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I never had vinegar pie, but my Granny Rose made, "Boiled Cider Pie".
This is from her recipe card.
Put suet dough in pie dish. Melt a handful (about 1/3 cup as far as I could tell) of grated maple sugar by heating up in a pot with a mug of strong boiled cider. Add eggs ( I use 3 yolks because she didn't say how many eggs) slowly, stir until thick. Add a bit of nutmeg, a spoon of butter, and a fist of raisins. Put into dish. Beat sweetened egg whites with white sugar and put on top. Bake on low wood until it smells good and is brown.
Here's her "Suet Dough" Recipe
2 mugs of sifted through flour with a bump of salt, a bump of soda (baking soda), and a bump of cornpowder (cornstarch). 1 hard packed mug of suet, 1 mug of spring water. Rub into a dough and roll to fit.
I used to watch her make this pie when I was little. She passed away when I was 11 years old. But I'll never forget her cooking, or her love for us kids. She was a big woman, 6' tall and softly round. She always wore dresses with an apron that had big pockets where she always had candies for us to find there. Her food was so packed with love that every spoonful you'd put in your mouth was like a big, warm hug.
Where we lived in Texas it was a mostly Slovanick culture, and I learned so much from the old-timers as far as butchering and processing animals and making sausage.I also learned so much about making pickles, jellies, etc. Knowledge I'm sure that was passed down to them from their past. The most fascinating thing I have ever seen was a green grape pie my neighbor made from the wild Mustang grapes that grew all around us. It was delicious, and try as I might I have never been able to make it as good as she did. She showed me that there was a window of time that the grapes could be harvested before the seeds inside became too hard, and the grapes unusuable. After the grapes are picked and cleaned, they are blanched and either canned for later, or made into the pies. Also, if anyone reading this doesn't know, the leaves from the Mustang grape help to keep dill pickles crisp when they are put up. I would always put two or three in the jars of pickles I made. The folks I knew there were a wealth of knowledge as far as country living.
Where we lived in Texas it was a mostly Slovanick culture, and I learned so much from the old-timers as far as butchering and processing animals and making sausage.I also learned so much about making pickles, jellies, etc. Knowledge I'm sure that was passed down to them from their past. The most fascinating thing I have ever seen was a green grape pie my neighbor made from the wild Mustang grapes that grew all around us. It was delicious, and try as I might I have never been able to make it as good as she did. She showed me that there was a window of time that the grapes could be harvested before the seeds inside became too hard, and the grapes unusuable. After the grapes are picked and cleaned, they are blanched and either canned for later, or made into the pies. Also, if anyone reading this doesn't know, the leaves from the Mustang grape help to keep dill pickles crisp when they are put up. I would always put two or three in the jars of pickles I made. The folks I knew there were a wealth of knowledge as far as country living.
What exactly is Slovanick culture? I've never heard of this.
As Ms Midwestern already pointed out, we are well acquainted with old-timey recipes (FWIW, my mother would have been 98 on the 25th of last month). Mincemeat pie was a thanksgiving standard, and many of the other items mentioned here were common on our table as I was growing up.
You can buy perfectly serviceable mincemeat at most grocery stores. Making a mincemeat pie requires you to make a couple of crusts (use your favorite pie crust recipe) and following the directions on the container of store bought mincemeat.
If you're really adventurous, Alton Brown has a wonderful recipe for homemade mincemeat:
As for Slovankian culture, we lived in Texas for almost 20 years. The hill country, west of San Antonio, the first European settlers lived. They were a mix of German, Slovak, Czech, and Polish. They rapidly intermarried with the Spanish settlers who moved north from Mexico. The Hill country has a fascinating mixture of Mexican and central European cultures that gave the world Norteno music (think Polka with a latin swing) and a unique cuisine (Tacos Polaco - Kielbasa with tortillas and salsa is the most "normal" item I can think of)
I grew up with Chinese immigrants, so we missed out on those. I remember reading the same book series when I was younger and I think I actually heard about such pies in schools and museums, so I wasn't that surprised, but looking around no one serves those anymore.
We have our own, but one of the rare few I do know is the pastrami sandwich. Harder to get right than you think, the meat can always be fatty or the bread mismatched.
2 lbs cooked and thinly sliced beef pastrami
3 slices havarti cheese coarse
Mustard
Dill pickle slices
2 Artisan rye bread or sandwich buns
1 cup beef broth
Simmer pastrami in broth until hot.
Divide meat among bread, using 4 ounces for smaller sandwich, and 8 ounces for large.
Add cheese, mustard, pickles, and onions to taste. Grill sandwich until toasty and crisp if desired. Serve warm with chips if desired.
I get my pastromi or corned beef sandwiches from Gunther's in San Jose. No fatty meat, just great food.
They are the best and walking into that place is like my Grandma's kitchen.
There are places where you can buy them in DTLA as well, and they're supposedly the best in the nation (I don't know about NYC, I heard they're equal). But $14 for a sandwich with no drink and a tiny side is... yeah...
My Great Grandmother ate far differently, she was raised on a farm, and surprising, hardly ever ate meat, it was too expensive! And with no refridgerators, it did not keep long. She rarely cooked with any meat, except bacon, and she could make a pound of bacon last over a week, using it for flavoring.
