Regional history centered around Bath County, Ky., plus old recipes, photos, maps, and genealogy. Surnames of interest include Kincaid, Karrick, Darnell, Goodpaster, Young, and Dawson
My paternal grandparents were Hugh and Bertha Karrick of Salt Lick, Kentucky, and while thumbing through an old Homemaker’s cookbook, I found my grandmother’s recipe for gingerbread and decided I should try to make it with my own granddaughter, Elliott. She is four years old and loves to mix stuff up in the kitchen, recipe or not! It turned out great and we topped it with homemade whipped topping. Yum.
As I stated in previous post, as I move forward with this blog, I hope to share old local recipes like the gingerbread recipe of my Mamaw’s. I have quite a few cookbooks from the Homemakers, The Women’s Club, local churches, and so forth. These need to be saved for various reasons. First, these old cookbooks give us a glance of the domestic work that women traditionally did, and it’s work that needs to be appreciated, as it has often, at least in my opinion, been undervalued.
Second, old local cookbooks connect us with not only our own ancestors, but also the ancestors of our community, and they offer a glimpse into how information was collectively passed on. The recipes and household tips may seem trivial, but they’re not. I’ve participated in the compilation of these kinds of cookbooks, and it’s been my experience that the recipes are eagerly shared and received. Everybody wants a recipe that works, and in the days before the Internet provided easy access to that, women shared through church cookbooks and hand written notes. Of course, one could get a recipe out of a book or magazine, but not ones “reviewed” by the community by word of mouth after church potlucks and funeral dinners.
Third, these recipes often are from a time before processed foods. If we want to eat healthier, it might not hurt to start with these older recipes that use basic ingredients. You might see the occasional “cream of something soup” called for, but not often, especially in the oldest ones. The recipes, with few exceptions, are simple and call for basic pantry staples.
I hope you enjoy the ones I share, and if you have one you’d like to contribute, please let me know.
The recipe. I followed it exactly as written, although I wasn’t sure what a “moderate oven” temperature would be. I finally went with 350 and baked for about a half an hour, testing frequently to see if a toothpick inserted would come out clean.
2 cups flour 1/4 tsp. soda 1/2 tsp. salt 1/3 cup butter or shortening 2/3 cup molasses 2 tsp. baking powder 2 tsp. ginger 1 tsp. cinnamon 1/2 cup sugar 1 egg, well beaten 3/4 cup sour milk [buttermilk]
Sift flour once, measure, add baking powder, soda, spices, and salt, then sift together three times. Cream butter thoroughly, add sugar gradually and beat together until light and fluffy. Add egg and molasses, then flour alternatively with the buttermilk, a small amount at a time. Beat after each addition until smooth. Bake in a moderate over [I baked at 350 for about 30 - 35 minutes or until a toothpick came out clean].
The finished product was cake-like and tasty. Elliott likes to go shirtless but insisted on an apron for cooking! I’m going to try to make one for her that fits.
We also made homemade whipped cream, which is super easy to make. 1 cup of heavy whipping cream, 2 tablespoons of sugar, and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla. Beat until soft peaks form. We overbeat ours a little but we didn’t care.
I took the cookbook to my dad, Joe Karrick, because of the advertising in the back featuring Salt Lick businesses. I wanted to know more about some of them and thought it would also be helpful in dating the cookbook, which Dad decided was probably published in the 1950s.
The Greyhound Restaurant (a Greyhound bus stop) became Greene’s, a place by the creek most of us can recall. Horseman and Powell became Powell’s. Salt Lick Milling had corn meal and flour and was located on the creek bank further into town. Tom Perry operated the establishment.Jarrett Manufacturing Co. became Reeve’s Lumber. The Gem Theater was located across from the Powell funeral home (or that’s what my dad best remembers). Earl Wills ran E.B. Wills Grocery, and Henry Craig ran the other listed at the top.
A clipping from a 1908 copy of the Owingsville Outlook, courtesy of the Library of Congress.
A few years ago, as I was looking at digitized copies of the Owingsville Outlook, I happened upon this interesting tidbit in which the writer states, “Hog-killing, Thanksgiving and Christmas to look forward to before the blue days of winter come on.” It struck me that “hog-killing” seemed a celebratory event, one on par with Christmas and Thanksgiving, something to be enjoyed before the gloom of winter set in. I mentioned it to my dad, Joe Karrick, and he started telling me his childhood memories of that event. Of course, this clipping is a lot older than my father, but I would guess the ins and outs of hog killing stayed the same.
