AS THEY ARE TODAY, EGGS WERE A STAPLE IN Wisconsin households no matter what the occupants’ ethnic background. They not only were needed as an ingredient in numerous types of dishes, but could also be the main offering of any meal of the day.
In many places in Wisconsin, the woman of the house routinely made cheese of various kinds when milk was plentiful. Gladys M. Randall of Hustisford, for instance, remembered that her “great grandmother used to make American cheese for all her family using a large copper kettle. They had a small shed she called the cheese house, where she kept her utensils and made the cheese.”
This simple, pioneer favorite combined eggs with one of Wisconsin’s native products.
Maple syrup
Eggs
Heat the maple syrup to boiling and poach eggs as you would in water. Serve with some of the syrup spooned over.
Submitted by Mrs. Henry R. Bowers, Marion. “This was, of course,” she noted, “a spring treat to be had when the maple sap was running.”
“Take 8 eggs of which you separate the white and yolks. Mix the yolks with 5 tablespoons powdered sugar; stir in finely grated rind of ½ a lemon. Beat the white just until snowy; fold into yolks. Melt in a frying pan ¼ pound butter; when the butter is just a little more than lukewarm, add the eggs and stir just until they have soaked up the butter, then turn out onto a buttered plate; place this plate on hot ashes, sprinkle sugar over the omelette, and place covered in a very hot portable bread oven. Serve hot as soon as it is cooked.”
Translated from La Cuisinière Bourgeoise, the 1838 edition of a cookbook used by the Dousman family at Villa Louis in Prairie du Chien.
Edna Kern of Clarno (Green County) waters her laying hens, January 1956. WHi Image ID 25078
4 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon white pepper
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon minced parsley
1 tablespoon minced onion
2 cups milk
4 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
4 tablespoons grated Swiss cheese
6 eggs
Melt butter in a saucepan. Add flour, salt, pepper, bay leaf, parsley, and onion. Blend. Cook over low heat 2 minutes. Add milk and cook until thickened, stirring constantly. Remove bay leaf; add cheeses and stir until melted.
Place half of sauce in a ½-quart shallow baking dish. Break eggs evenly over the top and cover with remaining sauce. Bake at 350 degrees until eggs are set, about 25 minutes.
Submitted by Jean Schoch (Mrs. Donald) Magarian, Milwaukee.
¼ pound bacon, cut in small squares
½ cup flour
2 cups water
¾ cup vinegar
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
Eggs as needed
Mashed potatoes
Fry bacon in a frying pan until browned. Stir in flour, water, vinegar, sugar, and salt. Cook, stirring, until thickened. Break eggs into mixture about 3 at a time and poach until whites are set but yolks are still soft, turning over once gently with a spoon. Keep cooked eggs in a separate bowl until all are cooked, then return all eggs to the sauce.
To serve, place eggs on mashed potatoes and spoon sauce over.
Submitted by Viola (Mrs. Felix) Schuster, Menomonee Falls.
2 cups milk
¼ cup sugar
4 eggs, separated, whites stiffly beaten
1 cup plus 3 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ teaspoon lemon juice
1 cup raisins, washed and drained (optional)
4 tablespoons butter
Place milk, sugar, and egg yolks into a bowl. Beat well with a rotary beater. Add flour, baking powder, salt, vanilla, and lemon juice, beating constantly until batter is smooth. Fold in raisins (if desired) and stiffly beaten egg whites.
Melt butter in a broad, heavy skillet and pour in batter. Cook over high heat for a few minutes until a crust forms on the bottom. Cover and cook over low heat about 20 minutes or until mixture doubles in height. Remove cover and with a pancake turner chop into a crumbly texture, turning over frequently. Continue chopping and turning over low heat about 15 or 20 minutes.
Submitted by Mrs. Anne Shoberg, Milwaukee. Mrs. Shoberg served this “crumble omelette” as a luncheon dish “with a salad such as fruit salad, lettuce, or cole slaw and a beverage.” She wrote, “In spring, it is very good served with dandelion greens. During the Depression, when we lived on the farm, we had this for dinner many times with the various salads.”
Variations of the omelet like this one showed up on the table when eggs were plentiful.
