No Coconut Work

What I need around here is a good candy recipe. Because we do not have any Easter candy in the house. We are going to get some but I didn't want to buy loads of malted milk eggs and chocolate eggs in foil wrappers and have it all lying around whispering sweet nothings to me. But now I would like some! So I will just read a recipe or two and pretend. Which is much less fattening, right? Right.

So here I am with Skuse's Complete Confectioner, written by anonymous people at the W.J. Bush & Co. Ltd. "olde essence distillers" flavoring factory at Ash Grove Works, Hackney, London (England, not Ontario!) in 1921. It will be just the ticket as it tells us how to make "A.B. goods, Boiled Goods, Caramels, Chocolates, Coco-nut Work, Creams, Drops, Fondants, Fudges, Gelatines, Gums, Nougats, Pralines; and to the art of sugar boiling in all its branches, based on the results of practical work."

Sounds perfect. I would love a little Coco-nut work. Am not sure what A.B. goods are though. Have just had a look and guess what! They don't either: they say that A.B. goods are very popular in the US, and "We have endeavored, but without success, to ascertain the derivation and meaning of the title 'A.B. Goods.'" And Culinary Masterdoes not know either. It says that the term refers to jellied, gum or marshmallow candy but they don't know why.

Sounds like we have got a mystery on our hands, Scooby Doo! (Or Krunchy Goo, I suppose. Could that work? Krunchy Goo, Culinary Detective. A cat, possibly. I like cats and i think that they would make good spies. And they are discriminating diners, if our own cats are anything to go by).

These recipes were meant for professional candy makers, and they all sound quite delicious. Many of them I have never heard of before. So when the time machine is invented, I definitely want to make a stop at fancy confectioner's shop - preferably one that used this handbook.

Vanilla French Jellies or Jelliettes

Sugar......18 lb.
Water......6 pints.
Best Gelatin......18 oz.
Cream of Tartar......1/2 oz.
Vanillin, "W.J.B."......15 grains. [pushing the house brand - W.J. Bush!]
Blue, A.G.......a trace.

Dissolve the sugar and water in a pan over the fire. Stir until it boils. Thenplace a cover over the pan to steam down the sides. Care should be taken that no sugar adheres to the sides of the pan, otherwise the jellies will soon grain. Boil to 236 F. Remove the pan from the fire, then add the gelatin, previously soaked in another vessel until quite soft, and melted. Pour this in small quantities into the sugar batch, stirring gently, otherwise the mixture will rise and overflow. Add the essence and colour; then run into starch impressions. Sift starch over them, and place in the drying-room for ten or twelve hours. A crust will form over the jelly similar to a liqueur. Finish by crystallizing in a cold syrup, 34 degrees Beaume. Allow to stand in the crystal syrup for about twelve hours; then drain for three hours; after which knock the jellies out of the tins onto wire trays. When quite dry, they are ready to pack.

Vienna Chocolate Bonbons

Crystallized fondants of suitable shape, flavored with any desired flavor or blend of essences and colored with any appropriate shade, are so dipped that only half the centre is covered with sweet chocolate covering. The other half of the fondant thus forms a pleasing contrast to the color of the covering, and produces a very attractive form of sweetmeat for inclusion in boxes of mixed chocolates.

Tomorrow: more candy, even stranger and more anachronistic!

Krunchy Goo, Where Are You?

Why, in the 1968 Favorite Recipes of Jaycee Wives: Salads book, of course!

I don't know why anyone would want to call a food item Krunchy Goo. Perhaps one might use the term to name a kind of ersatz Silly Putty, or that goopy plasticky stuff that kids make in kindergarten, sometimes. What is that stuff called? We had some around here once but nobody used it and I threw it out over the summer. I made homemade Play Do once too. It didn't come out very well. But then, this might not either:

Krunchy Goo

2 cans English peas, drained
1 cup diced celery
1 small onion, diced
1 cup sharp diced cheese
3/4 cup Miracle Whip
Salt and pepper to taste

Combine and mix above ingredients. Yield: 8 servings.

I could not have made it up if I tried, not that I want to try and do that. It is so terrible it is almost wonderful, as long as you don't have to eat it. Do you know what I mean?

The ad is from a 1953 Woman's Day, and I thought it fit in with the not-really-edible theme. The manic, frightening happy guy staring at who-knows-what off camera. And he's in charge of actual food - after all he's wearing the chef's hat. But what is he cooking? I wouldn't be surprised if Krunchy Goo was on the menu. The woman, meanwhile, has been hypnotized by the dismantled Lucky Strike. Lucky for the chef, she won't mind if dinner is a little bit - unusual.

Might as well throw a few peeled cigarettes in there, and call it found art. Call it a day, too, and just send out for pizza instead (could they even do that in 1953 though? Probably not. She will have to snap out of her trance and cook something decent. Macaroni, perhaps.)

I will try and come back later with something delicious, and later this weekend we can get into the Easter stuff.

Yankee Doodle Went To Lunch

I have just been looking through America's Cook Book(1942 edition) - I'll bet you didn't know America had actually written a cookbook. Me neither. Actually it was the people at the Home Institute of the New York Herald Tribune,and they were mighty proud of it, too. A lady called Mrs. William Brown Meloney writes in the Introduction that "a gratifying stream of enthusiastic letters have poured into our office." Furthermore, lots of people came to the Home Institute to learn all about food preparation, and "some have even given us recipes which they considered better than ours." And also, writes Mrs. Meloney, even the people who didn't have really good recipes - and were terrible at cooking, though she is too polite to do more than merely imply this - helped them. They showed the Institute all the ways people cooked badly. For example: don't boil your dumplings too fast, or you will have a big mess on your hands.

I guess that happened during some of the cooking classes.

There are some foreign recipes included as well, in a separate chapter, because the New York Herald Tribune thought you ought to be the sort of bon vivant housewife who was in the know about things like Norwegian Fish Pudding and Alsatian Pork Chops. And recipes with foreign places in the titles are sprinkled throughout the book like - like potato chips on a tuna noodle casserole, that's what.

Macaroni Montparnasse

1 package (8 oz.) macaroni
i medium-sized onion, sliced
6 tomatoes
1/2 tsp. salt
pepper
1/4 clove garlic
1/2 lb. Swiss cheese, sliced

Cook macaroni (p. 408). Cook onions and tomatoes 10 minutes; add salt, pepper, garlic and macaroni; mix well and turn into 6 greased cups or a large casserole. Bake in hot oven (425 F) for 10 minutes; cover top with a layer if Swiss cheese, and bake 10 minutes longer, or until cheese has melted and browned. Yield: six portions.

Montparnasse is a neighborhood on the Left Bank of Paris, noted for its nightclubs and as a hangout for artists and various creative types. I am not aware that it has ever been (or ever will be) famous for its macaroni. Or its Swiss cheese. I believe Switzerland has a prior claim on that. What it is doing on the Left Bank I cannot say. In fact I am speechless. So will resort to song lyrics:

Yankee Doodle seldom dined
With Mrs. Brown Meloney,
For always on his plate he'd find
Montparnasse Macaroni.

