And The Search Continues by Karla Stover

 

By The Same Author:

Parlor Girls                                     An Everleigh Sisters (world famous madams) bio.

Wynter's Way                                    A Gothic Novel

Murder" When One Isn't Enough    A Puget Sound / Hood Canal murder mystery

A Line to Murder                             A Tacoma, WA / Puget Sound murder mystery

Visit Karla's BWL Author page for book and purchase information

            Last week a friend stopped by and brought me some carrot cookies. She made them because I am known for disliking vegetables. I can eat some of them raw but almost none that are cooked. Of course, corn, potatoes and onions don’t count. The cookies were okay, but I didn’t ask for the recipe. However, I decided to make cookies for her using an unusual ingredient---in this case, vinegar. Vinegar cookies are about my favorite, right up there with molasses cookies, both recipes passed down from my grandmother. I did, however, get to thinking about when and where this recipe originated so while they baked, I headed for that fount of all knowledge, Google. The first thing that came up was a recipe and information about Resurrection Cookies. They contain one teaspoon of vinegar representing the vinegar given to Jesus to quench his thirst while on the cross. Not what I wanted; I plowed on and stumbled on this: “Vinegar has played an important but little-emphasized role as a food adjunct in man's development of his civilization.” Apparently the Babylonians were known to use it. 

Here’s something else I learned: “Vinegar and water has been a refreshing drink from the time of Roman soldiers to modern athletes who drink it to slake their thirst.” Hmmm. I thought the athletes’ drink of choice was Gatorade.

Soldiering on and dropping down the Google page I came across Vinegar Pie. Aka Desperation Pie. It seems in the 19^th century, when some ingredients for flavorings were hard to come by, cooks used vinegar and made pies similar to Chess pie.

In the Polish Housewife’s cook book I found Grandma’s Vinegar rolls with a caveat that the family’s heritage is German.

Google was getting me nowhere, so I hopped over to Yahoo. There I found winkfrozendeserts.com which told me that: "Recipe Size: The amount of vinegar needed [in chocolate chip cookies] may vary depending on the recipe size. As a general rule, for every cup of flour used, you can add 1 to 2 teaspoons of vinegar." Chocolate chippers are considered to be the King of Cookies, but who knew they needed vinegar? Well, according to Lillian, writer for thetakeout, they do. As she spent most of 2020 mastering various recipes, the cookie seemed to taunt her saying, “You want me.” So she uncled under and began the search for the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe. I found her search and recipe on duckduckgo.”  In total,” she said, “I made 20 batches of 20 cookies, or 400 cookies. “And 400 cookies later, I found exactly what I was looking for: a recipe that I can follow to the letter to produce perfect chocolate chip cookies time and time again.” Eleven ingredients of which, forth from the bottom is one teaspoon of apple cider vinegar. Sadly, for those of us who are metric challenged, the amounts require conversion.

However, back to my vinegar cookies. I thought sure the recipe would be in my grandmother’s copy of the Wartime Edition of the American Woman’s Cook Book with “Victory Substitutes and Economical Recipes for Delicious Wartime Meals,” but it wasn’t. I did learn that when entertaining in a maid-less household, “The hostess will find great convenience in the tea-wagon,” and how to measure my table cloths for “the placement of the monogram.”

Vital knowledge for the contemporary homemaker.

And so my search continues.