INDIANA'S FIRST COOKBOOK OFFERS AMUSING, IF NOT APPETIZING, HOLIDAY COOKING IDEAS

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Hoosier culinary tastes have certainly changed since Indiana's first cookbook was published in 1851 by J.N.O. Nunemacher of New Albany. At 144 pages, with no illustrations or tables, Mrs. Collins Table Receipts Adapted to Western Housewifery is a slim volume indeed, and a meal based on its recipes could be just the motivation needed to eat sparingly and stay slim over the holidays.

One of several historic cookbooks in the collections at Indiana University's Lilly Library, the book was written by Mrs. A.M. Collins, who prefaced her work by saying, "I have endeavored to select and combine such ingredients as may be easily obtained in any section of the country, but especially have I desired to render them serviceable to the housekeepers of the West.

Then as now, ham was a popular holiday dish with "housekeepers of the West." But preparing a ham in 1851 required skills beyond the strictly culinary. The first instruction in preparing "a suckling pig" advised, "The pig should be killed in the morning, and requires careful roasting." Roasting, in general, "must be done in the open air, and the joint should be well balanced on the spit."

Provided one isn't a vegetarian, a roast pig may still sound like fine eating more than a century later. But today's holiday diners might want to pass on the gravy if they happen upon a time machine heading for the 1850s. In preparing the au jus, cooks of that time were instructed to "cut off the head, and part that and the body down the middle; chop the brains very fine, together with some boiled sage leaves, and mix them with the juices that run from the pig when you cut its head."

Additional instructions, from a second recipe on roasting a pig, advised the cook to "Melt some good butter, take the gravy you saved, boil it, pour it in the dish with the brains bruised and fine, and some sage, mixed together, and then send it to the table."

Those trying to cut down on their brain intake would have had the option of dressing their ham with "Hoosier Sauce," a concoction made by combining "1 oz. scraped horseradish, 1 oz. mustard, 1 oz. of salt, ½ oz. of celery seed, two minced onions and ½ oz. cayenne. Add a pint of vinegar; let stand in a jar for a week, then pass it through a sieve, and bottle it up securely."

For dessert, Mrs. Collins didn't offer any recipes for holiday cookies, but there were several types of pastries and a long list of puddings, including such unique varieties as corn pudding, vermicelli pudding, carrot pudding, mince-meat pudding, chicken pudding and boiled pudding. All of them were definitely not of the sugar-free, low-fat variety. One recipe for green pudding called for eight eggs, a pound of powdered sugar and a half-pound of very sweet butter (no salt). Another dessert recipe, for "rice cake," called for the yolks of 15 eggs and the whites of seven.

To wash down dessert, coffee would have been available, although in a form unrecognizable to Starbucks aficionados. "Take 6 tablespoons of ground coffee, add the white of an egg, mix it well together with a small quantity of cold water. Pour it on 6 or 7 tea-cupsful of boiling water; stir it well, let it boil 10 minutes; then let it stand by the fire, without boiling, 10 minutes. It will then be ready to pour off."

Bon appetit!

For more information, contact Jeff Austin, Office of Communications and Marketing, 812-855-0085 or 812-855-3911, jeaustin@indiana.edu