de re coquinaria

I was looking through a cookbook that we found the other day, one that reached all the way back to the kitchen and cuisine of 1898, and noticed that organizationally and instruction-wise, like other older volumes of recipes that we have, there’s a verse-like brevity to them, almost like a haiku and something self-contained, with mostly no measurements, cooking times and temperatures. If you have to ask, then you are obliviously are not a good homemaker and Hausfrau. There are some interesting basic meals and descriptions of sauces that would be interesting to try to recreate, and it was worth noting how one can rate the familiar and the exotic food of the time, given the attention to detail and exacting instructions for preparation: one dish that’s described as italienisch was steamed rice with green peas and was called “Risi-Pisi.” I cannot imagine a good bürgerlichen family of the turn of the century asking for such a thing by name from far away Italy.  It will be fun to experiment and see what other changes in tone and method come up.