Food From Scratch

Soup is how a household lives on bones, scraps and whatever the garden gave. Long, slow heat gets everything out of a bone, so soup is the natural job for the back of the stove and for the hay box (FB 771, p. 14).

Bone broth (brown soup stock) (stove top, the back of a slow fire, or a hay box · 7½ hours) — 6 lb of shin or any bony cut, 3 quarts cold water, ½ cup each of carrot, turnip, onion and celery cut in dice, 1 Tbsp salt, ½ tsp peppercorns, a few cloves, ½ bay leaf, a sprig or two of herbs.

1. Cut the lean meat in 1-inch cubes. Brown a third of it in a hot pan in marrow or fat.
2. Put the other two-thirds, with the bone and fat, in the kettle. Add the water and let it stand 30 minutes.
3. Add the browned meat and heat slowly to boiling. Skim off the scum as it rises.
4. Cover and cook 6 hours, kept below boiling the whole time.
5. Add the vegetables and seasonings, cook 1½ hours more, strain, and cool it as fast as you can.

(Fannie Farmer, p. 142) Don't salt a stock until it is half cooked, and set the pot far back on the stove so it comes to the boil slowly; five or six hours of simmering gets everything out of the bones (Household Discoveries, p. 805).

The same broth in a hay box: split the bones well or cut the meat small, cover with cold water, bring to a boil and boil 15 minutes, then into the box overnight. In the morning lift out the meat and bones, strain, skim the fat, season, bring back to a boil and return it to the box until dinner. One kettle of stock becomes vegetable soup, clear soup or noodle soup (FB 771, p. 14).

Stew with dumplings (stove top or a slow fire · about 3½ hours) — 5 lb of a bony, tough cut (beef, venison, goat or mutton), ½ cup flour, salt, pepper, 4 cups potatoes in slices, ½ cup each turnip and carrot in cubes, half a small onion sliced.

1. Cut the meat off the bone in 1½-inch cubes, season, and dredge with flour.
2. Try out some of the fat in a frying pan, add the meat, and stir constantly so the surface sears quickly.
3. Put the meat in the kettle with the sawn bones; rinse the frying pan out with boiling water into the kettle so none of the goodness is lost.
4. Cover with boiling water, boil 5 minutes, then cook below boiling until tender — about 3 hours.
5. Add carrot, turnip and onion for the last hour, with salt and pepper. Parboil the potatoes 5 minutes and add them 15 minutes before the end.
6. Skim, then thicken with ¼ cup of flour stirred smooth in cold water. Surround with dumplings (Pan breads, dumplings, pancakes and fritters, below).

(Fannie Farmer, pp. 218–219)

Bean or pea soup (stove top or hay box · 3–4 hours) — 1 pint of dry beans, 2 quarts cold water, a small onion, 2 stalks of celery, ½ Tbsp salt, pepper, mustard, 3 Tbsp butter or lard, 1½ Tbsp flour.

1. Soak the beans overnight. Drain, cover with the cold water.
2. Cook the sliced onion 5 minutes in half the fat and add it, with the celery broken up.
3. Simmer 3–4 hours until the beans are soft, adding water as it boils away.
4. Rub it all through a sieve, reheat to boiling, and season.
5. Thicken with the rest of the fat and the flour cooked together.

(Fannie Farmer, p. 157) Dried lima beans, peas and lentils make a good soup with no meat at all, and the long cooking they need suits a hay box exactly; cooked with less water, sieved and thinned with milk they become a "cream" soup (FB 771, p. 14). Left-over baked beans make soup too: simmer 3 cups of them with 3 pints of water, onion and celery for 30 minutes, sieve, and thicken (Fannie Farmer, p. 158).

Corn chowder (stove top · about 40 minutes) — a 1½-inch cube of fat salt pork, 1 sliced onion, 4 cups potatoes in ½-inch slices, 2 cups boiling water, 2 cups corn, 4 cups scalded milk, salt, pepper, 3 Tbsp butter, hardtack or crackers.

1. Cut the pork small and try it out. Add the onion and cook 5 minutes, stirring so it does not burn. Strain the fat into a stewpan.
2. Parboil the potatoes 5 minutes, drain, and add them to the fat. Add the boiling water and cook until the potatoes are soft.
3. Add the corn and the milk and heat to boiling. Season, add the butter.
4. Split the crackers or hardtack, soak them in a little cold milk, and put them on top.

(Fannie Farmer, p. 163) Fish chowder is the same dish with 4 lb of fish instead of corn: simmer the head, tail and backbone in 2 cups of water for 20 minutes for the broth, add that and the fish to the potatoes, simmer 10 minutes, then add the milk, butter and crackers (pp. 163–164).

Broth for someone who is ill (a cool oven · 4–5 hours) — 3 lb of lean shin cut small, in a jar with seasoning and just enough water to cover; tie brown paper over the top and leave it in a cool oven 4–5 hours, then strain. It sets as a jelly when cold, and someone who cannot keep hot broth down can sometimes keep this down (Priceless Recipes, pp. 181–182). A beef-tea custard — a gill of broth, 2 egg yolks, 1 white, a pinch of salt, steamed 20 minutes in a buttered cup with the water never bubbling — is another way to get meat into someone who is weak (p. 181). Feeding someone who has been starving is its own subject: see Food When It's Scarce.