Actually the macaroni reference in "Yankee Doodle" has nothing whatsoever to do with pasta. It was late eighteenth-century English slang for something fashionable, or to describe a young over-the-top Beau Brummel dandy. It was derived from the Italian word "maccherone," meaning foolishly vulgar. In the song the British were making fun of the Yankees, who thought that sticking a feather in one's cap was a major fashion statement. According to Wikipedia, the Americans thought this was quite funny and took to the song, thus disappointing the satirical British.

Macaroni pasta was brought to America by Thomas Jefferson, whose charming plan for a macaroni machine is shown above. I am grateful to the Library of Congress American Memory site for the image [Thomas Jefferson's drawing of a macaroni machine and instructions for making pasta, ca. 1787, (Thomas Jefferson Papers); Reproduction Number:A30 (color slide); LC-MSS-27748-180 (B&W negative)]

Monkey Glands and Whiz-Bangs: Some 1930s Cocktails

This little book is caled Cocktails by Jimmy Late of Ciro's London, and this site says that the book was first published in the US circa 1930. The Ciro's in Hollywood opened in 1939, was a celebrity favorite in the 1940s and 1950s,and the Byrds liked it too, as they played there in 1964. By that time the LA Ciro's was a rock club.

Of course, Prohibition in the US lasted from 1920 until 1933, so Jimmy would have been assuming that you either had your own speakeasy, or that you lived up in Canada, or that you had some secret source of liquor.

Jimmy recommends that you shake your cocktails as long as you possibly can and then after you have exhausted yourself in this aerobic fashion, to slug them down right away: "All cocktails are at their best immediately after making and shuld be taken as soon as possible." Especially if the police were at the speakeasy door!

The Preface writer had probably had a cocktail or two before sitting down at the typewriter. You can just hear him chortling at his own jokes, of which there are nearly as many as cocktail recipes in the book. He writes that this book will be as useful as "the family cook-book" because it will ensure that "even a child of five may prepare his (or her) favorite beverage without the necessity of running to ask daddy 'Please, what is a jigger?'"

The Preface also says that you can certainly use a bathtub to mix your drinks if you like - or a teaspoon, if you are more moderate. Just use Jimmy's scientific ratios and "the result will save you the endless bother of taking trips to Europe." Haw haw!

Jimmy liked grenadine (orange-flavored) and orgeat (almond-flavored) syrups but he also enjoyed a little gum syrup. You could get all of them "at al first-class grocery and provision stores." As long as they didn't ask what you were doing with all the drinks ingredients! Also, as we puzzle over the subtle difference between groceries and provisions, we may also wonder what is gum syrup. Could it possibly contain - gum? Well, gum arabic, originally, which gave it a creamy feel, but generally gum syrup was a simple sugar/water or sugar/water/egg white concoction. Here is a link to a recipe for it.

There are a lot of cocktails crammed into this small book, many with amusing names. And there are some strange toasts at the back, covering everything from bad puns to condescension to women.

Ink Street: 1 part Irish Whisky,1 part Orange Juice, 1 part Lemon Juice.

Monkey's Gland: 1 part Dry Gin, 1 part Orange Juice, 1 dash Absinthe per cocktail, Grenadine to taste.

Whiz-Bang: 2 parts Scotch Whisky, 1 part French Vermouth, 2 dashes Absinthe per cocktail, 2 dashes Orange Bitters per cocktail, Grenadine to taste. Squeeze a piece of lemon peel on top.

And after you have made your Whiz-Bangs and Monkey Glands, in between shaking and drinking them (and remember, you do not have much time to mess around here!) you can whip off a quick little toast, such as:

"Hips that touch liquor will never fall down." [Huh?]

"In through the teeth/Over the tongue/Look out, stomach/Here I come."

"Here's to you, my dear, and to the dear who's not here, my dear
but if the dear who's not here, my dear, were here, my dear,
I'd not be drinking to you dear, that's clear."

I would most definitely need a drink after the last toast, I fear.

Steero Bouillon Cubes, 1924

I am going to try and post later today too, but I wanted to do something small before heading off to the library. And at the library I have learned how to use the microfilm reader/printer AND have discovered that said library (it is the main city one down my way) has got all sorts of old magazines on microfilm - scads of old women's magazines! And you know what that means? Old advertisements, which I love like crazy. So here is one I did yesterday - it could be better, I know! That reader/printer was not the best one. I need to find the perfect one so am trying them all out. Such fun (geeky nerdy fun I realize, but fun nonetheless).

This is from the Ladies' Home Journal circa 1924, part of an ad for bouillon cubes. I thought it had a Mary Poppins vibe to it - I mean the original P.L. Travers book (or books rather, as there are four of them in the series). Specifically the beginning of book one, where Mrs. Banks (who looks like she came out of a 1930s dress catalogue) is freaking out because all the nannies quit on her and here she is with four children running around like the Three (or rather Four) Stooges. Or perhaps the Marx Brothers, there were four of them.

Now in this ad - are those elderly children looking upset over the enormous cook exiting stage left, or are they the parental units, shrunken to symbolize their helpless rage? We have one balding child/man, a Depression-era Charlie Brown with Anger Issues and one confused girl/woman, a deflated 1930s Lucy Van Pelt lookalike, whose energetic crankiness has been mysteriously transferred to her three-haired mate. I guess they are the master and mistress of the house.

However did that enormous cook fit in their tiny-person house? And she doesn't look like a domestic servant to me. She looks like Mrs. Stuckup Knickerbocker after a tough day's shopping at Henri Bendel.

Still, if that didn't convince the ladies of 1924 to rush out and buy Steero bouillon cubes I don't know what would.

And if only Mrs. Banks had had some Steero cubes on hand, she might have calmed down well before Mary P. arrived at Cherry Tree Lane on the 6:42 Black Umbrella Express. "After a tiring afternoon, there is nothing more refreshing than hot STEERO bouillon. "

I don't know - if I had four children to look after, and was as clueless as poor Mrs. Banks (or the couple in the ad) I would be reaching for the Harvey's Bristol Cream bottle, not a bouillon cube.

Irish Moss Jelly

Irish recipes are on the menu today (I know, that is pretty lame, but it is Monday, that's my excuse) - because it is St. Patrick's Day today, that's what. As well as Monday. Don't have any special Monday recipes though.

Also, you probably ought to know that I am partly Scotch-Irish, though also part regular-Irish by marriage. That counts, doesn't it? As a genealogist I consider all my ancestors-in-law sort of mine, too. Especially if I found them in the census! So my Irish-by-marriage ancestry is from Kerry (or Cork, I haven't worked that out quite yet). And on my side, from Tyrone and Londonderry.

I have got two variations of one recipe in honor of the day. The first is from Mrs Beeton's All About Cookery (ca 1925-30). Yes, I know she was English. But her ingredients are Celtic-sounding. And everyone should celebrate St. Patrick's Day - even Mrs. Beeton.

Irish Moss Jelly

Ingredients: 1/2 an oz. of Irish moss or agar agar, 1 pint of water, 1/2 a glass of sherry (optional), 1 dessertspoonful of lemon-juice, sugar to taste.

