Big news for those of you who are following my food posts about Aunt Lil.  I now have a blog dedicated to Aunt Lil and vintage cooking from 1900 to 1950!

The new blog is called Aunt Lil’s Kitchen (www.auntlilskitchen.com).  It’s really cool!  My marvelous hubby, Dan, created the theme for me.

Please visit Aunt Lil’s Kitchen as I continue to talk about Aunt Lil, her recipes, and vintage cooking.

Just baked cookies!

I made Christmas cookies this week to give as gifts for my co-workers. Of course I wanted to use Aunt Lillian’s recipes. The best ones from her cook book for Christmas were her Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, which I’ve already blogged about and a new one I tried. These were her Molasses Fruit Cookies. Both are sure fire hits that everyone loves!

Here I am with the finished batch of Oatmeal Raisin Cookies. Both of these cookies stay moist and chewy forever – and I mean forever!

Lillian’s Molasses Fruit Cookies were interesting. I needed to find a similar molasses cookie recipe that had raisins and nuts – not such a common thing in Molasses Cookies, but not uncommon either as I found in searching the internet. Here is Aunt Lil’s recipe:

Molasses Fruit Cookies

• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 tablespoon lemon
• 3 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ginger
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 stick softened butter
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 cup molasses
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1/2 cup walnuts

Making soured milk for Molasses Cookies

Make your soured milk by mixing 1/2 tablespoon of lemon with 1/2 cup milk. Let this sit for 15 minutes. Stir once more and its now ready for your recipe. Set aside.

Next sift flour, baking soda, salt, ginger & cinnamon together. Cream sugar with the softened butter and then add beaten egg and molasses. Add sifted ingredients alternately with the soured milk in small amounts to make a batter. Add the nuts and raisins. This will be a very wet batter. Drop from a teaspoon onto a greased cookie sheet and bake in a pre-heated 350 degree oven for 12 minutes. Cool on racks.

Molasses Fruit Cookies out of the oven

Merry Christmas everyone!

It’s Thanksgiving tomorrow and I’m waiting for my pie dough to “meld” in the fridge so I thought I’d take a look at Thanksgiving menus from my array of vintage cookbooks. I have six cook books that give suggested Thanksgiving menus that range in date from 1896 – 1942. It was from perusing these menus that I came up with our menu for tomorrow’s feast by searching for the most common elements.

Turkey was of course the winner, although surprisingly there were optional menus for pork, chicken, and roast for the daring family wanting to think outside-the-box. Stuffing was also mandatory, but the type of stuffing ran the gamut. All of them called for either cranberry jelly or relish.

Five out of six called for celery as a starter. This may surprise you, but to our early 20th century relatives celery was still an exotic vegetable to be savored and relished! Not just something to be cut up and used to flavor our food. Five out of six also called for mashed potatoes which is no surprise.

The next big winners  with 4 out of 6 votes were: starting the meal with either a clear or oyster soup, having a salad to accompany the meal, and using a giblet gravy.

Here’s a look at the most complicated menu from Fannie Farmer’s 1896 Boston Cooking School Cook Book

• Oyster Soup with Crisp Crackers
• Celery and Salted Almonds
• Roast Turkey and Cranberry Jelly
• Mashed Potatoes, Onions in Cream, Squash
• Chicken Pie
• Fruit Pudding in Sterling Sauce
• Mince Pie,  Apple Pie, Squash Pie
• Fruit, Nuts & Raisins,  Bon Bons
• Crackers & Cheese and Cafe Noir

Phew! I’m exhausted. Obviously Fannie expected you to have servants in the house or a huge family to do all this cooking. I wasn’t about to tackle all this myself! By 1942 her cookbook’s menu is much more reasonable, reflecting the shift in American households away from having a servant or two at home. And the fact that we were no longer eating such huge meals!

One of the least complicated menus comes from my 1939 Every Homemaker’s Cook Book. Written at the end of the Depression with World War II looming, the cook book stresses economy throughout. So its not surprising that the Thanksgiving menu is not extravagant.

• Assorted Canapes
• Celery,  Olives, Carrot Straws
• Roasted Stuffed Turkey with Giblet Gravy
• Cranberry Relish
• Mashed Potatoes & Turnips,  Brussel Sprouts
• Lettuce with Cheese French Dressing
• Pumpkin Pie
• Coffee

This is pretty much the menu we are following tomorrow, though I can’t bring myself to do giblet gravy. Nor do I see a need for Dan and I to have assorted canapes – especially since the celery, olives, and carrots will seem like canapes to us anyway.

