With the cold weather the past two weeks, I have been indulging in comfort foods. Food that my mom taught me how to cook. Namely, oxtail soup last week and this week I made clam chowder.
After going through my recipes with a friend over the phone, I decided to check out how my great-grandmother’s recipes were different from mine.
This is the title page of the soup book. You can see my great-grandmother’s signature at the top of the page. This copy was a Christmas present to a relative or friend.
My great-grandmother, Ella Leighton Upton Owen, published a series of miniature cookbooks from 1898 to the early 1900s. I find it interesting that she went by her married name, “Mrs. Dewitt C. Owen” rather than her name — Ella Owen.
This soup book was the seventh in her series. I don’t know why she called them “Ripley Series of Cookbooks.” My great-grandfather, Dewitt Owen was a newspaper man in Dixon, Illinois. Eventually, they moved west to Washington state where he continued the trade. Great-grandmother Ella used her husband’s printing press to create her cookbooks. She had to set the type by hand! Can you imagine?
My mom told me that they hauled the printing press by covered wagon across our country. Don’t think the dates match up for that.
The cookbooks were sold throughout the country to women’s church auxiliary groups. At times, Ella supported the family with her ingenious little books.
I wrote more about her books HERE with excerpts from her “Sick Room Necessities” booklet. Two years ago, I wrote a post about comfort foods and shared snippets of the Soup book. You can read it HERE. When I wrote this post yesterday, I thought it was a brand new subject. You can imagine how I felt when I discovered I wrote the same title and subject matter two years ago! But no worries, I have more information in this post, than the one two years ago!
The recipe above is similar to my oxtail soup that I learned from my mom. But I quit dredging the oxtails in flour, because I like a clear broth. I also don’t use cayenne, wine or Worcestershire sauce. I skip the turnip cut in “fancy shapes” and I don’t “par-boil” the veggies. I do use lots of garlic and a bay leaf.
Another secret, is to refrigerate the soup overnight. The next day, I get rid of the fat that solidifies on top of the soup.
For clam chowder, I use canned clams. I cut bacon into small bits with my kitchen scissors (no fat salt pork — whatever that is) and fry it up. Then I add onions, celery and garlic to the bacon. I boil cubed potatoes in a separate pot. After the onions are clear, I stir in Wondra Flour and cook it in the bacon mixture. Add milk, let it thicken, then add clams and potatoes with the potato water. Delish and very comforting in our cold weather.
What are your favorite comfort foods?
