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Cooking Forgotten 100 Year Old Recipes (Not What I Expected!)

Barry Lewis

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I cooked 100 year old recipes to see if they still taste any good today – Porcupine Meatballs and Snow Pudding. One held up surprisingly well… the other, well, let’s just say edible shaving foam.

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Full Blog Post: https://barrylewis.net/recipe/cooking...

Ingredients – Porcupine Meatballs
450g beef mince
100g uncooked long grain rice
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 egg
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
1 tin cream of tomato soup (≈400g, UK) or 500ml tomato juice/passata

Ingredients – Snow Pudding
40g cornflour (cornstarch)
200g caster sugar (150g base, 50g custard)
475ml water
2 medium eggs, separated
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Pinch of salt
250ml milk (for custard sauce)
1 glacé cherry (to garnish)

I’m Barry, a self-taught cook from the UK, filming food fun in my kitchen. From retro recipes and taste tests to kitchen gadget reviews and quirky experiments, there’s always something new cooking here. Subscribe and join in!

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#100YearOldRecipes #BarryLewis #PorcupineMeatballs

20 Comments

@mrbarrylewis Creator 1 year ago Pinned

What’s the oldest recipe YOU’ve ever tried — and did it actually taste any good?
These 100 year old Porcupine Meatballs and Snow Pudding really surprised me (one for good reasons… one less so).
Full write-up + ingredients here: https://barrylewis.net/recipe/cooking-100-year-old-recipes-porcupine-meatballs-and-snow-pudding/

@Ian_pilcher 1 year ago

What did you do to that poor custard😂

@spidy666uk 1 year ago

That custard is a crime against humanity Barry. We need someone too roast that next lol

@meacadwell 1 year ago

Yum! Porcupine meatballs. I grew up with them and still make them.

@thebratqueen 1 year ago

Oh man, the porcupine meatballs zoomed me back to my childhood. I didn't even remember we had those until you showed them. Wild!

@sos_legio_primus 1 year ago

Barry!
That is not custard, it's sweet scrambled eggs😂😂😂😂😂

@samanthahughes7783 1 year ago

Curdled the custard worse than I would 😂😂😂

@Sethonious 1 year ago

I love porcupine balls. I regularly make these for my family. I knew they were a bit of a struggle meal growing up, but they became beloved. Now serve it on a heap of steamed cabbage (cause pasta was too expensive if we bought meat) and you’re right back there.

@purplepikminYT 8 months ago

i almost cried when you droped Porcupine meatballs. this is a lost recipes from my childhood that i given and lost from my late grandmama. thank you, alott

@ScotsmanLost 1 year ago

We used to have porcupine meatballs all through the 70s and 80s. It was a normal dish in Scotland. You must have lived a sheltered life Barry! 🙂

@deereating9267 1 year ago (edited)

I grew up eating like someone from 100 years ago because my grandmother was born in the early 1900's and our region didn't have electricity until 1957. Lots of cured meats, home grown vegetables and biscuits. I love old recipes and food history, I've made a Roman pork dish that was amazing, but every time you make porridge, it's from - like - 6,000 BC at least.

@stitchesbysue 1 year ago

Flouting Islands was a technical challenge on the Great British Baking Show/Bake Off a number of years ago.

@PhantasmicPhread 1 year ago

Omg! Porcupines 😋 I'm from Australia and my mother makes porcupines. We use Heinz tomato soup though and we put them in a casserole dish, cover them with tomato soup and then bake them in the oven.

Serve on top of mashed potatoes!

@LifeOfNigh 1 year ago (edited)

Here in Newfoundland, Canada, we still make porcucine meatballs. Different sauces, but the balls are made the same. We usually do the meatballs smaller though. More bite sized. It makes them more porcupine-y.

@buddygrouper3599 1 year ago

You are never prepared for how large porcupines are. It's like Aaaa! Why is that heavily armoured coffee table moving!

@MonicaPrinceFam 11 months ago

In the 70s, porcupines were the one of the first recipes I made as a kid. We used Minute Rice, which is parboiled and dried instant rice. In a tomato sauce with more rice and some veggies. Love from Austin, Texas.

@missy13d69 1 year ago

Porcupine meatballs are legitimately one of my favorite meals ever. My mom turned it into a pressure cooker recipe, and they are so good. I like them when they are almost burnt, when they have a deep rich flavor, right before they reach actually burnt.

@carlychichester5271 11 months ago

I taught high school for many years, beginning in 1974. Between classes I was talking to a colleague and two of my students overheard me saying I was cooking porcupine balls for supper. One of the students looked at me, genuinely intrigued, and asked, "How in the world do you get balls off a porcupine?!" I think of you, Alisha, every time I hear of this recipe.

@elfenhexchen 1 year ago

In austria we always put a bit of salt into sweet stuff and a bit of sugar into savoury food. It brings out the flavours more.
It's so weird to hear someone beeing surprised by it! Shows how different all of our cultures are!