Are You Afraid of Raw Head and Bloody Bones?

"Don't Talk! Go to Sleep!

Eyes shet an' don't you peep!

Keep still, or he jes moans:

'Raw Head an' Bloody Bones!'"

-"Negro Folk Rhymes" (1922) compiled by Thomas W. Talley

It might seem strange to us today that winter, a season of festive cheer and celebrations, was once a time for scary stories. But for those who lived in a world where days grew shorter and the fields lay barren, gathering around the fire and telling tales of ghosts and ghouls felt natural. Among these chilling stories, few were as enduring or as terrifying as those of Raw Head and Bloody Bones.

Raw Head and Bloody Bones is a centuries-old bogeyman whose origin has been lost to time. He goes by many names—“Rawhead,” “Tommy Rawhead,” and “Raw-Head-and-Bloody-Bones.” In some stories, "Rawhead" and "Bloody Bones" are treated as two separate ghouls. Despite the variations, the legend is consistent in its ability to frighten children and adults alike. Typically, Rawhead is depicted as a skull with teeth, while Bloody Bones is portrayed as a skeleton without a head. Together, they are said to abduct naughty children, cook them in a stew pot, and devour them.

Many English towns have their own versions of the Bloody Bones tale, often placing the ghoul in dangerous locations such as marshes or caves to deter children from venturing into unsafe areas. “As the nurse’s opiate to quiet a troublesome brat. See! There is Raw Head and Bloody Bones coming to fetch you. Raa! hoes aen bloote-beens” (Bellenden, 36).

Christmas Entertainments 1740

The first recorded use of the term “Bloodybone” appears in a sermon from 1548, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The legend was especially popular in England, Ireland, the Appalacian Region and the American South from the 18th to the 20th centuries. Even Thomas Jefferson referenced Raw Head and Bloody Bones in his writings, using the figure to symbolize fearmongering in political discourse.

The legend’s influence persisted into the 20th century, as seen in interviews conducted during the 1980s with women born around 1900 in Carrboro, North Carolina. One woman recounted:

I remember one nightmare I had: Old Raw Head and Bloody Bones came out and threw my brother in the fire, and my brother got out and threw Raw Head and Bloody Bones in the fire. But he ran under my bed, and oh, for weeks I was afraid to pass that bed. I guess I was five years old then. And I know a nephew of mine came along. They told him the story of Raw Head and Bloody Bones, and one day he went down to the garden, and during the night the dogs had dragged up an old cow’s head. That little fellow saw that and he screamed bloody murder. It was a raw head and bloody bones (Quinney 1980, 100).

The legend also lived on in the oral histories of formerly enslaved people in the United States. Rachel Adams, an enslaved woman born in Georgia, shared:

Us chillun was allus skeered to play in de thicket nigh de house ‘cause Raw Head and Bloody Bones lived der. I used to think I seed ha’nts at night, but it allus turned out to be somebody dat was tryin’ to skeer me (Work Projects Administration 1941).

Georgia Baker spoke of the enduring fear instilled by such tales:

Oh Lord! Us never played no games in slavery times, ‘cept jus’ to run around in a ring and pat our hands. I never sung no songs ‘cause I warn’t no singer, and don’t talk ‘bout no Raw Head and Bloody Bones or nothin’ lak dat. Dey used to skeer us chillun so bad ‘bout dem sort of things dat us used to lay in bed at night a-shakin’ lak us was havin’ chills. I’ve seed plenty of ha’nts right here in Athens. Not long atter I had left Crawfordville and moved to Athens, I had been in bed jus’ a little while one night, and was jus’ dozin’ off to sleep when I woke up and sot right spang up in bed. I seed a white man, dressed in white, standin’ before me. I sho didn’t say nothin’ to him for I was too skeered. De very last time I went to a dance, somepin got atter me and skeered me so my hair riz up ‘til I couldn’t git my hat on my haid, and dat cyored me of gwine to dances. I ain’t never been to no more sich doin’s (Work Projects Administration 1941).

Mary Colbert took a more pragmatic view:

Honey, there is no use to ask me about Raw Head and Bloody Bones. When folks started talking about that, I always left the room. It is a shame how folks do frighten children trying to make them get quiet and go to sleep. I don’t believe in ha’nts and ghosts. Since I have been grown, I have been around so many dead folks I have learned that the dead can’t harm you; it’s the living that make the trouble.