📚 Go deeper: Fannie Farmer 1896, p. 157 — soups made without any stock; USDA FB 771, p. 14 — soups and stews in a hay box; Household Discoveries, p. 805 — dozens of plain soups, including soup from left-over vegetables.

Dry beans keep for years, and beans with corn or wheat make a complete protein (Staples, above). Soaking and simmering are there too; these are the dishes.

⚠️ Boil beans hard before they go in a hay box or a solar oven — 20–25 minutes — and reheat to boiling before eating. Kidney beans and chickpeas are the ones that cause trouble when they sit warm (Practical Action, p. 5). Add tomatoes or vinegar only once the beans are tender, or they will never soften (USU, p. 3).

Baked beans (a slow oven, a Dutch oven in coals, or a bean hole · 6–8 hours) — 1 quart of small white beans, ½ lb fat salt pork, 1 Tbsp salt, 1 Tbsp molasses, 3 Tbsp sugar (honey or maple syrup does the same job), boiling water.

1. Pick over the beans, cover with cold water, and soak overnight.
2. Drain, cover with fresh water, and heat slowly — below boiling — until the skins burst. Test by taking a few beans on a spoon and blowing on them: if the skins break, they are ready. Drain.
3. Scald the pork rind, cut a ¼-inch slice off it and lay that in the bottom of the pot. Score the rest of the rind every ½ inch, cuts an inch deep.
4. Put in the beans and bury the pork among them with the rind showing.
5. Mix the salt, molasses and sugar with 1 cup of boiling water, pour it over, then add boiling water to cover.
6. Cover and bake slowly 6–8 hours, adding water as needed. Take the lid off for the last hour so the rind browns and crisps.

(Fannie Farmer, pp. 247–248) You do not need a bean pot: a five-pound lard pail works just as well (p. 248). In a pit, the same beans go in a covered kettle, the coals are raked around and over it, and it is buried overnight (Kephart, p. 301).

Hominy and bean cakes (stove top or coals · 15 minutes once the beans are cooked) — 1 cup boiled coarse hominy, 1 cup cooked beans, ½ cup milk, 1 Tbsp fat, ½ Tbsp cornstarch or flour, 1 tsp salt, a pinch of cayenne.

1. Melt the fat, blend in the flour, salt and pepper, add the milk, and cook until thick.
2. Grind or mash the hominy and beans together and mix them into the sauce.
3. Shape into cakes and brown them in a little fat. They can take the place of meat.

(FB 1236, p. 19)

Four-vegetables-mixed (stove top or a fire · about an hour) — the winter dish of the Hidatsa gardeners, built entirely on things that store: dried beans, dried squash, parched corn and parched sunflower seed. It needs no meat, because the sunflower seed carries the fat.

1. Put a pot of water on the fire and throw in one double handful of beans — no more, whatever the size of the family, or it makes gas.
2. Add a ring of dried squash slices and cook until they are soft.
3. Lift the squash out, chop and mash it, and return it to the pot.
4. Add four or five double handfuls of mixed meal of pounded parched sunflower seed and pounded parched corn.
5. Boil a few minutes more and serve. A little salt, if you like; nothing else.

(Buffalo Bird Woman, p. 44)

Beans mashed in fat (stove top · 10 minutes): cooked beans mashed into hot lard or tallow with salt and a little of their own liquid, fried until they hold together, make a filling for flatbread and a way to use yesterday's pot (rule of thumb).

📚 Go deeper: USU Dry Beans and Peas, p. 3 — soaking, cooking and why acid stops them softening; OSU Preserving Dry Beans, p. 3 — drying and canning them.

Whole grain keeps for years and a sack of it is most of a winter's food. These are the ways it gets eaten day after day without anyone minding.

Cornmeal mush (a double boiler or the back of a stove · 30 minutes to 4 hours) — per cup of cornmeal: 1 to 1½ level tsp salt and 3½ to 6½ cups of water (more water the longer you cook it). Milk can replace part or all of the water.

1. Put the meal, cold water and salt together in the top of a double boiler. No stirring is needed — that is the whole point of starting cold.
2. Set it over the lower pan and let it heat slowly. Cook half an hour, or longer if convenient. Many people cook it four hours.
3. Just before serving, take the top pan off and boil the mush hard for two or three minutes. It will not lump at this stage, and it needs to reach a boil for the flavor.

(FB 1236, p. 11) In a hay box: boil it 10 minutes at night, leave it in the box overnight, and reheat in the morning (FB 771, p. 14).

Three ways to make mush into another meal (FB 1236, p. 12):

• Fried mush: pack it in a pan, let it set cold, slice it, and fry the slices. Or cook meal in three times its volume of water just long enough to make a mush and finish the cooking by frying it in fat — faster, because fat is far hotter than boiling water.
• With cheese: stir in about ½ cup (2 oz) of grated cheese per cup of meal at the end. It then needs no butter or cream, and it can be fried or baked afterwards.
• In buttermilk: cook white meal in buttermilk — 1 part meal to 6 parts buttermilk, 1 tsp salt per cup of meal. It tastes like cottage cheese, and is best cold with cream.

Polenta with a sauce (stove top · 20 minutes after the mush is made) — mush, reheated in a sauce and sprinkled with cheese. Cut it small so the sauce gets through it.

