Book Review

Dunk the dead by lightning in a cold water bath for two hours and if still dead, add vinegar and soak for an hour more.

Long story short, I imagined the Inglenook Cookbook to be almost unobtainable; yet when I started looking, I found the 1911 version still being published, unrevised. My copy finally came today and looking through it is like trip, trip, tripping through a long, dead past. Not only does the cookbook have recipes for things that need animal feet, whole-split calf heads, something called 'prune whip', and from what I can tell, a dessert called Silver Pudding with Gold Dressing which is nothing more then beaten egg whites covered in yolk, it also has a recipe section for taking care of the sick. Need a recipe for toast soaked in hot water and strained to help settle your stomach? I got it. Need something to dab on that nasty rattlesnake bite? Got that too. The amazing part of this book is it's history as a collection of recipes from the sisters of the Church of the Brethren, a liberal offshoot of the German Baptist faith. Anyway, there might not be any cures for death by lightning in it's pages, but the book is an honest to god, real thing. The closest we have, I think, to some actual witchy juju. I'm so cooking diner this weekend.