From English nurseries to the fields of Georgia, the legend of Raw Head and Bloody Bones transcended generations serving as both a tool of caution and a source of terror. While the stories may no longer dominate our winters, they remain a fascinating glimpse into the imaginations of those who came before us. If you find yourself around the fire this year, you might think to tell your company a chilling story of Raw Head and Bloody Bones.

References

Notes and Queries a Medium of Intercommunication for Literary Men and General Readers . 1914. Vol. IX. London: John C. Francis & J. Edward Francis.

Bellenden, John. 1834. An Essay on the Archaeology of Our Popular Phrases, and Nursery Rhymes. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green & Co.

Quinney, Valerie. 1980. “Mill Village Memories.” Southern Exposure VIII (3): 98–109.

Talley, Thomas W. 1922. Negro Folk Rhymes. New York Macmillan 1922.

Work Projects Administration. 1941. Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1. Vol. 1. Washington D.C.: Library of Congress. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/13602/pg13602-images.html.

Clarissa Dillon on Thinking Outside the Book

 

I came across this webinar by Clarissa Dillon on researching beyond using recipes. Recipes do not give the full picture of prevalence, who ate it, who cooked it, or if these recipes were altered due to need or desire. 

Webinar was hosted by the Historic Foodways of the Delaware Valley. 

What is Election Cake? | Colonial Recipe | Amelia Simmons, 1796

Many cookbooks include a recipe for Election Cake. What is it? The hallmark of an election cake recipe is the enormous batch size. Some of the finished cakes weighed over 10 pounds. In the 1700s, Election Cake was a yeast leavened cake with prunes or other dried fruits, intended to feed dozens of people. Sometimes they were made of soft gingerbread. Regardless of the ingredients, Election Cake was frequently served with cider. 

Election Cake seems to be derived from "Muster Cake." In the late 1600s and throughout the 1700s, some men were expected to attend military musters for training and were supplied with cake and cider as a reward. In the late 1700s, Election Day was new and a day of celebration. Eligible men who made the trek out to vote were given cake, cider, and alcohol outside of the polls and at parties.   

This recipe is from American Cookery by Amelia Simmons, the second edition published in 1796. This book is known for being the first known American cookbook. The full recipe makes a lot of cake. It contains 30 cups of flour and 36 eggs! I cut the recipe by about 1/7! The recipe also assumes you're cooking in the 1700s and that it will take 24 hours for your sponge to rise. It took me about 45 minutes in my 21st century oven. Likewise, if your house is heated in November, you won't have to cream the butter for 30 minutes. When I make this again (even the family liked it) I'll probably add a cup of crushed walnuts.  

   

Colonial Election Cake

Ingredients:

- 4 Cups Flour
- 1 1/2 Sticks Butter 

- 1 Cup Sugar

- 1 1/4 Cup Raisins, Prunes, or other dried fruit, chopped

- 2 Eggs

- 2 Tablespoon Wine

- 2 Tablespoons Brandy

- 1 Tablespoon Cinnamon

- 1 Tablespoon Coriander seed  

- 2 Tablespoons Yeast (1 Packet)

- 1 1/2 Cups Warm Milk 

Instructions:

Combine your flour, milk, and yeast, cover with a warm, wet cloth and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size. In a separate bowl, cream the sugar and butter until smooth. Add the eggs, spices, brandy, and wine and mix until combined. Pour the butter mixture into the dough and mix (with your hands, if necessary). Mix in the fruit.  Pour into greased pans and bake 45-60 minutes in an oven preheated to 375 F. Let cool then cover and let sit for a day.   

 

Sources:

Humble, Nicola. Cake: a Global History. London: Reaktion Books, 2010.

Simmons, Amelia. American Cookery; or, The Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry and Vegetables and the Best Modes of Making Pastes, Puffs, Pies, Tarts, Puddings, Custards and Preserves, and All Kinds of Cakes from the Imperial Plumb to Plain Cake, Adapted to This Country and All Grades of Life. . 2nd ed. Hartford: Hudson & Goodwin, 1796.

Stradley, Linda. “Election Day Cake History and Recipe,” November 3, 2020. https://whatscookingamerica.net/History/Cakes/ElectionCake.htm. 

The above link to American Cookery is an affiliate link. Thank you for helping me keep the fires going!

18th Century Wash-Balls: Scented Body Soap | How To

Bathing in colonial times evokes images of dirty rags and lard soap. In reality is there were many scented, colored, and augmented soaps available at perfumers and many receipts (recipes) to scent pre-made soap at home. 

