Recipes from Old Virginia compiled by the Virginia Federation of Home Demonstration Clubs 1958 (reprinted 1994, at this point the club had renamed Virginia Extension Homemakers Council)
The introduction assures us that all 700+ recipes were “tested time and time again under ordinary home kitchen conditions”. “Proof of the pudding was in its tasting”. There were two pages of names of the women (and the counties they live in) who did the testing. That must have been a massive amount of work!
While they did test the recipes, judging from this note it does not seem like they modernized all of them.
The recipes were a mix of the very old fashioned—Mrs Overton Tuck (Essex County)’s Molasses Pudding and Mrs E.R. Johnston (Aunt Jane) of Cumberland County’s Blackberry Acid to the more modern Ginger Ale Delight contributed by Elizabeth P. Weikel (Montgomery County).
There were cute illustrations on the section dividers that I’m not sure were special to the book or not. They don’t seem to have a particularly “Virginia” theme but the book was published by the organization and not sent out to one of the popular third party printers like most community cookbooks. The one below goes with the “historic” theme of the book which makes me think it is bespoke but I can’t say for sure.
No headnotes but some recipes slipped in helpful tips in the body of the instructions.
There were some recipes I had never seen before like Mable Massey (James City County)’s recipe for Fattigmand (according to Google it’s a Norwegian cookie popular at Christmas time) which from what I can tell are fried, unleavened cardamom cookies. There was variation from Mrs David Orn (Southampton County) that one can use nutmeg in place of the cardamom seed. I would have enjoyed a head note for this one!
When I picked up the book, I was expecting there to be more history and information about the recipes and the area since it was billed as “recipes from two centuries” on the cover but there really isn’t any. It is a very complete book nonetheless—everything from many icings and frostings to a large assortment of bread and rolls.