Method: Wash the moss thoroughly, and soak it in cold water for about 12 hours. Strain, put it in a stew-pan with 1 pint of water, and simmer gently for about 5 hours, adding more water as evaporation occurs, so as to keep the quantity of liquid to 1 pint. Strain, sweeten to taste, add the lemon-juice and sherry (if used), and turn into a mould previously rinsed with cold water. Irish moss possesses medicinal properties, but the flavour is somewhat unpalatable, hence the necessity of disguising it with sherry or lemon-juice. Time: about 17 hours.

Irish moss (carraigin or fiadhain in Irish Gaelic) is a seaweed found on the rocky North Atlantic coasts in Europe and North America. It ranges in color from yellow-green to red to brown-purple, and is full of carrageen, which forms a jelly when heated to a boil. Irish or carrageen moss is also rich in protein, iodine and other minerals. Carrageenan, which is derived from this seaweed, is used as a stabilizer in products such as ice cream. In Asia it is used in jellied desserts, as it is similar to agar agar. It can have a sea-water taste, according to Wikipedia, so it is usually combined with other, more dessert-friendly flavors.

Another seaweed (genus Gracularia) is called Irish moss in the Carribean, where it is used in beverages and desserts, which often have vanilla or strawberry added to them.

But do the Irish eat Irish moss jelly? The name sort of suggests that they do, doesn't it? Mary Caherty's Real Irish Cookery(Robert Hale Ltd, London, 1995), is a tiny book and the only Irish cookbook in my collection. She has a recipe for "Carrageen Jelly" which is very similar to Mrs. Beeton's. She suggests that you boil an ounce of "Carrageen moss" in a pint of milk, with 2 dessertspoonfuls of sugar and a bit of salt, after soaking the moss for 15 minutes in cold water. After simmering this for half an hour, one strains the mixture and puts it in a mold to set. She also recommends adding some stewed fruit just before you put it in the mold (Caherty, pp 55-56). And it probably wouldn't take 17 hours to make, which beats Mrs. Beeton.

And if you used gooseberries, you would get a lovely green jelly, just right for St. Patrick's Day!

The image is from one of the many delightful old ads at the beginning and end of the Mrs. Beeton book - there were a lot of ads for gelatins. No Knox or Cox gelatin though.

Liquid Smoke and Mirrors

Here are some really useful household hints from a booklet entitled Home Curing and Preparing of Meats: Recipes and Household Hints, from the Standard Chemical Company Limited (Toronto, Winnipeg, Montreal). They made, among other things, Standard Liquid Smoke for all your meat-smoking purposes. Liquid smoke was invented in the 1920s (according to my Google Patents search) so the booklet probably dates from about 1940.

What better hint to begin with, from liquid smoke manufacturers, than how to deal with a smoky room. That is, aside from putting out the fire, if that is the cause of your problem, of course. Listen up, children:

Tobacco smoke, and odors, may be removed from a room by placing a pail of water, containing a little hay, in the room. A towel, dipped in a mixture of half vinegar and half hot water, wrung out, and swung around the head, will also take up smoke and odors.

Do you have to do these things at the same time? Because I don't see how a bucket of hay and water is going to help matters much. Mind you, if I started swinging a vinegar-soaked towel around my head around here, room odor would not be perceived as being our primary problem.

Tea-Kettle: A clean oyster shell in the tea-kettle will prevent it from rusting. [You do have plenty of oyster shells lying around, don't you? Especially you folks out in the prairie provinces!]

Oilcloth: Instead of tacking oilcloth on the kitchen table, paste in on with boiled flour paste. It will last considerably longer. [In fact, you will probably never get it off.]

And here is a hint that will make you grateful to the makers of dishwashing liquid (or dish soap, as we call it in Canada):

Dish-Washing Suds: Take a small baking-soda can - punch nail holes in both top and bottom. Keep pieces of soap (too small to use, and which would, otherwise, be thrown away) in this can. Swish the can around in the dishwater, for heavy suds. Another way is to just punch holes in the bottom of the can, and put a string handle on the top. After filling with pieces of soap (or a bar of soap) hang it on the oht water tap, or pour the boiling water through it, into the dish-washing pan.

At least you didn't have to make your own soap, though.

And one last hint:

Hanging Pictures: If you are going to drive a nail into plaster, make it very hot first, and the plaster will not split. [Won't it be too hot to pick up though?]

To wind this up, let's look at one of the recipes for cooking the meat that you have smoked. It was probably all right if you had been out in the fields all day and needed something really heavy in your stomach.

Broiled Ham

Cut thin slices of a smoked ham. Then spread them with lard, and sprinkle generously with brown sugar. Broil, in a very hot oven, for ten or twelve minutes. This is delicious, served with fried bananas.

So much for never seeing another meat-fruit-sugar recipe....I guess I forgot about ham. I guess it is OK with ham. Cranberry sauce is also fine with turkey. And in Belgium once we had roast wild boar with some sort of berry sauce. There was a cooked pear half on the plate too. And I liked that. So let's just say: meat plus sugar must not - under any circumstances, and I mean even if you have, oh, say, a really nice Bundt pan - equal cake.

The Bundt Cake Paradox

There are apparently 300 ways to use Bundt pans - at least they were up to 300 in 1973, when this strange little book came out. It is a little later in time than most of the cookbooks I collect, but I couldn't resist this one. And I don't think that the copyright was renewed (I just checked, and I was right). This was a one-off, and this recipe will help explain why. There are some mighty odd things these people wanted to put in their Bundt pans. I was very nearly going to present the Bean Bread (which involves hot roll mix and a can of pork and beans) but then I saw the following and knew I had my subject for today.

Sausage Cake

1 cup raisins
1 lb. pork sausage
1 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1 tsp. soda
1 cup strong coffee
3 cups sifted flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tp pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp. ginger
1 cup chopped walnuts

Pour boiling water over raisins and let stand 5 minutes; drain well and dry raisins on paper towelling. In large bowls, combine meat and sugars; mix well. Add eggs and beat. Stir soda into coffee. Sift together dry ingredients and add to meat mixture alternatively with coffee. Beat well. Fold in raisins and walnut. Bake in greased and floured Mini-Bundt Pan or Fiesta Party Pan at 350 for 1 1/2 hours or until cake tests done. Cool in pan 10-15 minutes; turn out on wire rack or serving plate to complete cooling. Top with thin Vanilla Glaze and decorate with whole almonds.

The cookbook says "you won't believe how fast this cake will go!" I'll bet I will though. And I think I know where it is going. Right down the garbage disposal, that's where. Or to the pig trough, if you happen to be baking this on a farm. I think they might like it all right.

"The combination of flavors is spicy rich!" I suppose it is definitely spicy. And with all the fat from the sausage, it will definitely be rich. Doesn't it sound like the Essex Meat Packers have a hand in this though? The ambiguously-worded, manically cheery commentary. And of course the meat - the meat! What is meat doing in a cake?! Never ever do I want to read the directions "combine meat and sugars" in a recipe - not just one sugar but two sugars. The meat must be well sugared! The meat is spicy and rich and no one will ever forget this cake. No matter how far they - or the cake - go, or how quickly. Though they might want to.

"No Farther Away Than Your Can-Opener!"

