The Confederate Housewife: Receipts & Remedies, Together with Sundry Suggestions for Garden, Farm, & Plantation [Paperback]

John Hammond Moore (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1997

Combination cookbook and "how-to-do-it" guide, this receipt book provides for the first time a comprehensive, grass roots picture of what many Confederate housewives faces during those tumultuous years. Substitutes abound, as do ways to preserve food, care for crops and animals, make straw hats and squirrel-skin shoes, and cure everything from cancer to small pox to ingrown toenails. Half of the nearly six hundred entries here -- all published in journals or newspapers during the Civil War -- relate to the preparation and cooking of food and encompass both substitutes and standard fare, everything from snow corn cakes and cracker pie to walnut catsup and secession rice bread. Also included is advice on measuring land, estimating hay, and collecting opium for home use. "Some of these recipes may seem strange by today's standards others horrific (cures for cancer that use turkey figs, sheep sorrel, and dock root). Still others are helpful even today." -- Civil War Times

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

John Hammond Moore is a former news reporter and history teacher. He is the author of sixteen books, eight of which deal with South Carolina where he makes his home.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Ginger Pound Cake -- Cut up in a pan three-fourths pound of butter and a teacup of brown sugar. Mix with a pint of West Indian molasses and stir will together. Sift into a pan a pound of flour. In another, beat five eggs. Add gradually the eggs and flour to the mixture of butter, sugar, and molasses, together with two large tablespoonfuls of ground ginger and four of ground cinnamon. The stir in a glass of brandy and a small teaspoonful of saleratus melted in a very little milk. Add a pound of raisins raisins dredged with flour and transfer to a buttered tin pan, and bake from two to three hours. (Field and Fireside, April 11, 1863) TABLE OF CONTENTS: Introduction, 9 Coffee, Tea & Assorted Potables, 22 Soups, 30 Bread, Crackers, &c., 33 Milk, Butter, Cheese, & Eggs, 40 Fruits & Vegetables, 43 Meats & Fish, 51 Vinegar, Pickles, &c., 61 Puddings, Cakes, & Pies, 66 Candles, Soaps, Cleaning & Dyeing, 75 Additional Advice for Mistress & Servant, 84 Remedies, Cures & Personal Hygienics, 98 Care of Fowls, Animals & Property, 120 Glossary, 145 Sources, 153 Index, 157

Product Details

• Paperback: 159 pages
• Publisher: Summerhouse Pr (March 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 188771409X
• ISBN-13: 978-1887714099
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #735,858 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating history opens window into Civil War life, August 31, 2000

By 

Author Bill Peschel "Writers Gone Wild" (Hershey, PA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Confederate Housewife: Receipts & Remedies, Together with Sundry Suggestions for Garden, Farm, & Plantation (Paperback)

This compilation of contemporary Civil War advice for home and farm is an excellent source of information on how the South "made do" during those hard times.

While Mary Elizabeth Massey's "Ersatz in the Confederacy," republished in the last few years by the University of South Carolina Press, is a worthwhile history of home life during those times, "The Confederate Housewife" goes further by quoting the exact recipes and nuggets of advice that appeared in newspapers and periodicals like "Field and Fireside," "Southern Cultivator" and "Clarke's Confederate Household Almanac."

Reading these pages is like going back in time, when advice is needed to restore tainted meat ("take it out of the pickle. Wash so as to cleanse it of the offensive pickle . . . As you re-pack your pieces, it would be well to rub each piece with salt."), get rid of mosquitoes ("put a couple of generous pieces of beef on plates near your bed at night, and you will sleep untroubled by these pests.") or dealing with bloated cattle ("a dose of thoroughwort with a little tansey will afford immediately relief.")

If nothing else, it will make you grateful for indoor plumbing, air conditioning and refrigerators.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How those poor women managed is beyond me!, April 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Confederate Housewife: Receipts & Remedies, Together with Sundry Suggestions for Garden, Farm, & Plantation (Paperback)

You don't know how good you have it until you read about how bad things can get. Boy those Civil War belles had to work from sunrise to sunset just to get a couple of potatoes on the table. This book was really fascinating and puts the War into real perspective in a way that no other book has done. A wonderful recipe book too!.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Source Book on the Confederate Home Front, February 22, 2009

By 

John Jeffery Rabb "Jeff Rabb" (Concord, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Confederate Housewife: Receipts & Remedies, Together with Sundry Suggestions for Garden, Farm, & Plantation (Paperback)

This is an excellent source for information on life on the Confederate home front from 1861-1865. If you know how to look at it, the information that you can derive from it is vast and useful. My main nit-picks are that often times the many newspapers that the book attributes each of the articles in many cases do not list the city of issue. Or it will list them perhaps in the very first entry for that paper and unless you've made a written list, it's easy to forget where it came from. Very important when trying to determine regional variations. But that is a minor issue and should not by any means discourage one from getting this book.