Weird Ingredients In Recipes?
Yesterday a friend of 35 years gave me his mother's fruitcake recipe, which was her grandmother's recipe, apparently originating in the 1800s. My friend's mom would make dozens of these fruitcakes each year and give them as gifts. This was the kind of fruitcake people actually liked ... and I was shocked to learn there was a pound of ground pork fat in each five-loaf batch.
While researching the three Michigan coney sauces (Detroit, Flint and Jackson styles), I've discovered not an ounce of ground beef among the original recipes. Ground beef hearts, beef kidneys, suet, all in there, but no ground beef whatsoever.
What are some possibly weird ingredients you've found in recipes? Have you made them that way, or have you tried to find alternatives, possibly because of the "ewwww" factor?
Dave
Luna Pier Cook
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11 Comments:
Truth be told, I rarely follow recipes, unless we talk baking (and even then, it depends). To me a recipe isn't something set in stone and for the most part, I may take an idea or an element that I like and end up making it my way anyway, and "my way" would depend on our likes/dislikes and ingredients on hand.
That said, I don't recall seeing a recipe with really weird ingredients. Then again, it may be due to the fact that I always automatically come up with substitutions if I see something really questionable.
brooke29 at 11:11AM on 03/02/09
I can slurp kanimiso (crab guts) happily, but when it comes to cow's tongue, that grosses me out. One of these days, I'll try it, but I remember poking it at the grocery store with my finger when I was younger and didn't care for the way it looked and felt.
There was some kind of meat pudding from the budget recipe book we bought a couple months back that I was interested in having my husband cook. Tongue was part of it, and I told my husband to sub it out. He hasn't shopped for it yet, so he's probably delaying cooking that too.
Pork fat? How interesting. Did it replaced the butter or something?
Cassaendra at 1:07PM on 03/02/09
I was looking at a really old cookbook and ran across an ingredient I'd never heard of. Which surprised me. I mean, you'd think that nowadays the canned food aisle would have more ingredients than it did back in the stone age.
I looked it up and it was some kind of pickled thing. Chestnuts, maybe? Whatever it was, it didn't sound like something I wanted to run out and find.
dbcurrie at 5:49PM on 03/02/09
OK.....sweetbreads sound totally disgusting......who would want to eat a cow thymus gland?....there really isn't much I won't eat...or at least try.....but i think i'll give them sweetbreads a pass
onepercent99 at 6:34PM on 03/02/09
Whenever I read old cookbooks and come across ingredients that I can't find in my grocery store, I figure there's a good reason that they're no longer available. I mean, with all the new research on nutrition and health concerns, there's a VERY good chance that whatever used to be "safe" to eat isn't anymore. I'm sure if you just try something similar, you'll get the same flavor or at least close.
cookieyi at 7:07PM on 03/02/09
In the "Back of the Box" cookbook, there is a recipe for apple pie with ketchup. Actually, it sounded pretty good. I've also seen apple pie recipes with red hots.
HeartofGlass at 7:08PM on 03/02/09
Apple pie with red hots sounds tasty to me.
ghc630 at 7:47AM on 03/03/09
I remember as a kid in the 70's a tomato soup cake.
pjracz10 at 10:23AM on 03/03/09
Tomato soup cake? I'm afraid to ask, but I'm intrigued...how did it taste?
Don't say spongy tomato soup. :x
Cassaendra at 12:15PM on 03/03/09
the recipe for jellies calves brains really grossed me out.
good thing i kept looking through that cookbook, because the next page has what become one of my favorite chicken recipes.
redhead at 1:09PM on 03/03/09
A friend recently called me and said he and his daughter were looking at a broccoli soup recipe but couldn't figure out what the ingredient "Myre Pox" was. I asked him to spell it and then we had a mirepoix 101 discussion! So I guess that was weird to him until he realized what it was. Some people hear that term on TV frequently, but in print it becomes a mystery, especially
if you took German or Russian or Mandarin as your language in high school and/or college.
zucchini at 4:51PM on 03/03/09