That's how far away a good meal is, says the Better Homes and Gardens Casserole Cook Book (1961). Hmm. Well, the last time I checked, my can opener was in the silverware drawer. So it might be more accurate to say that a good spoon is no farther away than my can opener. And judging from the recipes - Pizza Hash, Chipped-beef Chow Mein, and something called Hurry Supper Bake (which sounds less like a meal and more like what I mutter to myself as I stick things in the microwave) - well, I don't know. Maybe they ought to rethink what exactly is no farther away than my can opener. There must be something else nearby. A can, perhaps? Maybe it could become a meal. Depends on what's in that can. And what happens to it once we open up that can.

For example, here's what might happen if you opened up a can or two of devilled ham. I guess they mean the Underwood stuff, does anyone else remember that? It came in teensy cans that had a paper wrapper, I don't know why. My mother stuck some of it between white bread slices and called it a sandwich. But we can do so much more with it than that! Behold:

Ham Sandwich, Spring Style

8 thick slices enriched bread, toasted
Prepared mustard
2 4 1/2 oz cans devilled ham
8 thin slices (about 3 1/2 inches square) sharp process American cheese
2 10-oz. packages frozen asparagus spears, cooked and drained
1 recipe Jiffy Mustard Sauce [note: this is 1/2 cup mayo and 1 1/2 tsp. mustard, low heat, combined - got it?]

Trim off crusts, then spread toast lightly with prepared mustard; spread generously with devilled ham. Top each slice with cheese. Cut toast in half, diagonally. Place on baking sheet and heat in hot oven (400 degrees F) 3 to 5 minutes, or till cheese starts to melt. Arrange on platter with hot buttered asparagus; serve with warm Jiffy Mustard Sauce. Makes 8 servings.

Now they recommend that you set the toast triangles to look like little cheesy sails, riding in a sea of buttered asparagus, with a rivulet of sauce running down the middle. I have no idea what this nautical theme has to do with ham, or cheese, or sandwiches, or buttered asparagus. Or spring. The spring thaw? Flooded riverbanks?

Also, when you up-end what is essentially a tuna-melt (only with ham spread), it is most likely to fall off the toast. And then where would you be, nautically speaking? You'd be at sea, that's where. Up the Jiffy Mustard creek without a toast sail, me hearties! Yo ho ho!

Oh, and Happy Pi Day. Have a piece of deep dish apple, or some pizza, listen to Don McLean sing that long song about American Pie. And may your meringue toppings never weep!

Baked Alaska Pie

If you are also readers of The Old Foodie (and I certainly hope that you are!) you will know that it is Pie Week in honor of Pi. You can go here for some ideas on how to celebrate Pi Day - aside from the consumption of delicious pies, of course. I don't know if we are going to play the Pi version of Jeopardy! (I am already confused just thinking about it), or decorate the house (with pie plates?) but perhaps I will play "American Pie"on YouTube or something.

Pi Day is in fact tomorrow, but I am putting this up today. You can read it tomorrow if you like, of course. This recipe is from the festively-named Good Housekeeping Party Pie Book (1958). There's something about a party pie that sounds - so perky! A party pie for a Pi party. Let the calculations begin! Perhaps you could measure the slices with a protractor or a ruler or something (can you tell that I dropped math in 10th grade?)

Baked Alaska Pie

Baked 9" pie shell
16 large marshmallows
1 Tb water or canned pineapple juice
2 egg whites
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 tsp salt
2 cups chilled fresh raspberries or drained, just thawed frozen raspberries or strawberries
1 qt. firm vanilla, peach or pistachio ice cream

Refrigerate pie shell until well chilled. Preheat broiler 10 minutes, or as manufacturer directs. Over low heat, heat marshmallows with water, folding constantly, until marshmallows are melted. Beat egg whites until quite stiff; gradually add sugar and salt, beating until very stiff; fold into marshmallow mixture. Sprinkle 1 cup berries into pie shell; fill with ice cream; then sprinkle rest of berries onto ice cream; top with meringue, covering ice cream completely all the way out to edge of pie (this helps to keep ice cream firm). Broil several inches below heat until lightly browned. Serve at once.

Good Housekeeping notes that you can make this in advance - just leave out the berries, make and broil the pie with meringue, then bung it in the freezer all wrapped up. Thaw for about 45 minutes before you want it, and put the berries on top as you dish it out. Only they took about three paragraphs to say it, so I thought I'd cut to the chase.

Traditional Baked Alaska uses sponge cake as a base for the ice cream and meringue. It was made possible by a scientist named Benjamin Thompson (1753-1814) of Woburn, Massachusetts, who was well known both in the US and England. He was honored by the English with the title Count Rumford (after his wife's hometown in New Hampshire - I guess they didn't like the sound of Count Woburn). According to John F. Mariani in The Dictionary of American Food and Drink (New York, 1983), Thompson discovered that egg whites are resistant to heat. From this scientific breakthrough came a dessert at New York City's famous restaurant, Delmonico's, called Alaska-Florida. Fannie Farmer first called the dessert Baked Alaska in 1909 [Mariani, p. 23].

So there you have it - the perfect dessert for Pi Day, a scientific pie!

For more delightful pie recipes:

To Catch A Quiche
Rawleigh's Coconut Cream Pie
Silverwood Spice Pie

Rooibos Tea and a Good Book

Jenn over at The Thrift Shop Romantic has asked me to do a meme - and before you go any further, go look at her blog, which is very cool and fun! The deal is that you are supposed to share the book you are currently reading a quote a few paragraphs from it.

Well, luckily the book I am reading now has a lot of tea-drinking in it - and an intriguing tea at that. So not only am I going to share a bit of my book with you, I will (a) find out what the tea is and (b) end up with a teatime recipe, which, OK, is not in the book, but you can see the tenuous connection, right?

I did read a couple of mysteries over Christmas where the detective is a caterer or something, and there are recipes at the back of the book, after the mystery is solved, but I read those in December so they do not count. And I decided not to count my cookbook reading, which consists of me making the recipes in my head, or flipping around at random in the Larousse Gastronomique. Mind you when I read at night, reclining gorgeously on a couch, the Larousse is WAY too heavy for me. I need a light paperback to hold in my exhausted hands. Mysteries are perfect for this sort of half-conscious, do-not-bother-me-for-I-am-covered-by-a-blanket reading moments.

So what I am reading right now is one of Alexander McCall Smith's mystery series about the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, which is run by Precious Ramotswe, the first female detective in Botswana. This one is called The Good Husband of Zebra Drive. As always in this series, several small mysteries are solved in the course of the book. The titular one concerns a rather rude and abrupt lady who suspects her husband of having an affair, and wants him followed and found out. All is solved in the end, naturally. I am looking forward to reading more in the series, as they are quietly witty, and I like the premise of having several smaller mysteries to solve rather than one flashy extraordinary one.

It is hard to choose bits of the book to quote - and I won't tell you too much about the plot, because that would spoil it. Here is a little exchange in Chapter 1 that gives you an idea of the style of the novel:

"He cannot shut doors quietly," said Motholeli, putting her hands to her ears.

"He is a boy," said Mma Ramotswe. "That is how boys behave."

"Then I am glad I am not a boy," said Motholeli.

