Alkalize This!

Here's the blogging equivalent of - oh, I don't know - a sorbet, a palate cleanser if you will. All these recipes and the staggering amount of jellied salad have inspired me to post this early 1950s ad for Tums.

The copy is as follows:

Relax and enjoy your food! If acid upset follows, simply take TUMS. These delicious antacids neutralize the excess acid that causes your stomach distress. That is why you feel fine - so fast. TUMS are carminative, comforting, soothing. Never over-alkalize [sic]

On the roll of Tums it reads "Eat Like Candy" - they're so much better than all those non-delicious antacids out there. But can this be a good thing? After all, some people eat candy pretty fast. I don't know how comforting and soothing it would be to bolt them down like Rolos or M&Ms, do you?

Mind you that guy does look pretty well medicated. I wonder how many he had, and what was in them? Do you think it ever occurs to him that the pipe-smoking might be contributing to his acid upset? I mean, it isn't good for you, is it. But clearly he cares not, he is floating on a virtual sea of antacid contentment.

Furthermore the man seems to consist only of a disembodied head and a hand - where's his stomach got to? Does Tums take away the "acid upset" by - taking the entire stomach away?

But let's not over-analyze - er, over-alkalize! - the situation.

One final thing - I very much enjoyed seeing that the ad writer used the word "carminative," which I haven't seen since reading Aldous Huxley's novel Crome Yellow, which satirizes various wealthy and/or literary types of the 1920s. The main character is a bad poet named Denis who, not knowing that this word means gassy, decides that it is the most beautiful and poetic word he has ever heard, and wants to use it in a poem thus: "And passion carminative as wine..."

And then he decides to look it up in the dictionary. He is crushed, of course (satire of disillusionment of 1920s youth, etc).

Perhaps a Tums would have cheered him up.

Kitchen Sweetheart

This is from 1951, from Good Housekeeping's Home Encyclopedia, published in Britain. It's a huge, heavy book, full of information. Lots to see here. But today, here is the bigamous appliance, a Trianco boiler. These boilers are so good that women want to marry them! How about that. It's not very tall, and kind of - square-looking - but it really has a certain something. Just ask the checkered-fabric-addicted gal who looks like she just had a couple of gin and tonics (and probably did).

This lady is very excited about the boiler, but insists that her marriage is just fine:

...is hubby worried? Not a bit of it - saves him tons of money on fuel. Am I happy? Yes, I should say so - both my sweethearts are wonderful; and this one keeps the whole house snug and warm at any temperature I choose; is always ready with hot water for my every need, and requires almost no attention whatsoever. In green? Yes, you can get them in a lovely range of colours and sizes...

In fact she prefers the Trianco to the 'hubby,' because at least the Trianco keeps things warm and "is always ready with hot water for my every need," we won't even go there. And you don't have to pay attention to it, that can get really aggravating. They aren't - high maintenance. You know.

Hubby doesn't really mind, though, he just wants to save that proverbial ton of money. And also to get this maniacally smiling woman off his back. She's gone all funny since they got the boiler.

Plus hubbies do not come in green, unless they have been eating this lady's cooking.

Health Food Pudding

Elizabeth Craig (1883-1980) was an early "celebrity chef" in Britain, who wrote dozens of books and articles, mainly about traditional British food. She was born in Dundee, Scotland and spent more than 50 years as a food writer, chef and home economist whose first cookery article was published in 1920.

She endorsed a lot of different products, including Borwick's Baking Powder, for whom she wrote a rather nice recipe booklet, published in 1930. There are a lot of good recipes in here. She tends to stick to well-known English and Scottish dishes, with the odd "Canadian" dish thrown in (she married an American war correspondent, Arthur Mann, but I don;t know where the Canadian connection comes from).

Here is an amusing recipe from the Borwick's book entitled "Health Food Pudding," which is a rare attempt on Craig's part to marry the old-fashioned steamed pudding to the concept of "health food" -

Health Food Pudding

4 oz. breadcrumbs

4 oz. flour

2 eggs

Little nutmeg

2 oz currants

2 Tbs treacle

1 tsp Borwick's Baking Powder

2 oz brown sugar

3 oz shredded suet

Rind and juice one lemon

Mix all well together and steam two hours in a basin covered with a buttered paper. Turn out on a hot dish. Spike if liked with blanched, peeled and browned almonds. Serve with custard sauce.

