Notes from the kitchen
Everything that is not a recipe. How a farmhouse pantry worked, why a method exists at all, what the books left out, and the occasional word about what is being written next.
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How to Make Sour Milk for an Old Recipe
How to make sour milk from what is already in the kitchen, and why an old recipe asks for it instead of the milk in your fridge. One…
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The Six-Week Christmas Baking Timeline
When to start Christmas baking, counted backward from the day across six weeks, with the reason each thing sits where it does. Every instruction in an old Christmas…
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What Is a Moderate Oven Temperature in Old Recipes?
Every moderate oven temperature, and the rest of the old oven words, converted into numbers you can set a dial to. A moderate oven is 350°F. A slow…
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How They Kept Food Before Refrigeration
How they kept food before refrigeration: cellars, salt, sugar, smoke and fat, and every method still works. A farmhouse in 1890 had no refrigerator, no freezer, and roughly…
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When to Make Christmas Cake, and Why It Is November
When to make Christmas cake, and the physical reason the answer is six weeks earlier than feels sensible. If you have ever wondered why old recipes tell you…