🧪 Bad Science
Mushroom tests that are coin flips, and canning methods that grow botulism.
28 recipes, worst first.
Sulphuric-Acid Fumigation of Tainted Meat
Meat going off? Suspend it over a bowl of salt, add two ounces of sulphuric acid by degrees, and let the fumes work. “Care must be taken not to breathe them.”
Household Discoveries and Mrs. Curtis's Cook Book · 1914
Testing and Cooking Mushrooms
Try a piece of any mushroom you cannot identify; if the throat burns, “eat no more but take a copious dose of common salt, which generally neutralizes the poison.”
The 20th Century Home Cook Book · 1906
Salt Test for Poisonous Mushrooms
“The best rule” for telling a deadly fungus from a safe one: salt the gills and watch the colour. Yellow, poisonous. Black, edible. It is a coin flip.
Household Discoveries and Mrs. Curtis's Cook Book · 1914
Preservation of fresh meal (tainted meat)
“Tainted meet may be rendered good by pickling it in potash water for some time; before it is cooked however, it should” be dipped in vinegar. Then serve it.
A New Collection of Genuine Receipts · 1831
To Can Corn (soldered tins)
Raw corn sealed in tins soldered at the kitchen table, then boiled. “Peas, string beans and Lima beans can be put up in the same way.”
The Dixie Cook-Book · 1883
Mushrooms (the salt test)
“Sprinkle salt on the gills; if they turn yellow they are poisonous; if they turn black they are good.” Offered alongside a description of what a safe mushroom looks like.
The 20th Century Home Cook Book · 1906
Test Pickles for Copper
Chop the pickle into ammonia and watch for deep blue — proof it was “cooked in brass or copper kettles.” A routine kitchen test, because it happened constantly.
Household Discoveries and Mrs. Curtis's Cook Book · 1914
Brine That Preserves Butter' a Year
Three gallons of brine “strong enough to bear an egg,” with loaf sugar and a tablespoonful of saltpetre. Wrap the butter in muslin and sink it for a year.
The Home Cook Book · 1887
Beef-Steak for Winter Use
Cut the steaks the usual thickness, layer them in a jar with salt, sugar and powdered saltpetre, and keep in “a cool, airy place, where it will not freeze.”
Buckeye Cookery · 1880
Pickled Cucumbers (Gallon vinegar)
“To green the fruit: line your brass kettle with grape-leaves… and boil.” Stated as routine practice, with no comment.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia · 1879
Raw Marrow for the Bloodless
Marrow from “animals, freshly killed,” administered to bloodless patients “to stimulate their fresh blood formation.” The logic is that marrow makes blood, so eat marrow.
Meals Medicinal · 1905
Prune Whip
Stewed prunes chopped fine, folded into raw beaten egg whites, and stood on the ice. A nursery and sickroom dessert.
Mrs. Fryer's Loose Leaf Cook Book · 1922
A Good Relish—Uncooked
Three cups of chopped raw cabbage, onion and green pepper, a little sugar and vinegar, “place in jars and cover with parafine.” Nothing is ever cooked.
Libertyville Presbyterian Cook Book · 1920
Liver for Bleeding Lungs
Fresh animal liver as a food “to help against active bleeding from the lungs in consumptive disease,” three or four ounces daily — and the same liver dried and powdered as a drug.
Meals Medicinal · 1905
To Can Peas
Fill the jars with uncooked peas, top with cold water, stand them on straw in a wash boiler and boil three hours. Tighten the lids once cold.
How to Cook Vegetables · 1890
Mayonnaise Dressing
Two uncooked yolks beaten with salt and cayenne, then a quart of oil worked in drop by drop. The closing line tells you to keep it a week.
How to Cook Vegetables · 1890
Syllabub
“Dissolve a generous teaspoon of sugar in a tablespoon of brandy. Put in a pint cup and milk into this from the cow till the foam reaches the top.” Filed under invalid cookery.
Good Housekeeping's Cook Book · 1909
Yellow Sauce
Yolks beaten with powdered sugar, whites beaten stiff with more sugar, combined and poured over hot pudding. No custard stage, no double boiler, no cooked syrup.
The Catskill Cook Book · 1911
Iced Rice Pudding
Rice boiled and drained, a quart of milk poured over, sugar beaten with two raw yolks stirred in, whites folded through, and the whole frozen.
Good Things to Eat and How to Prepare Them · 1907
Koumiss
Two quarts of new milk with sugar and a third of a yeast cake, stood warm ten hours, bottled — “cork the bottles tightly and tie the corks down” — and left another day.
Mrs. Fryer's Loose Leaf Cook Book · 1922
Nectar
Tartaric acid, sugar and hot water boiled seven minutes; “when nearly cold, add the whites of four eggs, one ounce essence wintergreen. Bottle and keep cool.”
Twentieth Century Cook Book · 1901
Roast Turkey, with Truffles
A pound and a half of pounded truffles mixed with rasped fat bacon, stuffed into a raw turkey, which is then held forty-eight hours before roasting.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia · 1879
Sausage (Seven pounds of lean pork)
Seven pounds of lean pork and nearly two of fat, ground with sage, pepper and salt. “Taste, to be sure all is right.” The mixture is raw.
Twentieth Century Cook Book · 1901
Sweet Corn (canned)
“The following recipe for canning corn is so satisfactory that no other will be given for this article in these pages.” It is a boiling-water process.
Canning, Preserving and Jelly Making · 1915
Veal Chops (forcemeat-coated)
Fry the chops brown but “without actually cooking the chops,” press them cold, coat thickly with a paste of raw pork, marrow and raw egg yolk, and bake ten minutes.
The Story of Crisco · 1913
Broiled Beef Balls
Scrape the soft part from a piece of raw round steak, form into balls “applying no more pressure than absolutely necessary,” and cook two minutes.
Good Housekeeping's Cook Book · 1909
Clabbered Milk
“Stand the bottle of milk in a warm place until it is the consistency of cream. Season with a little salt, and drink in place of buttermilk.”
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon · 1919
Syllabubs Under the Cow
Sugar, lemon, a pint of sherry and a glass of brandy in a punch bowl — then “take it to the dairymaid, and let her milk the cow into the bowl until it is quite full.” Stands overnight.
Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery · 1912