12 eggs
1½ cups milk
1½ cups flour
1 tablespoon salt
Beat eggs well. Add milk, flour, and salt and mix smooth. Fry on a buttered griddle like pancakes.
Submitted by Mrs. Ervin Zahn, Shawano. “Sometimes they were served at breakfast and sometimes at supper; sometimes we ate them plain and sometimes with butter and/or jam,” she wrote. “Egg cakes taste something like an omelet—crisp and buttery—and we loved them.”
12 hard-boiled eggs
¾ cup mayonnaise
1 pint sour cream
Salt and pepper
Minced onion
Minced garlic
Sugar
1-pound can peas and carrots, drained
Paprika
Cut eggs in half; remove yolks and mash. Combine mayonnaise and sour cream; add salt, pepper, onion, garlic, and sugar to taste. Moisten yolks with a little of the mixture and stuff into whites. Add peas and carrots to remaining sour cream mixture. Spread in an 8- by 10-inch dish and arrange eggs, yolks down, in mixture. Sprinkle with paprika, cover, and refrigerate overnight.
Submitted by Mrs. Rosalie Franckowiak, Cudahy, who got the recipe from a Polish friend. With rye bread and butter, it makes a fine supper dish.
6 hard-boiled eggs, peeled
24 whole cloves
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon dry mustard
2 cups vinegar, divided
1 stick cinnamon
¼ bay leaf
1 small cooked beet with cooking liquid or ½ cup pickled beet juice
Stud each egg with 4 cloves. Mix salt, pepper, and mustard and moisten with enough cold vinegar so mixture pours. Heat remaining vinegar to boiling. Add cinnamon, bay leaf, and beet and liquid or beet juice. Slowly pour in mixed seasonings. Boil for 1 minute.
Place eggs in sterilized glass jar. Pour in boiling liquid and seal. Eggs will be ready to eat in two weeks.
Mrs. Byron Dolgner, Pardeeville, submitted this recipe from a 1924 cookbook.
These were made at Easter time to be eaten as a snack.
4 dozen eggs
2 quarts water
¾ cup caraway seed
1 teaspoon salt
Hard boil the eggs. While still hot, crack and roll the eggs between your hands so the entire shell has little cracks; but do not peel. Place in a bowl.
Bring water, caraway seed, and salt to a boil and boil 1 or 2 minutes. Pour over eggs. Make enough liquid to cover the eggs and let stand at least overnight. To keep longer, put eggs in refrigerator. The caraway taste penetrates the shells.
Submitted by Mrs. Theodore Toepel, Howards Grove.
Many Wisconsin families colored their Easter eggs with red onions in the days before store-bought dyes. Coffee grounds were sometimes added for a deeper brown color.
Fill any size saucepan or kettle half full of [red] onion peels. Add 1 cup of coffee grounds (from boiled coffee) and as many eggs as needed. Cover with water and let slowly come to a good boil. Cook until eggs are hard boiled.
Submitted by Mrs. Theodore Toepel, Howards Grove. “I still color some eggs this way,” she noted. “It seems a certain flavor even penetrates into these onion-peel-colored eggs.”
Very few people today have access, legal or otherwise, to the raw milk that is required to make cheese at home, but long ago, of course, it was as close as the nearest cow. Another ingredient needed for most cheeses is rennet, the enzyme that causes milk to separate into solid curds and liquid whey. It is available today from cheesemaking supply companies and at some grocery stores.
Wisconsin State Fairgoers enjoy a cooking demonstration featuring a cheese appetizer, late 1940s. WHi Image ID 33353
This cottage cheese was the simplest of cheeses to make.
1 gallon whole raw milk
Sour the milk by placing in a large pan or bowl at the back of the stove over a very low heat for several hours or until the curd has separated from the whey, and it is cooked through. Do not let it boil or get to the boiling point.
Spread a clean dish towel over a large pan and pour the soured milk into the towel. Bring the four corners together and hold up to drain. Hang and let curd drain for at least a day. Serve with salt and pepper or sugar or syrup.