All that suet and treacle are not healthy, never mind the almonds and the custard sauce. I don't know what the figure of the girl next to the Health Food Pudding is up to. It looks like she has a big bunch of celery sticks under her arm and has turned away from the stodgy dessert which has reached a size - relative to her - of a compact car. In her basket she has got, apparently, hard boiled eggs. She is about to go on the diet that a lot of my friends did in high school in the late 1970s. A figurine ahead of her time!

Ivory Laundry Starch and Its Relation to the Unconscious

You know you want to cook with corn oil. Do not deny yourself the pleasure of putting corn oil and corn syrup and corn starch into as many recipes as you possibly can. All three at once would be ideal.

May I present the St. Lawrence Starch Company of Port Credit, Ontario, and their promotional cookbook, circa 1955-60 (there is no date but it is a whopping 34th edition - which in itself is a tribute to corn products).

Doesn't the very name reek of dense white carbohydrates - the St. Lawrence Starch Company! This is the hard stuff, gentlemen - bready, pasty, potato-laden. Sauces thick as all three Stooges. Pie that takes a week to digest. Christmas puddings that double, in the New Year, as door stops.

As you can see from the picture (which is on the back cover) the St. Lawrence people (unwearied by corn) make laundry starch which "also works in the wash." I thought laundry was wash. Maybe you can wash dishes with it, is what they mean. Dishes sticky with corn oil and corn syrup, no doubt.

In one triumphant recipe entitled "Tangy Spanish Sauce" they have manage to press all three products into service. This is the sauce that has it all: tomatoes, green peppers, onion, celery...and corn oil, corn syrup and corn starch. That's tangy all right. Depending on your definition of tangy.

And we move through the oil-drenched salads and really heavy doughnuts until ending up on the last page with "Corn Starch Pudding" (blancmange, in other words: classic invalid fare for the fans of Mrs. Beeton and of Louisa May Alcott, who had Jo bring some to Laurie in Little Women when Laurie was not exactly sick, but cranky because of his cranky grandpa).

There's something Freudian about it all. Trying to sneak in the little references to corn-based products, which build and build through the book to culminate in the catharsis of: oh what the hell, let's just make it the main ingredient.

At least they never tried to put Ivory laundry starch in any of the recipes. Unless it was somewhere on a subconscious level, signified on the back cover where the bottles and boxes float on a white background, the stuff of dreams.

Or perhaps just the stuff of indigestion. Like when Scrooge thinks that Jacob Marley's ghost is "an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato." Actually, he was more like a heaping cup of Tangy Spanish Sauce, that's what.

The Clock's Strange Desire For Campbell's Soup ("It's That Good!")

Here is a surreal play in photos from a Campbell's Soup booklet, circa 1958.

In the top photo four cups of foamy mint green stuff have gone to the opera. There is only one pair of opera glasses and only three ticket stubs. Invariably some of the cups have been left out, and even the ones who attended couldn't see. Except for the Alpha Cup, despite the fact that they have no eyes.

But they do not realize this. The Alpha Cup has deceived them in some way.

The Alpha Cup is clearly the one whose powers are sucking a bunch of red plastic grapes into its sphere of influence. A small brass alarm clock hovers nearby with a couple of candlesticks. It tries to rectify the situation, but can only look on, helplessly. It ticks on but can do nothing. Very significant! So symbolic of modern angst. And modern soup.

In the middle photo the alarm clock has made friends with an egg cup and a reclining banana. They are staring at someone's bowl of soup, trying to comprehend it. It isn't working. They can't even tell what it is made of. Nor can I. Puzzlingly, the mug of milk has a telephone cord for a handle. It must mean something, but it is too deep for the clock and his egg and banana friends.

The banana in fact has given up and gone to sleep.

In the last photo the ubiquitous clock has made friends with a wooden bird, who is attempting to drink three cups of orange soup with strange white bits in it. As with the opera-loving soup cups, the bird's attempt is futile. You're made of wood, maybe you didn't notice. The apple and the bits of greenery lend an air of the outdoors. As does the thermos. But they are indoors on some vast avocado melamine savanna. Trapped in a world of pastel melamine.

The clock is obsessed with soup and does not know why. Friends come and go, bringing with them bits of plastic greenery and ticket stubs, opera glasses and telephone cords. All useless! They are all standing around waiting, waiting for the Godot of the canned soup to come.

But Godot does not come. He has gone out for Chinese. Because that soup does not look good.

Curse of the Silhouette Salad

I was inspired by the very nice lemon jello salad over at Retro Food in a sort of inverted way - much as a jello mold is inverted on a plate. I was reminded of the scariest jello salad I have yet seen (and certainly I hope to see more hideous ones as I keep collecting cookbooks of the mid-20th century, the Renaissance period if you will of the jellied salad).

