.
How Accurate Is It?: I'm skipping the hazelnut butter, but otherwise everything is pretty reasonable. It was also all made by hand, so achievable for the average kitchen in 1897.

Contenders for HFF

Because I have this problem (lookit the humblebrag coming up) where I read antique cookbooks like novels regularly, I am very rarely confused by their instructions. The fact that my family has generally not used measurements in home cooking probably encourages such things. All of our family recipes are a list of ingredients, with no amounts or directions. ... Actually that's probably the reason for my facility with this...

Anywho, I decided that I would pick a French recipe from Traité General de la Cuisine Maigre by August Helié (published 1897 and found on Project Gutenberg). The translation would give me the detective part of this challenge, as I haven't taken French in ... a decade. I feel old. Amusingingly, reading this on my kindle while commuting for the past week must have been amusing for those around me as I mutter French under my breath and get really excited when I figure words out.

Here are my contenders!

Well, the first got eliminated when I realized the word I didn't know was 'tortoise'. No matter if Indian-style Rice Croquettes otherwise sound delicious. Onto number two!

Gnochis au Gratin:
Faites une pâte à choux commune au lait, dans laquelle vous y incorporez du fromage de parmesan râpé, beurrez un plat à sauter et faites des belles quenelles à la cuillère avec votre pâte; lorsque votre plat est plein, mouillez ces quenelles à l'eau bouillante et laissez-les pocher sur le coin du feu. Les égoutter sur un linge, ensuite les placer sur un plat a gratin, les napper avec une sauce au beurre dans laquelle vous y aurez introduit du parmesan râpé et un peu de paprica; semez par-dessus un peu de chapelure et quelques gouttes de beurre fondu; poussez au four pour le faire gratiner et servez.

Number three!

Calecanom à l'Irlandaise:
** side note -- Colcannon is one of my all-time favorite meals, so this is high on my list.**
Ayez des pommes de terre cuites et bien farineuses, brisez-les au moyen d'une fourchette, ajoutez-y un bon morceau de beurre et un cinquième d'herbe potagère bien hachée, le tout assaisonné de beurre, de sel, de poivre et de gingembre; ce mets est très substantiel et assez agréable, servez dans un plat à légumes en en formant un dôme, et l'arroser d'un beurre fondu.

Number four!

Soufflé à la Parmentier:
Beurrez un moule à Charlotte grassement, chemisez-le légèrement avec de la chapelure blonde; faites cuire des pommes de terre à la vapeur ou au four; lorsqu'elles sont cuites, les passer au tami, les beurrer en les maniant à la cuillère dans une casserole, leur adjoindre une bonne poignée de fromage de gruyère râpé trois jaunes et trois blanc fouettés; emplissez votre moule et faites-le cuire à four modéré; lorsqu'il est cuit, démoulez-le sur un plat et arrosez-le avec du beurre noisette.

I'm less excited about the gnocchi, so I'll eliminate that for now (although I might try it eventually). The colcannon requires buying les "herbe potagères" which google tells me are potherbs. That actually does call for some recipe detective as I forget what potherbs are. I'm assuming greens. Especially as potagère alone means vegetable, although there was a secondary definition of beets. I'm also assuming greens because it's colcannon. ... It's just too easy for the colcannon. I've made literally every version of mashed potatoes + stuff that wikipedia lists. Looks like I'm going to try and make the soufflé! I need to buy gruyère, hazelnut butter and eggs. Amusingly, although I had assumed there'd be eggs in there, it being a soufflé and all, there is no mention of les oeufs. But "three yellows and three whites whipped", now that sounds like eggs. The question then becomes, do I own a Charlotte mold? I might have to make something up. Thursday's dinner will be delicious. :-D

Clearing Some Tabs

Since my husband and I share computers (they're both his), I can't really keep tabs up for ever and ever. So here are some things:

“I’m not a fucking genius. I work my ass off. Hamilton could have written what I wrote in about three weeks. That’s genius. It took me a very long time to wrestle this onto the stage, to even be able to understand the worldviews of the characters that inhabit my show, and then be able to distill that.” — Lin-Manuel Miranda

“Men give me credit for some genius. All the genius I have lies in this; when I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort that I have made is what people are pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought.” — Alexander Hamilton

^ cute way to do a bow neck


source


source

Matchstick Cookies




Cute corselet with "panties" of silk georgette. The largest front and back petals button together. source


"All dresses of this time [1913] started out with a boned belt to which everything was attached. This was snugly fitted and usually fastened on the left."

"An underbodice, or guimpe, was attached first. This one has the sleeves in one with the body, kinono-style, which was in fashion at the time. Lace is attached where it will show, and the under fabric is pink silk georgette. The bodice snaps down the left side front, hooks securely to the belt, then the snaps continue around to the side. The rest of the bodice from the left front around the right and across the back to the left closure is attached to the belt."

"Here is the back, showing the simple turned-under edge of the netting, which will not fray, and the georgette. This is gathered to a cotton twill tape and stitched to the belt."

"Over the bodice goes this beautiful silk lace cape, edged with rose weighted silk, which covers the unfinished edges of the netting and meets at the middle front at the beltline. (I have it on inside out here, showing the seams.) Note how the lace is gathered at the bottom to make a drape at the waist. The other side has come unsewn. Look at the dresses for October 1911 and July 1911 at the link I provided above to see similar construction. It has been cut away at the front, but I believe it had been attached to the belt at center front and center back. The other piece of this beautiful dress that remains is the top overskirt. The fronts are finished with the same rose weighted silk fabric. The underskirt, which is missing, probably was made of the rose weighted silk, which you can see is splitting very badly. This underskirt, like the bodice, would have been attached to the belt from the right side around the back to the side opening, and then finished with snaps to the front left. To cover all the busyness at the waist, there would have been a boned sash, probably with long ends finished with lace or tassels."

"Notice how the lace is gathered at center back for more draping. This would have been a diaphanous floaty rustling party dress!"

"The silk lace is still in excellent condition. The only material that is crumbling is the weighted silk, which is to be expected."
source

HFF 2: Culinary Vices

2. Culinary Vices (January 15 - January 28) Some foods are really, really naughty. Globs of butter, lashings of sugar and syrup, decadent chocolate and wine. Bring out your naughty, indecorous side with foods associated with all the bad things, in the best ways.


We had every intention of having our culinary vice meal involve foie gras, because what's more decadent than feeding a goose to death and then eating only it's liver? But I couldn't find a single recipe involving it in any of the cookbooks I read, French or otherwise. I did come across one mention of fattening geese for dinner, and that many hundreds of such geese are prepared every year in France, but that was it.

So I did something else. Part of my personal naughty, indecorous side is obsessed with china, dishes and fancy settings. I had gotten as a gift, a soup tureen that I had never used. It sat in my cupboard and taunted me. I also have salad tongs (the kind that look like hnads!) that I never use, because it's just as easy to use your own fork to get a handful of salad. I also have a cake stand that I never use because they're really impractical when you have no space. The only thing I didn't bother getting out was nice china (it's in storage) or silver (it's really hard to get to). My culinary vices use up my very very limited cupboards, and don't actually involve food. :-P But here is my meal from yesterday using my fancy serving dishes.

Menu:
Squash Soup
Salad
Spice Cake


The soup is from Marion Harland's Complete Cookbook, a very very useful turn-of-the-century work full of adorable "familiar talk" with the help, or how to clean kid gloves and old lace. She's opinionated and very knowledgeable.

Squash Soup: one cupful of cold boiled squash, run through a colander, one quart of milk, heated, with a pinch of soda, one teaspoonful, each, of salt and sugar, a quarter as much pepper, and a pinch of mace, two tablespoonfuls of butter and one of flour, one tablespoonful of onion juice, and two of minced celery.

