What the hell is a scuppernong?

My wife has a small, but growing, cookbook collection. Her most recent garage sale find is the Culinary Arts Institute Encyclopedic Cookbook, by Ruth Berolzheimer. The book is about 10" x 7", and about 3.5 inches thick. It has almost every recipe you can imagine and many you would never think of, or want to. It was originally published back in 1950, but our copy is the 1962 edition. It's tabbed like a dictionary for easy use and sports a table of  equivalents, like how many egg whites makes a cup (8 to 10, depending on the size of the eggs), or my favorite, 1 teaspoon fresh horseradish is equal to 2 teaspoons bottled horseradish. I didn't know that it takes 60 drops to make 1 teaspoon. Actually, I never even thought about it. And heres a good one - a peck of potatoes equals 15 pounds. Can you imagine how long it must have taken Peter Piper to pick that many peppers?

Some of the more interesting recipes include; chicken corn cake, spiced ham loaf, rinktum ditty, apple slump and heart goulash. Remember this is 1960 we're talking about. My computer's dictionary didn't know what to make of rinktum ditty - neither did my big paper version. Sounds yummy though - actually its a cheese sauce with cooked tomatoes, minced onions, butter, salt and pepper, sugar, served on toast. The book has it under entrées, but it sounds more like an appetizer - come to think of it I don't know about that either. Also you can easily convert your rinktum ditty to scotch woodcock simply by adding 2 to 3 tablespoons of anchovy paste, a dash of cayenne, and  putting some hard cooked egg slices on the toast before you pour the sauce. "Hey Mom, I like the Woodcock much better that plain old Ditty! Can't we have Woodcock? Pleeease?" 

What really sounds good is the Turkey and Ham Mouse. Oops, it calls for a jello mold, so maybe not. What's really funny about this book are some of the captions under the pictures. Like this one, "Creamed chicken takes on a whole new glamour when it appears on a noodle or rice ring." Sorry, but meat of any kind should never be creamed. 

But here is a recipe we can use: Home made English Muffins. My wife said, "Who knew you could make English Muffins at home." I replied that it was probably the English. That went over about as well as the stuffed beef heart recipe. But here's how you make English Muffins

3 tablespoons butter

1 1/4 teaspoons salt

2 tablespoons sugar

1 cup milk

1/4 cup luke warm water

1 egg, beaten

4 cups sifted flour

Add butter salt and sugar to milk and cool to luke warm (I don't know what cool to luke warm means, so you'll just have to figure it out for yourself), Soften yeast in water. Add yeast, egg and 2 cups of flour to cooled milk. Stir to blend well. Then knead in remaining flour until firm and elastic. Let rise until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour. Roll out 1/4 inch thick  on floured board, cut in to 4" circles. Leave on board and cover. Let rise again until it has doubled in bulk, about 1 hour. When light, sprinkle with corn meal if desired and bake slowly on hot ungreased, heavy griddle or frying pan about 7 minutes each side. Brown slowly. Make 12 muffins.

And heres the caption next to the picture: "The English muffin, so light and  golden brown, is a favorite with many the whole year roun' "  Well, at least you can see why we don't make English muffins at home any more. Who has time to wait around for bread to rise - twice! Its a good Saturday project with the kids though. I suppose if you went into mass production in your kitchen you could probably freeze a few dozen. 

Whether you are slaving over a hot dish of Roast Squirrels, or serving up some soup from chicken feet (pg. 899) you'll get rave reviews using the multitudinous milieu of culinary delights from this classic cook book. Bon Appetite.

Oh yeah. I almost forgot to tell you what a scuppernong is. It's a large French grape that's a little smaller than a plumb. It has seeds like a grape, instead of a pit like a plumb. Now you know. Bye.