I made these wash-balls with castile soap that I made over a full year ago so it has had plenty of time to cure. If you're interested in knowing more about castile soap, I've written quite a bit about it here.  All you need to know for this is that castile is an olive oil based soap, used in the 18th century for shaving and washing as is has a decent lather (for the time period.)

Castile soap can be bought online or in grocery stores. You can also use whatever you have lying around. They did have different color wash-balls but the coloring agents are not something I feel safe putting on my skin in modern times.  I'll update this post with how to color your wash-balls in a safe manner. I'm thinking "melt and pour colorant" is the best bet. 

Other recipes of the time called for rice flour, starch, or hair powder in 1/2 proportion to the soap to stretch it and to add color and extra scents. Hair powders came in white, orange, brown, gray, pink, red, blue and lavender. 

18th Century Wash-Balls

Ingredients:

- Pre-made Soap
- Rose or other Flower Water (Other recipes from the time period suggest lavender, coriander, cloves, jasmine, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon peel, lemon juice, orange flower water, musk.)

1. Shred, grate, bash, crush, buy pre-masticated or take up the relaxing art of soap shaving. A large mortar and pestle would work best.

3. Heat up your soap in a double boiler, in the hot sun or just use the heat from your hands. You want the soap soft but not melted.  Add your scent liquid or water if you don't want to add a scent. (Don't do this with essential oils they will burn your skin.) Stir until well mixed. I did not heat mine, but heated up my rose water. 

4. Wet your hands and grab a handful and squeeze it into a ball. Add as much liquid as you need to get it to stick together. You want the balls as compacted as possible. 

5. Let them dry in ball form for a week. You can scrape the outsides with a knife or peeler to make them smoother.

Castile really is great for shaving. I'm excited to try it out now that it's scented. This is a great activity to do with kids, unlike soapmaking which can be dangerous.

If you want to buy premade soap flakes and waters I recommend the products below:

This site uses affiliate links. If you are planning on making a purchase, I would greatly appreciate if you would use the affiliate links above. It doesn't cost you any more but it does help me keep the website running. Thanks!

How to Render Lard and Tallow for Cooking, Soap Making and Cosmetics

In early America, grease pots were a ubiquitous part of a kitchen. Grease was collected during cooking and butchering and was later rendered (made clean), and used to make soap, candles, grease pans, for cooking, and cosmetics. Tallow is the rendered fat of a ruminant and lard is fat from pigs. 

Today, so much good fat goes to waste.   

I'm using fat that my family saved for me from tacos and meatloaf. I don't eat meat so I'm reliant on friends and family whenever I need lard or tallow. My fat wasn't too gross. Yours might have chunks of meat on it, and that's fine for this. Just chop it into pieces and melt.

   

How to Render Lard

Put your fat in a pan on medium heat and add enough water to cover it.

Add 1 teaspoon of salt per pound of fat.

Heat until melted.

Pour into a sieve over a bowl.

Let the bowl Rest for 24 hours. 

Cut the tallow out of the bowl.

Rinse the tallow under running water.

You can repeat the process a second time with a finer sieve. Freeze in zip lock bags for up to a year. 

In the next few weeks I'll hopefully post a few tutorials on what you can do with rendered tallow. Stay tuned! 

Civil War Fruit Cake Recipe -150+ Years Old!

Fruitcake. I'm young enough to have never encountered a fruitcake in the wild. Its reputation had been cemented before I was a child. Likened to paper weights and door stops, fruitcake has disappeared from tables.  The theory that there is only one fruitcake in the world and people just keep regifting it to each other has expedited its demise.

Still there are diehard fans who can't have Christmas if there is not a fruitcake and I'm apt to believe that the real reason for the demise is the cost and care they take to make in a world that increasingly values quick and cheap.

Fruitcake has a long history. Nutritionally dense and long lasting, fruitcake like mixtures date back to at least Ancient Rome, but the modern recipe has its roots in the Middle Ages.  Richard Briggs includes a recipe for "Plum Cake" in his 1788 cookbook The English Art of Cookery that includes all the hallmarks of what we would call a fruitcake today. In 1840, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's wedding featured a highly decorated, 300 pound fruitcake popularising the choice for many future brides. By the 1860s fruitcake was a classic choice for Christmas and weddings.