May I introduce 'Silhouette Salad' from a lovely instruction book and cookery book called To The Bride which was distributed by Peck's Department Store (in Lewiston, Maine - apparently the largest department store in New England outside of Boston, at the time). It was also published under the considerable aegis of Chase and Sanborn coffee, which product is heralded on nearly every page where coffee is relevant. And some where it is not.

In this book are all sorts of things the modern bride of 1956 had to know. Like how to feed your in-laws when they come to dinner for the first time, and what to put in your spouse's lunch box (hint: not peanut butter and jelly and a stale cookie) and the epic "Story of the three chickens," which is a depressing saga involving endless leftovers and various social events. (This deserves another post, so consider yourself warned!)

You will not be serving Silhouette Salad to your in-laws or putting it in your husband's lunch pail. This is what you're eating, missy. So you'll want to know what's in it.

Silhouette Salad

1 envelope Knox unflavored gelatin

1 can condensed cream of chicken soup

1/2 cup cold water

1 Tb lemon juice

dash black pepper

1 can boned chicken, diced

1/2 cup chopped celery

1/4 cup chopped green pepper

2 Tbs chopped pimiento

2 Tb grated onion

1. Soften gelatin in 1/2 cup cold water.

2. Stir over boiling water until thoroughly dissolved.

3. Blend soup, 1/2 cup cold water, lemon juice and pepper.

4. Add dissolved gelatin; mix thoroughly.

5. Chill to unbeaten egg white consistency.

6. Fold in chicken and remaining ingredients.

7. Turn into three-cup mold; chill until firm.

8. Unmold on crisp salad greens; serve with salad dressing.

At least it doesn't have Chase and Sanborn coffee in it. It's got everything else but the kitchen sink in it though.

They did forget one thing however. Step #9: throw the damn thing out, it's completely horrible!

Little Watkins Vanilla Meets Surprise Dessert

The Watkins Company has been around since 1868 in Winona, Minnesota - and it still is, their website is here. I was lucky enough to come across several of their early cookbooks from the 1930s. The one I got this picture/ad from was put out in 1938.

The books are filled with recipes of all kinds, each of them including Watkins products - a few grains of Watkins pepper, Watkins Baking Soda, anything really.

Here is something called a "Surprise Dessert." The generic quality of this name would usually make me pretty wary, but it sounds good to me actually. The exception to the rule that a recipe with the word "Surprise" in it probably is not going to end well.

Surprise Dessert

1 Tb gelatin

1/4 cup orange juice

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup crushed pineapple

1/2 cup Watkins Shredded Coconut

1/4 tsp Watkins nutmeg

1 cup fresh strawberries

1 cup heavy cream

1/4 cup orange cubes

1/4 cup sliced bananas

1/4 cup blanched almonds

1 tsp Watkins Vanilla

Dissolve gelatin in orange juice over hot water [think they mean, in a double boiler]. Mix with sugar, cool, add well-drained crushed pineapple, strawberries, orange cubes, sliced bananas cut fine, chopped almonds and flavoring.

When mixture begins to thicken, fold in 1 cup heavy cream, beaten stiff. Place mixture in hollowed-out sponge cake [Wait a minute, no one said anything about sponge cake! Maybe I don't have a sponge cake!] and set in refrigerator to form.

Before serving, cover cake with sweetened whipped cream, and little Watkins Vanilla.

That's what they say, not "a little Watkins Vanilla." It sounds like Little Orphan Annie's cousin, doesn't it? Maybe she knows how to cut oranges into cubes, because I sure don't.

A Complete Electric Kitchen

I had to share this latest find which cost me 99 cents in a secondhand shop - I present to you the Mr. & Mrs. Roto-Broil Cookbook (4th printing, 1956) by Sarah Alexander, starring the Roto-Broil rotisserie oven which was made by the Klinghoffer family of Queens. The purple paperback, with 225 recipes in it, was published "by Roto-Broil Corp. of America, Long Island City, N.Y." I remember Long Island City as the place where my scary driving teacher took me to practice 3-point turns back in the early 1980s, but little did I know then that I was in Roto-Broil territory.

Here is a link to the Greater Astoria Historical Society which talks about the Roto-Broil operation there.

