Of all of the interesting things down in the Historic Sugartown Archives, the one I keep going back to is a cookbook. “Quaker Flavors: A Cookbook” published by Willistown Friends Meeting in 1976 holds a collection of Pennsylvania Quaker recipes collected from around Chester County, as well as several Quaker narratives, traditions, and short stories. 

After reading through the cookbook, I thought it might be fun to actually cook some of the recipes and see how they turn out! The majority of the recipes include things such as breads and baked goods, sides, appetizers, mains, etc. There are also a few recipes that seem to be regional/specific to this area (Philadelphia and the surrounding suburban areas).

However, the recipe I chose to try this week isn’t necessarily regional and doesn’t pay homage to the Philadelphia area in any specific way, but it does sort of pay homage to an ingredient that seemed to be pretty popular in the 1970s: gelatin. There are a decent amount of recipes found in the cookbook that include gelatin- some of which seem pretty normal and some of which are more… interesting (I’m looking at you, Tuna Mousse). As for the “normal” recipe, I went for the Lemon Cake by Josephine Copithorne. 

The ingredients are pretty simple, just a lemon cake mix, lemon Jell-O mix, water, oil (I used canola), and eggs. As someone who is definitely not a baker, I thought this recipe seemed approachable, so I grabbed my ingredients and got to work following the instructions. Everything came together fairly quickly and I popped the cake into the oven within ten minutes. The only change I had made was in the recommended pan size (spoiler: I had to leave the cake in the oven for a LONG time because of this). While the cake was baking, I followed the instructions for a glaze consisting of powdered sugar, lemon juice, and orange juice to pour over the cake once it was finished. Once the cake came out, I let it cool for a few minutes, poked some holes into the top with a fork, and then poured over the glaze.

It took a LOT of self restraint to let the cake cool before digging in, but a while later I was able to have a slice and I can tell you it was delicious! So delicious in fact, that I had to bring some into the office so that I don’t eat the entire thing myself. All in all, this was a fun experiment and I’m excited to pick out another fun recipe to try soon!