52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Week 14 Prompt - Favourite Recipe

2024

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 14

Prompt – Favourite Recipe - Part 1

 In the spring of 1975 just before my husband and I were to be married, I had a surprise bridal shower. The Saskatoon St. Paul's Lutheran Church ladies hosted it for me. We were to be married in this church and we held our wedding reception in the church basement served by the “church ladies”. Also Bill and his family were regular members of the church. I did not know more than half of the ladies who attended. Those who attended were asked to bring their favourite recipe printed out on an index card. I received quite a collection. I set them aside inside one of the dishes I got. It was several months before I actually pulled them out and read them. 

 

What can I say? Truly I have spent more than a week trying to figure out how to blog or even comment on this. There are no words....So I have decided to take them as a religious tongue-in-cheek advice recipes and, I guess, they are meant to be cute. 

I wanted to find out who authored this and when did it come out. I turned to google and really did not expect to find much of anything. And as an aside and after the fact I had some trepidation about entering it into google. Maybe it would be interpreted as something as nefarious as preserving a “dead husband”. Oi! I was surprised that there were so many entries in google. Here are a few that I had found.

I found a newspaper article from The San Francisco Call and Post dated Tuesday, January 17 1905, Page 8;“To Preserve a Husband”. 

This suggests a wife should choose an American Variety over a foreign one. Apparently he should go through a long engagement to make him easier to handle. Also the wife should gently detach him from his old acquaintances and change his old ways.  According to this recipe the women of 1905 had to do a lot of work to get and keep a husband. 

I found a blog by Susan Anthony called "How to Cook a Husband". She found this recipe in a cookbook called "Yankee Kitchen Cookbook" from the 1800's. She suggests he can be spoiled by mismanagement. Also she suggests you pick him out like shopping at a market for a mackerel or salmon. She also suggests that you don't stick him with any sharp instruments to see if he is tender. Then she states if thus treated “you will find him very digestible agreeing with you and the children”.

 

 I found this variation of the preserving husbands recipe in a book published in 1887. It was called “The Jubilee Cookbook” On page 96 it can be found at the bottom of the page among 'Citron Preserves', 'Spiced Currents', and 'Quince Preserves”

 

Jubilee Cookbook 1887

A very similar recipe for preserving a husband was found in a 1911 cookbook called "250 Recipes for Everyday Use" and also another cookbook called "Food A' La Louisiane". One last cookbook I found was called "Recipes of Grandview Congregational Church" by the Ladies Aid Society. In one of these recipes it suggests that you;  "wrap well in a mantle of charity. Keep warm with a steady fire of domestic devotion and serve with peaches and cream."

And if all that is not enough you could find this recipe on a wall hanging or a serving tray.

I can assure you that in the almost 49 years of marriage I have never needed to cook Bill. Neither pickle, stew, boil, roast, jam or simmer him in hot water. I have not needed to compare him to Mackerel or a Salmon. I have never stuck him with any sharp instrument to see if he is tender.

Bill and I did not have to work this hard to "manage" our marriage. We have mutual respect for each other. We work together as a team. We support each other and most importantly (and somewhat corny) we love each other more than the day before. 

Wendy