Food, Drink, and Diet | Cotsen Children’s Library

Little Jack Horner caught in the act by Jessie Wilcox Smith

In honor of little Jack Horner, here is a menu for a holiday dessert buffet concocted from children’s cookbooks in the Cotsen collection. The recipes, as prepared by some of the best-loved characters in children’s literature, have been edited for length, but were not tested in Cotsen’s curatorial or outreach kitchen.

From Easy Steps in Cooking, or Mary Frances among the Kitchen People, written and illustrated by Jane Eayre Frye. Oakland, CA: Smithsonian Co., c1912. (Cotsen 40860).

CHRISTMAS DESSERT BUFFET

Pepparkakor

Inspired by Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking

From Astrid Lindgren, Kaenner du Pippi Langstrump? Illustrated by Ingrid Nyman. Stockholm: Raben & Sjoegren, 1947.

3 1/2 C. flour; 2 tsp. ginger; 2 tsp. cinnamon; 2 tsp. cloves; 1 tsp. baking soda; 1/2 tsp. salt; 1/2 C. dark corn syrup; 1 tsp. grated orange zest; 1 C. butter; 1 C. sugar, 1 large egg, lightly beaten; pearl sugar

Whisk together dry ingredients in a bowl. In a small saucepan, warm the butter and sugar, stirring until melted. Cool to room temperature, then whisk in the egg. Pour over flour mixture and stir until blended. Form dough into ball, wrap tightly with two layers of plastic wrap and chill overnight. Preheat over to 375 degrees With a lightly floured rolling pin, roll out dough on a lightly floured kitchen floor to 1/4 inch thickness. Using a star cutter, cut dough into cookies. Put stars on baking sheets covered with parchment paper and sprinkle with pearl sugar. Bake until edges begin to brown, about 7-8 minutes. Cool on baking sheets for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire racks.

Thanks to Epicurious for this recipe.

*****

Blackberry and Apple Meringue

Arabella Boxer, The Wind in the Willows Country Cookbook (1983). (Cotsen 15424)

From Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows. Illustrated by E. H. Shepard. London: Methuen, 1970. (Cotsen 32085).

1 large cooking apple; 50 g. (2 oz) granulated sugar; 450 g. (1 lb. blackberries); juice of one lemon; 2 egg whites; 75 g. (3 oz) superfine sugar

Heat the oven to 150 degrees C (300 degrees F or Gas Mark 2) Peel and core the apple and cut into thinnish slices. Put the apples in a pan with 2 T water and the granulated sugar. Cook gently, covered, for 4 minutes, then add the berries, return to the simmer and cook for 1 minute. Remove from the heat and add the lemon juice. Tip into a pie dish. Beat the egg whites until stiff, fold in the superfine sugar, and pile over the fruit, covering the dish entirely. Bake for 30 minutes, then cool for about 30 minutes before serving with cream.

*****

Hidden Window Dessert

Carolyn Keene, The Hidden Window Mystery. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, c1958. (Cotsen in process 7305311).

1 package EACH of cherry, orange, lemon, and lime gelatin; 1 C. pineapple juice; 1/4 C. sugar; 1 1/2 Tbsp. melted butter; 12 graham crackers, crushed; 4 C. whipped cream or other whipped topping

In a saucepan, boil enough water to make 1 cup. This means you must start with a little more than a cup. Dissolve the cherry gelatin in this. Stir well. Add 1/2 cup cold water and pour gelatin into a ice tray with no divider. Do the same with the orange and lime gelatin separately. (Use the same pan, but rinse it each time.) In the same pan again. boil the pinapple juice with sugar. Dissolve the lemon gelatin in this. Add 1/2 cup cold water. Let set in a large mixing bowl to the syrupy stage. Fold in the whipped cream. When firm, cut the cherry, orange, and lime gelatins into cubes. Fold them into the lemon gelatin mixture. Grease a springform pan. Stir melted butter into the crushed graham crumbs and spread on the bottom on the pan. Pour in the mixture. Chill 12 hours. You’ll have many colored windows in each slice of cake!

Mrs. Tiggy’s Tipsy Pudding

Margaret Lane, The Beatrix Potter Country Cookery Book (1983, c1981).

Beatrix Potter’s prickly little washer woman from The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy Winkle.

1 large spongecake; 125 ml. (1/4 pint) sweet sherry; juice of an orange; 75 g. (3 oz) superfine sugar; 250 ml. (1/2 pint) double cream; raisins; 100 g. (4 oz flaked almonds)

Cut a hollow on the underside of the cake, keeping the bit for later. Fill the hollow with the sherry and orange juice; pour the remaining wine and juice over the top. Refrigerate overnight, spooning the mixture over the cake from time to time. In the morning, replace the bit of cake in the hollow. Split the almonds into narrow bits and brown lightly in the oven. Stick them all over the cake. Use the raisins for nose and eyes. Whip the cream stiff and fold in the sugar. Pile in peaky dollops all around the cake and serve.

*****

Treacle toffee from Hagrid

Christmas at Hogwarts as imagined by Mary de Grandpre.

