New York City Dairies

illustration from travel guide, A Week in New York

Ernest Ingersoll’s 1891 travel guide A Week in New York counsels souls inexperienced in urban travel in how best to negotiate the labyrinthine boroughs of the Big Apple. In a section entitled “Advice to Inexperienced Travelers,” Ingersoll writes,

 

An arrival in New York, or any other large city, alone and for the first time, is an ordeal to which many persons look forward with justifiable dread. What shall they do first — whither shall they go — what arrangements are to be made regarding baggage — how shall they find the proper way — how escape mischievous misleading of some sort and unnecessary expenses? These questions occur to many inexperienced travelers; and it is the purpose of this chapter to answer them, as to New York, as explicitly as possible.

Ingersoll does indeed answer these questions, as well as many more. He covers such topics as “Getting About the City,” “Racing and Athletic Sports,” and “The Rivers and Harbor.” He is especially helpful in recommending restaurants to the wary (and likely beleaguered) traveler, writing most lovingly of “a class of restaurants called dairies.” These restaurants, favorites among diners of modest means, “make milk and bread in a great variety of forms the standard nourishment, adding some simple dessert and pastries, and always berries and fruit in season.”

Perhaps the dairies of New York served a simple rice pudding, like this 1891 recipe from the famous Astor House.

Rice Pudding

Wash a teacupful of rice, and boil it in two teacupfuls of water; then add, while the rice is hot, three tablespoonfuls of butter, five tablespoonfuls of sugar, five eggs well-beaten, one tablespoonful of powdered nutmeg, a little salt, one glass of wine, a quarter of a pound of raisins, stoned and cut in halves, a quarter of a pound of Zante currants, a quarter of a pound of citron cut in slips, and one quart of cream; mix well, pour into a buttered dish and bake an hour in a moderate oven.

 
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Little-Tin Pound Cakes for Invalids

vintage ad for malt drink for convalescing patients

Mary Hedley Scudder champions the ill and infirm in her 1902 article “After Christmas — What?” These people, she insists, suffer the most from the dreary, uninteresting months following the holiday season.

 

“Somewhere there is an invalid whose days drag heavily, even though tenderness has guarded each hour,” Scudder writes, “and she has only Christmas memories.” Scudder recommends that her readership do more for such pitiable souls:

It may be you have only a few flowers, or a single rose, and it seems so small to give, but it may help a trying hour — who knows? One day there may be a dainty to send, a cup of soup, a pretty cake, baked as for a child in a ‘patty pan;’ something will always be ready if the invalid is in mind every day.

 

Scudder is of the opinion that tiny loaves of bread and tiny cakes bring the most delight to infirm young girls or women. “I know a woman who has a tiny bread tin, and a biscuit pan for just such cases,” she writes. “Why can you not do likewise?”

Why not, indeed? Here is a recipe for “pound cake for little tins” from a Boston Cooking School advertisement for baking tins found in the August–September, 1914 edition of American Cookery.

Pound Cake for Little Tins

1/3 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
2 egg yolks
1/2 tablespoon brandy or milk
3/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoonful baking powder (level)
1/4 teaspoon mace
2 egg whites

Put a little of the mixture in the center of each tin; the heat of the oven will cause it to run and fill the tins. [Make sure to use a cake tin that bakes about 12 little cakes.] The recipe makes about sixty little cakes. Spread confectioner’s icing on the top or leave plain.

 
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Perfect Soup Stock

man made of various food dishes

The protagonist of Knut Hamsun’s 1890 semi-autobiographical novel Hunger wanders the streets of Kristiania (now Oslo) in search of love and bread. But he neither attracts women nor manages to scrape together enough money to purchase a crust. Instead, he wanders aimlessly, stopping now and then to rest on a park bench and in order to hastily write an article for the local newspaper that he hopes will earn him an øre or two.

Yet his hunger is such that it impedes even these few scattered thoughts. Hamsun’s protagonist more often than not merely wanders distractedly, watching people pass him in the street — people who, he thinks, seem as delirious with dreams of food as he is himself. At one point he passes a butcher’s stall where “a woman stood speculating on sausage for dinner.” When she looks up at him he sees a mouth adorned with a single tooth, a “long yellow snag,” her gaze “still full of sausage.”

Hunger‘s protagonist reaches his lowest point when he begs a bone off a butcher, but finds he cannot eat the scant few pieces of meat that cling to it. “There was no light to be seen anywhere,” he says, “only blessed darkness all around me; and I began to gnaw at the bone [but] [i]t had no taste; a rank smell of blood oozed from it, and I was forced to vomit almost immediately.”

But as much as his hunger torments him, it also fuels his creative energies. Once after being arrested for vagrancy, Hamsun’s protagonist sits in the dark of his jail cell meditating, faint from inanition. Out of the darkness comes a word: Kuboa. This word, he claims, is of “profound import”; only his incessant, gnawing hunger allows him to recognize it. “I sit with open eyes, amazed at my own find, and laugh for joy,” he proclaims. “I intended to keep my discovery a secret. I entered into the joyous frenzy of hunger. I was empty and free from pain, and I gave free reign to my thoughts.”

Creative inspiration sometimes comes from surprising places. The protagonist of Hamsun’s Hunger shows us that strangest visions do not necessarily come from bellies well fed. But should you wish for a belly full of soup instead of a mind full of visions , try this recipe for soup stock from the 1909 Mendelssohn Club Cook Book — and make sure the soup bones you use bear ample chunks of meat.

Soup Stock

Exactness in cooking removes the danger of failure. Recipes should be exactly copied. The skeleton of soups must be accurate, but more seasoning or more thickening may be added to suit the individual taste.

Soups should be brought to the boiling point and then pushed back on the stove to simmer, as boiled soups are greasy and muddy. Seasonings are important. Winter vegetables, such as turnips, carrots, celery and onions should be kept on hand for soup; also sweet herbs, including thyme, savory, marjoram, bay leaves, peppercorns, cloves, all spice berries, stick cinnamon, dry tarragon leaves, browning, Worcestershire sauce, paprika, with, additions of salt, pepper and parsley are essentials for soup stocks. Flour, cornstarch, arrowroot, fine tapioca, sago, pearl barley, rice, bread or eggs are added to give consistency and nourishment to the soups.

Vegetables and seasonings should be added the last hour.

In getting meat from the market, have bone and meat cut into small pieces. When ready to start soup, put meat and bone in soup kettle, cover well with cold water. Let stand 1 hour to draw out juices; heat gradually to boiling point; set on back of stove and let simmer 6 to 7 hours. This will form stock for many kinds of soup.

To clear soup stock: Add white of an egg or washed egg shells (2 or 3) to cold strained stock and bring to a boil slowly. Then remove from fire and strain through flannel cloth.

 

 
Why Fast and Fermented Foods by Christine Baumgarthuber

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