• Tomato sauce: melt 2 Tbsp butter, cook 2 Tbsp flour in it thoroughly, add 1 cup thick strained tomato juice, salt and pepper, and cook smooth, stirring.
• Savory sauce: cut up 2 oz of salt pork, bacon or sausage and heat it crisp but not burnt; cook a little chopped onion and pepper in the fat; add a cup of thick tomato juice and cook it down to a cupful; salt it. Mushrooms or chopped pickle can go in.

(FB 1236, pp. 11–12)

Coarse hominy or samp (hay box, double boiler, or over the fire · 2 to 12 hours) — 1 cup coarse hominy, 6 cups boiling water, 3 tsp salt.

1. Soak the hominy in 2 cups of water for 6 hours or overnight.
2. Add the boiling water and salt and boil 10 minutes over the fire.
3. Then either: into the hay box for 8–12 hours; or a double boiler for 5–6 hours; or straight over the fire for about 2 hours. A cup of milk stirred in 15 minutes before the end is good.
4. Cook a big batch — it keeps well in a cool place. Serve it plain, or browned in a little fat in place of a vegetable.

(FB 1236, p. 19) Hominy grits: 1 cup grits to 5 cups water and 2 tsp salt — add the grits slowly to the boiling salted water, boil 10 minutes, then overnight in the hay box or 2 hours in a double boiler (same page). Hominy turnover (a supper from a pint of cooked hominy, 1 cup milk, 2 beaten eggs, 1 Tbsp fat, 1 tsp salt, stirred in a greased pan until hot, browned on the bottom and folded like an omelet) and scalloped hominy (layers of hominy and minced meat, fish or grated cheese under a cup of white sauce, baked 30 minutes) are on the same page.

The older way with whole corn (Parker, pp. 115–116): coarse pounded corn, 1 part meal to 8 parts water, boiled 2 hours, with meat and beans cooked in it; or hulled corn, washed free of skins and hulls, put in cold water and boiled 4 hours until the kernels burst open, with small chunks of meat and fat thrown into the boiling liquid. ⚠️ Corn that will be a daily staple must first be cooked with lime or ash (Corn, above), or people get pellagra.

Barley (stove top · ½–¾ hour): simmer barley in about four times its volume of water until just tender, half to three-quarters of an hour, then sweeten it, or use it in soup or in place of rice (FAO Barley, p. 63). Barley water for the sick or for thinning milk: ¼ cup pearl barley and 1 quart water with lemon rind, simmered covered on the lowest heat for two hours, then strained (same page).

Acorn mush and acorn bread (stone-boiling, a hot flat rock, an earth oven or hot stones): leached acorn meal (see Acorn flour, above) mixed with water and cooked makes porridge and a thick soup; poured onto a hot flat rock it makes pancakes and bread. Acorn cakes about 3 inches across were wrapped between two layers of grass and cooked overnight in an earth oven, and a dry acorn bread baked on hot stones kept for a month or more (NRCS Tanoak, p. 2).

📚 Go deeper: USDA FB 1236 Corn and Its Uses, p. 11 — mush, polenta, hominy and the breads; FAO Barley, p. 63 — soups, breads, puddings and drinks from barley; Parker, Iroquois Uses of Maize, p. 115 — dozens of corn dishes as they were really made.

Bread with no oven, and the quick things that turn flour and meal into a meal. Yeast bread, sourdough, biscuits, flatbread, hardtack and noodles are under Staples, above.

Bannock (camp bread) (a frying pan propped in front of coals, a reflector, or a covered pot · 25–40 minutes) — enough for four: 3 pints flour, 3 heaping tsp baking powder, 1 heaping tsp salt, 2 heaping Tbsp cold grease (lard, pork fat, drippings or tallow), 1 scant pint cold water.

1. Mix the baking powder through the flour thoroughly, then the salt.
2. Rub in the cold grease until there are no lumps and none sticks to the pan. Do not skimp this.
3. Stir in the water and work it to a rather stiff dough.
4. Grease the pan, turn the loaf in, and rake embers out in front of the fire. Set the pan on them just long enough to crust the bottom.
5. Prop the pan up at an angle facing the fire so the top gets the heat. Turn the loaf now and then, both ways. Never less than 25 minutes.
6. Done when no dough sticks to a sliver pushed into the middle. Break hot bread with your hands, never cut it.

(Kephart, pp. 348, 351) Left over and dry, sprinkle it with water and heat it through — once only (p. 351). The same dough rolled ¾ inch thick and cut out makes two dozen biscuits in a reflector (same page).

Ash bread (damper) (a fire's own ashes · until done): build a good fire on level ground, let it burn to coals and heat the earth, rake the embers aside, drop the loaf on the hot ground, pat it smooth, rake hot ashes and then embers back over it, and leave it until a sliver comes out clean. It is not dirty; brush it off (Kephart, p. 348).

Corn pone and corn dodgers (a Dutch oven, an oven, or a hot frying pan · about 45 minutes + 15) — 1 quart cornmeal, 1 tsp salt, 1 pint warm (not scalding) water — 1¼ pints if the meal is old.

