L i n REGIONAL s COOKING e n m Cooking Plain, Illinois Country Style by Helen Walker Linsenmeyer pre- e y e sents a collection of family recipes created prior to 1900 and perfected from r generation to generation, mirroring the delicious and distinctive kind of PLAIN cookery produced by the mix of people who settled the Illinois Country C during this period. Some recipes reflect a certain New England or Southern O influence, while others echo a European heritage. All hark back to a simpler O style of living, when cooking was plain yet flavorful. K I The recipes specify the use of natural ingredients (including butter, lard, N and suet) rather than synthetic or ready-mixed foods, which were unavail- G ILLINOIS COUNTRY STYLE able in the 1800s. Cooking at the time was pure and unadulterated, and P portions were large. Strength-giving food was essential to health and en- L 2222duranc2e; thus2 fare w2as pure2, hearty2, and w2holeso2me. 222222A222222222222222222 I And there are extraspecial nuggets, too, for Mrs. Linsenmeyer laces her N cookbook with interesting biographical notes on a number of the settlers , I and the origins of many of the foods they used. There is also a wealth of L historical information on lifestyles and cooking before 1900, plus helpful L I tips on the use of old-fashioned cooking utensils. N O A working cookbook complete in its coverage of every area of food prepa- I ration, Cooking Plain, Illinois Country Style will be used and treasured as S much today as its recipes were by families of an earlier century. The recipes C are delicious and straightforward, not fussy or gourmet, and are certain to O please today’s cooks, especially those interested in using local ingredients U and getting back to a more natural way of cooking and eating. N   T Helen Walker linsenmeyer is the author of From Fingers to Finger R Bowls: A Sprightly History of California Cookery. Y   S Shawnee Books T Y L southern illinois university press E 1915 university press drive $19.95 usd mail code 6806 isbn 0-8093-3073-3 Helen Walker Linsenmeyer isbn 978-0-8093-3073-7 carbondale, il 62901 www.siupress.com Southern New Foreword by Bruce Kraig Illinois Printed in the United States of America University Cover illustration: © ozdigital; from iStockphoto LP Press Linsenmeyer mech.indd 1 11/1/11 2:22 PM Cooking Plain, Illinois Country Style COOKING PLAIN, Illinois Country Style Helen Walker Linsenmeyer With a new foreword by Bruce Kraig Copyright © 1976 by Southern Illinois University Press Paperback edition 2011 Foreword copyright © 2011 by the Board of Trustees, Southern Illinois University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 14 13 12 11 4 3 2 1 The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Linsenmeyer, Helen Walker. Cooking Plain. Includes index. 1. Cookery, American—Illinois. I. Title. TX715.L7593 641.5'9773 76-13548 ISBN 0-8093-0782-0 (cloth) ISBN-13: 978-0-8093-0782-1 (cloth) ISBN-13: 978-0-8093-3073-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8093-3073-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-8093-3074-4 (ebook) ISBN-10: 0-8093-3074-1 (ebook) Printed on recycled paper. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. To the memory of my parents Ben and Nora Walker worthy representatives of the hardy German and English-Irish-Scotch stock who settled and peopled early southern Illinois Foreword ix Bruce Kraig Preface xi Foreword Bruce Kraig S OME years ago, I mentioned to Susan Wilson, then the associate director of Southern Illinois University Press, that I was just beginning to explore the foods of southern Illinois. As a historian of food and foodways who had just moved to the region, I observed the truism that to know a people, start with their food: food is central to a people’s culture. Well, Susan said, years ago we did publish a book on southern Illinois cookery, probably the only one of its kind, and a best seller for a university press back then. The book was and is Helen Walker Linsenmeyer’s Cooking Plain, originally published in 1976. That this gem of a “good indigenous cookbook,” as the author put it, had not been reprinted surprised me. Now, years later, here it is, and what a surprise it will be to new readers who may have forgotten, or never known, the culinary heritage of a unique part of America. And it is eminently usable. Helen Anna Walker Linsenmeyer Keyser was born on March 3, 1906, in Williamson County, Illinois. The Walkers emigrated from Tennessee in 1834, settling in and around Herrin. As it was for so many others, the Walkers’ route was the Ohio River, and that southern origin is really the base of southern Illinois culinary culture: Cooking Plain has plenty of recipes for those diagnostic southern dishes, corn cakes, hominy, grits, and biscuits. There are other culinary cultural infl uences, as well, from northerners, or Yankees, and especially Germans from various regions of their homeland. Helen’s book contains examples of each, from English pudding, brought by great-aunts, to cabbage dishes and enough dumplings to fi ll any German American stomach. In a very American lexical merging, a recipe for spaetzle is called here “German egg dumplings,” while elsewhere in southern Illinois noodles appear as “fl at dumplings.” Later, Italians and East Europeans played some roles in southern Illinois foodways, but none of their recipes appear in what is essentially a family-historical cookbook. Between the recipes in Cooking Plain and others Linsenmeyer composed for Illinois Magazine and the Southern Illinoisan newspaper, something more comes through, descriptions of the ways that her family, and many other rural families, lived that had all but disappeared during her long lifetime. We hear about the author’s early years on a farm, traveling by wagon down to the Big Muddy River to “hog” for catfi sh that were cooked up on the spot. Wild game was and remains a part of the local larder. Want to cook squirrel, muskrat, raccoon, prairie chicken (rare now), opossum, or venison? Look no further than here. Many of the recipes, or ideas for them, came from Helen’s childhood. As she says in a biographical sketch she wrote in 1993,1 she learned about her family history and country life from her grandfather. Elsewhere she tells us her model for cooking was her mother, as in the incomparable sponge cake that her mother made as the base for strawberry shortcake.2 Early on, she realized that the food traditions of people (including her large, extended family) tell a lot about who they are. ix