Heirloom recipes are a time machine of taste, a portal into the past flavor experiences of our ancestors.
A good recipe recreated is an homage to our forebearers. A spell we cast, a summoning of sorts to have them among us again as we partake of the thing.
When I was just a little kid running around my neighborhood there was an old Irish Couple that lived across the street from me, the O’Donnell’s. I distinctly remember the little statuette of a leprechaun near their front step that I used to sit on.
I don’t have a clear memory of them just rather gauzy impressions of fresh baked smells, their brogues and smiles carved into deep wizened features, and a deeper kindness. They were the embodiment of Irish hospitality, always offering me a cool drink in summer or a treat of some sort.
While Ireland does not have as much a celebrated culinary heritage as some other cultures (we are people of lyrical sensibility, and deft at weaving prose…. think Joyce, Keats, Beckett, Wilde among others) we do have some treasures of taste: Boxty, Colcannon, Cottage Pie and I mean Guinness perhaps one of the finest brews to ever exist and I will fight anyone over this point. Combative, another Irish trait. And of course, this Irish Soda Bread.
Kay O’Donnell shared her recipe for her mother’s Irish Soda Bread with my mom and she then shared with me. This has been baked and devoured every year, around Saint Patrick’s Day since my birth, I bake it now, my sister now serves it. A recipe that has crossed oceans and generations to arrive at your table.
Slainte!!
Irish Soda Bread
4Cs unsifted, unbleached flour 2/3 Cs sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1tsp baking soda
1tsp salt
2/3 Cs Crisco
1/2 Craisins
1Cbuttermilk
1gl egg
Blend dry ingredients and add Crisco or oil. Put milk and egg in a small bowl and whisk together. Meanwhile put raisins into warm tap water to moisten them. Then add drained raisins and milk and egg mixture to the dry ingredients. If too dry add a little more milk or if too wet add more flour. Knead 1⁄2 the mixture at a time on a floured surface. Form into round loaves and cut a crisscross into the top of each loaf. Bake at 350.