As you can see the menu is pretty dull. No extra whipped cheese filled potatoes. No green bean casserole. No rolls.  No extra super duper this or that. In fact it looks shockingly healthy if its eaten in some moderation! Yet again it turns around the notion that our foods are healthier than the food of our parents that were “laden with fat.” Excuse me? Take a look at what you’re eating this Thanksgiving and look at my simple menu.   The past looks pretty good. Next post – how did the menu taste?

1950 Ford Treasury of Favorite Recipes from Famous Eating Places

Not only do I love cooking vintage recipes from my vintage cookbooks, I love traveling roadside America looking for unique tourist attractions, quirky motels and lodgings, and Mom and Pop restaurants. My most recent cookbook find, Ford Treasury of Favorite Recipes from Famous Eating Places, dated 1950 fulfills both desires!

The cookbook features a new lodging on each page with a great painting of either the exterior (often with awesome 50s cars) or the interior that evoke a time when men and women dressed up for dinner and life was just a tad more elegant. Below the painting is a brief description of the lodging with a recipe that they are famous for.

One of the first things I did was find out which hotels still are in existence.

Stockton Inn today

Many are gone, but some still exist like Colligan’s Stockton Inn (now called just the Stockton Inn) in Stockton, New Jersey. As they note in the description, their outdoor dining garden inspired the Rodgers and Hart melody “There’s a Small Hotel with a Wishing Well” which was used in the 1936 Rogers and Hart musical On Your Toes. When this cookbook was written the authors had no idea that in 1957 Frank Sinatra would make the song far more famous in the movie Pal Joey. You can hear the swank tune here!

The Stockton Inn’s recipe in the cookbook certainly won’t be anything I will be cooking – Terrapin A La Colligan. Meaning turtle. I’m not a picky eater, but there are a few things I won’t eat and turtle is one of them. Plus I think it’s just a tad difficult to find anymore.

Windham County Hotel (and Jail)

So, tonight when I had a few spare minutes, I looked around to see what I had ingredients for and of course it was the ever faithful Banana Bread. I’m going to spare you another Banana Bread recipe, especially since this one was not a winner. It came out tasting like baking soda. But I did learn some fun facts about the Windham County Hotel in Newfane, Vermont.

First off, it’s been in existence since 1824 though it is no longer a lodging facility – well at least not for paying lodgers. I’m pretty sure it still functions as the Windham County jail.

It really has an amazing history to it. When it was built it started its life as the Windham County jail. The residents of Newfane needed a place for the men to stay who came into town to conduct court business, and so they added onto the jail a hotel. Enterprising!  They are pretty sure its the only example of this unique combination in the country.

Who doesn't use convicts at their hotel?

In the 19th century, this didn’t seem to worry the paying customers as much, but by the 20th century, its seems inn goers began to balk when the inmates were used as gardening staff and other types of workers around the inn. Seemed like a good idea to the hearty Newfaners!

I’ve seen a postcard of the Windham County Hotel from as late as the 1950s showing it as a still functioning lodging property, but at some point Newfane wisely turned the Hotel over to their Police Department who now are the sole owners of this fine establishement.

Windham County Hotel Banana Bread

While browsing the Police Department’s Facebook Page I found this cool picture that shows that recipes from the Ford Treasury cookbook were used as giveaways with the Aunt Jemima Pancake Box, including this Banana Bread recipe. What great national advertising for the Windham County Hotel! And what a surprise for the unknowing guest who drove up to find the jail attached. But it obviously worked for them for over 130 years! So if you’re ever in Newfane, be sure to drive by the Police Department and imagine staying there in its glory day as the Windham County Hotel. But pass on their Banana Bread.

I have to admit, I’m going kind of crazy with the banana bread recipes like grandma used to make. There are so many great vintage recipes for banana bread! And since Dan always has a few lying around that are past their prime (I don’t eat them in their “fresh” state), I always have plenty of material to work with.

So this week I tried something a bit different – Banana Layer Cake from 250 Classic Cake Recipes edited by the very prolific Ruth Berolzheimer in 1951. This is one of those cool vintage cookbooks that your mom always had in the cupboard. My mom had a slew of them, but I never once saw her actually cook from them. Growing up I would take them down from time to time and flip through them for a laugh or for curiosity. I guess even back then I was starting my interest in vintage cooking.

