Syllabub was a crowd-pleaser at Colonial-era fancy balls. It's sweet and foamy and pretty. It's whipped together cream, sweet white wine, and cream sherry with lemon juice and sugar. If you use heavy cream, it whips up nice and thick; you can eat it with a spoon.
For best results, you can't make this one on the spur of the moment, it has to rest overnight for the flavors to come into harmony.
This is another old Plymouth favorite. There's a Clam Pudding Pond in Plymouth, and one of my friends lives on Clam Pudding Road!
This is a combination of ground sea clams and finely crushed crackers, bound together with egg. There's no leavening in it, so it does not puff up in the oven, but nevertheless it's not heavy. This is good served as a luncheon dish with salad or soup or as a side dish to a main course, and leftovers are delicious fried up in hot butter!
I don't remember seeing this in any of my old Plymouth cookbooks, but Richmond and Annette knew it well, and others in their circle remembered it.
A colonial-style recipe from before the days of molasses-sweetened nostalgia-food. This would have been made with the ubiquitous salt-beef available in barrels everywhere that there were cattle and salt. Most homes would have had salt pork (see Pork and Beans but commercial establishments and ships would have had access to beef.
Note that sweetening with molasses would be "in-period" but I have seen no mention of it for this recipe. This recipe is rather no-nonsense, but it is nourishing and not unpleasant. I would add dry mustard before adding any sweetening agent. The molasses does better in the Pork and Beans recipe.
This classic favorite becomes extra-special when made with local stone-ground cornmeal. I got the recipe from Suzanne Cary Gruver's Cape cod Cook Book.
There are different kinds of cornbread. Many restaurants today make something that to my mind is too like a corn muffin; it's too sweet, soft and spongy, and hasn't much fresh corn flavor at all.
This recipe makes a cornbread to savor with a meal. It has substance and enough flavor to complement many dishes, especially those we make in the autumn and winter months.
There are still mills around New England where you can get fresh-milled cornmeal. I made this one with meal from Dexter's Grist Mill in Sandwich, MA.