1. Stir the meal, salt and water together until the batter is light.
2. Bake to a good brown all round, about 45 minutes, then let it sweat 15 minutes more in the closed oven off the fire.
3. For dodgers, mix it stiff instead, roll cylinders 4–5 inches long and 1¼ inches thick between your hands, drop them into a very hot greased pan, brown them, then bake them through.
4. For ash cakes, roll the same dough into balls the size of hen's eggs, roll them in dry flour, lay them in hot ashes and cover them completely.

(Kephart, p. 356) Plain corn bread with no flour, milk or egg is hard to get right without a Dutch oven, and is usually spoiled by being baked too fast and not long enough to be done inside (same page). The milk-and-soda version — 2 cups cornmeal, ¾ cup water, ½ cup sour milk or buttermilk, ½ tsp soda, 1 tsp salt, 1 Tbsp sugar, 2 tsp baking powder, shaped into cakes and baked in a hot greased pan in a hot oven — is in FB 1236, p. 12.

Dumplings (steam over boiling water, or on top of a stew · 12 minutes) — 2 cups flour, 4 tsp baking powder, ½ tsp salt, 2 tsp butter or lard, ¾ cup milk.

1. Sift the dry things together, rub in the fat with your fingertips, and add the milk gradually, cutting it in with a knife.
2. Pat and roll the dough out ½ inch thick on a floured board and cut rounds.
3. Set them close together in a greased steamer over boiling water, cover tightly, and steam 12 minutes. A tin pie plate punched full of holes works as a steamer.
4. Or make the dough a little wetter, drop it by spoonfuls on top of a stew, and cook it there — ladle some liquid out first so the dumplings rest on the meat and potato instead of sinking.

(Fannie Farmer, p. 218)

Corn dumplings (a pot of boiling water or a pot of boiling meat · 30 minutes): moisten cornmeal with boiling water, shape it quickly into cakes in a closed hand dipped in cold water, drop them one by one into boiling water and boil half an hour. They were the favourite thing to cook with boiling meat, especially game birds — speared out of the pot on a sharp stick and nibbled with the meat (Parker, p. 115).

Flapjacks (a hot pan over a thin bed of coals · a minute or two each) — 1 quart flour, 1 tsp salt, 2 tsp sugar or 4 of molasses, 2 level Tbsp baking powder, 2 heaped Tbsp grease rubbed in dry (leave the grease out if you have none), and milk or water.

1. Make a smooth batter, thin enough to pour from a spoon but no thinner.
2. Set the pan level over a thin bed of coals, get it quite hot, and grease it with a piece of pork held in a split stick. The batter must sizzle as it touches.
3. Pour enough to fill the pan to within half an inch of the rim.
4. When the cake is full of bubbles and the edges have stiffened, shuffle the pan to be sure it is loose, then turn it.
5. Grease the pan and stir the batter again before every cake. Two eggs make them much better; cold boiled rice mixed half and half with the flour makes them tender.

(Kephart, p. 359) For sourdough hotcakes, stir ½ tsp of baking soda dissolved in 1 Tbsp of water into the batter last (Leavening, above).

Rieska — unleavened barley bread (a hot oven · 30 minutes) — ½ cup buttermilk (or any liquid), ½ cup cream, ½ tsp salt, ½ tsp sugar, 1 cup barley flour, 1 Tbsp melted butter. Mix the liquids, beat in the flour until smooth, add the butter, pour into a buttered 9-inch round pan — or spread the dough on cabbage leaves on a greased sheet — and bake at 450 °F for about 30 minutes. Serves 4–6. (FAO Barley, pp. 63–64)

Steamed bread, for a kitchen with no oven (a covered tin or can in a kettle of boiling water · 3½ hours) — 1 cup each of cornmeal, rye meal and graham flour, 1 tsp salt, soda and baking powder, ¾ cup molasses, 2 cups sour milk (or 1½ cups sweet milk). Mix and sift the dry things, add the molasses and milk, beat well, and steam 3½ hours in well-buttered covered tins; take the covers off and dry the top by the fire or in the oven (FB 1236, p. 13).

Fritters (a deep pan of hot fat · 3–5 minutes a batch) — batter: 1 cup flour, ½ tsp salt, ⅔ cup milk or water, 2 egg yolks, 1 Tbsp melted fat, and 2 egg whites beaten stiff and folded in last. Stir in sliced sour apples (or corn, cooked beans, or chopped greens), drop by spoonfuls into hot deep fat, fry, and drain (Fannie Farmer, p. 347).

📚 Go deeper: Kephart, Camping and Woodcraft, p. 348 — breadstuffs over a fire, in detail; USDA FB 1136 Quick Breads and Biscuits, p. 22 — muffins, griddle cakes and biscuits; UAF Sourdough, p. 3 — hotcakes and muffins from a starter.

Most of the meat a household eats is tough, because most of an animal is tough and the tender part is small. Tough meat is not worse meat — it just needs water, a lid and time.

Broiling, for tender pieces only (a bed of bright coals · 5–20 minutes): cut the meat at least an inch thick. Have clear coals with a flaming fire to one side. Sear the outside in the flame for a moment, then broil it in front of the fire rather than over it, with a pan underneath for the drippings. 1 inch thick — 5 minutes · 1¼ inches — 10 minutes · 2 inches — 20 minutes. Do not season until it is done. Venison usually wants pounding first, but do not gash it. (Kephart, p. 297) With no broiler, get a clean frying pan almost red hot, cover it, and turn the meat often without stabbing it: a large venison steak is done in 10 minutes, and the juices are saved (same page). Kabobs when you are in a hurry: 1½–2-inch pieces off the saddle, pounded, cut small, speared on a sharpened stick, salted and peppered, plunged into a bright flame for a moment and then toasted slowly over the embers — eat one while the next toasts (p. 300).