This cook book is filled with every kind of cake recipe imaginable, as well as icings. There are a few good photos as well to help you learn to ice your cake.  Here’s the recipe:

INGREDIENTS

• 2 1/4 cups sifted cake flour (I use King Arthur Cake Flour)
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup shortening (butter)
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup mashed bananas (2 bananas)
• 1/4 cup buttermilk

DIRECTIONS        

1. Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.

2. Sift flour, baking powder, soda and salt together.

3. Cream shortening with sugar until fluffy.  Add eggs, one at a time, beating thoroughly after each is added.  Stir in the vanilla to the egg mixture.

4. Mash the bananas. Add the buttermilk to the mashed bananas and stir.

5. Add the sifted dry ingredients and the banana/milk mixture alternately in small amounts to the creamed shortening/egg mixture, beating thoroughly after each addition.

6. Pour into 2 greased 9 inch round cake pans

7 Bake for 25 – 30 minutes – test for doneness.

8. Cool cakes in the pan on racks for 5 minutes.  Remove cakes from pans and cool completely.

9. Spread Seven-Minute Icing between layers and on top and sides of cake.

Photos from How to Bake!

The Seven-Minute Icing recipe also comes from the Classic Cake Recipes cookbook. Now if your like me, all your cake recipes have come out of a can! So I was a bit intimidated by this recipe which calls for a double boiler, a rotary beater, and the creation of soft peaks in seven to ten minutes of hard beating. I wanted back up. I remembered that another cookbook, All About Home Baking, 1933, also had a recipe for this frosting, and included detailed step-by-step instructions and most importantly photos. As the page says in big bold letters An easy, sure method for cooked frosting.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 egg whites
• 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions

1. Combine all the ingredients, except vanilla, in top of a double boiler. Beat with rotary beater until thoroughly mixed. Place over rapidly boiling water and beat constantly for 7 to 10 minutes or until icing holds a peak.

2. Remove from heat and add vanilla. Beat until cool and thick enough to spread.

3. To spread begin by spreading the top of the lower layer.

4. Place second cake on top

5. Frost cake sides and then top of cake

The result – seven minutes passed of intense rotary beating and not a peak in sight. In panic mode I pulled out my electric hand mixer and cheated. This helped a great deal though I feel I never achieved the snowy peaks I see in the photos. But everyone loved the taste of the frosting and it was certainly thick enough. One interesting note was that the frosting hardened a bit after it cooled on the cake. I’m not sure if this is what the end result was supposed to be as the recipe calls it a soft cooked frosting.

I had three taste testers for this cake and everyone loved it. The cake was a bit dry, but that may have been because I used powdered butter milk mix as opposed to real butter milk. The flavor had a nice banana taste to it and the icing gave just the right amount of sweetness to the cake to make it a perfect dessert. As usual, unlike some of the modern desserts this one was not overly sweet which was refreshing for the taste testers.

While this is certainly more work than Banana Bread, it make for a nice treat and a great show off dessert.

If you’re like me you always seen to have over-ripe bananas around the kitchen. Until recently they would end up in the compost, but now thanks to my growing collection of vintage cookbooks I have a wealth of banana bread recipes that call for 2-3 bananas for baking. I’ve got two good tasting, healthy, and easy recipes to share with you, plus some fun history about how bananas came into our cooking culture.

A Victorian Banana Boat

Introduced to Americans in the 1870s, bananas were an expensive delicacy which you wanted to show off on your dining room table in your cut glass banana boat.  Our bananas are kept in the kitchen along with other fruit and are a cheap staple, but to the wealthy Victorians who could afford them, bananas were displayed in all their glory on the dining room table as a form of ostentation.

Early banana recipes from my cookbooks include banana salad, banana fritters, banana custard, banana cantaloupe (no cantaloupes involved, just shaped like one), banana ice cream, and bananas baked or sauted (all dated 1896 from the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book). Many of my early cook books have no recipes at all.

It was not until the 1930s during the Depression that Banana Bread became popular. There is a story floating around that a housewife needing to make money came up with the recipe, but I’m not sure its an accurate story, as there seems to be no documentation on who she was and exactly when this occurred.

