15 Long-Forgotten Pioneer Recipes (2024)

Cook meat on both sides in heavy frying pan until crisp. Remove from pan and keep warm. Measure fat and return desired amount to skillet. Add flour and brown slightly. Remove from heat and add milk, stirring well to blend. Return to heat and cook and stir until mixture is thick and smooth. Season to taste. Serve with side pork on potatoes, biscuits, cornbread, or even pancakes.

Lazy Cobbler

This updated version of an old cowboy dessert, sometimes called dump, will serve 12 hungry cowboys.

Cook in a 12’ Dutch oven. Use 2 cans slices peaches or pineapple with syrup, 1 package of white or yellow cake mix, 1/3 stick butter and some ground cinnamon. Place fruit into oven. Spread cake mix evenly over fruit. Sprinkle cinnamon and thin slices of butter on top. . Put lid on top of oven

Place 15 hot charcoal briquettes on the bottom and 10 on the top. Bake for about 45 minutes or until you can stick a toothpick into the cake without having batter on it when you pull the toothpick out.

If you would like to mix the peaches into the cake, do so when the cobbler is about half done, and continue baking until done.

Fart & Dart Beans

The following is not an actual 1800’s cattle drive recipe. However, it is in the spirit of the bean dishes the cowboys ate. Even better yet, it tastes great.

Mix together one 16 ounce can of the following: Pinto beans, pork & beans, red kidney beans, lima beans, white northern beans and butter beans.

1 lb cut up bacon
1 chopped onion
½ tsp minced garlic
½ tsp prepared mustard
½ cup vinegar
1 cup of brown sugar

Fry the bacon until done, but not crisp. Pour beans, bacon, onion and garlic into large pan and mix. Simmer for 15 minutes a combination of the mustard, vinegar and brown sugar.

Pour the liquid over the beans and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour. Mix the beans a couple of times during the cooking process.

Making Tough Beef Tender

1886 Daily Bee, Sacramento, California

Lay meat out smoothly and wipe it dry.

Take a coffee cup full of fine breadcrumbs, a little salt and pepper, a little powdered thyme or other sweet herb, and just enough milk to moisten to a stiff dressing. Mix well and spread over the meat. Roll it up and tie it up with twine.

Brown in salt pork fat, then put in half a pint of water. Cover and cook.

The toughest meat is made tender and nutritious when cooked in this way.

Butterless, Eggless, Milkless Cake

Amazingly this works. However, it is best eaten fresh out of the oven.

• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup cold water
• 1 1/2 cup raisins
• 1/3 cup shortening
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp cloves
• 1/2 tsp salt

Boil the above together for 3 minutes. Let cool. The add:

• 1 tsp baking soda dissolved in 2 tbsp (25 mL) hot water
• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder

Bake in a flat pan at 350°F (180°C) for 35 to 40 minutes.

Source:Boomtown’s Second Edition of Women’s Auxiliary of the Western Development Museum Cookbook,published in 1966/1967.

Brunswick stew

This version of the stew is as easy as 1-2-3. You don’t need to find a tobacco field to enjoy it.

Ingredients (All cans are the 16-ounce size.)

1 can of lima beans
1 can of corn
1 can of chicken broth
1 can of chicken, or 1 pound of fresh cooked chicken
1 squirrel tail (optional)
2 large onions, chopped up
2 cans of chopped tomatoes
3 cooked, peeled, and chopped potatoes
A dash of pepper, garlic, brown sugar, and salt
Cooking oil
Hot sauce to taste

Put the onions and a tad of oil into the pot first and cook them ’til they turn clear, then add all the rest.

Depending on the amount of juice from the vegetables, you might have to add a little water. Keep it bubbling, and stir it for about 20 minutes.

Two or three eastern communities with the name of “Brunswick” like to claim this stew as their own concoction, but generally, Brunswick County, Virginia, is given the credit. It is thought to have come about in the early 1800s.

Hoe cakes

These are a Southern tradition.

Ingredients

A pot full of water
3 cups corn meal
1 teaspoon of salt
Shortening

Put a pot of water on the stove to boil. Mix corn meal and salt in a large bowl. Slowly add boiling water ’til the batter becomes mushy but not stiff. Let this sit while you heat up some shortening in a skillet. When the shortening is hot but not smoking, drop several heaping tablespoons of the corn meal mixture into the pan.

Keep the corn “cakes” separate so they don’t run together. Turn down the heat a little, then flip them over and cook the other side. They should be flat and crispy golden brown. That’s it.

These are called HOE cakes because they were originally cooked over a fire on the flat part of a garden hoe. They are basically an African-American invention and are like those potato chips . . . you can’t eat just one—especially if you drip butter on top.

With the wild fruits—plums, cherries, grapes, gooseberries, currants—and the glorious fresh fruit cultivated so successfully from imported cuttings, the early pioneer women were soon making some of the delicacies that reminded them of “home.” Two of the favorites were Swiss apple-cherry pie, a recipe that came into the valley with a young Swiss convert who was famed for its making, and 101-year-old pastry, as good today as it was in the early days.

Swiss Apple-Cherry Pie