Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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!.

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.

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!.