Make a roux of butter and flour, and stir into the hot milk. Beat together the squash, celery and seasoning until light; heat quickly in a saucepan, stirring all the while. When very hot, put into the tureen, turn in the milk, stirring all well together, and serve.

Notes: I had cooked two squash the day before, so just used what squash there was. It wound up looking closer to 2 or 3 cups of squash. I heated a whole half gallon of whole milk, and didn't bother with a roux -- just tossing all those ingredients into the milk. I mixed the minced celery and MORE spices into the squash, and heated it. I was concerned that it would burn before it actually heated, but it turned out fine. I then put the squash in the tureen and ladled as much milk in as it took to make a consistency I liked. I have about a pint left of flavored milk. Oh, and instead of onion juice I used chopped garlic and some of the juice from the garlic jar. I served it in a pre-warmed tureen and with roasted squash seeds on top.


The salad was mixed greens with dried cranberries, walnuts, cheddar cheese, chopped apple and a vinaigrette.


The cake was from a box -- I had had every intention of making one, but every recipe called for eggs and we had none in the house and time was a factor. So I made boxed spice cake, using applesauce instead of the 3 eggs. Between the layers I put applesauce cooked down with basil sugar and I put powdered sugar on top because I don't like frosting. I served it on my cake stand. Y'know, it's been years since I had a cake bx cake, and it was really fluffy! The cakes I've made in recent years have all been denser than that and it was a surreal feeling to be eating and not even really feel the food in my mouth.

Roundup:
The Challenge:Culinary Vices
The Recipe: Marion Harland's Complete Cookbook
The Date/Year and Region:original copyright 1903, this edition 1906, published in Indianapololis, Indiana, USA
How Did You Make It: see above
Time to Complete:Not counting the cooking of squash, under an hour. It took a while for the milk to come up to temp.
Total Cost:I bought a half gallon of organic whole milk for $4.79 and that was the only cost of the entire meal. Everything else was already in storage.
How Successful Was It?:It was delicious! It was really quite tasty, and very easy to make. And I'm in love with using my soup tureen. Honestly, I FELT quite decadent, eating this creamy delicious soup with my gorgeous tureen full of even more tasty soup. I would make this again. I think it also would have done well with the addition of corn or something, as it tasted quite chowder-like.
How Accurate Is It?:I think I doubled the spices, by heating the milk with seasonings AND the squash. So this was probably more flavorful than the original recipe intended. I also did a garlic substitution for the onion. But other than that, I think this was very accurate. This isn't that old of a recipe, and cooking was very similar to today.

Christmas Cake

I am trying out a new recipe. As anyone who knows me in real life can attest, I collect antique cookbooks. I read them cover to cover like a novel. I also use them as inspiration and will attempt the recipes contained. What I love about them is that they're from a time when you HAD to put food on the table, three times a day, from scratch. Naturally, rather than make your workload insane, many recipes are simple, easy to put together, and often variations upon a theme. These are also useful things to consider when busy and broke.

So this recipe. It's from the 1916 edition (although is also found in the 1932 edition) of the Boston Cooking School Cook Book written by Fannie Farmer. I double checked my later copy to see if there were any edits (nope) and to see if there were any additional directions (aside from a rough chart of oven temps, nope).

As if testing an antique recipe wasn't enough stress for myself, I am also using a holiday bundt pan for the first time. I received it as a gift from my Grandmother years ago, but I had never used it. It's shaped like a castle with trees. In fact, it's this pan:


So with no further ado, here is the recipe:

Rich Coffee Cake
- 1 cup butter
- 2 cups sugar
- 4 eggs
- 2 tablespoons molasses
- 1 cup cold boiled coffee
- 3 3/4 cups flour
- 5 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon clove
- 1/2 teaspoon mace
- 1/2 teaspoon allspice
- 3/4 cup raisins, seeded and cut in pieces
- 3/4 cup currants
- 1/4 cup citron, thinly sliced and cut in strips
- 2 tablespoons brandy


Follow directions for making butter-cake mixture. Bake in deep cake pans.

