Abby Murphy

  • Under Construction

    More coming soon! Continue reading

  • Devil’s cake no. 1

    Yesterday I celebrated my birthday! I turned 27, just a few weeks after this blog turned 2. In between melting in the 90-degree heat and dashing through torrential rainstorms (yes, it was an eventful day, weather-wise), I enjoyed a pastry… Continue reading

  • Brewing and distilling the old-fashioned way

    Turns out cooking from historical recipes isn’t the only way to play with food and history. There’s a new trend brewing in the alcoholic beverage world (sorry, couldn’t resist). Cleveland’s Great Lakes Brewing Company, maker of some of the best… Continue reading

  • The best-laid plans of gardeners

    It’s been some time since we’ve visited the container garden. Let’s take a stroll, shall we? Here’s the basic layout: broad beans (the happy tall stalks in the corner); sugar snap peas climbing those bamboo trellises; one strawberry plant; onions… Continue reading

  • Two years

    Dear blog, Today you are older and hopefully wiser. (I’m not sure I am.) We’ve done quite a bit this past year… cooked from recipes from 1967, 1903, and the 1st century AD visited Downton Abbey through Victorian and Edwardian… Continue reading

  • Afternoon Adventure: Longwood Gardens

    A month ago my family met up in Philadelphia to celebrate my sister’s graduation. We had some free time before the festivities began, so we drove about an hour outside of the city to the Brandywine Valley, former home of… Continue reading

  • Dining at Downton: Gilded crust (pain perdu)

    When I took French in middle school and high school, I particularly loved the words that had both literal and figurative meanings. “Petit chou,” you might call your sweetheart, meaning…”little cabbage.” “Pomme de terre” was on the list of grocery… Continue reading

  • How to render suet for cooking

    Back when I first started this blog, I learned a few things right away about historical cooking. First, some old recipes are very similar to their modern counterparts (like pie). Second, animal fat is wonderful. From salt pork to lard,… Continue reading

  • Why I love historical recipes

    I’ve been chronicling my adventures in historical cooking for almost two years now (!), but it wasn’t until recently that I began to wonder why. I love history, isn’t that enough? Well, yeah, but what’s the bigger picture? Why does… Continue reading

  • Boiled ham (or, a foray into Eastern Europe)

    Sometimes I think way too hard about how to use up leftovers. The potential for waste bothers me. If we have half a head of red cabbage sitting in the crisper because Josh realized he really, really hates cabbage after… Continue reading