Now your Roto-Broil comes in three sizes and status levels, rather like the three bears. You got your Riviera, your Capri, or your doesn't-have-a-resort-name. I wish they had called the baby bear model something like the Long Branch (this was a resort in New Jersey - my grandmother's family worked there in the World War I era, doing what I do not know, but something to do with boardwalk concessions I believe). Or the Coney Island. Or even the Brighton-in-the-middle-of-August (now we're in England, which is closer to the Meditarranean, I suppose.

The Roto-Broil does the following things: it barbecues, broils, grill, boils, roasts, toasts, fried and bakes. Not all at once, I trust. But it appears to be trying to.

Take, for example, the "Capri" model on the front cover. It is tackling a whole turkey, some hot dogs and burgers and bacon on the top tray, and a large waffle on the "Bak-A-Tray" that is hovering warily near the Capri.

(Before we turn to the other models, I want to know what sort of meal this is supposed to be. Come on. Is this breakfast, Thanksgiving dinner or a summer cookout? Is this the result of some dysfunctional family conflict over meals? Has the Roto-Broil restored harmony to some troubled household, mercifully out of camera range, that cannot agree on which meal it is time for?)

Let's move on, shall we?

The Riviera is on the back cover. It boasts a coffee pot up on the top bit, as well as a pan and five bagel-like objects clustering around the pan and the coffee pot. The Riviera in the high season, it mst be. Just like a crowded beach, with everybody toasted and broiling and frying.

If you were a cheapskate you could go for the Roto-Broil Custom "400" (the "Long Branch", if you will) which looks quite similar to the others to me. And with it is our old friend the Bak-A-Tray, which has abandoned its waffle and now holds a large chocolate layer cake. How did the Bak-A-Tray manage to produce that?

Inside, they talk about a fourth, really new model called the "Sun Valley" that is the "'Cadillac' of rotisseries" and can cook a 25 lb turkey or "up to 8 chickens." (But, I say, weak from looking at all the activity going on with the Riviera et al, I don't want to cook 8 chickens!)

Now this Roto-Broil could be used "all day - any place" and was an "Automatic Infra-Red Complete Electric Kitchen." I don't know that I like the sound of the infra-red rays that are shooting around all day and any place (really? ANY place? you can cook with this, what, in the forest? in the bathroom?)

My initial question, when I first looked at this wonderful little book, was why the "Mr. & Mrs." Presumably this refers to the target market, not the appliances being, um, married to each other. Are single people not supposed to use this? Will the infra-red rays attack them if they do?

Questions we may never know the answers to.

On the inside back cover is a small photo of a man in a chef's hat who looks extremely happy and excited. He is identified as the "Roto-Magician" who has been talking up the Roto-Broiler on television "from coast to coast." From coast to coast! They still said things like that when I was a kid 15 years later, it was still exciting to think that we could all be slumped in front of TVs all across the continent.

The Roto-Magician looks a little like Ralph Kramden when he was trying to unload the 2000 "Handy Housewife Helpers" on TV, assisted by Ed Norton, wearing those big white chef's hats. Ralph got very nervous and fell into the set kitchen wall at the end. The Handy Housewife Helper did almost as much as the Roto-Broil: among other things, it could (in Ralph's words) "core a apple," scale fish, remove corns and clip nails, sharpen scissors, open bottles and cans and peel potatoes.

And now let me present a genuine Roto-Broil recipe. All the temperature setting are in capital letters, because at this point the reader will be too excited to be thinking clearly.


Barbecued Bologna Kebabs

2 lbs bologna sausage
Barbecue Sauce for Ham or Pork
Red wine, if desired

Remove casing from sausage, and cut into 1 1/2 inch cubes. Marinate sausage in barbecue sauce for at least an hour (note: it may be necessary to prepare double quantity of sauce recipe). Place sausage cubes on skewer spit. Brush again with barbecue sauce. Barbecue at MEDIUM heat for 10 minutes; brush with barbecue sauce. Turn heat to HIGH and barbecue 10 minutes. If desired, brush with wine, and barbecue for another five minutes.

NOTE: Serve with huge salad bowl and French bread.

My NOTE: Could they possibly use any more barbecue sauce? The bologna cubes will have drowned by the time you stick them in the Roto-Broil, never mind coming at them again and again with the sauce! Leave them alone already! And then wine! The only wine I am brushing anything with is the wine that I'll be brushing up against the inside of my wine glass. I'll be needing a drink at about that point.

The other thing I love is that you serve it "with a huge salad bowl" - not with any salad, mind you. Just the bowl.

Sally In My Galley

The first kitchen I ever knew about was in our apartment and it was a galley kitchen, named of course after the little narrow kitchen on a ship. They were typical of apartments back then, still are. The building was new in 1960-61 and except for the refrigerator (which has been replaced a couple of times), it has remained exactly the same.

