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• Gold cake with boiled icing, 1866

Boiling

Recipe adapted from A Domestic Cookbook by Malinda Russell. <br /> <br />This is a serious pound cake (20 egg yolks!) and, with brandy and rosewater (still popular flavorings) and cooked icings (becoming more and more common), typical of the time. (Also typical of the time is the recipe in the book for Magic Oil, which includes laudanum, chloroform, and hemlock amongst the ingredients. But that’s another article.) <br /> <br />Not much is known about Malinda Russell, for whom we can credit with this recipe, beyond what she said in her own words that open A Domestic Cookbook, the earliest known cookbook by an African American. I would quote verbatim, but instead I’ll just summarize with this: Her mother was the daughter of an emancipated slave, “one of the first families set free by Mr. Noodle of Virginia,” so by law, Malinda was born free. As an adult, she was twice robbed of her life savings made, at differing times, by working as a laundress, running a boarding house, and managing a pastry shop. Married for four years before the death of her husband and the single mother of “one child, a son, who is crippled,” she made her way from Tennessee to Virginia, back to Tennessee, and then onto Michigan during the Civil War. <br /> <br />It was in Michigan where Malinda wrote and published A Domestic Cookbook. “Hearing that Michigan was the Garden of the West, I resolved to make that my home, at least for the present, until peace is restored, when I think of returning to Greenville, Tennessee, to try and recover at least part of my property.” It is not yet known if she ever made it back; research into her story has only just begun.

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