The earliest recipe The Food Timeline found is from 1933 created by the Pillsbury Flour Mills Company which obviously had a stake in keeping people baking.  Looking through my cookbook collection this history does hold true. Prior to 1933, I find no recipes for banana bread. But I have one exactly from 1933!

My Hotpoint Electric Range Cookbook

The first recipe I tried however, was from the cookbook, Recipes for your Hotpoint Electric Range. Although the book isn’t dated, an internet search shows its from c. 1950. I chose the recipe as I was looking for one with a little something different to make it stand apart – in this case the addition of bran.  That, with the nuts, makes it really a very modern recipe that could easily be from the hippy days of the 60s/70s.

The recipe has all the hallmarks of what makes Banana Bread beloved by housewives since it’s inception – easy to make, quick, fool proof, and delicious. Plus it gives the baker, who may not be the most accomplished of chefs, a sense of accomplishment for baking something from scratch! This is also why Banana Breads took America by storm again in the 1960s as people began baking again.

Here’s the recipe:

Banana Bread batter

• 1 egg, well beaten
• 1 1/2 cups mashed bananas (3-4 bananas)
• 1/4 cup melted shortening (I used butter)
• 1 cup bran
• 1/2 cup broken nuts (I used walnuts)
• 1 1/2 cups sifted flour
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Combine egg, bananas, melted (and cooled) shortening, bran and nuts; mix well.

3. Sift together remaining dry ingredients.

4. Add to banana mixture, mixing just enough to dampen flour.

The finished bread

5. Turn into well-greased bread pan (8 1.2 x 4 1/2 x 3″).

6. Bake for 1  hour and 10 minutes, or until bread is done

Dan and I both loved the texture and taste of this Banana Bread, finding it moist, but with an added texture from the bran that gave it a very rich and complex flavor.

I next tried another version that used whole wheat flour, which gave an interesting twist to a Banana Bread Muffin recipe. This recipe is from the Every Homemaker’s Cook Book. Written in 1939 by Fanny Engle at the end of the Depression and with World War II looming, Fanny was espousing whole wheat in several recipes for baking your own bread both for health and economy.

While researching this rather rare cook book, I found a few tantalizing nuggets of information about the author, Fanny Engle, that made me ache to learn more about her. After publishing two general cookbooks, this one in 1939 and one called The Fannie Engles Cookbook in 1946, she began to specialize in Jewish cookbooks. She published two seminal Jewish cookbooks which remained in print through the 1970s, The Jewish Festival Cookbook (1954) and The Jewish Holidays and Their Favorite Foods (1958).

In her Every Homemaker’s Cook Book, she has an interesting recipe for Banana Whole Wheat Muffins that caught my eye.  Please note that this recipe calls for a lot of bananas – not just your left overs so plan ahead and let quite a few go extra ripe on purpose!

• 2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 egg, well beaten
• 1 1/2 cups bananas, ripe and mashed (4-5)
• 1/4 cup buttermilk
• 1/4 cup melted shortening (I used butter)

1. Pre-heat the oven to 425 degrees.

2. Mix the flour, baking powder, soda, salt and sugar thoroughly.

3. Beat the egg and set aside.

4. Mash the bananas with a fork and combine with the egg, milk and melted shortening.

5. Add the egg and banana mixture to the flour mixture mixing only enough to dampen all the flour.

6. Turn into well-greased muffin pans

7. Bake for 20 – 25 minutes or until muffins are done.

Yield: makes 24 small muffins

This recipe tasted moist, which is what you want in a Banana Bread, and the whole wheat flour gave it a pleasing depth of character and richness you don’t normally find in Banana Bread. Dan especially liked these muffins and having your Banana Bread in muffin form is kind of fun and different.

Next week we will explore banana cake – a whole new use for those bananas!

Yep, even in those days that we look back at so fondly and say “oh it was better then….” , mom’s were harried. Perhaps it was the many P.T.A. or Club meetings to attend? For my mom, it was her need to juggle her every consuming passion for golf, with being a Girl Scout leader, volunteering with her Newcomers Club in Darien, Connecticut, and just running me around. So, even stay-at-home mom’s needed some quick recipes to throw together at the last moment.