It was about halfway between Alice Kramden's kitchen and Lucy Ricardo's. Alice as you will recall had a corner of the main room in the Bensonhurst apartment on "The Honeymooners." She had an icebox with a drip pan, a little sink and a stove.

Lucy on the other hand had a sort of suburban, spacious place with lots of room and even a back door. She didn't have a dishwasher or a freezer (unless you count the huge one she and Ethel set up in the basement once that she got locked in) but it was pretty nice.

Ours was in the middle of the Alice-Lucy spectrum, I suppose. Functional but not much more than that.

It was essentially a hallway between the back of the apartment and the L-shaped living-dining room, with fridge, tiny counter and sink on one side facing gas burner-over-cabinets and tiny wall-oven on the other. There was a white metal dispenser for wax paper, plastic wrap and paper towels located over the gas burners, which was inconvenient. The oven was tiny and dark and shaped like a railway tunnel about as wide as a coffee table book and only a little taller than that.. It really was small. There was a broiler underneath with a separate door.

The gas burners were temperamental and sometimes you had to hold a match to them. There were two drawers and two cabinets directly underneath the burners. The oven was powered by gas too, and that was really scary to try and relight.

There was a tiny dishwasher under the countertop but my mother used it exactly one time. There is photographic evidence otherwise I would have said quite confidently that she had never opened the thing. I think she felt that the dishes did not get really clean unless you had at them with a sponge and dish soap.

The tiny countertop between the fridge and the single-bowl, white porcelain sink, was gold-speckled white melamine, and when the finish wore off sometimes during the 1970s, it became a handy notepad for my mother. You could erase pencil from it quite easily so she always jotted things down right on the countertop. It wasn't really big enough for much else. You could put the plastic dishrack out on it at dish-washing time (that lived under the sink usually) or a bowl, but that was it. You were not going to be making a five-course dinner in this kitchen, unless it came from the local Chinese takeout.

Even then you would have to unpack on the dining room table. Not enough room back there in the galley.

A lady named Carolyn Coggins wrote a book about Successful Entertaining At Home in 1952 and apparently she had even less room than we did. She writes of her kitchen set-up that:

A pullman kitchen measuring exactly six by two and a half feet is tucked away in one wall; it can also be tucked out of sight by lowering Venetian blinds. When these are down, the kitchen looks exactly like one of the windows. For those of you who may not know what a pullman kitchen is, it is a metal unit containing a small stove, a tiny refrigerator, with a sink and shelves above them for storage.

She goes on to describe how she manages to throw cocktail parties, which sound rather nice. Only my mother was not the cocktail-party-throwing type. We had relatives over once in a while, and we had takeout from the local deli when we did. One time we had takeout oyster stew, which I thought was the most delicious thing I had ever had. And she always made icebox cake, which is the perfect dessert for those with limited kitchen space and/or limited kitchen patience. Here it is:

Chocolate Icebox Cake

1-2 boxes of Christie's plain chocolate wafer cookies

some whipping cream or Cool Whip if you are really short on space/patience

some vanilla and icing sugar, if using the whipping cream

Whip cream and add a little icing sugar and vanilla to taste. A pint and a half is about right for 2 boxes but I usually have Cool Whip on hand to extend the cream if necessary - even people who hate Cool Whip will never know (trust me, I know - and it stabilizes the cream too).

Start making stacks of 5-6 wafers sandwiched with cream. When you have a bunch of them put them on a rectangular plate (a relish tray sort of thing is good, but anything with shallow sides will do) in two adjacent rows that are touching each other. Ice with remaining cream/Cool Whip. If you feel like you can stick raspberries in or on top but I like it plain. Stick it in the fridge for at least a few hours, 6-8 is best. Overnight is OK as long as you don't have lots of oniony things in there too.

Slice it on the diagonal. The wafers are cakey and it is so delicious, everyone will be very happy. And so will you, because you didn't spend too much time on it!

Image is from the NYPL Digital Gallery of a tenement kitchen circa 1910. No cocktail parties emanating from there, I reckon.

Housekeeping Made Uneasy

Today's household hints come from a cookbook written by Mrs. Frances Youngren, Director of Women's Programs at the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago (which is still around and has a website and everything). It is called More Food For the Body For the Soul and is a sequel to this.

There is a photo of her at the front of the book, looking very much like she is about to put a portion of delicious holly leaves on a lucky someone's plate. The tie-back curtains behind her have been tied back with fruits. Shouldn't this be the other way around, Mrs. Youngren?

