Heirloom Cooking with the Brass Sisters: Recipes You Remember and Love

The Brass sisters (Heirloom Baking) once again pore through their impressive collection of timeworn note cards, cookbooks and manuscripts to offer up an assemblage of culinary favorites from yesteryear. Those expecting a compilation of curiosities will be largely disappointed, as the duo focus on homemade dishes that have stood the test of time: Clam Chowder, Irish Lamb Stew, Meatloaf, Chicken Soup and Red Velvet Cake outnumber novelties like Candle Salad, a 1950s-era combo of lettuce, pineapple, bananas, green bell pepper, maraschino cherries and sour cream (or mayo). Recipes are straightforward and simple, and ingredients are easily sourced; this is the stuff of potlucks, church dinners and family get-togethers. The sisters' collection is remarkable, if not exactly showy, with recipes for Split Pea Soup and Blueberry Buckle that are more than a hundred years old. Food historians will appreciate the sisters' homey anecdotes (up to and including reproductions of original recipe cards). Though not definitive (and with no aspirations to be), this leisurely, nostalgic collection of homemade favorites brings a heaping portion of America's cooking traditions to the modern table.