Back in March, 1901, Good Housekeeping had an article that featured an older, experienced homemaker helping out a young, recently-married woman who was completely adrift at cooking in the home. It’s an interesting article because it highlights the differences between cooking back then and cooking now.

The young woman’s primary problem is that, because of her lack of experience in cooking and running a home, the couple is very low on money–at the time of the writing, the couple had only a few dollars to last the week.

The older woman rolled up her sleeves and got to work, starting by taking stock of the young woman’s pantry. Here is an example of how things have changed. The older woman lists off staples she finds that are “standbys–a box of codfish, dried beef, sardines, eggs, oranges, butter, crackers, cereal, tea, coffee, sugar, flour, raisins, rice, beans, beef extract, chocolate, prunes, lard, cheese, sphaghetti [yes, that’s the spelling used] and plenty of canned things.” Most of these are familiar as staples today, but prunes, codfish, sardines, and lard are a bit surprising by today’s standards.

They then talk about specific foods that can be cut or changed, including dairy products. Here the instructions become a bit complex. The older woman says cream shouldn’t be purchased, because it can be taken from the milk, but the younger woman protests that the milk they get doesn’t have cream on top. “I’m afraid you don’t give it a fair chance to rise,” the older woman responds, explaining that

It does not rise, because you put it to set in the refrigerator. In winter milk needs a warmer temperature to yield cream. I put our milk, when it arrives, in two shallow pans, keeping four for this purpose. Two are emptied, and scalded each morning and set away for the next day’s use. I set the milk to rise in a cupboard in the kitchen, where it is fairly warm, covering it with plates to keep out any dust. In the morning there is a thick, rich cream on each pan. From one I get enough for the coffee; the rest I put in a cup to keep for anything that may be required.

It’s a complicated process that requires some knowledge of just how cream and milk work. The older woman then notices that the young couple purchases a certain amount of ice every week for the icebox (this is before electric refrigerators), and explains that they could stop buying ice in the winter by making some adjustments to their pantry. A proper pantry, at this time, was a separate room off the kitchen and not, as it often is today, a cupboard in the kitchen. Also, central heat did not exist–rooms in the house were heated with heaters or stoves in various rooms.

Your pantry with its wide shelves and upper and lower cupboards is a first-rate refrigerator while the thermometer stands at freezing. Simply keep the window open an inch or two at the top, and place things you wish kept coolest on the broad shelf by it. Put such things as oil or fruit, that a chill would injure, into a warmer cupboard.

Of course you must regulate the temperature of the pantry. Close the window entirely on a night when the thermometer falls below zero. You may even in very severe weather have to leave the door into the kitchen open to keep things from freezing. In this way a housewife in this part of the country can generally manage to shut down on an ice bill from November till April.

She then goes on to give a bit of advice that surely must have been obvious to anyone living back then: “When a frozen dessert is wanted you will find snow much easier to pack into the freezer than ice. If there is no snow, but the temperature is low, set a few shallow pans of water out doors at night; you will have as much homemade ice in that way as you need.”

All of these pieces of advice illustrate many small differences between then and now. They also illustrate the sheer amount of knowledge homemakers had to have back then, and how much time they spent performing food-related work. Time-saving devices have resulted in making cooking easier, and also made it so that cooks need a lot less knowledge than they needed back in 1901.

Source: Good Housekeeping, March, 1901, 207-211.