What Did Manitobans Eat in 1904?
Have you ever thought about what people ate in the past? Many history students, including myself, are intrigued by food history. Due to my interest in the topic, I went searching through a few Manitoba newspapers from 1904 for recipes.
I will begin with a recipe from Portage La Prairie Weekly, a newspaper that was printed from 1881 to 1916. The newspaper featured “domestic” recipes, which seemed to be mostly pastries and desserts. A recipe in the June 22nd addition of Portage La Prairie Weekly described a pastry called Pocketbooks. To bake Pocketbooks you must:
“Warm 1 qt. new milk, add 1 cup of yeast, 2 well-beaten eggs, 4 tablespoons melted butter, 3 teaspoons of sugar, and flour sufficiently. For moderately stiff batter, let rise overnight. In the morning stir in all the flour you need, as for bread, and let rise again. Then roll in a sheet half an inch thick, cut in squares, butter one side and fold over like a pocketbook. They will rise in a very short time, then bake, and they will be pronounced delicious.”
I agree that pocketbooks seem tasty! But, advertisements in multiple issues of Portage La Prairie Weekly warned that “a cook is only as good as the flour she uses.” In order to make acceptable Pocketbooks women were strongly encouraged to use Royal Household Flour. So hopefully, for all of you that try out this recipe (men included), today’s flour will be of the same outstanding quality as Royal Household Flour was advertised to be.
In the Winnipeg based newspaper, The Morning Telegram, savoury recipes were a staple in its publications from 1898 to 1907. Recipes for a variety of dishes like mince pies, deviled kidneys, welsh rabbit, and stewed chestnuts were highlighted. A recipe for Luncheon Sandwiches stood out to me as its ingredients surprised me:
“Select firm, medium sized fish, remove the skin carefully, put the hot water dish on the chafing dish frame, pour into it a pint of hot water. Now place the cutlet dish on top, and in it put a teaspoonful of butter, one of anchovy paste, half a wine glass full of white wine and a dash of white pepper. In this, warm up six sardines, put each one carefully on separate pieces of toast, no wider than the fish itself.”
Would you try making this luncheon sandwich? I am interested in making a batch to see if I can follow these very specific instructions correctly. Will I measure the half glass of wine properly? Will I accidentally put more than a dash of white pepper? What if my fish is wider than my toast? I’ll just have to try it out and I hope you do too!
The Brandon Daily Sun took a similar approach to recipes as I am right now. While popular recipes at the time were featured, they had a newspaper column dedicated to recipes from the distant past. Entitled “Cookery in Ancient Times”, the column describes a recipe in a book from 1467, Noble Boke of Cookry, for a Prynce Housaolde of eny other Estately Houseolde:
“To make mon amy, take and boil cows’ cream, and when it is boiled, set it aside and let it cool; then take cow curds and press out the whey; then bruise them in a mortar, and cast them in the pot to the cream and boil together. Put thereto sugar, honey, and may butter, colour it up with saffron, and in the setting down put in yolks of eggs, well beaten and do away the strain, and let the potage be standing, then arrange it in dishes, and plant therein flowers.”
Are these the recipes you expected to be in Manitoba newspapers from 1904? I am surprised that The Brandon Daily Sun had a column dedicated to historical recipes. I guess the people that wrote the column and me, along with all of you reading this, are not that different from each other! I hope you enjoyed this blog post and if you decide to try out these recipes, good luck. Post a photo of your dish on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter and tag UMHiSA so we can see your work. Bon appetit!
- Hannah