This is my first attempt to make a fruitcake so I tried to find a simple recipe. I asked on Facebook what time period fruitcake I should make and many wanted to see a Civil War Fruitcake. So here it is. The recipe is from Godey's- the June edition as fruitcakes generally need to cure from 1 month to 6 months for the best flavors.

The recipe was very simple so I looked to E.F. Haskell's The Housekeeper's Encyclopedia (1861) for information on how to mix and bake the cake:

Rich Fruit Cake.—One pound of sugar, three-fourths of a pound of butter, worked together until very light; one wine-glass of brandy, one dozen ground cloves, half a nutmeg, a teaspoonful of ground cinnamon, ten eggs beat separately, the yolks to be used first, and afterwards the whites, one-fourth of a pound of sliced citron, two pounds of washed currants rubbed in flour and mixed in the cake with one pound of raisins cut fine, and one seeded and left whole or cut once, and one pound of sifted flour; stir in the citron, currants, and the chopped raisins, and lastly, the flour and whole raisins alternately; bake in a moderate oven in deep basins two hours. If the fire is strong, the heat should be decreased the last hour. Line the basins with buttered paper, and keep a piece over the top of the cake. Frost it and it will keep two months or longer if desired.

I ended up lining my pans with buttered paper and frosting my cake. I was interested in using rum to keep my cake soft so I did not try frosting it before storing it.

Civil War Fruit Cake

Ingredients:

- 2 Cups Butter
- 2 Cups Molasses
- 2 Cups Sugar
- 6 Eggs
- 2 teaspoons Baking Soda
- 1 Pound Raisins, Chopped
- 1 Pound Currants, Chopped
- 1/2 Pound Citron, Chopped
- 1 teaspoon Salt
- 1 Tablespoon Nutmeg, Ground
- 1 Tablespoon Cinnamon, Ground
- 1 teaspoons Cloves, Ground
~ 6 Cups of Flour


Instructions:

Preheat oven to 325°F.  In a mixing bowl, cream the butter, molasses sugar, salt, nutmeg, and cloves. Add a little water to your fruits and mix in a little flour to coat the fruits. Alternatively add fruits and mix in  flour to make a stiff batter. Beat your eggs and fold in at the end. Line your pans with buttered paper. Fill pans 2/3 of the way with batter and cover the tops with greased paper. Bake for 1 hour to 2 hours depending on pan size. Test the middle with a skewer.

This made 6 3x6 sized loaves. I baked them for an hour and 15 minutes.

Sorry for the cell phone pics.

The day after they were baked, the tops were hard. I used a skewer to poke holes half way down into the cakes and spooned rum over. I left the paper on and wrapped the cakes in plastic wrap then put them in a plastic container. Historically they would be wrapped in paper and kept in an airtight tin but I couldn't find one big enough. Some people wrap them in alcohol soaked cheesecloth first. I tried coating them with rum weekly unless they seemed soggy, then I skipped a week.

It is rumored you can keep fruitcake good for up to 25 years by storing them in powdered sugar. They apparently do last forever. There was one found from Robert Falcon Scott's expedition to Antarctica in the early 1900s that still appears to be edible and one being passed down from the Ford family for over a century.
 
There are 6 of my fruitcakes floating around in the ether and I hope to update you after everyone has tried them. I won't be trying mine until Christmas Day but will update with a photo when I cut mine open. I gave everyone the drunken fruitcake disclaimer. Can't get drunk off cake? Check out this article by Stuart Heritage who decided to not only answer the question "Can you get drunk off of fruitcake?" but the question of "How drunk?" I hope everyone has a good holiday and I'd love to hear if anyone tries this recipe.

UPDATE: I've updated with a picture of the inside. We ate this on Christmas and it was overall not bad. I didn't pour a final bit of rum on it before icing it I wish I had. It felt kind of soggy on the top and I didn't want it to be soggy. The flavor was nice an mild. I thought the flavors would be strong but they were very delicate and the fruits practically melted into the cake. The raisins definitely disappeared! I have one cake left so I'm going to keep feeding it and test it in 6 months to see if the flavor changes any. 

Colonial Era Cold Remedy That Actually Works: 18th Century Elderberry Syrup

It's the middle of September in 1774, your mother is sick and has sent you out to collect elderberries to make syrup. You know just where to find them as you have a favorite spot. You fill your basket and turn to leave but eye up a particularly nice stalk that you can hollow out later.

