Month: April 2023

Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes Dixie Escalloped Corn

VintageJenny

Why this recipe is called Dixie Escalloped Corn I have no idea. At any rate, in Lesson 22 Sue makes Dixie Escalloped Corn. When it is done they eat it for lunch. Escalloped Corn (or Scalloped Corn, as we usually find it in modern cookbooks) is still made on a fairly regular basis. In fact, I saw it on a restaurant menu this past month. Although this recipe may be unique to some, it is definitely still in some kitchen rotations.

Sue and Ruth Ann use canned corn in this recipe. However, frozen corn warmed on the stove in a pan of water is probably easier for most of us these days. If you want to use canned corn, by all means do. It will give the dish a unique and vintage taste that frozen corn, or leftover corn from the cob, doesn’t match.

This is Lesson 22 from the book When Sue Began to Cook. If you are new to the series, you may want to click the linked title to begin with Lesson 1. Along with the recipes, the book tells the story of Sue and Ruth Ann’s adventures in the kitchen and their neighborhood in Sue’s diary entries.

This particular recipe displayed quite a few stains on it, so it must have been a favorite with the little girl who owned it.

Sue’s Diary for Escalloped Corn

“I do like a ‘lady-like’ lunch, Aunt Bettina,” said Ruth Ann today when we sat down with Mother and Robin to our Escalloped Corn, cocoa, orange salad and bread and butter. “When everything is dainty and pretty like this, I always feel hungrier.”

“I don’t,” said Robin. “I like the Uncle John kind of lunch best. The kind we had last Saturday. Please give me some more Escalloped Corn.”

“I like to set the table, too,” Ruth Ann went on. “And have a dear little fern in the center, like this one. And a clean tablecloth, and pretty china, and everything. It’s the way I mean to have things when Mother comes home, and we’re all back in our own house. Oh, I’m so glad we’re learning other things besides just cooking!”

“Ruth Ann’s notebook isn’t like mine, Mother,” I said. “She’s writing down exactly what we have for lunch each time. She says it’s silly just to put down what we cook on Saturday without putting down what we serve with it. She says she’ll probably have this very luncheon again when her Mother comes home.”

“Splendid!” said Mother. “A real housekeeper understands food combinations as well as she does cooking.”

Print Recipe

Dixie Escalloped Corn

from When Sue Began to Cook, 1924
Course: Luncheon, Side Dish
Cuisine: American
Keyword: Bettina’s Best Recipes, corn, Twenties recipes, vegetarian, When Sue Began to Cook

Ingredients

  • 2 cups canned corn Mother said it could be made from two cups of boiled corn cut from the cob – in corn season, of course.
  • 1 cup cracker crumbs rolled out with the rolling pin
  • 2 tbsp green pepper washed and cut in little bits with the kitchen scissors
  • 1 tbsp celery washed and cut fine with the kitchen scissors
  • 1 tsp salt
  • ¼ tspq pepper
  • 1 egg beaten
  • 1¼ cups milk
  • 2 tbsp butter melted

Instructions

  • Ruth Ann and I each mixed our corn (no, we didn't pour off the juice), cracker crumbs, green pepper, celery, salt, and pepper in a mixing bowl.
  • Then Mother had us each beat our egg in a separate little bowl and add the milk and the butter to it.
  • Then we added the egg mixture to the corn mixture and stirred it all up thoroughly with a big spoon.
  • After it was well mixed we each poured ours into a buttered casserole.
  • Then we baked it in a moderate oven for about twenty-five minutes. When it was done, it looked all brown and puffy and good.
    Note: Moderate oven = 375 degrees F.

Notes

The ingredient list may be missing a measure of sugar, perhaps a teaspoon. Sugar is listed in the first step as one of the ingredients combined, but it does not appear in the ingredients.
Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes Ham with Potatoes

VintageJenny

In Lesson 22, Sue makes Baked Ham with Browned Potatoes for lunch. This is similar to the baked ham recipe that I ate growing up. I thought it was a Depression era recipe from my grandmother, but apparently it predates the Great Depression by quite a bit.

This is the first full meal that Sue and Ruth Ann learn to cook during their Saturday lessons. Each week their adventures appear as a chapter in When Sue Began to Cook, a cookbook in the Bettina’s Best Recipes cookbook collection by Louise Weaver and Helen LeCron. Clicking the link will take you to Lesson 1 so you can follow Sue’s adventures in order.