That's it! So here are the directions for how I actually made it.

1) Cream butter. Add sugar a bit at a time until fully incorporated and creamed.
2) Add eggs one at a time, beating fully after each addition.
3) Sift dry ingredients together.
4) Add dry ingredients to butter mix a bit at a time, alternating with wet ingredients; beginning and ending on dry ingredients.
5) In last dry ingredients set, toss the dried fruit (this is so it doesn't sink in the oven. N.B. based upon my own pantry, I used 50/50 dried cranberries and chopped dark chocolate).
6) Prepare your pan -- using a pastry brush, coat every inch with oil. Sprinkle flour over this oil, covering every inch. Tap the excess oil and flour out of the pan.
7) Carefully spoon the batter into the prepared pan.
8) Bake at 300F until done aka when the top springs back from touch and a testing skewer comes out cleanly.
9) Remove from pan immediately, and cool on rack.
10) Sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving.

Here's hoping it both GOES well and TASTES well!

UPDATE

Here it is!
It baked well (didn't even spill over though it domed SUPER high), it baked in a bit over an hour, it came out of the pan PERFECTLY, and the batter tasted good so I'm sure the cake will taste good. The white speckles on the cake are from the oil+flour that I used to prep the pan.

Recipe: Mrs. Wilder's Donuts

I came across a delightful reference to the donuts that Mrs. Wilder makes in Farmer Boy. The original post is here. Side note: I once planned to buy a building in Malone, NY. It went nowhere. But boy did I plan!

But since links often disappear, I'm going to recreate it here! So the text is not mine, any pictures are not mine. N.B. It looks like it's from The Little House Cookbook.

Aside: in regards to shape, I think it was in Farmer's Boy where someone talks about the newfangled shape that's round, and Ma Wilder says that the shape SHE uses turns itself in the heat -- she doesn't have time to flip donuts when they can just as easily flip themselves. So I think they should be a twisted stick. Anyway, here's the recipe:


The relevant quote from Farmer Boy:

Almanzo took the biggest doughnut from the pan and bit off its crisp end. Mother was rolling out the golden dough, slashing it into long strips, rolling and doubling and twisting the strips. Her fingers flew; you could hardly see them. The strips seemed to twist themselves under her hands, and to leap into the big copper kettle of swirling hot fat.

Here are ingredients for 2 dozen doughnuts:
1 to 2 lbs of coconut oil (or lard if you have it)
1 egg
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt (I use Celtic sea salt)
1 cup sour cream (raw if you have it)
2 1/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour (Almanzo's mother would have used white)
Enough powdered sugar to sprinkle doughnuts with.


1. Melt oil or lard in Dutch oven over low heat until it reaches approximately 375 degrees. Don't let it get too hot!
2. Meanwhile, beat egg, baking soda and salt into the sour cream in a large bowl. Then mix in one cup of flour. After that, add the rest of the flour 1/4 of a cup at a time until dough is well mixed and can be rolled out.
3. Flour your work space well and roll out or press dough into a long rectangle that is about 4 inches by 16 inches and a 1/4 inch thick.
4. Cut the dough into 1/2 inch strips.
5. Here is the fun part! Twist dough like a corkscrew then bend in half and twist together pinching the ends together. My kids preferred to keep the hole in the center, so they kept their shapes round like traditional doughnuts we see today.


6. By now your oil should be hot. Carefully drop a test doughnut into the oil. It should only take about two minutes on each side for it to be nicely browned and crisp. Take it out of the oil and cut off a piece to see if it is done in the middle.
7. Place doughnuts on a paper towels and sprinkle both sides with powdered sugar. These are a guaranteed hit! We've had these for breakfast several times.
Put them in a container with a lid. Although I doubt they will last the day out