Heirloom Cooking With the Brass Sisters: Recipes You Remember and Love [Hardcover]

Marilynn Brass (Author), Sheila Brass (Author), Andy Ryan (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 8, 2008

Authors of Heirloom Baking and James Beard Award finalists Marilynn and Sheila Brass launched a whole new cookbook category with their "heirloom" baking recipes. Now they turn their culinary skills to the rest of the menu, presenting delicious, savory, and timeless heirloom dishes collected over decades and updated for the modern kitchen.

Marilynn and Sheila Brass have spent a lifetime collecting handwritten "manuscript cookbooks" and "living recipes." Heirloom Cooking collects and skillfully updates 135 of the very best of these, which together represent nearly 100 years of the best-loved and most delicious dishes from all over North America. The oldest recipes date back to the late 1800s, and every decade and a wide variety of ethnicities are captured here.

The book is divided into sections including Starters; Salads; Vegetables; Breads; Main Dishes including Lamb, Beef, Veal, Pork, Fish, Chicken, and Turkey; Vegetarian; and—of course—Dessert. As they did in Heirloom Baking, the Brass sisters include the wonderful stories behind the recipes, and once again, lush photography is provided by Andy Ryan.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The Brass sisters (Heirloom Baking) once again pore through their impressive collection of timeworn note cards, cookbooks and manuscripts to offer up an assemblage of culinary favorites from yesteryear. Those expecting a compilation of curiosities will be largely disappointed, as the duo focus on homemade dishes that have stood the test of time: Clam Chowder, Irish Lamb Stew, Meatloaf, Chicken Soup and Red Velvet Cake outnumber novelties like Candle Salad, a 1950s-era combo of lettuce, pineapple, bananas, green bell pepper, maraschino cherries and sour cream (or mayo). Recipes are straightforward and simple, and ingredients are easily sourced; this is the stuff of potlucks, church dinners and family get-togethers. The sisters' collection is remarkable, if not exactly showy, with recipes for Split Pea Soup and Blueberry Buckle that are more than a hundred years old. Food historians will appreciate the sisters' homey anecdotes (up to and including reproductions of original recipe cards). Though not definitive (and with no aspirations to be), this leisurely, nostalgic collection of homemade favorites brings a heaping portion of America's cooking traditions to the modern table.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

“We fell in love with the Brass Sisters at first sight….[Heirloom Cooking] reads more like an exploration of a cookbook from your grandma’s attic, full of warm memories and cozy notations.” 
(The Tampa Tribune )

Selected “Best Outside the Box” cookbook! “One look at [The Brass Sisters’] book and them on the cover and we know we’d like to be cooking in the kitchen with them.”
(St. Petersburg Times )


“If you have a hankering for cherished old-time recipes, you’ll appreciate the new “Heirloom Cooking with the Brass Sisters…a fun nostalgic read – and doable recipes, too.”


(Los Angeles Daily Times )

“Sisters Marilynn and Sheila Brass have revived dozens of recipes that represent decades of home-cooked comfort food…presenting [an] edible history in this handsome volume.”



(Detroit Metro Times. )

“Their cooking expertise is difficult to dispute.”  
(Milwaukee Journal Sentinel )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 285 pages
• Publisher: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers (October 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1579127843
• ISBN-13: 978-1579127848
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 9.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #588,553 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A cookbook treasure that spans many generations, November 17, 2008

By 

Cricket "Living life and loving it!" (Somewhere in a land far, far away..) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Heirloom Cooking With the Brass Sisters: Recipes You Remember and Love (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

When I received this cookbook I decided to sit down and give it a good once over. I first noticed the beautiful cover, substantial weight and quality feel to the book. In reading the preface it gave me a better insight as to just who the Brass Sisters are, since I had not come across them previous to this book. The helpful tips and hints that they provide you throughout the book, although sometimes basic, are a good reminder of things we often overlook.

Two recipes that immediately piqued my interest were Mrs. Yaffee's Pierogi and Billionaire's Macaroni and Cheese. Two takes on recipes that were a memorable part of my childhood, but made different than how I've always done them. To give this book a full review I decided to try their macaroni recipe instead of mine this time and see what my family thought.

