The year is 1634 and my ancestor Robert Day came to Ameria and landed in Boston with his wife Mary. Mary died shortly after arriving and Robert remarried Editha Stebbens and started a family. They are my 8th great grandfather and grandmother.
So picture Editha making this cheese cake for Robert. Maybe she read this recipe that was published in London in 1662 that was followed by our earliest colonists.
Mrs. Leeds Cheese Cake
Take six quarts of milk an reen it ( and rennit) pretty cold and when it is tender come, drain from it your whey bedropt from it, then presse it, change it into dry cloathes till it wet the cloth no longer, then beat it in a stone mortar till itbe like butter, then strayne it through a thin straynor, mingle it with a pound and a half of butter with your hands, take one pound of almonds and heat them with rose water till they be like your curd, then mingle them with the yolks of twenty eggs and a quart of cream, two great nutmegs and one pound and a half of surgar. When your coffins are ready and going to set in the oven, then mingle them together. let your oven be hot enough for a Pigeon pye and lett a stone stand up till the scorching be passed, then set them in. Half an hour will bake them well . Your coffins must be made with milk and butter as stiff as for other paste, then you must set them into a pirty hot oven and fill them full of bran and when they are hardened take them out and with and wing, brush out the bran - they must be pricked.
Okay any one understand what you just read. I am sure Editha understood it but I don't.
This recipe was found in " The Old Farmer's Almanac Colonial Cookbook" edited by Clarissa Silitch. It is full of recipes our ancestors would of followed.
Thanks for stopping by .. hope that you enjoyed this vintage recipe. Grace
