The Bad Lands Cow Boy (spaces intentional) was one of the earliest newspapers in Dakota Territory -- positioned out in the far west edge of the region, with very little else was in the area. Those that lived in the badlands were homesteading pioneers, trying to eke out a living with miles upon miles between their home and civilization.
So, you can imagine the newspaper's recipe section is designed to be simple, difficult to mess up, and requiring a minimum of basic ingredients. Here's a selection from February, 1884:
Recipes for "Home."
- Cookies.--One cup butter, one cup sugar, two eggs, well beaten, one teaspoonful soda, and one tablespoonful ginger; flour to make a soft dough; roll thin and bake quickly.
- Roll Jelly Cake.--Three eggs, well beaten; one cup butter; one cup sugar; one cup flour; one teaspoonful soda, and nutmeg to suit your taste; bake ten minutes in long pan; spread with jelly and roll; wrap in a cloth around it till cool.
- Lazy Woman's Pie.--Two eggs, two tablespoons sugar, two heaping tablespoons flour, two-thirds of a pint of sweet milk; flavor same as custard pie, and bake without a crust in a buttered pie-tin.
- Currant Pudding.--Two eggs, one-fourth cup sugar, two tablespoons butter, two-thirds pint sour milk, and one-half teaspoonful soda; flour enough to make a thick batter; then flour one teacupful of English currants, stir them in, and steam one and one-half hours; to be eaten with cream and sugar, or pudding sauce.
- Lemon Jelly.--Juice of one lemon, one cup sugar, one egg, one tablespoonful butter; boil till thick.
If you're unfamiliar with your nineteenth-century cooking terminology, here's some help:
- Sweet Milk is whole milk, named such to distinguish it from buttermilk.
- Sour milk is either milk with a mild acid added, or since it's often a substitute for buttermilk, you could use buttermilk as well.
- Steaming a pudding is a specific skill, but the BBC is here to help.
- Pudding sauce is essentially sugar gravy, a sweet syrup that can be made in a variety of ways.
You'll note that all these ingredients are the kind of pantry materials that don't require special storage or (like milk and eggs) can be gotten directly from the source on short notice. The exact sort of things you'd have bought in bulk in town, a couple month's-worth at a time, because you might be stuck on your claim for a while before you can get back into town again.
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