Holidays often mean only one thing in my family -- eating. During the Christmas holidays, we often eat traditional family recipes like my great-grandmother's Carrot Pudding, a steamed pudding that came to the USA with her Spencer ancestors in the 17th century. The recipe traveled west with the family from Hartford, Connecticut to southern Utah where Belle Christensen (my great-grandmother) raised her family. Another recipe of hers that we treasure is a Christmas Cake recipe that my grandmother, Wilma, still makes for us every year. I am sure you too have favorite family recipes, but perhaps they only go back a generation or two. This year why not utilize your genealogy and cooking skills to a make a dish that your ancestors would have eaten in their homeland? Or maybe you would just like to find a recipe that has been lost to add to a family history. Thanks to facsimile editions, e-books, and the internet we can now find historical recipe s and prepare them with ease for our family and friends this holiday season. This article will show you a few sources to search and point you towards books and periodicals that can help you trace down that special recipe for your holiday menu.

An acknowledged foodie and cookbook collector, I looked first to my own bookshelf at home and my virtual shelf on Google Books for some historic cookbooks. Many of these, such as Amelia Simmons' American Cookery (1796), have been published in facsimile version by Dover Publications. Reputed to be the first "American" cookbook of British North America, Simmons' book is renowned for its use of cornmeal, which was a distinctly American ingredient. (Available for $5.95.) A bicentennial version of the cookbook can also be found in its entirety on Google Books (Applewood 1996 Dover); it features historical notes by Karen Hess ($9.95). Other "first" cookbooks in reprinted forms are The First Jewish-American Cookbook (1871) by Mrs. Esther Levy ($9.95 Dover); Rufus Estes' Good Things to Eat: The First Cookbook by an African-American Chef (1911) by Rufus Estes ($9.95 Dover); The Plimoth Colony cookbook by the Plymouth Antiquarian Society ($5.95 Dover); Early American Cookery: "The Good Housekeeper," 1841 by Sarah Josepha Hale ($6.95 Dover); California Mexican-Spanish Cookbook 1914 Reprint: Selected Mexican And Spanish Recipes by Ross Brown and Bertha Haffner-Ginger ($14. 99 CreateSpace 2008). All of these books are available for sale on either BarnesandNoble.com or Amazon.com and can be previewed partially or in full on these sites or Google Books.

For those of you who would like to make some historic cookies for the family, a great cookbook that is back in print is Betty Crocker's Cooky Book ($24.95 on BarnesandNoble.com). This 2002 edition is a facsimile of the 1963 edition. And while it is fun to take a nostalgic trip back to the 1960s, the real strength of this cookbook is its excellent variety of drop, cut out, and refrigerator cookies. One day I wanted to make Oatmeal cookies and found there were more than 15 different recipes to chose from in this cookbook. I chose the banana-oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies -- and they were delicious! The other strength of this cookbook is a section near the back called "Betty Crocker's Best Cookies," which gives the recipes and background on the most popular cookies for the decades from 1880 to 1963. Short facts are also provided that set the cookies in their historical context. For instance, food shortages during World War II restricted options for cookie ingredients, such as white sugar, so simple recipes like Caramel Refrigerator Cookies were popular (p. 145).

A series of historic cookbooks I recommend for you southerners (or descendants of southerners) are the Southern Heritage Cookbooks published by Oxmoor House. While they are no longer in print, you may find a copy in your public library or purchase a used copy on Amazon.com. Some copies are listed for as little as a penny. These books are valuable because they not only have the historic recipes, but they also feature the historic context and replica photographs that help us "see" what our ancestors would have looked like while baking such foods. A recipe I make quite often is the Old Salem Pumpkin Muffins from the Southern Heritage Breads Cookbook (p. 115). From the Old Salem Tavern in Winston Salem, North Carolina, these muffins go back to the 19th century and still get rave reviews today.

Public libraries are a great source for regional cookbooks, if you want to make something that fits the region or location your ancestors moved from within the United States. If you are looking in a public library catalog, make sure you narrow your search to include search terms for "Cookery" and then add other phrases such as "American," "African American," and "history" or "social life and customs" along with a locality (state or region). I have been surprised by how many public libraries have large collections of cookbooks. My neighborhood branch has an entire bookshelf full!

However, if you are looking for some totally free recipes and articles about the recipe, a great place to look is historic periodicals (magazines and newspapers). Many public libraries have access to databases such as EBSCO that can take you to newspaper databases. If you have access to a university library, databases such as American Periodical Series and 19th Century UK Periodicals offer multiple links to Christmas-time recipes, especially for a plum pudding or a fruit cake. But if you only have internet access at home, here are some hints to using Google to find historic recipes. First, you want to use the advanced search function and limit your results to the years your ancestors lived. You will want to search "all content" because many magazines do not appear when only "magazines" are chosen. Then limit your search for "full view" or "public domain" so that you know you can see the entire recipe. I played around for quite a while within these search results and found some recipe gems. The best recipes I found came from The Boston Cooking School Magazine. Entire issues are available for download from Google Books.

By viewing these online magazines you can not only get a recipe in its original context, but you can also see photos and advertisements of food products your ancestors would have been using. For instance, one such article in Volume 9 (June-July 1904) featured an article about wedding cakes and included photographs of two royal wedding cakes. Just looking at these photos illustrates the difference between wedding cakes now and in 1904 (p. 3-5). Reading the recipes shows the trend for fruited cakes and royal icing.

Another gem was an article in The Caledonian Magazine (April 1908), "Leaves from the Diary of a Traveller [sic] in New Zealand" that details the mixing, cooking, hanging, and eating of a steamed Christmas pudding (p.302-307). The article details how traditional British puddings included trinkets and coins as a prize for those who ate the pudding: They found "one of the silver bits, which meant riches for the finder, but the thimble for the old maid, the button for the old bachelor, and the ring for the first wedding remained hidden away somewhere, to be brought to light at other cuttings" (p. 307). In less than an hour you can find a fun recipe for your holiday baking or a family recipe.

I hope this quick journey through cookbooks has been helpful and not made you too hungry. My little holiday gift to you is my family recipe for Carrot Pudding. Enjoy!

Carrot Pudding
1 cup shredded carrots
1 cup shredded potatoes
1 shredded apple
2 eggs
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup shortening
3 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
2 cups flour
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. cloves
2 cups raisins
1/2 cup chopped nuts

Mix the ingredients and put in glass jars, metal cans, or a metal Bundt pan and steam until cooked about 1 hour.

Dip (sauce for pudding)

To 1 quart of milk add 2 heaping tablespoons of flour, 1/2 cup sugar, ground nutmeg and butter. Heat until thickened.

Article written by Larisa S. Asaeli