Manuscript recipe book in English and Swedish

Collection

Identifier: MSS 0097-Item 0188

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

Hannah Borg, a Swedish immigrant to the United States, kept this English and Swedish recipe book from the 1920s to the 1940s.

Borg frequently switched between writing recipes in Swedish and English. Her recipes reflect the influence of both Nordic and American foodways. The volume begins with a list in Swedish of daily meals planned or prepared over the course of several weeks. Each daily menu consisted of frukost (breakfast), middag (dinner or lunch), and kväll (supper). Several meal plans also included efterrätt (dessert). Common foods included kaffe (coffee), ågg (eggs), smörgås (sandwiches), mjölk (milk), and sill (herring).

Following the daily menus, Borg recorded a number of recipes in English. Between the first pages of English recipes, she pasted in a clipped recipe from Carnation for corn pone and corn-bread sticks. Borg included recipes for various desserts, including chocolate cream roll and coconut macaroons, as well as savory dishes like gnocchi and American Tagliarini. She attributed several recipes to women named Bertha, Rika, and Clara. Borg included several brand-name ingredients in her English-language recipes, such as Knox gelatin, Crisco, and Del Monte tomato sauce.

After a recipe in English for oatmeal cookies, Borg recorded more traditional Nordic recipes in Swedish, including gravlax (cured salmon), fiskomelett (fish omelet), and finsk fårstuvning (Finnish lamb stew). She also provided lengthy explanations in Swedish of how to make and serve ice cream. The last few pages of the volume contain a mixture of recipes in English and Swedish.

This volume is bound with a flexible black cloth cover and contains 62 pages of unlined, wove paper. The recipes are handwritten in pencil.

Dates

Creation: circa 1920-1950

Creator

Borg, Hannah Carolina (Person)

Language of Materials

Materials in English and Swedish.

Conditions Governing Access

The collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

Use of materials from this collection beyond the exceptions provided for in the Fair Use and Educational Use clauses of the U.S. Copyright Law may violate federal law. Permission to publish or reproduce isrequired from the copyright holder. Please contact Special Collections Department, University of Delaware Library, https://library.udel.edu/static/purl.php?askspec

Biographical Note

Hannah Carolina Borg is the probable creator of this recipe book. Borg signed the recipe book in several places and noted that she lived at 53 Lakeview Avenue in Piedmont, California, in 1927. Borg was born in Arkiva, Sweden, on September 2, 1898, and immigrated to the United States with her mother in 1919. She lived at 53 Lakeview Avenue in Piedmont, California, when she declared her intention to become an American citizen in 1928. According to the 1930 Federal Census, Borg could speak both Swedish and English. Hannah Borg petitioned for U.S. citizenship in 1933, at which time she lived in Burlingame, California. A 1949 advertisement for Carnation evaporated milk is pasted into the volume, suggesting that Borg kept the book from the 1920s to the 1940s.

SOURCES:

1930 Federal Census (accessed via Ancestry.com on July 7, 2017)

California Naturalization Papers, Northern District, San Francisco (accessed via Ancestry.com on July 7, 2017)

Information derived from the collection.