Sweet Treats for Valentine's Day...Made with Old-Fashioned Love

Served with Love

Old-Fashioned Desserts

by Christina Cole

I love cooking, and whenever Valentine's Day draws nigh, my thoughts go to sweet desserts. Today, I'm sharing a few treats that will take you back in time. Cooking from scratch isn't as easy as opening a can or popping a tray into a microwave. Women in the west didn't have the same modern conveniences we know today. Just heating up the old woodstove and trying to maintain the proper temperature could be a terrific challenge.

One problem I've discovered in adapting old recipes is that the ingredients used aren't always ones on our grocer's shelves. Hartshorn? Salteratus? Suet? Pulverized sugar?

Another problem is that most old recipes are a bit vague. Measurements aren't exact, and since stoves and ovens varied so much, a woman had to rely on her own cooking and baking skills to determine the best heat and time.

I've chosen recipes today that modern cooks should be able to recreate with little problem. Even if the results turn out less than perfect, the love you put into these desserts will still make them sweet, indeed.

Sunshine Cake

From the Columbine Sunshine Society, How We Cook in Colorado, 1907

6 eggs, 1 cup granulated sugar, 1 cup flour, scant 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar, pinch of salt, flavor to taste.

Sift, measure, and set aside flour and sugar. Separate the eggs and add to the white 1 pinch of salt. Whip to a foam. Add the cream of tartar and beat until stiff. Add sugar and beat in, then add the well-beaten egg yolks. Flavor and beat again. Lastly, add the flour and fold lightly through. Put into a moderate oven at once and bake from 25 to 30 minutes.

Nana Faerner's Peach Ice Cream

From The Mesa Worker's Cook Book, 1897

3 pounds ripe peaches, cut and mash, and put through colander; sweeten peaches to taste. 1 pint cream, 1 quart milk. Beat 2 eggs and stir with other ingredients. Freeze until hard.

Grandmother's Sugar Cookies

From Recipes of the First Congregational Church, Colorado Springs, 1920.

2 eggs, 2 cups sugar, 1 cup butter, 1 cup sour milk, 2 teaspoonsful soda, 1 teaspoonful baking power, 4 cups flour, over one-half nutmeg (I take this to mean slightly more than 1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg), 1 teaspoon vanilla. Roll and sprinkle top of dough with sugar and cinnamon mixed. Bake in moderately hot oven.

Contributed by Mrs. Cynthia Wynne (Born 1831)

Economical Pudding

From Darley Family Papers, 1860s

Keep your pieces of bread and dry them nice. When enough are collected, soak them in milk overnight. In the morning, drain out all the milk you can through a cullander. Add to the bread some sugar and a little salt, with some scalded raisins. Tie it in a bag, and boil for 5 or 6 hours. Serve with sweet sauce.

Very Nice Pudding Sauce

From The Capitol Cook Book, 1899

Beat the yolk of 1 egg with 1/2 cup white sugar and 1 tablespoon of conrstarch. Stir in 3 tablespoonsful boiling water; set it over a teakettle to keep warm. Just as you take it to the table, stir in lightly the white of egg beaten with other 1/2 cup of sugar, a little nutmeg, and a spoonful of brandy or wine.

I hope you enjoy these old-fashioned treats. I have many more recipes from historical cookbooks, so if you're looking for something in particular that I can help you with, please email me. You can reach me at CCole@christinacoleromance.com.

Love in Days Gone By

I love writing historical romance, and one of the most fascinating and enjoyable aspects of that career is the research involved to bring characters to life. It's quite an understatement, of course, to say that life in the past was much different from today, yet in many ways, human nature hasn't changed all that much. Women then, as now, have wanted love and happiness, and have appreciated the values of home and family.

In The Wrong Woman, I wrote the following. In this little snippet from the story, Abigail and a friend begin by discussing a man...and end up contemplating what it means to be a woman:

~ ~ ~

“Let’s put our heads together, shall we? Maybe we can figure out why Will is acting so peculiar.”

Abigail pulled up a chair. “He’s a man, that’s why.”

“Men are always joking about their inability to understand women, but it works both ways, don’t you think?” asked Julia. “I mean, men are probably much more of a puzzlement than any woman could ever be. Our wants are so simple, really. We want to be loved and respected. We want to make a good marriage, raise a family of well-mannered children, and grow comfortably old with the man we love. What’s so difficult to understand in that?” The question was rhetorical. It required no response.

What an accurate observation, thought Abigail as she sipped her tea. In a few simple, straight-forward sentences, Julia had neatly summed up the precise nature of being a woman.

Love and marriage.

Home and family.

~ ~ ~

Fortunately, women had many helpful resources to which they could turn for practical advice and down-to-earth instructions on how to achieve those cherished goals.  One popular reference was Married Love, also known as Love in Marriage, written by Dr. Maria Carmichael Stopes. 

I've browsed around a bit and have come up with some very interesting bits of advice from Dr. Stopes.

Marriage and Toiletry

Now, it may enchant a man once -- perhaps even twice -- or at long intervals -- to watch his goddess screw her hair up into a tight and unbecoming knot and soap her ears. But it is inherently too unlovely a proceeding to retain indefinite enchantment.

To see a beautiful woman floating in the deep, clear water of her bath -- that may enchant for ever, for it is so lovely, but the unbeautiful trivialities essential to the daily toilet tend only to blur the picture and to dull the interest and attention that should be bestowed on the body of the loved one.

Pet Him

Men are, at heart, eternally children, and such tender petting as comforts children warms and sweetens a grown man's life. The "good night" should be a time of delightful forgetting of the outward scars of the years, and a warm, tender, perhaps playful exchange of confidence.

Be Always Escaping

Man is still essentially the hunter, the one who experiences the desires and thrills of the chase, and dreams ever of coming unawares upon Diana in the woodlands. I think that, in the interests of husbands, an important piece of advice to wives is: Be always escaping.

Ensure that you allow your husband to come upon you only when there is delight in the meeting. 

Whenever the finances allow, the husband and wife should have separate bedrooms, failing that, they should have a curtain which can at will be drawn so as to divide the room they share.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Yes, life was different indeed in days gone by. Love, too, was different in some respects, yet very much the same in others. I believe we can learn from the past, and I hope to create a home for my family that reflects many of the traditional, "old-fashioned" values which were once taught as part of what it meant to be a woman.

Finding little gems of wisdom through my research always brings a smile to my heart, and I'll leave you now with this sage advice for  loving wives and their husbands:

Never speak loudly to one another, unless the house is on fire.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Until next month...may your lives be blessed with love!

Christina