Peanut Recipes

Peanuts seemed to come into their own during the 19th Century. Most folks used them for cookies and candy. The fourth tidbit is an article with a lot of different uses for the peanut. Enjoy! And start thinking what your characters would do with all their peanuts.

Peanut Cookies.
Cream one tablespoonful butter; add two tablespoons sugar, one egg, two tablespoons milk; mix with onehalf cupful flour, one-half teaspoon baking powder, one salt spoon salt, one-half cup chopped peanuts and onehalf teaspoon lacto-lemon. Drop by the spoonful onto nnbuttered tins; garnish with whole peanuts and bake about twelve minutes. Mrs. C. F. Crosby.
Source: Cook Book of Tried Recipes ©1897

Peanut Brittle.
Boil three cups of brown sugar, one cup of New Orleans molasses, half a teaspoonful of cream-of-tartar, and one cup of water to the hard-ball stage. (To test, plunge a skewer in cold water, then into the boiling mixture to the depths of about two inches, then back into the water; let it remain while ten is counted, then push off the candy with the forefinger and thumb; if it can be worked while held under water to a hard, solid ball, it is cooked enough.) Now add one pint of peanuts, and boil to the hard crack stage. Test as before, but, when the candy is taken from the skewer, drop it into cold water a second, then press the teeth on it, and if it leaves the teeth clean it is boiled enough; add one-fourth a pound of butter and let just boil in; remove from the fire, add two level teaspoonfuls of bicarbonate of soda dissolved in a little water and stir vigorously. When the mixture begins to rise, pour out upon a marble or platter and spread thin. When cold break or cut in pieces.
Source: The Boston Cooking-School Magazine of Culinary Science ©1899

PEANUT CANDY.
Two small bags of peanuts—say, ten cents' worth—fresh roasted. Shell and chop fine in wooden bowl. Measure-, then take exactly the same amount of granulated sugar. Melt without water, and as soon as a liquid and without cooking, turn in the nuts; stir a moment, then put out on a dripping-wet breadboard, and roll with wet pin very thin.
Mrs. E. B. K. sends us the following recipe for peanut candy, which is simply made, very satisfactory, and for which we wish to thank her:
Source: Table Talk ©1897