By the 1700s, Elderberry (Sambucus) was a well known plant. Herbal manuals from the 1600s include it, and it was a favorite plant among young boys for making, of all things, popguns. The berries were also used for making wine. Elderberry wine was a main ingredient in a remedy printed in The Family Physitian (1696) to help treat scurvy in the winter when "herbs are scarce." Elderberry wine and honey make a very simple cough suppressant if you didn't feel like making elderberry syrup.   

You could use sugar instead of honey in this but I prefered to have the extra antibacterial properties of honey. Elderberry is still being studied but there have been a lot of promising studies that support  the healing properties of elderberry in shortening the duration of cold and flu symptoms.

18th Century Herbal Remedy: Elderberry Syrup

Ingredients:

- 1/4 Cup Elderberry Extract
- 3/4 Cup Honey
- 3 Cups of Water

Or

- 2/3 of a cup of berries (fresh or frozen and defrosted)
- 3/4 Cup of Honey
- 3 Cups of Water

Optional Ingredients:

Ginger, cinnamon, and cloves.

Instructions:

Mix all ingredients together and bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until the mixture is reduced by half. Pour into a bottle and let cool. If you used whole berries, crush them with a spoon, and strain into a bottle, let cool before use.  Take a Tablespoonful by mouth 3 times a day or mix the syrup into tea. You can refrigerate the syrup for up to 3 months or freeze them into cubes and use as needed.

For those of you asking if you can just buy it ( I get it, you're sick) I have used and recommend this brand: Gaia Black Elderberry 

If you are planning on buying I would greatly appreciate if you would use the affiliate links above. It doesn't cost you any more but helps me keep the website running.


DISCLAIMER: All information contained in this site is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be construed as medical advice or take the place of a doctor. Use at your own risk. For further research please check: Web MD.

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Colonial Popguns 

If you've found your way to this page I'm assuming you're sick and since you're sick anyway I thought you might have fun passing the time reading about popguns. I have always been curious about what they would look like in the 18th century and how they would work. Making popguns has been a children's pastime for hundreds of years, only to be lost recently. The popguns in the 18th century likely looked and functioned something like this:

Be sure to watch this video of this gentleman having some fun with his homemade, elder popgun and apple chunks. Hope you feel better soon! Have you tried Elderberry Syrup? How did it work for you? Be sure to leave a comment with any elderberry tips you have. 

18th Century Lemon Cheese Recipe from The Cookbook of Unknown Ladies

I was excited to try this recipe. I have yet to see anyone else attempt it and it is from a handwritten recipe book in Westminster City Archives in London known as the Cookbook of Unknown Ladies. Little is known about the recipe book or the women who contributed to it only that it was written by "various unknown women about the year 1761," as is printed on a title page.  Be sure to check out all of the recipes from The Cookbook of Unknown Ladies.

This was a mystery recipe.  I can generally read and approximate what the finished product of a recipe will be. For this recipe I didn't have a clue. I thought it sounded most like a cream cheese but it was whipped before being hung to separate the whey out. Would that make a difference? My grandma and I kept testing it throughout the process to try and get an idea of what it would turn into.

I was very afraid that the minute I added lemon to the cream that it would separate the way it does when making cheese but it didn't. I waited until the cream was whipped then quickly stirred in the juice and the rind.

It turned out that this makes a spread that tastes like a delicious lemon cheesecake. It was delicious on the 1796 pound cake I happened to make the same night. It would also be good on scones or toast.

Excerpt from The Cookbook of Unknown Ladies:

Lemmon Cheese

A qurt of good thick sweet creame. Put to it the juce of four lemons as as mutch peel as well give it an agreeable flavour. Sweeten it to your taste & add a littile peach or orange flower water if you like it. Whip it up as you would for sellabubs but very solid. If you have a tin vat, put a thin cloath in it & pour in your cream. If not, put it in a napkin and tye it pritty close. Hang it up to let the whey run from it. Make it the night be fore you use it. Garnish it with currant jelliy or candied oranges.

Ingredients:

- 16 ounces Heavy Whipping Cream
- 2 Lemons (Juice and Peel)
- 1 Tablespoon  Orange Flower Water
- 2+/- Tablespoons sweetener (Sugar, Honey, Molasses, )

Instructions:

Zest and juice your lemons. Put cream in large bowl, add sugar and orange flower water and whisk until you have whipped cream. Stir in lemon juice and peel gently to avoid over whipping. Pour into doubled cheese cloth and tie it up. Hang it overnight. In the morning press all the remaining juice out with your hands, make into a ball or press into a mold and serve with jelly or candied oranges.