Mma Ramotswe smiled. "Men and boys think that we would like to be like them," she said. "I don't think they know how pleased we are to be women." [p. 8]

Mma Remotswe's favorite drink is "red bush tea," and I thought i didn't know what that was. But it is rooibos tea, which has become popular partly through the Smith books and partly from its delicious taste, which is mildly nutty and sweet. It has high levels of antioxidants and low levels of caffeine and tannin - how could you not like that? Celestial Seasonings makes several kinds, including my favorite, Madagascar Vanilla Red Rooibos.

There are two kinds of tea consumed at regular intervals at the detective agency. There is regular tea for everyone but Mma Ramotswe. She prefers traditional red bush tea, which is seen by many people in the series as rather old-fashioned. This takes place in "A Short Chapter About Tea" - here is a bit which will give you the flavor of these wonderful books: smooth, gentle yet sharp writing, humorous and though quite relaxing to read, strangely absorbing. I picked this book up thinking I might get bored, and did not put it down until I had read it all. In this scene, the secretary, Mma Makutsi, has returned after quitting for one morning, and the two women are being careful with each other. However, they still want their tea:

Mma Ramotswe made a placatory gesture with her hand. "Oh no, Mma. Anybody can make that sort of mistake. One can be thinking of something else altogether and not notice that the tea is getting low. That has happened many times before."

"Here?" asked Mma Makutsi. "Are you saying that it has happened here? That I have forgotten many times before?"

"No," said Mma Ramotswe hurriedly. "Not you. I'm just saying that it has happened elsewhere. Everybody makes that sort of mistake. It is easily done. I cannot remember a single time you have done this before. Not one single time."

This seemed to satisfy Mma Makutsi. "Good. But what are you going to do now? Will you have ordinary tea, Mma?"

Mma Ramotswe felt that she had no alternative. "If there is no bush tea, then I cannot very well sit here and not drink any tea. It would be better to drink a cup of ordinary tea rather than have no tea to drink." [p. 171]

I agree entirely - and I am about to get myself a cup of Madagascar Vanilla Rooibos right now. But before I do, here's a recipe for a little something to go with your tea - whatever kind you prefer. It is Scottish, in honor of Alexander McCall Smith, who is Zimbabwean by birth but of Scottish descent (I am too, a little - one ancestor was from Dumfries and one further back came from the Isle of Skye). It is from Recipes From Scotland (1960), by F. Marian McNeill:

Edinburgh Gingerbread

8 oz. flour
4 oz. butter
4 oz. treacle
2 oz. sugar
4 oz. raisins
2 oz. almonds
1 level teaspoonful Bicarbonate of Soda
1 level teaspoonful Cinnamon
1 level teaspoon Cloves
1 heaped teaspoonful Ginger
2 Eggs

Sift the flour, soda and spices into a basin. Clean and stone the raisins, blanch and split the almonds, and add to the flour mixture.

Put the butter, sugar and treacle into a small saucepan and bring to the boil. Beat the two eggs, and pour the boiling treacle over them, stirring vigorously. Pour this mixture on to the dry ingredients and beat thoroughly. Put into a battered cake-tin and bake for an hour or longer in a very moderate oven.

Image of a glass of rooibos tea from Wikimedia Commons. And I tag any one of my readers who would like to do this - please do, it is really fun. And I love to hear about what other people are reading.

Note: BBC1 is about to start a series about the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency - I hope this will come out on DVD sometime!

Santa Clara Salad

This one is just so silly I can't resist. It's a salad, supposedly - but not really. It is from dear old Ruth Berolzheimer's 1951 edition of The American Woman's Cook Book (with special Everywoman's Binding, which seems to have something to do with Everywoman's Magazine, according to the title page).

This is not really a salad though - it is sort of salad as theatre-of-the-absurd - Salvador Dali Salad. It is just a venue for prunes disguised as salad - it's on a lettuce leaf, therefore it's a salad!

Don't get me wrong, I like prunes, but not so many prunes at once. It's like a National Prune Convention on a plate. And it takes place in - well, in Santa Clara, where else? I looked up Santa Clara, California and did not see anything about prunes. It did have a largely agricultural economy up until the last few decades but is now known for being the home of Silicon Valley. The closest I can come to prunes in Santa Clara is Apple headquarters. Well, they're both fruits! Sort of.

Santa Clara Salad

24 prunes in sirup

6 oz. cream cheese

8 slices pineapple

Head lettuce

Maraschino cherries

Stone prunes. Soften cream cheese with evaporated milk, if necessary, and stuff prunes. Place pineapple on lettuce and arrange three stuffed prunes on each slice. Garnish prunes with bits of maraschino cherries. Serves 8.

The prunes are stoned? Must be some convention. Also they are stuffed. I get like that if I tag along to conventions - those opening night cocktail parties have such good snacks. There was one, oh years ago, where they had fresh strawberries and tons of jumbo shrimp on ice. I stayed right next to the shrimp - it was a once in a lifetime shrimp opportunity! I didn't want to leave. I had to be dragged out and away from that shrimp, it was that good.

That's a great picture of the "salad" too, isn't it? The prunes look like little Edvard Munch faces. Wikipedia says that "The Scream" represents "the human species overwhelmed by an attack of existential angst." So Santa Clara Salad would be perfect if you're having a bunch of art critics over for dinner. What would you serve for the rest of the meal?

To Catch A Quiche

One of my favorite kinds of retro cookbooks are the ones that feature celebrity recipes - and I use the term "celebrity" fairly loosely, depending on the book. Good Housekeeping put one of these out in 1958, called Who's Who Cooks: Favorite Recipes of Famous People. They tracked down "actors and authors, musicians and milliners, statesmen and skaters, and puppeteers" and asked them what they liked on their celebrity tables. Some of them didn't cook, not surprisingly, so in that case you are getting the cuisine "perfected by their jewels-of-cooks."

In the case of Ray Bolger (who was as you probably remember the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz), "he takes his recipes to favorite restaurants and has them made to order." Because he doesn't have time to cook, you see. But wouldn't schlepping all the way to some restaurant and trying to get a busy chef to make you Flaming Filet of Beef - one of Ray's favorites, apparently - take more time than bunging it in the oven yourself? And why didn't he have a jewel-of-a-cook? Oh, never mind.

The celebrities range from people like writer/explorer Lowell Thomas and newscaster John Cameron Swayze, to less famous ones like Sally Victor (famous in the 1950s for her hats) and Bil and Cora Baird (the puppeteers). I'll write about some of their offerings down the road, but today I can't resist sharing one of my favorites - Alfred Hitchcock's Quiche Lorraine.

Who knew that Alfred Hitchcock was so crazy about quiche? I thought Real Men Didn't Eat Quiche, and all that (remember that book from 1982, anyone?). He was clearly a man ahead of his time. Good Housekeeping informs us that Hitchcock told his friends that "I'm not a heavy eater. I'm just heavy, and I eat." Whatever you say, Sir Alfred - just as long as you don't bring any flocks of birds along to dinner, or anything. Note the explanation in parentheses after the title - quiche was pretty exotic stuff back in 1958.

Hitchcock's Quiche Lorraine (Swiss-Cheese Pie)

Sift together 1 1/2 cups sifted cake flour and 1/2 tsp salt.
With finger tips, work in until crumbly: 1/4 cup butter or margarine (1/2 cup). Slowly add, stirring with fork: 1/4 cup cold water.
Shape into ball; roll in waxed paper; refrigerate about 1/2 hour, or until easy to roll.
Then start heating oven to 425 F.