A Great Cook Book if you find it

I too needed one when the staff where I work suddenly decided we were doing a belated birthday party for a co-worker. I volunteered the cake. Since it was a work night, I didn’t want to make anything too elaborate. What I found was In-A-Jiffy Cake in my 1942 edition of The American Woman’s Cook Book, edited by Ruth Berolzheimer. The recipe also appear in 250 Classic Cake Recipes from 1951 also edited by Ms. Berolzheimer. Both books are published by the Culinary Arts Institute.

The recipe totally lived up to its name. It was super easy to put together and bake.  Here’s

Ingredients

the recipe:

• 1 1/2 cups sifted cake flour
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 tsps baking powder
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/4 cup melted shortening
• 1 egg, beaten

Rotary beater beaten

Sift dry ingredients together 3 times (I sifted them onto a sheet of waxed paper, as I learned to do in a cook book, and then folded the waxed paper and used the fold as a funnel to pour the dry ingredients back into the sifter that is sitting in a bowl before sifting again). Combine remaining ingredients and add gradually to dry ingredients. Beat mixture 2 minutes. (I used my rotary beater I purchased at an antique store. The mixture is very thick and I ended up breaking my rotary beater and had to use Dan’s mother’s beater. Luckily I didn’t break this one!) Pour into greased cake pan. Bake in a moderate oven (350 degrees) for 30 minutes. Makes one (8 x 8 x 2 inch) cake.  Let the cake cool on a wire rack before frosting.

Now to frost! I was determined to make a good frosting and an easy one.  From my All About Home Baking, 1935, cookbook published by the General Foods Corporation, I found a simple Butter Frosting. The KEY to this recipe is to have your butter out well ahead of time to make sure it is very gooey.

Butter Frosting

• 4 tbs butter
• 3 tbs milk
• 2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla (I forgot to put this in and it was still great)
• dash of salt (ditto – forgot to put in)

Cream butter (I made sure it was very gooey and used my wooden spatula for this; add part of sugar gradually, blending after each addition. Add remaining sugar, alternately with milk, until of right consistency to spread. Beat after each addition until smooth. Add vanilla and salt. (I think I got just so excited that it looked like real frosting I forgot this step and started frosting!) Makes enough frosting to cover tops of two 9 inch layers, or top and sides of 8 x 8x 2 inch cake, or about 2 dozen cup cakes. (It did cover my 2×8x2″ cake perfectly).

Finished cake on cake stand

The result – well I had to wait overnight and until lunch to try it at the party. I took it in my vintage glass cake stand and top which looked great. The result – everyone loved it! Rave reviews! I took a big piece home to Dan and more rave reviews. The cake is moist, but not overly sweet. The icing adds the right amount of buttery sweetness. Its an easy cake and very, very good.

And it certainly beats any of today’s cake mixes. So much more healthy for you – no high

Tracy at work with her cake

fructose corn syrup and artificial ingredients and dyes.  Just a lovely cake the way your Mom and Grandma would make. That is if your Mom actually cooked and didn’t play golf all the time…….

If you’ll recall a few blogs ago I had some issues with that easy breakfast staple, waffles. Aunt Lillian’s waffle recipe had produced a thick, chewy waffle that really didn’t make anyone want to run to the breakfast table. But after reading up on waffles, I did indeed find a recipe that was a winner.

So, on a recent morning I decided to tackle another staple – pancakes from scratch. I found loads of recipes in my vintage cookbooks, but decided on one from my very funky The New England Yankee Cook Book, by Imogene Wolcott from 1939. This cookbook is great.  According to the cover the recipes are from the files of Yankee magazine and from “time-worn recipe books and many gracious contributors.”

Well, no wonder I like the cook book. As a young girl when we spent our annual summer vacation at the home of friends in upstate New York near the Vermont border, I used to pour over their copies of Yankee magazine. I was obsessed by New England, history, inns, and all things antique! Yankee was my entree into that world. And of course, I still love all things New England. Heck, I married a Bostonian didn’t I?

Which of course brings me to the Parker House Hotel in Boston, scene of one of our most romantic early dates! It was our first Christmas as a dating couple, and we attended the historic Parker House’s Victorian-themed dinner, followed by a performance of Charles Dicken’s great, great grandson’s performance of A Christmas Carol. Oh, it was enough to make this history lovers heart swoon. So how could I resist trying the recipe for Parker House Pancakes on p. 130 of the cook book?