But I don't really like to complain. She looks quite formidable. Determined. She knows you would rather eat some delicious holly.

There are not only recipes in here but household hints and some of them absolutely have floored me. For example:

No desk? A special wastebasket will hold all writing paper, ink, pencils. Even a box of stamps. I don't think this will work, because when I see a wastebasket I tend to throw stuff like old Kleenex in there. Not writing paper and stamps.

Don't miss a trip because of your houseplants. Leave them in the bathtub in about two inches of water. This maybe could work, if we didn't have cats who like to play in the bathtub and chew on things. But don't you also get the feeling that the plant owner in question is - sort of anthropomorphizing a little? It's just the feel of the sentence - like they won't LET you go away. You are in their power. The plants have hypnotized you. Maybe they are actually from another planet and trying to take over the world. They cannot allow you to leave. Their tendrils reach out as you try to sneak out with your suitcase and - but perhaps if you put them in the bathtub and lock the door -?

I have saved the best hint for last. I promise you this is an actual quotation from the book (as are all they all!) -

For an original wrapping: save the wishbones from chickens. Enamel in bright colors, tie on top of package.

OK, whoa there Mrs. Y. Let's back up the train. Number one, if it isn't for the occasional soup stock, I'm not saving chicken or any other bones. And aren't they kind of greasy to - enamel? And, um - what are you putting in the package, do tell? If it was me, and I saw that under the Christmas tree, or on my birthday, I wouldn't be opening that package, I'd be heading for the door.

No matter what the houseplants try to do to me.

[Image from Wikimedia Commons of some lovely Japanese gifts. Not a chicken bone in sight.]

It's 10 PM, Do You Know Where Your Kitchen Is?

I love the title of Good Housekeeping's The 10 P.M. Cookbook (1958). Like I'd really want to be cooking at that time of night!

I know, it's supposed to be for dashing social types who have people over for bridge, or say happily after the opera "do come 'round to our place for a late supper!"

Well, the only place I'm dashing at 10 P.M. is to the kitchen for some more SmartPop and then back to the couch. You want a late supper, or an after-theatre snack (hah!), go look in the fridge. There's your snack, folks.

My mother owned this book and I seriously doubt that she was making "Treats On A Tray" or "Holiday Party Fare" or whipping up a little Ham Gala "Especially For The Girls."

'Ham' and 'gala' do not even belong in the same sentence.

There are plenty of odd recipes in here, though I suppose one's cooking does go a little askew by 10 pm. Here is one called Dipsy Doodle. Dipsy Doodle, what a name. I looked in the American Heritage Dictionary for help, and it said that "dipsy-doodle" means to move in a zig-zagging manner, after the baseball term "dipsy do," meaning a screwball. I guess a screwball is a baseball that moves in a, um, zigzag fashion. Right, that certainly explains the dip. Not.

Dipsy Doodle

1 package green-pea soup mix [you've lost me right there, already]
1 pint commercial sour cream [as opposed to the stuff I make on my dairy farm]
1 cup cottage cheese
1 Tb lemon juice
1/2 tsp garlic salt
1/3 cup heavy cream

Blend all ingredients in electric blender. Refrigerate very thoroughly [yeah, OK, I'll make sure I close the fridge door all the way]. Serve with potato chips or raw vegetable relishes.

"Relishes" were what they used to call things like carrot and celery sticks. My aunt always had a relish tray out on holidays, when we had The Big Meal with the fancy table linen and crystal and all the relatives coming in from other states. A fancy occasion. Got to have that relish tray. It was crystal too and was heavy on the celery and carrots, plus black olives and radishes.

The Good Housekeeping people suggested that you also serve Dipsy Doodle with "Nut Bits" and "Olive-Cheese Balls." (Feel free to make up your own jokes here.)

Fortunately there was no Dipsy Doodle anywhere near our family relish tray. No dipsy at all, come to think of it. never mind doodle.

Note: the terrible blurred image is a picture of the Dipsy Doodle, avec "Nut Bits" and "Olive-Cheese Balls." I need to start scanning pronto! But perhaps it is better to blur over the dipsy in this case.

Homework On A Bun

Back when I was in the 7th grade (all right, in 1974) we were the last class to take Cooking instead of the trendier CT (Communications & Theater, my dear - in other words, as it turned out, Giving A Lot Of Tiresome Speeches). And so we gathered in a classroom with two hotplates per table, and groups of four of us clustered around each hotplate, earnestly making some frightful mess or other and trying not to fidget or look at the clock too often (which was hard, as the class was as boring as it was messy - always a bad combination!)