On floured board, roll dough into large circle, about 14" in diameter. Fit into 11" pie plate. Make attractive fluted edge. With fork, prick well. Place in refrigerator about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, make filling. Fry until crisp: 12 slices bacon Crumble bacon into small pieces. Now, using fine grater, grate: 1/4 lb. natural Swiss cheese (makes about 1 cup) Into bowl, break 4 eggs.

Then add: 2 cups heavy cream
3/4 tsp salt
Pinch nutmeg
Generous pinch sugar
Pinch cayenne
Plenty of freshly ground black pepper

Beat with egg beater just long enough to mix thoroughly. Now spread pastry shell with about 1 Tb soft butter or margarine. Sprinkle bacon bits, then grated cheese, in bottom of pie shell. Pour cream mixture over all. Bake 15 minutes. Then reduce oven temperature to 300 F; bake 20 minutes longer, or until silver knife inserted in center comes out clean. Serve hot, cut into wedges. Makes 20 hors d'oeuvres, or 8 main-dish servings.

I am not sure about the sugar and the cayenne, or about the butter on top of the pie crust (followed by bacon) - but Hitchcock's "great interest and good taste in food are sort of a legend," and this is the way he liked his quiche. Let's just be glad he didn't put in anything really strange.

Welcome To The Canape Ball

Here's a peculiar little cannon ball of an appetizer from the 1946 oeuvre, Watkins Salad Book, to start the week off in a festive sort of way. I truly wish there was a picture of this in the book (which is full of dreadful recipes, by the way, I'll be sharing more of it in the weeks to come). Instead, here are all the little Watkins products, pictured in the 1948 edition of the Watkins Cook Book. Yes, I actually own three Watkins books - I also have the 1938 Watkins Cook Book. They must have been in a group at the secondhand bookstore. I didn't like to separate them. Watkins products like to stay together, as the photo shows. This recipe is a bit like that - an awkward grouping, standing around - or in this case, rolling around, held together only by a few toothpicks.

Canape Ball

Wash a large grapefruit, dry, then chill. Just before serving, place a row of stuffed olives (stuck on toothpicks) across the top and down the sides of the grapefruit. On each side of the olives place anchovies stuck on toothpicks. Continue the rows, parallel to the olives and anchovies, with cubes of American and Swiss cheese, the size of the anchovies. Add a row of pickled onions, if desired, or large ripe olives.

If people actually did this, they might want to cut a thin slice off the bottom of the grapefruit - or else that thing is going to roll around, like some sort of edible bowling ball from retro-kitchen hell, and no one is going to want that to happen. The anchovies are a particularly terrible idea, impaled on toothpicks - you don't want the snacks staring at you, do you, accusing you silently of spearing them onto a large citrus fruit.

Best just to stop after the first sentence of the recipe - put the grapefruit away in the fridge - and then chill. Go read a magazine and relax. Yeah, chill. Just put cheese and crackers out, and a bunch of grapes maybe. Then we can all relax.

Washday Dish

This recipe is from a 1940 United Farm Women of Alberta cookbook, from the days when you had to spend an entire day doing the laundry. Naturally you did not want to cook an elaborate meal after all that fuss with the mangle and the starch and the clothespins and everything.

I have a household guide from 1941, the New York Herald Tribune Home Institute's America's Housekeeping Book, that devotes six whole chapters to laundry. It's quite an arbeit, as my grandmother liked to say: the sorting, the soaking, the washing. The rinsing, the bluing, the bleaching and the starching. And then all the troubles you may have with these tasks. Followed by the drying, the sprinkling and the ironing (see separate chapters).

And then after all of this - you have to take care of the washing machine. After each washday, it is suggested that you remove the lint, wash the inside of the machine, and wash the wringer rolls with nice warm soapsuds. Lucky for you you don't also have to sing to it and give it a little snack. If you did, though, there'd be plenty of Washday Dish to go around. And cooking it doesn't require any heavy lifting, which is a good thing after all you went through with the wash.

Washday Dish

Place in a baking dish thinly sliced potatoes, seasoned with salt, pepper and onion, and dredge with flour. Fill until you can see, but don't cover with milk or water. Places slices of bacon or salt pork on top of potatoes. Bake in oven until tender, about 1 1/2 hours. Turn meat when brown. If meat gets too crisp, cover.

The photos above are of washing machines from a British 1951 Good Housekeeping Home Encyclopedia. They are probably pretty similar to the sort of washing machines that the Tribune was telling housewives to clean with warm soapsuds. (And isn't the machine already pretty clean? I mean, didn't it just have warm soapsuds in it?)

Rawleigh's Coconut Cream Pie

The W.T.Rawleigh Co. Ltd. was based in Montreal and Winnipeg and made a wide range of cooking and household products, roughly similar to the Watkins Company in Minnesota. They made medicines, spices, dessert mixes, artifical sweetener, food coloring, makeup - you anme it, they probably made it or something close.

The ad and recipe are from their 1959 almanac, which has lots of terrific full-page color ads for their products. In fact the almanac is mostly ads, which is great because I love old advertisements. I especially like the product packaging. Rawleigh's give their medicines brilliant names like "Pleasant Relief" and Anti-Pain Oil." Who wouldn't line up to buy some of that? Just what I need after a long day!

And here's another thing you and I might need: dessert mix. That's right. Because you never know when hungry guests and ravenous school children are going to come marauding around, looking for pie! (Hopefully not at the same time, of course).

In the ad above, Rawleigh's is pushing their pie-fillings-slash-puddings. They want you to serve them after meals and also as an after school snack (not the healthiest thing, but I guess it is 1959 and sugar= good energy). I love how they urge you to keep a few on hand all the time "for regular and emergency use" - as if there was going to be some kind of pudding emergency cropping up, maybe after school. Or maybe you forgot to make something for your guests. And that will make them cranky. Low blood sugar is like that. So keep everyone happy with Rawleigh's dessert mixes. And not to worry; this pie won't take long to whip up.

Coconut Cream Pie

Vanilla wafers, crushed.....30

Brown sugar.....3 Tbs

Butter, melted.....1/3 cup

Semi-sweet chocolate pieces.....1 pkg

Rawleigh's Coconut Pie Filling.....1 pkg

Rawleigh's Vanilla.....1 tsp

Whipping cream, whipped

To make crust, mix wafer crumbs, brown sugar and butter together. Shape and press into a 9-inch pie plate. Place one half of chocolate pieces over sides and bottom of crust. Bake in 325 F oven for 10 to 12 minutes. Cool. make coconut filling according to directions on container, add 1 tsp. vanilla. Cool. Pour into crust. Cover top with sweetened whipped cream, flavored with vanilla. Sprinkle remaining chocolate pieces over top. Chill until ready to serve. Serves 6.

This sounds a lot like a Mounds bar, which is a great idea. The Mounds bar was created in 1920 by the Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Co. in Connecticut, which you can read about here.

