Weird Ingredients In Recipes?

Posted by LunaPierCook, March 2, 2009 at 5:34 AM

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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