We each got a mimeographed cook booklet (remember mimeographs? that was before xeroxing even) and had homework if you please - had to go home and cook a certain number of things in the booklet. You weren't supposed to cook outside the booklet, not that we were up for Julia Child or even the Galloping Gourmet with that glass of wine he had on hand (though that bit looked a little more promising, still does on a tough day).

The one thing I remember cooking for my homework, in our apartment's galley kitchen, were hot dogs, split lengthwise, stuffed with processed American cheese, which were supposed to toast merrily in the oven. We had a tiny wall oven, very dark and scary, rather like a miniature subway tunnel. The hot dogs were pretty scary looking too, once I'd got done with them.

This recipe is like that mimeographed one - sort of. It comes to us courtesy of the Home Economics Department of the H.J. Heinz Company from their classic Heinz Book of Salads and Meat Recipes which they claim is "something new in recipe books for the woman who likes to make every meal a culinary triumph." The menacing italics are theirs, not mine. Personally, I just want to make every meal edible - never mind the culinary triumph.

There are some great pictures in this book, and when we get into some of those salads (for I adore strange retro salad recipes) I will scan them in. But at the moment my scanning capabilities are limited as it requires linking this computer with that printer and other things I am still playing around with. When I am an expert in this I will edit these entries and fill them up with graphic retrograde-A imagery. And that will be a culinary triumph enough for me!

Luncheon Frankfurter Rolls

1 pound frankfurters

1/2 cup Heinz Sweet Mustard Pickle [you didn't think you were getting out of this without using Heinz stuff, now did you?]

2 Tb of mustard sauce from the above pickles

3 Tb Heinz mayonnaise [what did I tell you?]

Rolls

Butter

Cook frankfurters in boiling water until tender. Cool, remove skin, and put through the food chopper, together with the Pickles [their capital P, not mine - is that their surname?] Add mustard sauce and Mayonnaise [same deal as the pickles] to form a moist sandwich filling. Cut tops from the rolls, scoop out part of the center, butter rolls and fill generously with the meat mixture. Replace tops and serve. For the packed lunch wrap each sandwich in waxed paper.

That's as may be, but if I wrapped that up and sent it to school in the lunch bags, there would be a revolution in the streets. Or a revulsion in the streets.

But I love this kind of recipe just because I would never want to make it! It's a look into pop history - same with old ads, old magazines, weird fads. It doesn't make it into the standard history books - but maybe that's just as well. More fun for me to tell you about it - more fun for me, anyway!

The photo is from the amazing NYPL Digital Gallery, and shows a hot dog stand in New York probably in the 1920s.

Dishing About Junket

Someone asked me about junket the other day, what is it and why is it called that. Fair enough.

The short answer is that it is a milk custard set with rennet, and rennet is a substance found in the stomachs of mammals (calves usually), a group of enzymes designed to help digest the mother's milk. The active enzyme in rennet is rennin, that makes sense. And an enzyme called protease coagulates the milk which then separates into curds and whey. Rennet is also used in the production of cheese, which is how modern Junket developed (I'll get to that in a minute).

Junket-like custards have been around since the Middle Ages. The word is supposed to have come from the Latin juncus, meaning rush, which became juncata in medieval or Vulgar Latin. A Norman French dessert called jonquette was a sort of caramel egg custard.

A junket can also mean a trip taken at the expense of the public (such as a press junket) or a jolly social occasion. I suppose the 'rush' part of the Latin word relates to rushing off on a trip, or rushing around being jolly. I'm reaching here, folks, I know, but it's the best I can do for you today!

Anyway, modern Junket as we know it was developed in Denmark by a man named Christian Hansen in 1874, at his Hansen's Laboratorium. He made rennet extract for cheese and in 1878 set up in what apparently was the cheese-making center of the US, Herkimer County, NY (I thought Wisconsin maybe, but the Junket website says Herkimer County). In 1891 they started actually making it there (in Little Falls) and it still is made there.

The dessert was first called Junket in 1886, and the Canadians started making it in Toronto in 1917 (well, I can tell you, I can't find it in Canada now, so I guess they stopped). In the 1930s and 1940s you could get different Junket mixes with which to make ice cream, sherbet, fudge or frosting, and also a Danish Dessert mix that was based on my old pal Rodgrod. Now that's serendipitous (I mean, me writing about Junket so soon after the Rodgrod. Note to self: enough with the custard for awhile).