THE PEANUT AS AN ARTICLE OF FOOD.
WE take from the Philadelphia Evening Call a communication by May Forney on the peanut as an article of food and the various ways in which it may be prepared for the table. Some of our housekeeping readers will no doubt give one or more of the following recipes a trial:
The majority of people know very little about the peanut any more than that it is a palatable, though rather indigestible, article of food, and that a savory odor greets one pleasantly while passing by the corner peanut-roaster.
But the peanut has a mission far more important than to be eaten simply in its roasted state, .ind it performs it so well that it is raised extensively in all of the warm regions of the globe, and its cultivation grows constantly in proportion as the nut is found to be more and more useful. The peanut is presumably of American origin, and although the nuts raised on our soil are larger in size and finer in flavor than those grown in other countries, it is everywhere else more appreciated, its nutritious qualities more recognized and put to practical uses. In New Spain and some parts of Africa the peanut forms a staple article of food. It enters largely into the composition of some of the choicest European chocolates, and an oil is expressed from it said to be quite the equal of olive or almond oil for either h nip or table use.
Before war times, old "mammies," who were the presiding geniuses of plantation kitchens, made any number of niceties out of peanuts, only one of which ever to any extent became known to us. There was a time—not so very long ago, either— when every Philadelphia child was familiar with the peanut or groundnut cakes, as they were called. They were sold on the corners of streets by .old. colored: women wearing gorgeous-hued
I Madras turbans and spotless aprons. They w. on low stools and had their tempting wares neatly arranged on linen-covered trays. Likely the tmrbaned heads are laid low by this time, for we rarely see them and never see the groundnut cakes. They were very good, too, and fortunately tbc recipe for making them has been preserved. It was a savant who said that old recollections were revived more vividly through the taste than any other of the senses. For the benefit, then, of that who may care to recall the days when they bought groundnut cakes from their picturesque vendors, I append the original recipe for
Philadtlphia Groundnut Cakts.—Boil two pounds of light-brown sugar in a preserving-kettle, with just enough water to thoroughly wet it, and when this sirup begins to boil throw in the white of an egg to clear it. Let it boil until a few drops of the sirup put into cold water become brittle; it Lthen sufficiently done, and must be taken from the fire and strained. Have ready a quarter of a peck of groundnuts, roasted in the shell and then shelled and hulled. Mix the nnts thoroughly through the sirup while it is yet hot. Dampen with i brush a pasteboard or marble slab, free from all grease, and drop the hot mixture upon it in little lumps, which must be flattened with a spoon iato thin cakes the size of a tumbler-top. When coW take them off of the board with a knife.
The following recipes are no less good md somewhat more practical, and show that the peanut can be made into dishes that can be served with every course, from soup to dessert:
Peanut Soup.—Shell and hull carefully three pounds of roasted nuts; pound them to a smooth paste in a mortar. Put the paste into a saucepan, set it over a fire, and stir into it slowly two qua of boiling water; season well with salt and caj
pepper, and let it simmer gently until it thickens, stirring occasionally to prevent burning. Serve very hot.
Peanut >'».'/' '"''•'' Oyttert.—Prepare three pounds of nuts aa in the preceding recipe; mix with the paste two tableepoonfuls of dour, smoothly blended with half a pint of cold water. Place the mixture in a saucepan over the tire, stir into it gradually a pint and a half of boiling water, or half milk and half water; add a email red pepper and a good pinch of salt, and boil fur fifteen minutes; then pat in one pint of fine oysters. Let the soup boil up on«e, taking care it does not burn, which it will do readily, and serve immediately.
thicken Stuffed with Peanuti.—Shell and hull two quarts of roasted nuts, pound them in a mortar, and take two-thirds for the stuffing, reserving the remainder for the sauce or gravy. Mix with the stuffing-paste one cup of fine cracker crumbs; season with a teaspoonful of salt and a sallspoonftil of cayenne pepper and a little chopped parsley; add one-third of a cup of melted butter. To make the peanut-sauce, remove the fat from the drippingpan after the chicken has been taken out, adding water sufficient to make nearly a pint. Thicken with floor, add salt, pepper, and the remainder of the plainest paste. Boil up once and serve.
Peanut Croguettei.—To make these, remove the shells and bulls from three pounds of roasted nuts; simmer them gently in good broth or gravy until they are soft enough to rub through a sieve with a potato masher. To each pint of this mixture add one ounce of butter and a-palatable seasoning of salt and pepper, and stir these ingredients over the fire until they are scalding hot, then place the saucepan where the eontents will keep hot without boiling; stir into them the yelks of six raw eggs, stirring the mixture constantly until the yelks thicken, taking care it does not boil, in which cafe the eggs will curdle. Cool the pur£e. Now wet the hands slightly with cold water and mold tablespoonfuls of the cold mixture into little pyramids. Boll them in cracker or bread-crumbs, dip them in beaten egg and then a tecond time in the crumbs, and drop them in boiling lard sufficient to cover them. When brown, take them out of the fat with a skimmer, lay them for a moment on coarse brown paper which will absorb the grease, sprinkle a little salt over them, and serve at once u a folded napkin.
Peanut Salad.—Have ready about three pints of freshly roasted nuts, carefully hulled, and place them in a dish of crisp, tender lettuce-leaves. Dress the salad with a plain French salad dressing made of one part vinegar, three parts oil, and highly seasoned with pepper and salt. The salad ahoild be eaten an soon as prepared, as it readily loeea its flavor and crispness.
Peanut Pattiet.—To one quart of roasted nuts pounded fine in a mortar, add ten well-beaten eggs, one pound of sugar, and a half a pound of batter. Line two dozen patty-pans with flaky puff-paste, and fill with the nut mixture. Bake in a moderate oven until the pastry is done. Dust the patties with powdered sugar; they are equally good eaten either hot or cold.
Peanut Sovfflt.—Make a purge of roasted nuts by simmering them in a gravy and mashing them through a sieve; add to about three ounces six
ounces powdered sugar, two ounces of flour, a teaspoonful of salt, and stir in gradually a pint and a half of milk. Set the saucepan over the fire and stir ita contents until they have boiled two minutes; then set it to one side of the stove, where they will not boil, and stir for one minute. Separate the yelks of seven eggs from the whites and stir the yelks, one at a time, into the souffle' mixture, watching that it does not boil. Add the whites beaten to a stiff froth, stirring them in very lightly. Put the mixture very quickly into a twoquart tin mold lined with buttered paper that rises several inches above the top. Bake twenty minutes in a moderate oven, and serve the instant it is done.
Peanut Cakes.—Pound one pint of roasted peanuts to a smooth paste; mix in one pint of lightbrown sugar and the whites of five eggs, beaten stiffly. Put the mixture into small buttered pans, and bake in a fair oven to a light brown.
Source: Arthur's Home Magazine ©1884