“Hog-killing weather” is the phrase my dad remembered. One couldn’t butcher hogs until the weather was cold and was going to stay cold. It needed to be timed well to ensure a good final product. In the clipping below, you’ll note that some in Knob Lick were going to have ruined meat due to the weather warming back up. I would imagine this would have brought terrible hardship for some families. It also makes me wonder how good some would have been at predicting the weather without all of our modern technology. I’m betting there were a few old timers that could “feel it in their bones.”
Clipping from the December 1, 1898 edition of the Owingsville Outlook.
While it may seem gruesome to our modern minds and sensibilities, hog-killing was often a familial event, with uncles, aunts, and cousins coming to lend a hand and visit. Neighbors and friends, too, would join in on the work if needed, and often it was needed because this work had to be finished in a day. While it seems men did the worst and most physical of the work, women labored as well, cutting up meat, grinding sausage, and often seeing to the huge kettles. Children weren’t shielded from the blood and gore either, as you can tell from my dad’s recollection of the event. My mom worries that what he writes is “too gruesome,” but Dad, in true Dad fashion, says it’s just how it was – no sense in trying to pretty it up.
If you have your own memories of “hog-killing time” please leave a comment, or if you’d like to read more from “Papaw Joe” be sure and let us know.
Hog Killin’ Time by Joe Karrick
I grew up on a family farm just south of Salt Lick in Bath County, Ky. My Dad. Hugh Karrick, raised cattle and hogs, and grew corn, hay, tobacco, and sometimes a patch of watermelons or strawberries. Dad raised hogs to sell but usually butchered three to four for our own use. Almost all country folks back then raised hogs for meat and lard.
Hogs were butchered in the fall when temperatures dropped, thus the old saying, “hog killing weather.” If my memory is correct, Dad would choose three to four in the 250 – 300 pound class. I will try to describe the process.
The hog was shot with a .22 caliber rifle aiming at the brain. Death was instantaneous. Dad always had someone else to do the shooting. I think he dreaded it since he had cared for the animals all year. As soon as the hog was shot, someone would slit its throat, cutting through major veins and arteries, and then the hog would bleed out.
The next step was removing the hair from the carcass. This was done by placing the carcass in a “scalding pan,” a large metal vessel big enough to hold the hog. A wood fire was built under the pan, and the water heated to about 150 degrees, scalding temperature. After being submerged for a bit the hair would “slip” or loosen itself. Then came the job of of scraping all the hair off the hog. This took a while. After the hair was removed, the hog was hung head down from a barn rail. The belly was opened up and all the entrails were removed, the heart and liver were saved.
My grandmother had a very large screened in back porch. The hog carcasses were laid out on the porch floor. The heads were removed and saved to make souse meat. There sat a working tub full of hog heads! The carcass was then cut up into the parts that most folks recognize: hams, ribs, shoulder, sow belly or bacon, jowl, and backbone. The feet were saved for pickled pigs feet. The cuts were trimmed of excess fat and then put on benches in the “smoke house” and salted down. It took several weeks for the salt cure to be completed.
All of the trimmings and leaf fats (around internal organs) were saved and made into lard and soap. Two big black kettles were set up in the back yard and heated up with wood fire. Lard was produced in one kettle by heating the fat until it liquified, then, I think, strained and poured into five gallon cans where it cooled down and became white lard. The second kettle was for soapmaking. Again, fat was placed in the kettle, and such soap production requires lye to convert the fat to soap. After heating and liquifying, the soap resolution was strained and poured into flat pans, and upon cooling was cut into cakes of soap.
Meanwhile in the kitchen, my grandmother and her helpers were busy making sausage. A large meat grinder was clamped to the old kitchen table. Meat suitable for sausage was run through the grinder, mixed with some spices, and made into patties. The patties were cooked and then placed in large mason jars for storage.
The process provided food for the family for the coming year.
A lot of folks today think meat comes from Kroger. Meat comes from animals that have been cared for by a farmer. A good farmer’s goal is that his animals have only one bad day in their lives, and that is the day they are slaughtered.
Thanks, Dad, for sharing your memories of “hog killin’ time.” May we all appreciate where our food comes from and honor those farmers who strive to give the animals in their care a good life.
