Potato Flour Muffins -- a vintage gluten-free recipe.

Here is a vintage recipe from 1929 for gluten-free muffins!

Potato Flour Muffins
3 eggs
2 tablespoons sugar
¾ cup potato flour, or potato starch
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons ice water

Separate the eggs and beat the whites until stiff and dry.  Beat the yolks until thick and lemon colored, then fold them into the whites.  Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt together and fold into the egg mixture.  Lastly add the ice water and fold until well mixed.  Bake in greased muffin tins at 375 degrees for 20 minutes.  Makes 12 muffins.
-- from Magic Chef Cooking, ca. 1929.

Potato starch and potato flour can be found more easily than ever these days, not just at Whole Foods, but even at Target!  My local Target store now has a grocery section including a small baking supply aisle, with several gluten-free products. 

Cheap dishes for tax season.

This is from Sarah Josepha Hale's book, The Good Housekeeper, from 1841.

Plain Boiled Rice.

Wash in four or five waters a pint of good rice; tie it in a pudding cloth, allowing plenty of room to swell; put it on in a pot of cold water, and let it boil slowly for two hours. It may be eaten with butter and sugar, or molasses.

Bread Pudding.

Pieces of dry bread, crust, &c., if kept clean, and used before they are sour, make good puddings; no prudent housekeeper will allow them to be wasted. Soak the crusts in milk till they are soft; then add eggs, sweetening, and spice to your taste. Bake or boil.

A Very Economical Dinner.

One pound of sausages cut in pieces, with four pounds of potatoes, and a few onions, if they are liked, with about a table-spoonful of flour mixed in with a pint of water and added to the dish, will make a sufficient dinner for five or six persons. The potatoes must be cut in slices, and stewed with the sausages till tender. Or you may use a pound and a half of meat (mutton is best) instead of the sausages. Season with pepper, salt and sage or thyme.