Mrs. Rebecca Trumpy Gillings, Redgranite, submitted this recipe for cottage cheese. Her aunt, Mrs. Francis Riemer Burt, formerly of Albany and Brodhead, remembered that there was always a bowl of sour milk at the back of the stove and a bag of cottage cheese on the clothes line. Sometimes, instead of letting the whey drip on the ground, the Pennsylvania-Dutch would put a dish pan under the bag so the ducks could feed on it.
2 yellow coloring tablets (optional)
10 gallons fresh raw milk
1 rennet tablet, dissolved in ¼ cup water
⅔ cup salt
Paraffin
Dissolve coloring tablets, if using, in a little cold water.
Heat milk to 80 degrees and add color solution. Remove from stove and add rennet solution. Allow milk to stand 10 to 20 minutes or until a firm curd has formed.
Using a long knife, cut curd into 2-inch strips; cut strips crosswise. With hands, dip down at edge of kettle and bring curd up toward the center, wiggling finger to break curd into smaller pieces. Do this slowly and continue for about 10 minutes.
Return to heat and bring temperature to 102 degrees very slowly, stirring constantly. It should take 20 to 25 minutes to bring the temperature from 80 degrees to 102. Keep at 102 degrees until the curd is firm and springs back when pressed.
Pour off whey and add salt to curd.
Line a 7-quart press with muslin that has been wrung out of very hot water. Place a “bandage” of cheese cloth around the sides of the press. Put curd into lined press and top with another round of muslin; weight down. After 20 or 30 minutes, remove and straighten bandage and smooth out all wrinkles in the muslin. Replace and continue pressing 36 to 48 hours.
Remove cheese from press and store in a cool, well-ventilated room. After 3 days, dip cheese round in hot paraffin. The cheese should be turned end over end daily for 10 days or longer if moisture shows on the board where the cheese is kept.
Miss Louise Keiner, Greenwood, contributed this recipe that her family brought over from Switzerland.
2 gallons new (raw) whole milk
½ rennet tablet
1 tablespoon water
1 teaspoon salt
Heat milk to lukewarm. Crush and dissolve rennet tablet in water and add to warmed milk. Add salt. Let stand a few seconds, then stir with a ladle so the whey separates from the curd. Pour off whey. Press curds with hands until remaining whey is eliminated. Continue pressing into a ¾-inch flat cake. Place on a wooden slat and place in a slanting position on top of a frying or baking pan (to catch any additional whey). Put into a 450 degree oven and bake until golden brown on both sides.
Submitted by Mrs. Edward Pudas, Iron River, who added that her mother curdled the milk with the inner membrane of the stomach of a very young calf in the days before rennet tablets were on the market.
A number of cuisines, including Russian and Polish, have a dish that calls for a cottage cheese mixture folded into an eggy pancake. This version is Jewish.
1 cup sifted flour
3 eggs, beaten with a little salt
About ¾ cup water
Butter
Cottage Cheese Filling (see below)
Sour cream or fruit sauce
Add flour little by little into beaten eggs, mixing with a whip. Add enough water to make a runny consistency.
Heat a heavy 6-inch skillet over medium heat. Keep heat at medium during the making of the pancakes and do not let the skillet get too hot. Grease skillet lightly with butter and pour about ⅛ cup of batter into pan, tilting to distribute evenly. Fry until pancake blisters. Turn out, fried side up, on a cutting board covered with a clean dish cloth (not terrycloth). Repeat until all batter is used up, stirring batter frequently so flour does not settle at the bottom.
When all pancakes have been made and cooled, place a rounded tablespoon of cottage cheese filling (see below) in the middle of each pancake, fold over from both sides, then fold ends into envelope shape. (Or place mixture at top of circle, fold over both sides, then roll into sausage shape.)
Just before serving, fry blintzes in butter until golden brown.
Serve hot with sour cream or blueberry (or any fruit) sauce. Makes 25 blintzes.
1½ cups dry cottage cheese
Salt
2 egg yolks, beaten
1 tablespoon melted butter
1 tablespoon sugar
Press cheese through a colander or sieve. Salt lightly and add egg yolks, butter, and sugar.
Submitted by Mrs. Herman Tuchman, Milwaukee.