Parker House Pancakes (which were Perfect)

• 2 c. flour, sifted
• 3 tsps. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tbs powdered sugar
• 2 eggs, well beaten
• 1 3/4 cup milk (about)

Mix and sift the dry ingredients. Combine eggs and milk; add flour mixture and beat until smooth. Bake on a hot well-greased griddle. One tablespoon of the mixture makes one cake. This recipe makes about 24 small thin, delicate cakes.

My notes after a bit more reading on the perfect pancake (in no particular order) which I found interesting and helpful:

smooth batter, but don't over beat!

• don’t over beat your pancake recipe – some lumps actually are good
• if you have the time, put your pancake batter in the fridge for 30 minutes to let it rest, but don’t stir it again once you take it out
• use very little butter, and best to use unsalted butter or vegetable oil for frying the pancakes
• don’t stack your pancakes as you cook them. Lay them in a warm oven flat on a baking sheet until ready to serve. Or have your family eat them while you make them. Staking makes them soggy.
• Use Rumford Baking Powder which doesn’t have aluminum in it. Will make your pancakes taste better and its much better for you!
• Use a wire whisk to combine the dry with the wet ingredients

Aren't they pretty?

The Results – this was an excellent, light, fluffy pancake! Easy to make and really tasty. And so much better than a mix.

Just as a fun side note, the Yankee Cook Book had this interesting tid bit under the recipe:

Our great-grandmothers used hard wood ashes (in place of baking soda) to make pancakes rise. They poured boiling water over sifted ashes in a cup, let ashes settle and used the liquid as we use soda that has been dissolved.

While I don’t encourage this, I do hope you enjoy this recipe! And if your in Boston, do check out the Parker House Hotel downtown, which is filled with wonderful history.

About a month ago I had on hand a bag of peaches and wanted to make a quick dessert. My cookbook collection has grown and its easy now to just grab a cookbook and look for a suitable recipe. I found an interesting one in what is quickly becoming my favorite vintage cookbook, Ruth Berolzheimer’s, The American Woman’s Cook Book, 1941.

I wanted to learn more about Ms. Berolzheimer. A bit of googling found a gold mine. Turns out Ms. (or Miss) Berolzheimer was not a great cook at all, but a great organizer and publisher who worked for the Culinary Arts Institute in Chicago. This publishing empire published over 40 cookbooks edited by Ruth Berolzheimer until she finally retired to Southern California in 1949. In her day, she taught American women how to cook, just as Fannie Farmer did for an earlier generation. Here’s a comprehensive list of the cookbooks she edited.  O.K., it’s true. I probably won’t be happy until I have them all. Wonder if anyone does? As I look at some of these covers, I realize some of them my Mom had and I threw when out when she passed away. At the time they didn’t seem like anything I’d ever use.

In an earlier blog on Aunt Lillian’s Blueberry Pudding, I went into the history of puddings. Berolzheimer’s cook book has a whole chapter devoted to puddings, showing that by the early 1940s they were still popular. Many are the traditional steamed puddings that take hours in the oven. The one I chose took a lot less (or at least in theory) and was quite simple to prepare. But was still a far cry from a pudding mix that you add milk to and throw into the fridge to congeal.

Here’s the recipe:

Starting the layers

Peach Pudding

• 6 sliced peaches (or she suggests using canned or 1/2 c. dried peaches, soaked and stewed)
• 1/4 c. sugar
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 2 c. milk
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla
• 3 eggs
• stale bread

Add the sugar, salt and vanilla to the milk and stir in the eggs, well-beaten. Dip slices of stale bread into the mixture and line a quart baking-dish with it. Arrange layers of bread and sliced peaches to fill the dish. Pour any remaining liquid over the top. Set dish in a pan of hot water and bake in a slow oven (325-350 degrees) until firm (30 minutes). Serve hot with any sauces.

Finished pudding!

The results:

I set the temperature at 350 and it took an hour to cook and even then was still a little watery from the eggs.  I didn’t make a sauce to go over it as I didn’t think it needed it. Dan felt it was too bland (and threw it away despite the fact I was still eating it!). I liked it, though it wasn’t super great.  Probably the addition of the sause would have improved it. I still hesitate to make sauces, as I’m just not that good at them yet.  Many puddings do call for them, so I’d best learn!

