The Spirit of Seventy-Six!

In honor of the 250th birthday of the Declaration of Independence, all recipes through August 16, 2026 have been from Centennial and Bicentennial cookbooks and the 1796 first American cookbook. Enjoy this look at the (gastronomic) spirit of ’76 as we enjoy the sestercentennial!

I’ve also published a Sestercentennial Cookery with recipes and photos.

Coconut Cabbage and Pickled Shrimp: Cocoanut Cabbage, from the ca. 1915 40 Unique Dromedary Recipes of the Hills Bros. Company.; coconut; onions; curry; cabbage; shrimp

The pamphlet from Hills Brothers (the maker of Dromedary foods) is undated, so this is only approximately 1915, guessing from contemporary advertising. But curried cabbage is timeless, so it doesn’t matter.

The ingredients are all given in subjective amounts. Don’t sweat it. Just taste as you cook, and make what you like.

This uses pickled shrimp, which you can find in the recipe archive from last week.

Drop in again soon for another vintage recipe! I’ll have a different recipe every Sunday afternoon throughout the year. Keep an eye on this page or subscribe to the RSS feed for further details. You can also browse past featured Club recipes as well as some of the vintage promotional cookbooks I’ve used as sources. And I collect many of these recipes in A Traveling Man’s Cookery Book.

Recipe blogging:

Originals:

Inspirations:

Archives:

Dinner is never served until everyone present has at least three drinks. — Carl Randall (Life, Loves, and Meat Loaf)