I had this hanging over a bowl in my living room and my puppy was terrified of it.

If you haven't used cheesecloth before, I recommend paying a little extra to get the kind that you can wash and reuse: Cheesecloth. 



My site uses affiliate links. If you are planning on making a purchase, I would greatly appreciate if you would use the affiliate links above. It doesn't cost you any more but it does help me keep the website running. Thanks!

Amelia Simmons' 18th Century Pound Cake Recipe

We had a little teaser of fall over the last few days but that light breeze has been replaced with an Indian monsoon season. Again. I haven't wanted to look at the oven, let alone turn it on. I took advantage of the nice weekend weather to get a little baking done.

This recipe is from Amelia Simmons' cookbook American Cookery, famous for being the first American written cookbook intended for American cooks utilizing the ingredients local to them.

This is a true pound cake recipe. A true pound cake is a cake made from a pound of flour, a pound of butter, a pound of sugar and a pound of eggs. Traditional pound cakes do not use any additional leavening agents and rely on the eggs to puff them up a bit. This recipe gives the vague "spice to taste" so I had to do a little rummaging to see what spices were popular in cakes like this and settled on cinnamon, nutmeg and carraway.

18th Century Pound Cake 

Ingredients:

- 2 Sticks Butter (1/2 Pound)
- 1 Cup Sugar
- 2 Cups Flour (3+ if you you don't have small tins and want to bake them "cookie" style)
- 1/3 Cup (2 ounces) Rosewater
- 4 Eggs
- 1 Teaspoon Cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon Nutmeg
- Caraway Seeds

Instructions:

This is only half the recipe which made about 20, 3 inch cakes.

Preheat oven to 350 °F. Cream the butter, add the sugar, rosewater, cinnamon and nutmeg and mix well. Crack the eggs in a separate bowl and whisk 10-15 minutes by hand. Add eggs to the butter mixture and mix until well combined. Slowly mix in the flour.

If using small tins, grease the tins and fill with batter. Add carrayway on top.

If using cookie cutters, add enough flour to create a dough you can roll out. I kneaded it with my hands a little bit. This made a very light dough. Place cakes on parchment paper on a cookie sheet. Sprinkle carraway over the cakes.

Bake cakes for 15 minutes. They won't brown more than a slight orange at the rim on the base of the cakes.


The first thing I noticed about this cake was that it tasted good soft but probably tastes even better crunchy which is probably the point. These probably get better over time which is good because if you made a whole batch you'd have around 40 small cakes on your hands.  

Easy, DIY Cottage Cheese Tutorial, WWI Meat Substitute Recipe

This basic cottage cheese or farm cheese recipe has been used for centuries. Leftover buttermilk, lemon juice, or vinegar can be used to separate the curds and the whey. I used vinegar because I like the idea of being able to make this with stuff already in your refrigerator. I have an 18th century recipe that uses lemon juice for the purpose.

During WWI, the government encouraged Americans to make and use cottage cheese to reduce meat consumption. I've included some recipes from Cottage-Cheese Dishes, a pamphlet by the US Department of Agriculture, printed in August 1918.

Easy Cottage Cheese Recipe

Ingredients:

- 8 Cups Whole Milk

- 6 Tablespoons Vinegar or Lemon Juice
- 1 teaspoon Salt
- Splash of milk (optional for serving)

Instructions:

Pour milk into large pan. 

Heat the milk and salt until simmering (don't let it boil.) 

Stir constantly so the milk doesn't scald. Once simmering, remove from heat.

Add the vinegar or lemon juice and stir until curds and whey form.

Cover pot and let sit for 15 minutes off the heat.

Place a bowl under a colander or sieve and place quadruple folded cheese cloth or a linen cloth in it. 14" x 14" square should be enough.

Skim off the curds with a slotted spoon and place into the colander, pour the remains of the pot little by little, allowing it to drain.

Collect the corners of the cloth together to form a sack.

If you want cottage cheese, tie a string around the top of the bag and hang over a bowl overnight. When serving, add salt and a couple tablespoons of fresh milk.

 If you want meat substitute, sliceable cheese, squeeze the water out and let sit for an hour. Pack the cottage cheese into a bowl to form a loaf, refrigerate for 2 hours, then invert it on a plate and serve.

The Department of Agriculture pamphlet recommend adding chopped peppers, cucumbers, nuts, pimentos, and/or horseradish before serving, which all sound delicious. 