She made raisin pie, with dried apples.
My great gma either smoked or canned in jars her meats to keep before refrigeration always used bacon grease to flavor things. Use that or lard to cook with also. They all could eat high fat foods because they burned it off with all the labor they had to do in a day just to survive. Even when modernization started taking place gma still did things that were laborious in nature. No finer cook or baker than her she is instilled that love in me.
I have recipes of hers that call for 10 cents worth of flour, nickel worth of sugar. With today's prices that would make much huh?
Quote:
Originally Posted by 70Ford
I haven't seen a cracklin in almost 30 years.
Then come to Indiana we still have old time vendors that make them at town festivals across the state. Many of them still use the big black iron kettles to heat the grease over open fire to cook the cracklins. Broke a tooth eating some last fall it was worth the pain and money to fix the tooth.
What exactly is Slovanick culture? I've never heard of this.
I call it that for lack of a better explanation of the culture in the area where I lived. I lived in an area where there were a lot of folks from Chzeckoslavakia, Poland and the area around those countries, and I simply used the term as an abbreviation for the culture. We knew the Pavliceks, Chaloupkas, Fuchs Kolars, Cloudts, Mikeskas, and a lot of other people that could trace their roots back to the old country. Actually, a lot of the folks where I lived, also came from Fredricksburg, Texas, and the area surrounding, which was predominately of German decent. I have always been fascinated with different types of food, how different cultures prepared it, where it came from, and so when I got to know these folks around me, and saw how things were done, I wanted to know more. I raised hogs, chickens, goats, rabbits, sheep, and even ducks, and learned that a hog was the most valuable animal on a farm. Up to the time I moved there, I thought that cattle would be the most prized possession of a farm, or ranch, but soon learned different. Cattle, chickens, etc. was used as barter sometimes, but the hogs were almost never sold or traded. Some of the shoats(baby pigs) might be sold, but there was always enough held back for the family to raise and eat. The old-timers told me that you can use everything on a hog except the squeal. They showed me how to make head sausage which is similar to boudin, made with rice, or barley, green onions, and other spices mixed in with choice cuts of the hog that has been boiled in a kettle with onions, and garlic. Lightly fried with some toast in the morning it is a real treat. I made hog hair bristle brushes. A wonderful lady that we got to know real well showed me how back in the days, before there were casings for sausage sold at the meat market, people would clean the intestines, and use them for sausage casings. If anyone out there has done that, you can probably agree with me those casings were a lot better than the ones that have been soaking in brine for weeks on end. I learned how to smoke the sausage, and make my own bacon. There is nothing like walking into a smokehouse on an early fall morning, and inhaling the aroma of freshed smoked meat. I learned that before refrigeration, most all the butchered meat was partially cooked, then placed in crocks, with the rendered fat poured over it, covered with cheesecloth, then placed in a cool, shady spot, sometimes the front porch. When a meal was to be prepared, the cook simply reached in the crock, took the meat, which was already partially cooked, and simply finished cooking it.
We had grape vines around the house and I learned how to make jelly Our fig trees gave me huge figs for preserves. The only fruit I could eat just very little of was our pomegranate. Too tart for me. I suppose one of the things I miss the most was our neighbors Satsuma orange tree next door. I have never tasted oranges that sweet before, or since. He didn't eat but a few every season, and told me I could have all I wanted. One season, I picked 5, 5gal. buckets full. I took some to work, and gave some to folks I knew in the neighborhood. I guess it spoiled me, because I rarely buy orange juice now.
There were domino tournaments, polka dancing on Saturday night at the KC hall, barbeque chicken dinners sold by the Catholic church for a fund raiser for some needy cause, silent auctions, raffles for a benefit for someone in need, County Fair in the fall, and all sorts of good, clean fun for everyone in town. The folks I met, lived by and worked with were very strong willed individualists, and compassionate at the same time. They showed me so many things about how the early settlers made the land yield it's resources to them. What saddens me is that all that I saw, and the knowledge that others have about the old ways will probably be lost in time, as there aren't a lot of folks who are interested in seeing that meat doesn't just magically appear on the shelves at Wal-mart, or Kroger, wrapped in shrink wrap. Or that jelly comes in jars, off a truck. Milk, is a marvel of nature deserving more than the stature of a plastic jug on a cooler shelf. To me, at least, there was a reverance in the respect of an animal giving it's life up in order for my family to eat, and the knowledge that I raised it up to that point made me appreciate the end result even more. And that goes with anything we take from nature. It takes more effort to get it to the table, but the flavor, and nutrition value is so worth it.
I like some of the old-timey ways, and will always marvel at the tenacity, and endurance the early settlers had in making a life in the frontier, but I heard a song by Charlie Pride the other day about how he liked to remember the old days, but could he really live there? That probably sums it up for me at my age,now. I wouldn't trade my experiences for any amount of money, but at my age, with a bad back, and slowly worsening knees, it is a lot less painful to just do it all in my mind.
Everything was slowly changing in our little town a few years before we left, but if anyone wants to see a small country town, take a trip to Guy, where we were from, or Needville Texas, the next town up from us. I'm sure you will find the people as friendly today as they were when we left.
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Re: Old Timey Recipes
Broke a tooth eating some last fall it was worth the pain and money to fix the tooth. 