Braising, for everything else (a Dutch oven or any covered pot, on coals or a stove · 15 minutes to the pound) —

1. Put the meat in the pot with about 2 inches of hot water and a bit of bacon or salt pork (no pork with bear). Add chopped onion if you like.
2. Cover and cook about 15 minutes to the pound.
3. Season with salt and pepper half an hour before it is done.
4. For gravy, pour the grease off the pot, add a little water and salt, and rub flour into it gradually with a spoon.

(Kephart, p. 301) In an oven the same thing takes longer and comes out better: 3 lb from the round or rump, seasoned, floured and browned all over in pork fat, set on a trivet in a deep pan, surrounded with diced carrot, turnip, onion and celery and 3 cups of boiling water, covered closely and baked 4 hours in a very slow oven, basted every half-hour and turned after two hours, the liquid kept below boiling throughout (Fannie Farmer, p. 217). When you turn meat, do not pierce it with a fork — the juices run out (same page).

Pot roast in a hay box (sear on the fire, then the box · overnight): sear the meat in hot fat, put it in the cooker kettle, cover with boiling water, boil gently 30 minutes (20 is enough for a 3-lb roast), and put it in the box overnight. Reheat in the morning, season, and return it to the box until noon. Thicken some of the liquor for gravy (FB 771, p. 15).

Pit baking (the bean hole) (a pit of coals · overnight):

1. Dig a hole about 18 × 18 × 12 inches. Lay kindling in it and build a "cob house" of split hardwood over it — sticks crossed in layers, not touching, two feet high — and light it so it all burns to coals together.
2. Cut the meat or bird in pieces, season it, add a chunk of fat pork the size of your fist, put it in the kettle with water to cover, and put the lid on.
3. Rake the coals out of the hole, set the kettle in, shovel the coals around and over it, cover it with a few inches of earth, and leave it overnight. (Bark over the top if it rains.)
4. Practice two or three times before you trust a meal to it.

(Kephart, p. 301)

An old hen, an old rooster, an old anything (a hay box overnight, or a covered pot on the stove until the meat leaves the bone): brown fricassee will reduce the toughest old fowl on the place to meat that falls off the bone. Joint the bird, roll the pieces in flour and brown them in fat, packing them into the kettle as they brown; make a gravy in the frying pan and add it with boiling water to cover; salt and pepper; boil 20 minutes; hay box overnight; reheat and return to the box until noon (FB 771, p. 15). To roast a bird you fear is tough, boil it 15–20 minutes, put it boiling hot into the box for 10 hours, then drain, wipe dry, stuff if you want, and roast it only long enough to brown (same page). Boiled fowl without a box: truss a 4-lb fowl, tie it in a cloth so the scum does not mark the skin, set it on a trivet half surrounded with boiling water, cover, and cook slowly until tender, salting in the last hour (Fannie Farmer, p. 255). A young bird can simply be broiled: split down the back, seasoned, in a greased broiler, 20 minutes over a clear fire, flesh side to the fire most of the time (same page).

Game (NDSU, p. 5): game is leaner and stronger-flavored than farm meat, and the strong flavor sits in the fat — trim it off. Then put fat back in another form (butter, lard, cream, bacon over the top) or it cooks dry. Do not overcook it. Tell a young bird from an old one at the joints: stiff joints and brittle bones mean an old bird, which must be braised or stewed; flexible joints and soft bones mean it can be fried. A plucked bird roasts without drying out because the fat under the skin melts into it; a skinned bird needs bacon over it, or a slice of bread dipped in egg and milk laid on top. Game takes the place of beef in any chili, soup or stew you already make.

• Roast duck (a 325 °F oven · 1–1½ hours): fill the cavity with quartered apples, skewer it shut, tie the legs and wings close, rub it with onion, salt and pepper, and roast it back up, uncovered, basting every 10 minutes (NDSU, p. 9).
• Any bird in milk (stove top or a 350 °F oven · 1–1½ hours): dredge the pieces in seasoned flour, brown them in fat, add about 2 inches of milk or cream, and simmer or bake until done — at least 165 °F inside (same page).
• Rabbit (stove top · about 1 hour after browning): dredge in flour, brown well in fat with a little bacon, cover, and cook over moderate heat until tender, adding a few spoonfuls of liquid to make steam (NDSU, p. 8).

Fresh sausage, from trimmings that would otherwise be dog food — ⅓ fat to ⅔ lean. A test batch: 4 lb trimmings, 5 tsp salt, 4 tsp ground sage, 2 tsp ground pepper, 1 tsp sugar, and if you like ½ tsp ground cloves or 1 tsp nutmeg. Mix the seasoning, spread it over the trimmings, and grind it all. For bulk sausage that slices and fries without crumbling, work a scant half cup of cold water into each 4 lb of ground seasoned meat until it is sticky and dough-like, pack it tightly into small pans, and chill before slicing (FB 2138, p. 45). Scrapple and head cheese — the dishes that use the rest of the head and trimmings — are in the Pigs guide.

