The kitchen pages.

Aunt Rilla's pickled crabapples

From the Halverson book · given with blessing · first printed Vol. IX

A peck of small crabapples, stems left on. Wash, prick each one with a fork so the syrup gets in.

For the syrup: four cups vinegar, seven cups brown sugar, one stick of cinnamon broke in half, six cloves, a pinch of mace if you've got it. Boil it up, then slide the apples in and simmer till they just give when you poke one — not so long they burst.

Ladle hot into jars, pour syrup over, lid them up.

Rilla always said wait two months. Nobody ever did. They are, in fairness, better in January than they are in October.

Grange-supper cornbread

Composite recipe · agreed at the sorting table after three sortings and one argument

Heat the cast-iron skillet in the oven with a good spoon of bacon grease in it, oven at hot (400°, give or take).

In a bowl: two cups yellow cornmeal, one cup flour, a tablespoon baking powder, a teaspoon salt, two tablespoons sugar (or don't — half the table objects). Stir in two eggs, about one and three-quarter cups buttermilk, and a good splash of melted butter.

Pour into the hot skillet — it should sizzle — and bake till the top is the color of a russet apple, about 22 minutes.

This is the cornbread we feed neighbors when they come to dig out a smokehouse. It is not sweet cornbread. Do not mistake it for the kind in a box.

Rivvel soup (chicken broth with little lumps)

From the Pratt book, penciled on the inside back cover · given with blessing

Make chicken broth the way you do. (Edna says: a whole hen, an onion stuck with two cloves, a stalk of celery, a bay leaf, cover with water, simmer an afternoon.)

For the rivvels: one egg, a pinch of salt, and enough flour stirred in with a fork till it goes crumbly — not a dough, not a batter, but pea-sized lumps. Drop them into the simmering broth a few at a time. They'll cook in three, maybe four minutes.

Serve in a shallow bowl with pepper and, if it's a cold evening, a piece of the cornbread above.

Rivvel is a word we think came over with somebody's great-grandmother. It turns up in three of our books and always means the same thing. If you know where the word came from, we'd be glad to learn.

Green-tomato mincemeat pie

From the Sorrel book · given with blessing · typical of what got made after a hard frost came while the tomatoes were still on the vine

Chop four cups green tomatoes fine, salt them a little, let them drain an hour. Chop four cups tart apples. Put both in a heavy pot with two cups brown sugar, a cup of raisins, a cup of cider vinegar, the zest and juice of a lemon, a teaspoon each of cinnamon and cloves, half a teaspoon of allspice, a pinch of salt. Simmer it down till thick, an hour or so, stirring so it doesn't catch.

Ladle into a double-crust pie shell, lattice the top, bake at 375° till the juice is bubbling through and the crust is brown — forty-five minutes or thereabouts.

Keeps well. Better the second day. Better still with a slice of sharp cheese.