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Current circumstances are a sliding scale of annoying, frustrating, scary, and downright exhausting. Somewhere on that scale lies the fact that not only are we cooking more meals for our families than ever before, everyone is tired of the tried-and-true dinners that they usually love.
Here’s the thing. Most of us had jobs before this, and kids who ate at least one meal a day at school. We went through drive-thrus on our way to soccer practice, popped out for brunch after church, and a million other little things that made our lives in (or out of) the kitchen so much easier.
And don’t even get me started on our current grocery bill.
If you’re experience some cooking exhaustion of your own, listen…don’t murder your family just yet. Instead, go browsing through the vintage recipes shared online by the New York Historical Society.
They put out the first recipe on April 14th – a recipe for lemon cake that was transcribed from a handwritten cookbook that was penned in the 19th century.
Image Credit: New York Historical Society
And if you’re not into lemons, maybe you’d fancy a Loaf Cake? Or a Tea Cup Cake? Perhaps an Agnes Cake?
Image Credit: New York Historical Society
The N-YHS is looking to encourage people who find themselves cooking at home (all the time) by sharing a new recipe from its archives every single week.
The recipes will all come from the Duane Family Cookbooks, which were handwritten by Eliza Duane, Mary Wells, and Fanny T. Wells between 1840 and 1874.
You want to know about pudding? Oh, they’ve got some pudding…
Image Credit: New York Historical Society
How about beer? They’ve got that too!
Image Credit: New York Historical Society
They were written for and used by the upper class (and their cooks), and include medical remedies like a “cholera mixture” in addition to dinners and sweets.
Kind of like little reminders that there’s nothing new under the sun, right?
You may need to Google a bit in order to convert antiquated measuring methods or amounts, but unlike a modern food blog, you also won’t believe they were making ice cream back then!
Image Credit: New York Historical Society
Not only that, but we’re all looking for ways to entertain ourselves these days, and these recipes could even work as homeschool projects in history, math, economics, or…I’m sure you could come up with something else. We’re all getting good at being creative!
I hope you try some of these and enjoy yourself, too – if you do, please let us know how it turned out!