⚠️ Hang game at least two days before you cook it, or it will be tough and tasteless; venison eaten before it has cooled right through causes diarrhoea (Kephart, p. 295). Pork, bear and cougar must be cooked through — see the Pigs guide and Jerky, above, for trichinosis. Drying and smoking are not cooking (PNW 632, p. 8).

📚 Go deeper: Kephart, Camping and Woodcraft, p. 295 — frying, broiling, roasting, braising and pit baking; NDSU Wild Side of the Menu 1 — game cookery and kitchen safety; Fannie Farmer 1896, p. 217 — braised beef, beef à la mode and stews; Hunting, Trapping & Fishing — getting the meat home in good shape.

Fish over coals (a moderate bed of coals · 10–20 minutes): rub the broiler with fat bacon so the fish does not stick. For a large fish, take the head off and split it down the back, not the belly, and lay strips of bacon or pork across it; broil over a moderate bed of coals so the inside cooks through without drying. Small fish are better cooked fast over hot coals, heads on. When it is done, salt and pepper it, spread butter, and hold it over the fire again until the butter melts. With no broiler, push a sharpened green stick through the mouth into the body and keep turning it over the coals, basting with drippings from a bit of bacon held on another stick above it. (Kephart, p. 326) Frying fish: wipe it dry or it soaks up grease, have the fat very hot, and put the pieces in one at a time so the heat does not drop (same page). Boiled fish, for a big one (stove top · until a fork goes in easily): ¾-fill a pot with water, add two large potatoes and about ½ cup of salt per 2-gallon pot, bring it to a boil, put the fish in, and cook until a fork goes through the flesh easily — 2 lb of fish for every 2 potatoes (NDSU, p. 10).

Eggs (Fannie Farmer, pp. 131, 134, 136): allow one egg per person and one tablespoon of liquid per egg.

• Scrambled (a hot pan · 3–5 minutes): 5 eggs, ½ cup milk, 2 Tbsp butter, salt, pepper. Beat the eggs just enough to mix, add the milk and seasoning, melt the butter in a hot pan, pour it in, and cook only to a creamy consistency.
• Omelet (a hot pan · 3–5 minutes): 4 eggs, 4 Tbsp milk, 2 Tbsp butter, salt, pepper, cooked the same way and folded over.

A greens, bread and egg bake (a 350 °F oven · 40–45 minutes) — the dish that turns a handful of anything green into supper: 3 slices of bread cubed, 4 eggs, 1⅓ cups milk, ½ tsp each salt, pepper and ground mustard, 1 cup cooked chopped greens (blanched nettles, chard, beet tops), ¼ cup onion or chives, and whatever meat, fish or cheese you have.

1. Whisk the eggs, milk and seasonings. Stir in the greens and onion.
2. Spread the bread cubes in a greased 9-inch pan and scatter the meat or fish among them.
3. Pour the egg mixture over slowly and even out the greens. Sprinkle cheese on top.
4. Bake uncovered on a low rack 40–45 minutes, until a knife put in near the middle comes out clean. It puffs up as it cooks. Good hot or cold; chill the leftovers within two hours.

(OSU EM 9373, p. 5)

Baked custard (a slow oven, the dish standing in a pan of hot water · until a knife comes out clean) — 4 cups scalded milk, 4 to 6 eggs, ⅓ cup sugar or honey, ¼ tsp salt, a grating of nutmeg. Beat the eggs slightly, add sugar and salt, pour the scalded milk on slowly, strain into a buttered dish, set it in a pan of hot water, and bake in a slow oven. Keep the water around the dish below boiling — eggs and milk together must be cooked at a low temperature, or the custard turns to whey (Fannie Farmer, pp. 391–392).

Cheese, when there is cheese (FB 1451, pp. 12, 14): fresh curd is mild, so it takes flavor from whatever you put with it — horseradish, onion juice, parsley, chopped celery, ground sage; or honey, jam and dried fruit on the sweet side. A cheese roll is curd mixed with cold cooked rice or fresh bread crumbs and those seasonings, packed into a buttered dish, chilled, turned out and sliced; scraps of cooked meat or fish go in to stretch it further. Dry curd needs seasoning well. Grated hard cheese stirred into cornmeal mush makes a dish that needs no butter (above). Milk, butter, cheese-making, ricotta and whey are the Milk, Butter & Cheese guide.

📚 Go deeper: Kephart, p. 326 — fish over a fire, every way; Fannie Farmer 1896, p. 131 — eggs, omelets and custards; USDA FB 1451 Cottage Cheese, p. 12 — making it and cooking with it.

Garden and cellar vegetables need longer than most people think, and old ones longer again.

Sources: Fannie Farmer, pp. 292, 299, 306; OSU EM 9373, p. 4; Household Discoveries, p. 891; FB 771, p. 15.