75 g. (3 oz) Golden Syrup; 75 gg (3 oz) black treacle or molasses; 150 g. (6 oz) brown sugar; 75 g. (3 oz) butter; 1/4 tsp. cream of tartar

Line a 6 x 8 inch baking pan with non-stick parchment. Measure all ingredients into a deep, heavy-bottomed saucepan. Place over medium heat and stir occasionally until the butter is melted and sugar dissolved. When the mixture is smooth and nicely combined, bring to a rolling boil. When the mixture reaches 140 degrees C/ 285 degrees F on the candy thermometer (analog or digital), pour carefully into the pan. For even pieces, wait until the toffee is cool enough to hand, but leaves a slight impression if poked with a finger (15- 20 minutes). Cut into the toffee deeply enough to leaves lines and when it has cooled completely, break along the lines. For toffee that will break your teeth, let it cool completely, then break into pits with a hammer or rolling pin. Store in an airtight container with parchment in between layers.

With thanks to BBC Food

*****

Boston Cooler

Nika Hazelton, Raggedy Ann and Andy’s Cookbook (c1973). (Cotsen 28282).

Endpapers for Johnny Gruelle, Raggedy Ann in Cookie Land. Joliet, Wisconsin: P. F. Volland & Co., c1931. (Cotsen in process 0000).

12 oz. can root beer; 4 small scoops vanilla ice cream

Pour the root beer into two glasses. Carefully put two scoops ice cream in each glass. Serve with a long spoon and a straw.

And happy holidays to all!

For readers needing a stronger sugar rush, read junk food in picture books…

The front board of Neues Pfefferkuchen-ABC fuer artige Kinder. (Stuttgart: Lowes Verlag Ferdinand Carl, ca. 1907) Cotsen 72959.

After a really aggravating day, there probably isn’t a teacher alive who hasn’t wished that the human mind absorbed knowledge like a sponge soaks up water. Crafty teachers devise strategies that just might make learning this or that easy. Supportive publishers have been known to design children’s books that look like rewards for cooperating. One of my favorites is shown above, with its binding that looks like a tasty big cookie topped with split almond halves. Its title? Die neue Pfefferkuchen-ABC, which can be loosely translated as The New Gingerbread ABC (“pfefferkuchen” being another name for “lebkuchen,” the German spiced honeycakes topped with chocolate icing traditional at Christmas time).

The plate for the letter B in Neues Pfefferkuchen-ABC.

Many cultures try to associate the sweet with mastery of the letters of the alphabet. For example, Alberto Manguel describes a medieval Jewish initiation rite in which the teacher wrote a passage from the Bible on a slate and read it aloud to his pupil. The boy repeated them and if he did it correctly, was allowed to eat the holy words once the slate was spread with honey as a reward (thanks to Lissa Paul for this anecdote).

The frontispiece to The Renowned History of Giles Gingerbread: A Little Boy who lived upon Learning. (London: Printed for T. Carnan, 1782). Cotsen 6712.

A time-honored way of encouraging literacy in early modern England was to offer letters or hornbooks made of gingerbread as an inducement to learn their ABCs more quickly. Above Gaffer Gingerbread invites children to spend their pocket money wisely on cakes that will “feed the Little Folks, who are good,/ At once with Learning and with Food.”

A mold for a cookie hornbook and a cast from it. The letters could easily be cut apart into little tiles for spelling practice. The letterforms suggest that the mold is probably not more than one hundred years old.

At home, the conscientious gaffer took charge of inspiring his own little reluctant learner Giles, which was not all that difficult. By profession a gingerbread baker, the gaffer made his son a special gilt-covered, spicy “book.”

While the gaffer’s presentation of a table of two-letter syllables was novel, the truth is that any primer then contained such a chart, which helped children take a critical first step in learning to recognize and sound out combinations of letters. The eighteenth-century references to gingerbread letters, alphabets and books I’ve found don’t offer any evidence that such a thing was actually available.

The “book” as pictured would have been quite unwieldly. It probably would have broken apart with normal handling–like nibbling a corner as a reward for learning a little bit. Size may not have been as much as a problem as we think, because the gingerbread kings and queens sold at fairs could be quite large and detailed, if the surviving molds are any indication. The real test was carving the letters deep enough in the mold so that they would emerge from the oven sharp and legible. Using a very stiff dough with no eggs or butter would have helped.

This is Giles holding a gingerbread hornbook that is not anywhere as large as the one his father made for him. Page [31] in Cotsen 6729.

Another curious discovery I made researching this post was that neither Cotsen’s 1779 nor 1782 edition of Giles Gingerbread has the diagram of the gingerbread syllabary. Both pamphlets are complete. Missing pages wouldn’t be all that surprising for one of the most famous Newberys: it was first published around 1765 by John Newbery, the stepfather of Carnan, the publisher of the Cotsen copy.

The syllabary is present in the earliest known edition of Giles Gingerbread circa 1766 in the British Library, which can be accessed via Eighteenth-Century Collections On-line. I’m guessing the copy in Norwich, which is dated to 1764, also does. Very few copies of any British edition of Giles Gingerbread survive, having been read (not eaten) to pieces, so it is difficult to determine when and why the syllabary was dropped. Digital copies of the American piracies from the 1760s and 1770s don’t have it either.

The diagram was probably just a bit of complicated typesetting that could be cut. It slowed down the story, to tell the truth. But it is amusing to imagine that children who had read Giles Gingerbread pestered their parents for a hornbook just like it and the beleaguered publisher removed the offending passage to keep peace with gingerbread and pastry bakers all over Great Britain! Don’t quote me on that–it’s pure fantasy.

An antique mold for a gingerbread hornbook that looks something like the one Giles is holding.

Cotsen Children’s Library

Princeton University

Category Archives: Food, Drink, and Diet

Gingerbread Alphabets and Books: “Useful Knowledge by the Pound”