From Buttons To Bumbershoots

One of the things I collect in addition to traditional cookbooks are books on entertaining and throwing parties (I also love old etiquette books and - well, all sorts of odd things, really). This one is probably from the 1950s and was written by Helen Campbell, who was the Director of the Chatelaine Institute in Canada. It's called The Art of Entertaining and was done under the aegis of the London Life Insurance Company, whose interest in stag parties and wedding showers and their ilk is beyond me, but there you go.

This booklet, it is only 24 pages long, so I guess the art of entertaining was not considered hard to master. Miss Campbell does not think so. Mind you, she thinks that entertaining is all fun and friendly people and good times. She says that the reader (female, of course) "wants to know the answers to the problems of entertaining as delightfully as possible."

Helen Campbell also thinks that my "own particular crowd" as she puts it, look like the people in the above illustration. Perhaps they have some delightful answers to entertaining problems, though I doubt it. They do have delightful hats, I can see that. Especially the woman, who looks like she got the hat from a St Patrick's Day leprechaun costume. And Ronald Reagan seems to be answering the door, I don't know what he's doing there.

Anyhow, there are party games on the last page, and one of them sent me to the on-line dictionary to find out what in the world was a bumbershoot. All of Helen's games are things people probably enjoy more if they are seven and at a birthday party, but whatever. This one is called "How's Your Memory?" ("Oh, fine thank you, Mrs. Bumbershoot, and how is yours?")

How's Your Memory?

Give each guest a pencil and piece of paper. On a table in another room spread out about twenty different articles, anything from a button to a "bumbershoot." Have the guests come in to look them over for one minute, then return to the living room to write down as many as they can remember - in five minutes. Then read out the answers and reward the winner.

A bumbershoot is an old slang term for an umbrella. World Wide Words says that it was derived from the first syllable of umbrella, more or less, plus the ending (more or less) of "parachute," the shape of which resembles that of an umbrella. The guests would not remember mine, I am sure, as it is cheap and small and black. It cost $1 in the loonie store, which is what we call dollar stores up here in Canada. The people in the picture would have elegant and memorable (and delightful) ones, though.

Once you have a winner of that exciting game, you will of course reward him or her - being the gracious hostess that you are - and you are, aren't you? You had better be, once you read this book. How about rewarding everyone - with a nice piece of Feather Cake, from the section on Showers (perfectly in sync with the umbrella theme!)

Feather Cake

1/4 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
2 cups pastry or cake flour
3 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup milk
1/2 tsp almond flavoring Cream the butter thoroughly, add the sugar gradually and continue creaming until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the egg and beat well. Sift the flour, measure and sift two or three times with the baking powder and salt. Add alternately with the milk to the first mixture. Add the flavoring and bake in a greased square tin or in two greased layer cake tins in a moderate oven (350 degrees Fahrenheit) for 30 to 35 minutes.Fresh Strawberry Icing1/4 cup butter
2 cups powdered sugar
1 Tb orange juice
1/3 cup (approximately) of fresh strawberry pulp
pinch of saltCream the butter thoroughly, add the sugar gradually until one cupful is combined. Add the orange juice, then the remaining cupful of sugar alternately with the strawberry pulp, beating smooth after esach addition and adding enough of the strawberry pulp to make of spreading consistency. Add the salt and spread on top and sides of the cake.

Silverwood Spice Pie

This is from a promotional pamphlet put out by Silverwood Dairies in Canada sometimes in 1957. It sounds like a custard pie with extra spice, not that fashionable, but it is sounds good enough. The Silverwood people feel that it would be an even better idea if you used their powdered milk in it.

Spice Pie (Using Silverwood's Milk Powder)

4 egg yolks
1 1/4 cups milk
1 1/3 cups sugar
2 Tb melted butter
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp nutmeg
3 Tbs flour
4 egg whites
1/2 tsp salt

Combine first eight ingredients, mix well. Beat egg whites and salt until stiff but not dry. Fold gently into egg yolk mixture. Pour filling into warm baked pie shell. Bake 40 to 50 minutes in 350 F oven.*To convert milk powder to milk follow directions on package.

I like that last little hint. Don't, you know, try any funny business on your own, like mixing half the package with a tablespoon of water, or with orange juice or something. Just read the package! I guess they thought they had to tell the housewives that.

Also they tried to make the booklet appeal more to women by calling it Food Fashions of '57, like you would be stylish if you made their recipes, like Fried Corn with Sour Cream Sauce and Tuna-Macaroni Supreme. Very cutting-edge.

The photo is from the front page, which tells us that "more than 450,000 Canadian housewives have witnessed demonstrations which feature the proper balance of food for healthful nutrition, so necessary in our daily diets."

I'll bet you anything they are also showing them how to mix the powdered milk! They don't trust the housewives to read the back of the box!

Melonhash

Yes indeed, this is supposed to be one word. Melonhash. You won't be surprised to learn that this is from the infamous The World At Your Table (from the Essex Meat Packers of Hamilton, Ontario, cicra 1968). There is no picture of it, which perhaps is for the best. Just try to imagine the following, if you dare:

Melonhash

1 15 oz. can Essex Corned Beef hash
1/2 10 oz. can Mandarin oranges
1/4 cup coarsely chopped salted almonds
1 cup cantloup [sic] cubes
Lettuce
2 cantaloups [sic again - also, sick again]
1/2 cup mayonnaise (approxinately)
1/2 cup blueberries

Gently mix together Corned Beef Hash, oranges, almonds and cantaloup cubes. Sprinkle generously with instant minced onion. Chill mixture while preparing servings. Cut the cantaloup in half and remove seeds and peel. Cut halves into four slices each. Place cantaloup slices on a lettuce leaf to form flower petals. Place sweet pickles between each slice. Add mayonnaise to hash mixture and spoon into center of lettuce leaf. Garnish with blueberries and maraschino cherries.

Did you notice the ingredients that got sneaked into this recipe, that were not listed at the top? The instant minced onion, the pickles, the cherries. This is - some recipe, all right. Plus also it looks like a flower, supposedly. This is the salad recipe that's got it all: the food-sculpture, the bizarre mix of ingredients, the canned stuff, and to top it off - maraschino cherries, as if it was a sundae from another planet (perhaps one of the ice cream planets).

Oh, and also the pseudo-groovy one-word title. It sounds like the name of a psychedelic band, doesn't it? And if they were high enough they would maybe even eat this.

Or maybe not.

Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Desdemona Buns

Here is a recipe for sweet rolls with a name I do not understand, from a 1930s Ri-Temp cookbook. Ri-Temp was a special kind of oven control made by the English Electric Company Ltd in Preston, Lancashire. They wanted nothing more than to make your life easier with the "English Electric" cooker, which the lady in the picture is gazing at. Doesn't the door handle she is holding seem a little high? As does the window. Perhaps they have got the cooker in the basement. We had a basement apartment long ago that looked a bit like that room. Minus the cooker, of course (we had a gas stove from the 1970s, as I recall, that did nothing to alleviate my life).

The introduction to the book says that "in these days of rush and bustle and servant problems, it is essential that all household duties should be completed quickly and with the least possible expenditure of energy." Ah yes, the days of rush and bustle and servant problems. My main servant problem of course is that I don't want to do housework, I would rather be writing or going for a long walk or researching something. The servant is too busy rushing and bustling around in the library or at the computer, you see!