I took a very amateur photo of my Junket package, which you can see above. It comes in the form of little foil-wrapped tablets. We haven't made any yet, but I used to have it when I was sick. I wasn't sick as a kid very much but when I was, it was chocolate Junket time. It is very soft, like sweetened jellied milk (not just like that, it is exactly that) and perfect for invalids as well as their deserving friends.

This recipe is from Ruth Berolzheimer's Body-Building Dishes For Children, published in 1950 by the Culinary Arts Institute in Chicago, whoch she was the director of.

Blueberry Rennet-Custard

2 1/2 cups fresh blueberries

1 package of vanilla rennet-powder

2 cups milk

Wash and drain blueberries and divide among 6 dessert dishes. Save some for the tops. Make up the rennet custard and pour it over the berries. Let set until firm, about 10 minutes, and then chill. Garnish with a few berries before serving.

How to make the Vanilla Junket (Ruth B. assumes we all know how) - for 6 servings combine 3 cups whole milk, 4 1/2 Tb sugar and 1 1/2 vanilla in a saucepan and heat to lukewarm. Dissolve 1 1/2 Junket tablets in water by crushing (just a little water I should think) and add to the warm milk. Stir for a FEW seconds (the recipe booklet in the package verges on hysteria here so don't overdo) and pour it immediately (or else) into the 6 dishes you have waiting. Then carry on as above, with the berries and all.

I think you could use other berries and it would be OK. As long as you do NOT stir too long, got that? Good.

You can learn tons more about Junket (if you really want to) here and here and also here. Dr. Fankhauser and I have the same kind of Junket box, apparently.

Macaroons Made Easy

Some of my favorite cookbooks are the promotional ones that various companies put out (and they still do, especially for cookies, around Christmas) to get the Little Woman to buy that brand of lard or spices or to use Jello in some revolting casserole (I am making that up, of course - unless I find evidence to the contrary, in which case I will let you know).

Here are a few nuggets from a 1938 booklet called "Baking Made Easy" by the folks at the Robin Hood Flour Mills (Ltd), who had mills all across Canada. Still do, in fact I use their flour for baking myself, although that in itself does not make the baking any easier. Here's a link to their website. They appear to have been bought by Smucker's who make all that jam and jelly (guess it sort of goes with the bread, now they just need peanut butter). They started in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan in 1909. And they count among their assets a pickle plant, which pleases me for some reason. I like pickles. Though not with bread and jam.

Anyway, the "Baking Made Easy" book is full of wonders. There is a black and silver label on the inside front cover, proclaiming that it "is not an ordinary advertising Cook Book" (could have fooled me!) but "a specially prepared baking guide" with photos of people making the stuff. In other words - an ordinary advertising Cook Book, with black and white snapshots of disembodied hands mixing up stuff in bowls.

Most of the recipes are what you would expect - bread, pie, popovers, a few thousand sponge cakes. But the Oat Macaroons looked a little more promising, and here they are:

Oat Macaroons

Cream 1/2 cup of butter and add 1 cup of sugar. Cream until light. This will be in bowl #1.

In a second bowl beat 2 eggs until light and add to the butter-sugar mixture. Then add 2 tsp vanilla.

In yet another bowl! combine 1 cup of you-know-who's flour, it cannot be any other kind, with 1/2 tsp salt and 2 tsp baking powder. Then add to first mixture.

Finally add 2 cups of oats made by the you-know-who's of the flour, and then drop teaspoonfuls of this, an inch apart, on greased cookie sheets.

You can sprinkle them with chopped nuts or coconut but I would leave them alone, personally.

Bake at 350 for 12 to 15 minutes and, well - that's it, really.

Note: Obviously I didn't copy the recipe out word for word. I am still boning up on the whole copyright issue, though I gather from the helpful articles on this in Wikipedia that most stuff pre-1964 is fine provided they did not reapply in the last 28 years for a copyright renewal. And I think we're safe here but I am rephrasing here anyway.

I am going to stick to pre-1964 cooking and household books and ephemera for now, much as it pains me to leave out my beloved Holiday Inn Cookbook and the Alice's Restaurant Cookbook (by Alice, natch) but - we'll see. And if anyone knows more, please let me know!

And as I get on with the scanning (am complete utter novice) will add in all the groovy photos and kitschy line drawings. For now we will admire the photo of macaroons I got from Wikimedia Commons, ignoring the chocolate chips and coconut, and imagining all that lovely Robin Hood oatmeal (and flour!) in its place.