Nineteenth-century recipes for fruit jellies–the kind spread on toast or between cake layers. Vintage details instruct cooks on jellies (and jams) made of raspberry, cranberry, apple, strawberry, quince, three hues of currant, peach, plum, cherry, gooseberry, and more. How they capped their jelly tumblers might surprise you…
Etiquette governing balls and dances in the American Victorian era seems stuffy, old-fashioned, and strict to 21st century Americans. Every rule of decorum ensured good manners were in play, but most importantly, the moral purity and innocence of young women and young men were maintained. Etiquette governed everything from how a man asked a woman for a dance to how he could properly hold her hand while dancing, to how many dances that pair could have in one evening. This article contains the specifics propriety demanded, and the vintage sources where they may be found. Leap year turned some of the lady’s restrictions upon the men; see the true-to-history newspaper article from 1888 that starred in Sophia’s Leap-Year Courtship.
4 STARS for the 1879 title, Wired Love: A Romance of Dots and Dashes. As an amateur historian determined to learn what I could about the telegraph and its impact on American society, how it worked, and the challenges telegraphers faced, this sweet (innocent) love story fit the bill!
Twenty-first century people have it easy. In fact, most of us don’t know how to make soap–much less the ingredients (found on the Old West homestead) that should be saved in the process of living so that soap could be made. Soap did become readily available through catalog orders, but it cost money, and the more remove a settler, or the earlier a man or family found themselves on a frontier, the dirty, hot job of soap making was a necessary one. This article sheds light on the process, basic ingredients, methodology, as well as the rise of commercially prepared soap products.