If you need help cooking a ham, a few years ago, the sister of my friend Julie Grannis Carroll was featured in an NPR article about how her family prepared them. Linda and Julie grew up in Fleming County and “putting the ham to sleep” was a family culinary tradition. Here’s a link to that article. https://www.npr.org/2022/12/04/1139534855/kentucky-ham-country-ham-recipes-food
Just in time for Thanksgiving, here are some old recipes that might be of interest. Sorry if some of them seem incomplete, but this is how they are recorded in the old cookbooks from which I’m getting them. I guess it was a given that everybody would know what to do next. I’ll try to put more up before Christmas. ~ Ginger
Pie Crust
1 1/2 cups flour
3/4 tsp. salt
1/3 cup shortening
6 tbsp. water
Mrs. Chester Jones
Kendall Springs Homemakers
Butterscotch Pie
2 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 tbsp. butter
1 tbsp. cream
Boil to a wax and add:
Yolks of 3 eggs
1 cup water
2 tbsp. flour
1 cup milk
Boil together until thick.
Mrs. Chester Jones
Kendall Springs Homemakers
Rolls [Missionary Society Recipe Book / Owingsville First Church of God]
3 cups flour
1 cup milk – lukewarm
2 tablespoons lard
2 tablespoons sugar
pinch of salt
Dissolve cake of yeast in small amount of warm water. Mix milk, lard, sugar, and salt. Add yeast when milk is cool. Let rise one hour. Roll out. Let rise again one hour. Bake in hot oven 450 degrees.
Gladys Markland
Ma Bess’s Jam Cake [Missionary Society Recipe Book / Owingsville First Church of God]
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups butter
1 cup buttermilk
2 cups jam
2 cups flour (sifted before measuring)
1 cup chopped nuts
6 eggs – beaten separately
2 teaspoons soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon cloves
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
Cream butter, add sugar and beaten egg yolks. Put all dry ingredients in flour and add alternately with buttermilk to butter, sugar, and egg mixture. Add jam and nuts; then fold in beaten egg whites. Bake in 4 layer cake pans 35 to 40 minutes at 350 degrees. Filling for Jam Cake
1 1/2 cups jam cake batter
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup sweet milk
2 tablespoons butter
Mix all ingredients in sauce pan. Cook over burner, stirring constantly until pastry thick or purplish color. Spread between layers. (Cover sides and top of cake with any good frosting.
Unknown [Dorothy Butcher says Ma Bess refers to a “Ma Woodard” – Thank you, Miss Dorothy!]
Best Ever Caramel Frosting [Missionary Society Recipe Book / Owingsville First Church of God]
1/2 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup milk
3 1/4 cups sifted confectioner’s sugar
Melt butter; add brown sugar. Boil and stir 1 minute or until slightly thick. Cool slightly. Add 1/4 cup milk; beat smooth. Beat in confectioner’s sugar until of spreading consistency. Frosts tops and sides of 2 9-inch round layers.
Louise Stone
French Beans [Woman’s Club Cookbook, 1954)
2 cans French beans
1 can mushroom soup
More than 1/2 lb. Chateau cheese*
Heat soup until good and hot, add cheese cut fine, and melt thoroughly. Add 1/2 can Carnation milk; drain beans and pour into baking dish with soup and cheese mixture; add 1 tablespoon A.1 sauce and 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce, season with salt and a bit of Tabasco. Bake until cheese is rather thick.
May S. Piper
Owingsville, Kentucky
*Chateau cheese was evidently a type of cheese sold around the 1950’s and was a bit similar to Velveeta but with a sharper taste. Harvard Beets [Woman’s Club Cookbook, 1954]
Cook 12 small beets in salted water until skins slip off easily. Cube. Mix 1/2 cup vinegar, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 heaping teaspoon flour, 3/4 cup sugar and 1 tablespoon butter. To this mixture add cubed beets and cook until transparent. Mrs. Ed Hickey
Bethel, Kentucky
Might be a good dessert for the holidays. I haven’t tried this recipe and have copied it just like it is written in Jane Kincaid’s cookbook. Orange Cake Juice of one large orange. 1/2 cup white sugar put in juice, dissolve this mixture and let stand while mixing and baking. 1/2 cup butter or crisco (scant) 1 cup white sugar 2 whole eggs 2/3 cup sour milk 2 cups flour 1 level teaspoon soda (put in sour milk) 1 orange peel grated 1 cup raisins put through a food chopper with orange peel. Add raisins and orange peel to butter and sugar after they have been well creamed, add milk and flour then the eggs last. Beat yellows and whites together. When done and first taken out of the stove, pour juice over cake and let stand in skillet until cold. In pouring the juice over the cake be careful not to let the juice run down the sides of cake. Have stove pretty hot. Mrs. Charles Darnell From the Electric Cooking School
From the Journals of William Burl Kincaid, Jr. 