Apple Dumplings Part I

I have long been wanting to try my hand at some of the recipes in my collection of old cookbooks and household manuals, but somehow the project has never seemed to materialize. Many of the recipes are very time intensive if one wants to be authentic and it takes a certain amount of moxie to dive into a recipe that starts "Take a calf's head, boil for three hours and then remove the brain, tongue and eyes..." Even if I should manage to screw up the courage necessary to go to the butcher and ask to purchase a calf's head, I don't own a pot big enough to boil it in and even if I did, how would I manage to do it on the tiny burners of my modern electric stove? And what about mad cow's disease? As you can see, there is much to consider.

I recently obtained a copy of "Grandma's Wartime Kitchen" by Joanne Lamb Hayes which was published in 2000. I first ran across this volume in my public library and was so reluctant to return it that I ran up a rather large overdue fee. I decided that I needed to own my own copy and so went searching. You will understand my surprise when I discovered this book, although only eight years old, is already selling for almost $200 dollars on ABE. That is almost as much as I paid for my Mrs. Beeton and so, for a brief second I confess, I contemplated taking it out on "permanent loan" from the library. They have two copies after all and I know that I have given them much more than that in over due fees during the course of our relationship.

Fortunately I was able to shake off my book lust, or at least tamp it down enough, to realize that cookbook theft would hardly being the crowning point of my spiritual life. So the only other option was to hawk ABE and wait for a bookseller to post of copy without checking the market first, which I did. Fortunately this happened rather quickly and so I was able to gain a copy for the bargain price of $14.95 and avoid committing a rather silly sin all at the same time. Don't laugh. Book lust is a serious problem for a certain section of the population. I think I may need to start a 12 step program. I'm that far gone... seriously, or maybe not so much.

However, long convoluted story aside, "Grandma's Wartime Kitchen" has given me a jumping off point for my historical cooking experiments. In it is a recipe for apple dumplings and I remembered seeing another recipe for the same in Mrs. Beeton. As I thought about it I realized that apple dumplings are a food one runs across often in books, both fiction and historical, but I don't know a single woman who makes them today. I wonder why they fell out of fashion? Or maybe they have only fallen by the wayside in my part of the country? It's hard to say as I don't believe there are scholars tracking the rise and demise of popular recipes in the United States.

So, in light of the apparent lack of kitchen based scholarship, I did a little more checking and found I have several recipes spanning many years for Apple Dumplings so there I will start. I propose to cook several batches of Apple Dumplings over the next few weeks starting with Grandma's Kitchen and a 1940s version. Then I will move on the Mrs. Beeton's recipe and finish up with the version found in Mrs. Lea's 1845 Domestic Cookery. (This book is currently available in reprint under the title "A Quaker Woman's Cookbook".) These three recipes will cover the years 1845, 1888 and 1945(ish) and allow for contrasting any significant changes that may have occurred in cooking this particular dish over the years. If I can find recipes from around 1900 and earlier than about 1820 I will try and include those as well.