Sunday, July 20, 2014

Fattigmands bakkels recipe from 1933 Furst-McNess cookbook

Now this is a cookbook cover with some mileage on it. Tape. Worn edges. Scuffing. Decades-old notes scribbled all over the white spaces on the illustration.

It's the 1933 F.W. McNess Cook Book, published by the Furst-McNess Company of Freeport, Illinois. Furst-McNess was established in 1908 and is still going strong. Its first-rate website highlights the company's focus on helping rural farmers:
"Since 1908, Furst-McNess has been synonymous with value and quality products for the rural community. From our humble beginnings with horse-drawn carts delivering consumer and farm supplies, we’re now one of North America’s most trusted suppliers of products for the beef, dairy, poultry, and swine industries."
Furst-McNess also provides the rural farmers that it's looking out for the opportunity to purchase a Furst-McNess vintage-style bar stool for just $230. ("Must order a minimum of two.")

But I digress.

The F.W. McNess Cook Book is a 64-page staplebound booklet filled with recipes and vintage advertisements for products such as baking powder, laxative tea, brooms, mops, bug repellent, spices, and a wide variety of medicines including Pain Oil, Menthoform, Mentholated Cough Syrup, Sarsaparilla and Sen-Lax, a "mild yet effective laxative" for all ages.

Here's an illustration from the center spread:


It's also interesting to note that the aforementioned advertisements throughout this cookbook include a number of celebrity testimonials. (The advertisements so, however, stress that they were paid no money. Hmmm.) Celebrities featured include Leila Hyams, Chester Morris, Hedda Hopper and 18-year-old 4-H Club Cake Baking Expert Marguerite Clark.

The theme of this particular cookbook is international recipes. The "To Our Customers" note on the first page states:
"In this Cook Book we bring you a collection of the choicest recipes of hundreds of McNess Customers from all over the world. Besides popular American Dishes, this Book contains choice recipes from Argentina, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, printed in their native language and translated into English."
Some of the diverse international recipes include:
  • Puchero (Argentina)
  • Bird's Nest Soup (China)
  • Chervil Soup (Denmark)
  • Nuremberg Fish (Germany)
  • Calves' Brain Pancake (Hungary)
  • Kransekaker (Norway)
  • Tripe-Oysters (Switzerland)

And here is the recipe for Fattigmands Bakkels, a dessert recipe from Sweden.

Ingredients:
  • 12 egg yolks
  • 6 egg whites
  • 12 tablespoonfuls cream
  • 12 tablespoonfuls melted butter
  • 12 tablespoonfuls sugar
  • Flour
  • 1 teaspoonful cardemon
  • Wine glassful fruit juice (peach or apricot)
Beat egg whites, then egg yolks; combine and add sugar. Add butter, cream, cardemon, fruit juice and flour enough to handle - add just enough flour so mixture will leave the hands - too much flour will toughen mixture. When thoroughly mixed, place in a cool place overnight. Roll as thin as possible without flour. Cut in diamonds shapes and make a split in the center with cookie cutter. Then pull one corner through the slit. Fry in deep fat until a delicate brown. Sprinkle with powdered sugar at once.

No comments:

Post a Comment