When I picked up a century-old cookbook we’d brought home from my parents’ house and saw it was published by a baking powder company, I could hear one thing. It was Dad’s voice from the 1970s: “Keep your powder dry!” as he tried to calm whatever situation was erupting in our house full of teens.

When I mentioned this to Farmer Gary, he quickly explained the source: “Actually, that’s a reference to gunpowder.” Indeed, it’s credited to Oliver Cromwell, advising his troops in 1642, to ”Put your trust in God, my boys, but mind to keep your powder dry” at the start of the English civil war.

Silly me, I’d always equated the phrase with “take a powder,” which I thought meant take a shower. Now that I look it up, I see that was wrong, too. It’s a phrase from the 1920s and first meant “take a pill,” as aspirin and other medications were often available only in powder form. It was also a gangster-talk command to go into hiding.

Now that we’ve got that cleared up, let’s take a look at that cookbook.

It was Grandma Cassidy‘s. Might have even been a wedding present, as she signed her married name inside the front cover, along with the year she was wed.

Gary and I enjoyed an hour or two of flipping through the cookbook, which is still in pretty good shape.

First, we read up on the baking powder company, Rumford Baking Powder. Neither of us had heard of it, but a quick Google search showed us the brand is still on sale:

Production of Rumford Baking Powder began in the mid-1800s in Rhode Island. A century later, the unappetizingly named Rumford Chemical Company was acquired by a New Jersey firm, with the baking powder division moving to Hulman & Co. in – that’s right – Indiana. Terre Haute, Indiana.

Grandma’s cookbook includes the following propaganda:

Pure and Wholesome

Made of the genuine Professor Horsford’s phosphate, it restores to the flour the nutritious properties absolutely necessary to health, of which fine wheat flour has been deprived in the process of milling. Professor Horsford’s phosphate is made by us solely for our own use, none being sold for use in any other baking powder.

I remember telling Mom years ago that if extraterrestrials discovered our cookbooks centuries in the future, they’d have no trouble figuring out our favorite recipes. Just let the cookbook fall open on its own. Then check if the pages are speckled with cooking ingredients. (Oh, my, our brownie-recipe page was a spattered mess!)

As Grandma’s cookbook fell open, it was within the “Cake” section. But none of these delicacies look familiar (or taste-tempting, truth be told).

I spoke with Mom’s sister, Bunny, this evening – she doesn’t remember Grandma ever using a cookbook. She told me about a macaroni casserole that she and Beth have tried to replicate for years – she said Beth got really close, but there’s still a little something missing.

Alas, the 1929 cookbook includes only one pasta recipe, and it’s for macaroni and cheese.

Here are some recipes that were apparently popular a century ago:

• Huckleberry Cake
• Poor Man’s Cake
• Prune Almond Filling (there’s also Fig Filling)
• Sweet Pickled Prunes
• Fricasseed Clams
• Japanese Eggs
• Rye Drop Cakes
• Brown Bread Ice Cream
• Nesselrode Pudding (with chestnuts and peaches)
• Beef Olives
• Potted Pigeons
• Canary Pudding (no canaries involved, but lemon juice and a heaping helping of Rumford Baking Powder)
• King George’s Pudding (includes suet)

Okay, I’ll stop now. Getting a bit nauseated.

My favorite section of this cookbook is the following:

Recipes for the Sick

With recipes for Toast Water, Irish Moss, Arrowroot Gruel, and Junket Eggnog, the patient should be out of the woods in no time!

Grandma loved to tell the story about making chicken soup for a sick friend in their Fair Haven neighborhood of New Haven, Connecticut. Sadly, the friend soon passed away. A few months later, another friend took ill. Grandma made another batch of soup, with the same results. After the loss of a third friend, Grandma gave up her nurse’s cap and just sent a card.

We can’t possibly end this post without a few more recipes from the fine folks at Rumford Baking Powder.

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