Here’s a sauce I’m planning to try:

Vanilla Sauce:

• 1/2 c. sugar
  
• 1 tbs. corn starch
• nutmeg
• salt
• 2 tbs. butter
  
• 2 c. boiling water
• 1 tsp. vanilla

Mix the sugar and corn-starch, add the boiling water and a pinch of salt and boil until thick and clear. Continue cooking over hot water for 20 minutes. Beat in the butter, the vanilla, and a pinch of nutmeg.

One reason my pudding might have taken longer to congeal is that I forgot to soak the bread in the eggs so I had a lot more egg/milk material (liquid) than needed in the pudding. I’d still try this again if I had a batch of peaches, but this time try the sauce with it. Try it and see what you think.

Last weekend on the spur of the moment I wanted to make cookies and I decided to branch out beyond Aunt Lillian’s recipe book. I’ve been avidly collecting cookbooks that date from c. 1890 – 1948 the year she passed away and have quite a nice collection now. They are invaluable in helping me learn how to cook Aunt Lillian’s very scant recipes that never include instructions, oven temperatures, or cooking times – little details that I desperately need!

Cover of US Regional Cookbook

I was going through my very cool 1947 edition of The United States Regional Cook Book, edited by Ruth Berolzheimer and I found an interesting recipe for Back Bay Cookies. Having lived in Boston for many years it caught my attention, looked easy, and most importantly I had all the ingredients on hand. So I decided to dive right in.

The history of Back Bay cookies is somewhat a mystery even after quite a bit of sleuthing. The recipe is essentially the same as Boston Cookies found in Fannie Farmer’s Boston Cooking School Cookbook as far back as 1889. Earlier then that I’ve not found a reference to the cookie so it is quite possible that Fannie Farmer invented the cookie. Although I didn’t find many other recipes for it on the Internet, it seems that Boston cookies were a somewhat popular vintage cookie thanks to Fannie Farmer.

Back Bay cookies

Here’s the recipe from the United States Regional Cookbook which has Back Bay Cookies squarely places where they should be – in the New England section of this awesome cookbook:

• 2/3 c. butter
• 1 c. sugar
• 2 eggs, well beaten
• 2/3 cup chopped seeded raisins (guess raisins were both bigger than those we get today, thus needing to be chopped and came with seeds!)
• 1/2 c. chopped nuts
• 2 c. sifted flour
• 2/3 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp salt

Cream butter or other shortening and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add eggs and beat well. Add raisins and nuts. Sift remaining ingredients together and add to the wet ingredients. Mix thoroughly. Drop by teaspoonfuls, 1 inch apart on a greased cookie sheet. Bake in a moderate oven (350) for about 12 minutes. Makes about 2 1/2 dozen cookies.

The result – WOW! Were these delish especially warm right out of the oven. We had a hard time not eating them all at once. They became crisper the next day, so make sure you don’t over bake them.  On subsequent days we popped them in the microwave for a few seconds to warm and soften them. They had a nice cinnamon and nutty taste to them. Really lovely.

One blog I read mentioned that her mother made them every year for Christmas and I can see why. They do sort of remind me of a Christmas cookie. But don’t wait. Make them right away and think of the Boston patriots who gave their lives so that we can eat cookies whenever we want to!

Third times a charm with new 1920s waffle recipe!

Plus, as an addendum to the last post, I redid for a third time the waffle recipe since I was still unhappy with the toughness of the waffles. After reading a 1930s era Home Ec. manual I own, it seems Fannie Farmer’s recipe has too much flour for the proper flour to liquid ratio. And so armed with this useful information I found another, better vintage recipe which I tried and loved!

I share that recipe with you now from The New Royal Cook Book, produced by the Royal Baking Powder Company in 1920. These came out much better – still cake like which seems to be what waffles used to taste like – very thick. Really like the Belgian waffles we have but not so sweet.

Waffles

• 2 c. flour
• 4 tsps. baking powder
• 3/4 tsp. salt
• 1 3/4 c. milk
• 2 eggs
• 1 tbs melted shortening ( I used butter)

Sift flour, baking powder and salt together; add milk to yolks of eggs; mix thoroughly and add to dry ingredients; add melted shortening (cooled) and mix in beaten whites of eggs (these should be beaten to dry peaks – the secret to great waffles!). Bake in a well greased hot waffle iron until brown.

Caution – if you are big eaters or have a big family this only made 4 waffles. Granted they were very thick and rich! Enjoy!!!