NEW MARKET — Discovered between the pages of Jacob Bushong’s account book, dating back to 1843, were recipes written by his wife, Sarah Strickler Bushong, commonly known as “Mother Bushong.”
A cookbook, “Mother Bushong’s Sponge Cake and Other 19th Century Recipes,” researched and written by Stacey Nadeua and first published in 2014 was recently reintroduced at the Virginia Museum of the Civil War as part the 200th anniversary of the 1825 historic Bushong home, site of the Battle of New Market during the Civil War.
The cookbook is divided into two sections and features 48 recipes.
“Most of them were in the back of Jacob’s account book,” said visitors service technician Charmaine Detrow, who worked closely with Nadeua, now deceased, during the two-year research process.
At the time, Detrow said, Nadeua was a newly minted historical interpreter tasked with researching the Bushong family.
Directed to the archives in Lexington, Nadeau discovered the account book, which had to remain in the Lexington collection because of its contents.
“She took picture after picture,” recalled Detrow. “It was 85 miles down the road, so she had something like 10 pictures per page to make sure she got the base.”
Detrow said the recipes were written in pencil, and the handwriting was noticeably different from Jacob’s handwriting.
“They were recipes by their measurements and ingredients. I know they were from a later date than the accounts, but she couldn’t figure out who the handwriting was.”
According to Sarah Hebert, assistant site manager and educator at the Virginia Museum of the Civil War, the recipes were written down by Jacob and Sarah’s granddaughter, Mattie, the daughter of Anderson and Delilah Bushong.
It could be said that Nadeau made a remarkable rediscovery.
“From my perspective, when you look at that sponge cake recipe, you’re whipping eggs, and in what Stacey had written, it’s for the modern person to make,” explained Hebert, addressing how the cookbook connects to museum visitors. “Put it in your mixer and five minutes later it’s done. During the [Civil] War, you’re doing it by hand. But it’s special. Special enough the Mattie wrote it down in the back of the account book. She wanted to remember that recipe.”
Popular recipes from the cookbook include a wilted salad, sugar cookies, pork chops, which was an important food staple during the 19th century, and ginger cake, served with a custard sauce or whipped cream.
“A minimum of two volunteers tested every recipe [for the cookbook],” recalled Detrow, one of the volunteers Nadeau recruited.
“There were a couple dozen or so of us,” Detrow recalled. “I know there was one recipe that at least five of us tested and all five of us failed because we were putting in eight eggs, rather than five. All five of us read it as eight, but if you reduced it by three eggs it worked.”
The recipe turned out to be Mother Bushong’s Sponge Cake, a cake that relied on “air beaten into the eggs to provide the cake with a light springy texture,” according to the description.
Each recipe was tested against modern-day standards.
“That was her goal,” said Detrow of Nadeau’s work. “To be used by modern cooks. But if you wanted to be a reenactor and cook on the hearth, you could do that as well.”
The recipes were during the museum’s Food Waste seminar when volunteers would cook outside the Bushong family home from April through October to allow visitors to taste the family recipes.
“The family used what they had; they cooked seasonally,” said Detrow, explaining how the cookbook transitions to tell about daily life during the Civil War.
“‘May 15, 1984,” the cookbook reads. “Their world changed forever. Ten thousand soldiers battle in Jacob’s wheat field. Hundreds of wounded soldiers pass through the doors of the farmhouse….”
“You didn’t have strawberries in April or in December,” explained Detrow. “You had strawberries for May, until maybe the end of June. So, that’s when you did strawberries. Your fresh pork was around November, because that’s when most of the butchering was going on. You salted it down or preserved it.”
Cauliflower macaroni, Detrow said, was today’s version of macaroni. Nadeua wrote, “Even then, they knew that cauliflower made a tasty substitute.”
“Macaroni pudding is really good too,” Detrow said, adding that it’s not made from macaroni, but rather bucatini, the predecessor to the modern-day version of macaroni.
Finding some of the ingredients listed on the original recipes posed a challenge for Hebert when she went to make the Christmas pudding or steamed carrot pudding.
“It’s a beautiful pudding with a sauce on top and it calls for beef suet,” said Hebert, adding that while the suet was not impossible to find it did take some effort to locate.
“Because we live in a more rural area, it was a little easier to find, but if I lived in Northern Virginia, I would have had to find a substitute,” she said.
Both women agreed, it’s possible to make modern-day adjustments as needed. For instance, using Crisco in place of the beef suet.
For the second part of the cookbook, Nadeau sought out popular recipes from the 1960s and 70s and contacted local family members.
“Everything in here is pretty good,” said Detrow, adding that if she had to choose a favorite recipe, it would be the pork chops, with the cauliflower macaroni and wilted salad as her sides.
As a dessert person, Hebert said she’d have to pick the Christmas pudding, as she “happens to enjoy its ingredients.”
The cookbook is available for sale inside the Virginia Museum of the Civil War, located at 8895 George Collins Parkway in New Market.