The directions were very clear and easy to follow. Several ingredients I don't normally use were called for here, ricotta being one and although I was confident in my recipe I can honestly say that this recipe won hands down for me. My family knew immediately that this was not my normal "Mac-n-Cheese". They said that as much as they have always liked mine, that this one was very good. I believe the combination of several cheeses gave it wonderful flavor and creaminess.

The Brass Sisters have given us a cookbook that we can feel good about giving to anyone, from your best friend to your daughter to your grandmother. All of the detailed recipes, beautiful pictures and handy ideas will keep you looking at this book over and over. One clever touch I don't want you to miss is the "My Recipes" envelope securely attached to the inside back cover for you to tuck in your own "Heirlooms".

If you already own this book or are just looking for more from the Brass Sisters, make sure to check out this one on baking also sold here on Amazon. Heirloom Baking with the Brass Sisters: More than 100 Years of Recipes Discovered from Family Cookbooks, Original Journals, Scraps of Paper, and Grandmothers Kitchen

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Home Cooking Home Run by the Brass Sisters, November 19, 2008

By 

Joanna Daneman (Middletown, DE USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Heirloom Cooking With the Brass Sisters: Recipes You Remember and Love (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

If you collect those regional cookbooks with spiral bindings and hand-typed recipes inside, looking for that "secret family recipe", the Brass Sisters may have written just the book for you. Instead of guessing what "Billionaire's Mac 'n Cheese" or "Mock Chicken Salad" or "Salmon Squares" looks like, you get a handsome large volume lavishly illustrated with pictures and some stories. But mainly, this book is about the food, straight-up American style comfort food.

While I was thrilled to have what looks like the ultimate in mac 'n cheese (Billionaire's) I was actually really drawn to the side dish section, with stuffed baked onions, "church" cauliflower bake, baked butternut squash, caramellized potatoes from a German recipe and a zucchini cheese casserole. How many times am I looking for that covered side dish for a party or to enhance a simple meal of baked chicken? These look tremendous. The soups were less appealing to me, in fact one, tomato peanut butter soup really put me off but I am sure someone out there would probably adore it. There are a lot of good breads, including Baps, those soft Scottish rolls as well as bagels, crackers and a farm rye bread. I plan to be trying quite a few of these.

By far, my favorite chapter, however, is "Home Plates" which are those dishes beloved by men especially (corned beef hash, Shepherd's Pie, Swedish Meatballs, and stuffed cabbage.) Since our household loves traditional American cuisine, this cookbook looks like a roster of champions, waiting to hit home runs in the kitchen. Big (flour-dusted) thumbs up here.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful down-home cookbook - a pleasure for armchair chefs as well as real cooks!, December 18, 2008

By 

Gen of North Coast Gardening (California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Heirloom Cooking With the Brass Sisters: Recipes You Remember and Love (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

I've found that so many cookbooks try to impress us with their fancy methods, exotic ingredients, and interesting new ways. This cookbook is absolutely marvellous, because it doesn't try to be any of that - they focus on great, homestyle cooking that everyone in your family will actually want to eat!

Dishes like Billionaire Macaroni and Cheese, Louella's Church Cauliflower, Auntie Rose's Vegetable Beef Soup, Deviled Ham and Cheese Strata, and Crispy Norwegian Potatoes had my partner hopping up and down wondering when it was going to be dinner-time. With so many cookbooks he's sniffing the weird new dish with trepidation and I have to convince him to try it.

This is your Grandma's cooking, if you were lucky, and each dish is laid out in a beautiful and simple way. There's some background information on the chef who contributed the recipe or the old-fashioned book it came from, lovely full-color photos of many of the dishes, and the decade the recipe was from, to give you some context of the time and culture.

Another awesome thing? They have a Tips and Touches section for some recipes which give you ideas on how to use what you're making. Like for a recipe for Chicken soup that ends up with chicken lard as a throwaway, they tell you that you can check out a Pierogi recipe that uses chicken lard for the dough, so you don't have to waste. I really felt like they were looking out for me and helping me get the best result possible.

It's a gorgeous book to read and would make a fantastic gift for any young person missing the comfort food of home, or really for anyone who likes to eat down-home food like this. It's beautifully designed and done.

And hey - try that cauliflower dish - amazing! I ate the entire dish over a week's time myself, and still wasn't tired of it at the end.