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Tuesday, June 19, 2018

Chicago World's Fair "Kok-Bok"

I'm in my third week at my new job, and it's going well.
I added some new books to the glass-fronted display case. Like many things and people at the store, it's damaged--a big crack down the center. But you just place books so that doesn't interfere...

Yesterday I put in this cool souvenir cookbook from the 1893 Chicago World's Fair/ Columbian Exposition! ($20) Hemmets Drottning Kok-Bok--a Swedish translation of The Home-Queen Cookbook.  The cover shows the fair's famous dome.

It's more than a cookbook--it has instructions--the names of pieces of meat, how to fold a napkin, etc.--and, my favorite thing, BELOW, the owner had tucked handwritten notes and newspaper clippings inside, and glued some recipes in as well.
                                                                      ^ PORK CAKE?!?! 
Well, we're adding bacon to donuts and ice-cream and everything these days.

The books also has photos of and info about some of the women who helped run the fair (and put the book together? I'm not sure, exactly, not knowing Swedish).

8 comments:

  1. What a great donation! I love when people make books their own. It is also very possible that the owner bought the book and was using it to collect their recipes. Pasting in a book might have been the answer to not buying paper sheets along with a notebook.

    Some of the recipes appear to be from the early 1900's by the way they are written.

    I have my grandmother's recipes and basically they are ingredients and the amounts but no baking instructions which the pork cake recipe seems to be. My dad told me that basically my grandmother and her friends all cooked so much that they didn't need mixing instructions or oven temps.

    The escalloped herring recipe below the pork cake seems particularly intrigueing-- freshen six salt herring.

    Kirsten

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  2. Thanks for noticing the herring recipe, Kirsten--I totally missed it--don't care for fish---
    but the peach pudding looks pretty good to me!

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  3. I thought the carrot, celery and peanut salad, with the peanuts put through a meat grinder, in a salad dressing (assuming it was vinegar and oil based) would taste a lot like the toppings on Vietnamese salads and sandwiches. Hmmm...?

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  4. In re-reading the carrot, celery and peanut salad, I think you put celery, carrots and peanuts through the grinder. Would love to know what the cooked salad dressing is.

    What about the mock devil's food cake recipe: "one half cupful of the lard doughnuts have been fried in."I wonder why that specific lard?

    Kirsten

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  5. What great fun entering the world of an old book! I enjoy it at work. We have things pinned and taped all over the store that came out of different volumes: paper icons, poems, photos, recipes, etc.

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  6. OOOOhhhh, DEANNA: I am going to do that---start taping & pinning found ephemera up on the bookshelves.

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  7. Oh wow!! Old cookbook....... YES! I have a huge collection and that one is awesome!!

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