I froze the whey in ice cube trays until i figured out what I wanted to do with it. Whey honey sounds like a good topping for cottage cheese, especially since I'm out of honey. (I have to go pester the bees and their housekeeping staff.) The lemonade punch also sounds good. I'll keep you updated if I get to either of them.

Civil War Era Snow Cream Recipe

I'm enjoying my snow day off after that busy weekend at Military Through the Ages.

This is one of those recipes that sounds like it's "modern but marketed as Old Timey" but it is actually a historical recipe dating back at least to the 17th century.

I foolishly thought I was going to have to wait until next year to share this recipe but as we are now on Nor'easter number 4, I thought this recipe needed to be shared. It's a very easy, Philadelphian recipe. :D I've also included a WWI Era recipe to show how the recipe has stayed fairly consistent over the years.

Snow Cream

Ingredients:

- 1 Cup Heavy Cream (you can use milk it is just not as rich)
- 1/3 Cup of Powdered Sugar
- 4 Cups of Snow
- 1 tsp Lemon Extract or Vanilla Extract

Instructions:

Mix together cream, sugar and flavoring. Mix in fresh snow until it is as stiff as ice cream. Enjoy!

There's not much to it. It would be something fun to do today with kids. I was hoping to post an update about Military Through the Ages but I still have photos to go through.

The Pesky Colonial "New Year"

William Hogarth, 1755

There's something funny about Colonial dates. You'll see someone in a church record born on the 10th, but on their tombstone, it says the 21. This problem shows up frequently in genealogical research. People reason away the discrepancy:

They just didn't keep good records back then.
The church log must be recording the baptism date not the birth date.
The family but have misremembered the date at burial.
Birthdays weren't a big thing so they probably forgot it.
A lot of people couldn't read back then so their parents must have told it to them wrong.

The list goes on and on and these theories are possible but even if you ignore those pesky discrepancies there's still another thing that's weird about Colonial dates. Sometimes people double dated things. 1752/3. Well which was it?

Julian or Gregorian Calendars?

Much of this confusion is due to how people kept time. During the early 18th Century, most of the British empire was using the Julian calendar, a calendar of 365.25 days first put into use by Julius Cesar in 46 BC. But by the 1700s problems arose with the calendar. Most Roman Catholic nations were using the Gregorian calendar, which caused confusion in international affairs and the math was flawed so there ended up being a lot of odd leap years and religious holidays drifted too far away from their celestial markers.

In an attempt to reconcile the differences, the Parliament decided to change over to the Gregorian calendar in 1751/52. Confusing already? The Gregorian calendar was enacted in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII. It was a calendar of 365.2425 days and reduced the number of leap years while aligning holidays closer with the lunar calendar.

Happy New Year's Day, Again

At this time, Parliament also decided to pick a standard date for the ambiguous term "New Years." Prior to 1752, New Year's Day could fall on March 25th, January 12th, or January 1st depending on what year it was, your location, and what calendar you were using. While most people generally accepted January 1st as the start of the new year, the legal new year was March 25th.

Sometimes double dating was to bridge confusion between the Julian calendar and the Gregorian calendar but other times it was an attempt to bridge the January 1st New Year with the legal new year, especially for dates written between the two. Sometimes both dates were written out full but many times were just written with a slash: 1751/2.  At the time of the calendar transition the designations O.S. (Old Style) and N.S. (New Style) were also sometimes used to eliminate confusion.

That's a Nice 11 Days You've Got There, It would be a Shame If Something Happened to Them 

Part of reconciling the two calendars meant losing days. The members of Parliament chose 11 days in September to eliminate.September 3 to September 14th didn't exist in 1752. If you think people get upset over losing an hour during Daylight Savings time you can only imagine the uproar losing 11 days caused. There was a whole lot of grumbling but little more than complaining happened. The William Hogarth painting (Above) shows a banner that reads "Give us our Eleven Days."
      

All these changes did cause disagreements at the time and have made it hard for modern day genealogists to keep in order. For instance, George Washington was born on February 11, 1731, before the calendar change. He celebrated his 21st birthday on February 22, 1753, despite having already been 21 for a year. It's clear how the calendar change could easily cause confusion with indentured servitude obligation, rent payments and age based inheritances. George Washington's tomb reflects the date change and lists him as being born in 1732.

Hope Everyone has a great New Year 2017 N.S.!