The Seven Kinds of Catsup (Ketchup) You’ll Meet in a 19th Century Cookbook

Mushroom Catsup (Ketchup) Ad from Mrs Beeton's book of household management

As I’ve discussed before, in the olden days, catsup/ketchup was about much more than tomatoes. Cookbooks from the 18th and 19th century are ripe with recipes for catsup/ketchup that contain ingredients that are decidedly non-ketchup ingredients, like walnuts, anchovies, and oysters. In the early 19th century cookbook The Cook’s Oracle, author William Kitchiner shares seven […]

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The First Taco Recipe in English

Cover of California Mexican-Spanish Cook Book, by Bertha Haffner-Ginger, 1914

I’m reading Gustavo Arellano’s Taco USA, a deluxe combo platter of history, personal stories, and culture. Something from the taco chapter that jumped out at me was a mention of the first taco recipe in English.  Arellano claims that it was in the California Mexican-Spanish Cook Book, a 1914 book by Bertha Haffner-Ginger. Haffner-Ginger grew up in […]

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