Every week Sue has something chatty to say in her kitchen diary, and this week is no different. Let’s peek into Sue’s diary and see how the story progresses…

Sue’s Baked Ham Kitchen Diary

“Uncle John and Aunt Lucy will be here for lunch today,” said Mother at breakfast, “so we must plan to have a very good meal. Yes, I believe I’ll have you and Ruth Ann make Baked Ham with Browned Potatoes.” I held my breath. That sounded so hard, and grown-up-i-fied! [Sue is not averse to making up her own words when normal ones won’t do.]

“Besides that, we’ll have canned grean beans, hot biscuits and jam, and some sliced oranges with cake.”

“Whee-ee!” cheered Robin. “That’s a real lunch!”

“You may go to meet Ruth Ann, Sue,” Mother went on, “and buy your own meat at Wilkins’. I’ll tell you exactly what to get. As I want you and Ruth Ann each to learn to make Baked Ham with Browned Potatoes enough for four, we’ll have to use both pans of it for lunch. Ruth Ann won’t mind, I’m sure.”

“Oh, I know she won’t mind, I’m sure. She’ll be so glad to learn to make something real! Somehow it sounds lots more important to be making Baked Ham with Browned Potatoes than any kind of dessert, no matter how good.”

And oh, the Baked Ham was dee-licious! Uncle John is going to have us come out to the farm some Saturday soon and make it again for him, he says.

[Uncle John and Aunt Lucy appear in the other Bettina books. John is a farmer who champions good cooking, no matter who makes it. He was just as appreciative when Bettina cooked, before Sue was born.]

Print Recipe

Baked Ham with Browned Potatoes

from When Sue Began to Cook, 1924.
Course: Dinner, Luncheon
Cuisine: American
Keyword: baked dinner, Bettina, ham, potatoes, When Sue Began to Cook
Servings: 4

Equipment

  • 1 frying pan with lid must be oven safe to 425 degrees F

Ingredients

  • 1½ lbs sliced ham, cut 1 inch thick Mother had us buy it ourselves and watch the butcher slice it. [From the recipe, this sounds like ham that was not precooked. See notes section.]
  • 12 whole cloves
  • ¼ cup brown sugar
  • 2 tsp powdered mustard ground mustard, dry
  • ½ cup vinegar
  • 1 cup water
  • 4 potatoes, washed and peeled "good sized", probably medium size Russets
  • ½ tsp salt

Instructions

  • Mother showed Ruth Ann and me exactly how to wipe off the ham with a clean, damp cloth, and cut off the rind. Then we each stuck our twelve cloves into the meat, six cloves on each side. (It seemed a funny thing to do.) Then Mother had us each put our ham in a small deep frying pan.
  • Next, we mixed the brown sugar, powdered mustard, vinegar, and water and poured the mixture right over the ham in the frying pan. Then we covered the pan with a lid.
  • We had already lighted the oven and it was very hot. Mother had us put our pans of meat in and leave them for ten minutes. Then we lowered the fire and let the meat cook that way for forty minutes more.
    Note: See notes for cooking information.
  • Every once in a while Mother had us turn the meat over with a fork and several times she had us take some of the vinegar mixture up in a big kitchen spoon and pour it over the meat. (This is called basting — pouring the juice over the meat, I mean.)
  • While the meat was cooking we washed and peeled our potatoes and Mother had us cut each potato in half lengthwise. When the meat had cooked forty minutes, or fifty minutes altogether, we put the potatoes in the pans, too. We laid them, round side down, all around the ham. We sprinkled the salt over them. Then we covered it all up with the lid again and let them cook for twenty-five minutes more. At the end of that time Mother had us look at them. The potatoes weren't quite brown enough, she said, so she had us take off the lid and cook them that way for ten minutes more.
  • Baked Ham and Browned Potatoes does smell so good while it's cooking, that even Ruth Ann could hardly wait for lunchtime to try it!

Notes

Almost all hams today are precooked. If you purchase precooked ham for this recipe, heat the oven to 375 or 400 degrees F, then put the ham in and reduce the heat to 325. Then, at the lower temperature, finish cooking the ham. To include the potatoes, you might want to put them in at the beginning (since the ham is already cooked.)
If you purchase raw ham for this recipe, following the directions above, you would heat the oven to about 400-425 degrees F, cook the ham for the first ten minutes, and then reduce the heat to 350 to contine the baking.
These are both educated guesses from reading a 100 year old recipe. No specifics other than what appears in the recipe above were stated.