Interesting stuff!

The New York World's Fair Cookbook

We should each pick a (weird) recipe and try preparing it.

Perhaps the “Stewed Rice” (page 148). It starts with a full cup of lard…

I was reading the Steamed Pudding (page 131) recipe to Mr wtg.

His reaction: “You lost me at the cup of chopped suet….”

I have a friend who collects community cookbooks... the ones from the Ladies' Garden Club of East Overshoe Minnesota and things like that.

Through the 1950s and 1960s, there were a disturbingly large number of recipes that included the word "congealed" in the name. Ummmm... thanks, no... I'm good.

I have one from West Virginia. The final recipe in the book, which I think was included mostly tongue-in-cheek, is for moonshine. It doesn't tell you the most important thing you need to know about distilling booze: you have to throw out the first part of the distillate because it contains a lot of methanol which is poisonous.

I have a 1920s(?) Fannie Farmer cookbook and a few others. I keep coming across recipes that call for ingredients one cannot find anymore (alum? does anyone even sell powdered alum anymore?) or that I've never even heard of, at least by the name they use.