So what I really need is an "English Electric" cooker, so that I will have "every advantage required to produce well-cooked, well-balanced meals with very little effort on her part to obtain perfect results." Oh, I like the sound of that! But...I still have to cook, right? I do have to make a "very little effort." OK, I can do that. I guess.

You see, I adore old cookbooks but except for the odd mood (usually around Christmas, but not always even then) I do not really like spending hours in a kitchen doing things to and with food. I like quick, mostly vegetarian, very simple meals. And boy do I like the weekly takeout! I will gladly eat any tofu teriyaki that is sent in, but it never works out when I make it. I am not sure that the Ri-Temp cooker could really cope with tofu though.

My favorite kind of cooking is baking. I enjoy it when I do it, but it doesn't always work into the old health regime. So I cope by reading recipes and making them in my head, except at Christmas or birthdays. Or I make low fat muffins, they're pretty good. You just replace the butter with applesauce, and freeze them if you think you will eat them all at once (ahem).

Anyway - on with the Desdemona Buns, whoever they were named after - the lady in the picture? Othello's wife? Did she even have time to make buns, though? Not to mention not having an English Electric cooker with Ri-Temp control.

Desdemona Buns

4 oz. flour
3 oz. butter
3 oz. sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp baking powder

Filling:1/2 lb. icing sugar
2 oz. melted butter
1 Tb milk
vanilla essence

Cream the butter and sugar together; add the ewggs and flour, and place in greased tins. Set the oven dial to 450 F (oven will be ready in 25 minutes), and bake at this temperature for 10 minutes. When cool, cut off the tops of the buns, scoop out a little of the sponge and fill with cream filling; replace tops, sprinkle with icing sugar and decorate with cherries.

Actually a sugar glaze would work better, if you want the cherries to stick. Otherwise this sounds very nice. Maybe I'll make them next Christmas.

The Mysteries Of Salad

I have a collection of salad recipes, many of which I do not truly understand. I don't know why anyone would create them, make them or eat them. Never mind write them down and then publish them. But there you are. And there they are. These are from 1968, and they both involve celery, which would be enough to put me off right there. I will tolerate celery in bread stuffing at Christmas, and maybe deep in the mix of a vegetable soup, but I don't really want to know about it in a big way. But then I am not a man. Women, you see, will not like the next recipe at all. That explains - well, it doesn't really explain anything.

Men Like It Salad

1 pkg. cream cheese
2 sm. cans crushed pineapple
2 pkg. lime Jell-O
1 cup finely chopped celery
1/2 cup chopped nuts

Cut cream cheese fine with knife dipped in hot water. Drain juice from pineapple and add enough water to juice to equal 3 cups liquid. Dissolve Jell-O in liquid; hear. Add cream cheese, pineapple, celery and nuts. Mix well and chill until firm. Serve with pink-tinted salad dressing and red cherry, if desired. Yield: 8 servings.

And why exactly do men like this? Are we talking about all men, everywhere? That is a pretty sweeping statement. Also, maybe some of them would prefer the dressing to be tinted another color, or just left alone. If some men you know don't like it, you can offer them this instead, which is even more mystifying:

Krunchy Goo

2 cans English peas, drained
1 cup diced celery
1 small onion, diced
1 cup diced sharp cheese
3/4 cup Miracle Whip
Salt and pepper to taste

Combine and mix above ingredients. Yield: 8 servings.

Out of all the possible names you could give to a conglomeration of comestibles, why - why would you call it Krunchy Goo? I get the contrasting-textures idea, but this is not a name that encourages consumption. And why spell crunchy with a 'k'? Possibly to show that you are whimsical, you are kidding, you don't really expect people to eat it. Surely not. And yet it is in a salad cookbook.

We may never know the answers to the questions these salads bring to mind. (And come to think of it, we may not want to).

Image from the Library of Congress American Memory collection.

Cox's Gelatine Recipes, 1930

I hadn't known that there was any other kind of gelatin except Knox, but here's its rhyming rival, Cox, "used by good housewives since 1845." Knox gelatin came along in 1896, so it was the latecomer.

There is a special section for "Recipes for Use with Mechanical Refrigerators," but if you still had an icebox, that was all right too, you just couldn't make Frozen Apple Cream or Maple Fig Mousse.

I have got two recipes for you - a strange one, because those are fun, and a really good one - those are also fun, plus you might even want to make those kind.

I doubt that you will want to fill your sandwiches with the following, however:

Mint Filling For Sandwiches1 tablespoon Cox's Gelatine
4 tablespoons cold water
25 fresh mint leaves
4 tablesppons boiling water
1/8 teaspoon salt
Few drops green color
1 cup thick cream, whipped
2 tablespoons sugar
Unbuttered bread or crackersMix Gelatine with cold water. Cut mint leaves into small pieces, put them into a cup and add boiling water. Cover and soak thirty minutes, strain, pressing hard. Dissolve Gelatine over fire, add sugar, mint, water, salt, color, and cool. Fold in cream and turn into a shallow wet mold. When firm, turn out carefully, cut in thin slices and put between bread or crackers.

Not that it would be awful, just a little bit odd. But I would hold out for the Grape Fruit Lozenges, personally. I love the word 'lozenge' - despite its cough-droppy association. According to Wikipedia the word lozenge has been used in a medical context, i.e. the throat lozenge, since about 1530. The word comes from the French word for rhombus, "losange."

Grape Fruit Lozenges

1 tablespoon Cox's Gelatine
1 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar
8 tablespoons cold water
1/2 tablespoon corn or golden syrup
4 tablespoons grape fruit juice
Yellow color Put one-half cup of the confectioner's sugar and four tablespoonfuls of cold water into a saucepan; when dissolved, add corn syup, bring to the boiling point, add Gelatine mixed with remainder of water, grape fruit juice and a few drops of yellow color. Sift remainder of sugar into a bowl, pour hot mixture into center, and allow it to cool. Work it with a wooden spoon until smooth. Spread mixture into a layer one inch thick in a wet pan, allow it to harden, cut into squares and roll in sugar.

Wouldn't this be lovely with pink grapefruit juice (and maybe a bit more fruit juice and less water), and tinted pink?

The Cracker Box

Here's something fun to do on a rainy day, or any time you have too much time on your hands. This is from The Universal Cookbook (1938), "issued by the Universal Life Assurance and Annuity Company" of Winnipeg, Manitoba. It was written for them by Mrs. Olive Kyle, who graduated from the Fannie Farmer Cooking School in Boston. If you wrote a letter to Mrs. Kyle in care of the Universal, they would see that she got it and give it her "prompt attention," which I think is quite sweet.

Cracker Boxes For Salad

Spread narrow salted crackers with creamed butter, sprinkle with paprika. Place in cool oven until butter is absorbed. Dip ends of crackers in a syrup made of 2/3 cup sugar and 1/3 cup water boiled to crack stage. Fasten three crackers together to form box, place on lettuce covered plate. Turn salad into box.

I would definitely have to write to Mrs. Kyle about this one. I don't think she could give me prompt enough attention though - she lost me with the fastening three crackers together with sugar syrup. Maybe we had better ask Fannie Farmer, too.