Nettles, start to finish (a big pot of boiling water · 2 minutes, plus 2 in cold water): wear long sleeves and rubber gloves to pick and handle them. Bring a gallon of water and a pinch of salt to a rolling boil, put the leaves in, boil 1½–2 minutes, lift them out with tongs into cold water for 2 minutes, drain, and squeeze the water out. From there they are a cooked green: in the bake above, in soup, in a pan with fat and onion, or chopped fine with nuts, garlic, oil and hard cheese as a sauce for noodles — which keeps only 4 days in a cold place, or frozen, because greens in oil can grow botulism. Drying them: 95–115 °F until crisp, then airtight in the dark; best used within 6 months. (OSU EM 9373, pp. 3–4)

A boiled dinner in one kettle (stove top and a hay box · overnight plus the morning): cook a piece of corned beef or salt pork in the box overnight; in the morning add every vegetable you have — the more kinds the better — boil 10–15 minutes and return it to the box; put the potatoes in only an hour and a quarter before the meal, and bring it back to a boil when they go in. If the salt meat was parboiled first, the liquid makes a good soup (FB 771, p. 15).

From the cellar in late winter: dried squash and dried corn go into soups and the winter dish under Beans, above. Sprouting potatoes and soft roots are still food — rub the sprouts off and cut away every green part, which is toxic (why) — then boil them. Keeping it all this long is the Root Cellar guide; mushrooms, how to cook and dry them, are in the Mushroom guide.

📚 Go deeper: Fannie Farmer 1896, p. 292 — every common vegetable and how long it takes; OSU Wild Edibles: Stinging Nettle — gathering, blanching, freezing, drying and four recipes; Household Discoveries, p. 891 — plain vegetable cookery.

Apples, pears and plums keep in a cellar or dried; grain, milk, eggs, honey and syrup make them into puddings. A sweet dish at the end of a hard week does more good than its calories.

Scalloped apples (a moderate oven · 40 minutes) — a small stale loaf, ½ cup butter or lard, 1 quart sliced apples, ½ cup sugar or honey, ½ tsp grated nutmeg, the grated rind and juice of half a lemon if you have one.

1. Crumb the soft part of the loaf. Melt the fat and stir it lightly through the crumbs with a fork.
2. Cover the bottom of a greased dish with crumbs, spread half the apples over, and sprinkle with half the sugar and spice. Repeat, and finish with crumbs.
3. Bake 40 minutes in a moderate oven, covered at first so the crumbs do not brown too fast.

(Fannie Farmer, p. 374)

Steamed apple pudding — no oven needed (a covered tin or a five-pound lard pail in a kettle of boiling water · 1 hour 20 minutes) — 2 cups flour, 4 tsp baking powder, ¼ tsp salt, 2 Tbsp butter or lard, ¾ cup milk, 4 apples cut in eighths, 1 Tbsp sugar mixed with ¼ tsp each salt and nutmeg.

1. Sift the dry things, rub in the fat with your fingertips, and add the milk gradually, mixing with a knife.
2. Pat and roll the dough out. Put the apples on the middle, sprinkle the sugar and spice over them, and bring the dough round them.
3. Lift it carefully into a buttered tin or a lard pail, cover it closely, and steam 1 hour 20 minutes.
4. Quicker: cook twice as many apples with sugar until soft in a kettle on the stove, cover them with the dough rolled to fit, put the lid on tight, and steam 15 minutes. Turn it out and the apples are on top.

(Fannie Farmer, p. 378) The same dough and method takes berries — a cup of berries rolled in flour with a cup of milk (same page).

Indian pudding (a slow oven · 2 hours, after 20 minutes on the stove) — 5 cups scalded milk, ⅓ cup cornmeal, ½ cup molasses, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp ginger. Pour the milk slowly on the meal, cook it in a double boiler 20 minutes, add the molasses, salt and ginger, pour it into a greased dish and bake 2 hours in a slow oven. Serve with cream. If it is baked too fast it will not whey properly (Fannie Farmer, p. 372).

Rice pudding, and poor man's pudding (a very slow oven · 3 hours) — 4 cups milk, ½ cup rice, ⅓ cup sugar, ¼ tsp salt, grated lemon rind. Wash the rice, mix everything, pour it into a greased dish, and bake 3 hours in a very slow oven, stirring three times in the first hour so the rice does not settle. Poor man's pudding is the same with ⅓ cup molasses in place of the sugar, ¼ tsp cinnamon, and a tablespoon of butter stirred in at the last stir (Fannie Farmer, p. 372).

Bread pudding, for stale bread (a slow oven · 1 hour) — 2 cups stale bread crumbs, 1 quart scalded milk, ½ cup sugar or honey, ¼ cup melted butter, 2 eggs, ¼ tsp salt, a little spice. Soak the crumbs in the milk and let it cool; add the rest with the eggs beaten slightly; bake 1 hour in a greased dish in a slow oven. Leave the outside crusts out of pudding crumbs (Fannie Farmer, p. 374).

Nuts: hazelnuts and sugar pine nuts need no treatment (Acorn flour, above). Pounded parched nut meal mixed with parched corn meal makes a pottage, and nut milk was used with corn the way we use dairy milk (Parker, p. 117).

⚠️ Elderberries are never eaten raw. Raw berries and raw juice release cyanide as they are digested: nausea, vomiting, cramps and weakness, and people have been hospitalised. Cooking removes the risk. Berries that are dried or frozen raw must still be cooked before anyone eats them. (OSU EM 9446, p. 4) Our blue elderberry is high in acid and can be canned as juice, syrup or jam with ordinary high-acid recipes; the eastern kinds cannot (p. 2). Canning times and the jam rules are in the Preserving Food guide.

