The Kidlet and I visited a museum in South Baymouth while we were waiting for the ferry a few months ago. They had a whole bunch of books for sale, including several cookbooks. Two of the cookbooks were modern recipe collections compiled from locals. Flipping through was pretty nostalgic for me as a lot of the recipes looked like things that I remembered my mother and grandmother cooking when I was a kid. The third cookbook was a bit different. It was also a collection of write-in recipes, but they were all much older and interspersed with general cooking and diet advice as well as ads from various Manitoulin Island businesses -- all from the turn of the (20th) century. As best I can tell, the whole cookbook is a reprint of some earlier cookbook. The little info page that has been added in the front just informs me that my purchase goes to fund the ongoing research of the Michael's Bay Historical Society and that it is "a historical cook book of 1920's".

So, while I'm not sure of the exact dates and provenance of the recipes, it is a lovely snapshot of early 20th c. ads, businesses, and attitudes. It's not as nostalgic for me as the more modern recipes, but that's part of why I got it! I already know how to make a lot of those recipes from my childhood and, for the ones I don't, I can ask my mom. The recipes in "The Cook Book" are much more unfamiliar to me. So, if I was only going to get one book, this pretty much had to be it.

Now, in a lot of cases the recipes are pretty sparse on details. They leave out things like quantities or cooking instructions or simply tell you to "bake in a slow oven", etc. But that's okay. That's honestly part of the fun of working with older recipes. The other problem, of course, is that some of the recipes sound truly vile¹. And many of the ones that don't just sound a bit bland. But I'd still like to try out at least some of them! And this relatively inoffensive spaghetti recipe seemed like a decent place to start.

Because this is a historical recipe that requires some degree of interpretation, I've included a transcript of the the original text below and then my rendition of the recipe below that.

SPAGHETTI AND HAMBURGER STEAK
1 pkg. of spaghetti, 1/2 lb. of Hamburger steak, 1/2 can of tomatoes, 1/2 onion chopped fine, 1/4 lb. of grated cheese, 1/2 Tbsp. of butter. Boil spaghetti till tender. Let Hamburger steak, tomatoes and onion simmer together for 30 minutes, then add cheese and butter and simmer 15 minutes longer. Make a nest of the spaghetti on platter and pour meat mixture into it. Mushrooms added at the same time as cheese improve flavour.--Mrs. K. R. Montizambert.

Spaghetti and Hamburger Steak

Adapted from The Cook Book; recipe by Mrs. K. R. Montizambert

Ingredients

• 450g extra-lean ground beef²
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1/8 tsp. black peppercorns, ground
• 4 tsp. onion soup mix
• 1-2 cloves garlic, minced
• 100g mushrooms³, chopped (optional)
• 1 (800mL) can diced tomatoes
• 150mL tomato paste⁴
• 1 Tbsp. butter
• 225g mild cheddar, grated
• ~400g spaghetti, spaghettini, or capellini
• chile flakes, to serve (optional)

Directions

1. Cook the beef over medium-low heat for 5-6 minutes.
2. Increase the heat to medium, add the onion, and cook for another 5 minutes or so.
3. Add the pepper, soup mix, garlic, and mushrooms (if using), and cook for 10 minutes more.
4. Add the tomatoes and tomato paste, reduce heat to medium-low, and cook, uncovered, for 30-60 minutes.
5. Stir in the butter, then add the cheese and cook for another 15-20 minutes.
6. Meanwhile, cook the pasta.
7. Drain the pasta and transfer to a serving platter, making a nest into which to pour the sauce.
8. Pour the sauce into the pasta nest.
9. Top with chile flakes (if desired) and serve.

---

¹ Banana and celery salad, anyone? ^Back
2 Based on this recipe's presence in the "Luncheon Dishes" chapter of the cookbook, I suspect that this sauce is meant to be made with leftover hamburger steaks from dinner the night before. I didn't want to have to make hamburger steaks just to make this though, so I started with a pound of raw ground beef and just added a bit of garlic, black pepper, and onion soup mix to approximate hamburger steak. ^Back
3 I didn't end up using any mushrooms in mine, but I do think it would be tasty with some fungus in. I'd probably go for either cremini, oyster, or shiitake although white/button mushrooms would also be fine and probably more in line with what the recipe author was expecting when she suggested "mushrooms". ^Back
4 According to the original recipe, this was just meant to be done with a tin of tomatoes, hamburger steak, and an onion. No tomato paste. But I wanted to add a little more richness and body to the sauce, so I decided to toss in a tin of tomato paste that I had sitting in the pantry. I like the effect that this had on the sauce, but feel free to try it without the tomato paste if you'd like to stay truer to the original recipe or just prefer a somewhat thinner, lighter sauce. ^Back