📚 Go deeper: Fannie Farmer 1896, p. 372 — the hot-pudding chapter; OSU Play It Safe When Preserving Elderberries — which elderberries are safe in which recipe; OSU Picking and Storing Apples and Pears — when to pick and how to keep them.

The difference between a dull winter and a bearable one is sauce, salt and a change of flavor. The same beans, meal and roots can be a different meal every day.

White sauce, the one sauce to know (stove top · 5 minutes) — per cup of milk: 2 Tbsp butter or lard, ¼ tsp salt, pepper, and flour according to how thick you want it — 1½ Tbsp thin (for soups and creamed dishes), 2 Tbsp medium, 3 Tbsp thick (to bind cakes and croquettes).

1. Melt the fat in a pan until it bubbles.
2. Stir the flour and seasonings in and cook until thoroughly blended.
3. Pour the milk on gradually, about a third at a time, stirring, then beat until smooth and glossy.

(Fannie Farmer, p. 273) It carries any cooked thing: hominy, greens, fish, eggs, scraps of meat, dried mushrooms.

Pan gravy (the pot you cooked in · 5 minutes): pour the grease off, add a little water and salt to what is left, and rub flour in gradually with a spoon (Kephart, p. 301). On bread, mush or potatoes this is a meal in itself.

Tomato sauce and savory sauce (above, under Porridge) go on anything, not just polenta: 2 Tbsp fat, 2 Tbsp flour and a cup of strained tomato for the first; salt pork or bacon crisped with onion and pepper, then a cup of tomato cooked down, for the second (FB 1236, pp. 11–12).

A basting mop for anything roasting over a fire (simmered, then brushed on) — 1 pint vinegar, half a can of tomatoes (about a cupful), 2 tsp red pepper (chopped pods are better), 1 tsp black pepper, 1 tsp salt, 2 Tbsp butter, simmered together until it comes together. Tie a clean rag on a stick and keep the meat basted the whole time it is on the fire (Kephart, p. 300).

Salt, and when to add it:

• Do not salt meat that is broiling until it is done; if you must, glaze the salt onto the surface first in the flame so it cannot draw the juice out (Kephart, pp. 297, 300).
• Beans, greens and tough vegetables: salt in the last half-hour (Fannie Farmer, p. 292).
• Sausage and plain meat: per 4 lb, 5 tsp salt, 4 tsp sage, 2 tsp pepper, 1 tsp sugar is a seasoning that works on anything ground, not only pork (FB 2138, p. 45).

Flavor out of nothing much:

• Dried mushrooms grate or powder easily and go into soups, sauces and fritters after soaking; a species with good body but little flavor is cooked together with one of higher flavor (McIlvaine, p. 814).
• Curd and sour milk take onion juice, horseradish, parsley, celery and sage (FB 1451, p. 12).
• Vinegar on boiled greens, and on sliced boiled beets as a quick pickle (Fannie Farmer, pp. 292, 299). Homemade vinegar is fine for cooking — just never for canned pickles (Salt, sweeteners and fat, above).
• Honey replaces sugar cup for cup in baking (FB 1136, p. 23).
• Onions, garlic, mustard and dried herbs are the cheapest thing a garden grows for a kitchen, and dry easily (Drying food in the Root Cellar guide) (rule of thumb).

📚 Go deeper: Fannie Farmer 1896, p. 273 — the sauce chapter; Household Discoveries, p. 851 — a whole chapter on making left-overs into something people want to eat.

Men who carried nothing they could do without lived on four things: flour, bacon, baking powder and salt (Kephart, p. 356). Here is what those four, or fewer, will make.

• Pan bread. Flour, baking powder, salt, cold grease and water — the bannock above. With no baking powder it is flat bread: flour, water, a little salt, rolled thin, cooked on a dry hot pan 30–60 seconds a side (Staples).
• Ash cakes. Stiff dough — flour or meal and water — in balls the size of hen's eggs, rolled in dry flour, laid in hot ashes and covered over (Kephart, p. 356).
• Dumplings in salted water. Flour, a little fat, water; dropped in boiling water and boiled 12–30 minutes. With cornmeal, moisten with boiling water, shape cakes in your hand, and boil half an hour (Parker, p. 115).
• Gravy on bread. Fat, flour, water, salt — the pan gravy above. With milk instead of water it is better again.
• Fried mush. Meal, water, salt, fat: cook a thin mush, let it set, slice it and fry it (FB 1236, p. 12).
• Hardtack. 3 parts flour to 1 part water and nothing else, baked hard and dried (Staples). It keeps for years; to eat it, toast it until crisp, or soak it in something hot and butter or salt it (Kephart, p. 196).
• Thin gruel of meal or flour stirred into boiling salted water is what a sick person or a small child can keep down when nothing else will; so is barley water (above). Feeding someone who has gone hungry for a long time has rules of its own — see Food When It's Scarce.

A steady diet of baking-powder bread is hard on people; that is what sourdough and saved dough are for (Kephart, p. 196, and Leavening, above).

📚 Go deeper: Kephart, Camping and Woodcraft, p. 356 — corn pone, dodgers, ash cake and johnny-cake; Food When It's Scarce — rationing, nutrition and hunger diseases.