Sue Cooks Frizzled Beef

July 26, 2022June 17, 2022 VintageJenny

When Sue Began to Cook, one of the books in the Bettina’s Best Recipes series, tells the story of Bettina’s young daughter Sue and her adventures in the kitchen. On her first Saturday lesson, she and her friend Ruth Ann made Cocoa Drop Cookies. You can find that post here. For Lesson 2, Sue cooks Frizzled Beef on Toast. This recipe is known over the midwest and southern United States as chipped beef, SOS, S— on a Shingle, as well as by other names.

Basically, Sue and Ruth Ann are learning to make a white sauce. Many Twenties recipes used a good white sauce as gravy over a main dish course. Or perhaps mixed into left over meat and bread crumbs to make timbales or patties. A good white sauce also forms the base for some cream soups. All in all, learning to make white sauce is a good beginning step for any cook, because it’s a skill utilized in the kitchen over and over again.

Sue’s thoughts on the lesson

Here are Sue’s comments on the recipe, from her cooking class notebook:

When Mother said at breakfast this morning that she was going to let us make frizzled beef for our cooking lesson today, Robin butted right in and said, “Jinks! I don’t call that anything to make! Why don’t you make cream puffs or fudge or something folks really like?” (Meaning by “folks,” himself and Ted that always hangs around anytime there’s any cooking going on. Especially doughnuts or candy or frosting.)

“Maybe you and Teddy think we’re doing this cooking just for your benefit!” said I scornfully, looking as sarcastic as I could. [At times Sue could be a nicer older sister.] “Ruth Ann and I are learning to be practical cooks, and we aren’t planning our lessons just to suit two silly little boys that can’t even do their arithmetic problems without help!”

I had him there, as Father says. Even though he is a boy, I’m lots better at mathematics than he is and many’s the time Mother has to help him in the evenings.

Frizzled beef for lunch

“Don’t quarrel, children,” said Mother, not noticing that as usual it was Robin who was doing all the quarreling. “This frizzled beef is going to be just as good as doughnuts or fudge or icing. And we’re going to have it for lunch today, too. So if Sue and Ruth Ann are willing, you may ask Teddy to stay, Robin.”

Robin seemed quite pleased at that. Just as pleased as if he hadn’t said anything about the frizzled beef. And he went off whistling.

The frizzled beef was so easy to make — lots easier than the Cocoa Cookies. And it was awfully good, too, all brown and creamy and curly just the way it ought to be. I had thought mine would be enough for us all (Father doesn’t come home at noon). But the boys were so hungry that Ruth Ann very generously had us eat hers too. (Of course she stayed to lunch.) We had big baked potatoes with the frizzled beef, and big glasses of milk, and cookies and applesauce. After Robin had been served three times at least, he was polite enough to say that it was the best meal he had in a long time. But not one bit of the beef was left for Father!

Continue with the series

You can find Sue’s first lesson and recipe at When Sue Began to Cook.

Make the Recipe

Not only Sue cooks frizzled beef. You can make it, too. Here’s the recipe, directly from the pages.

Print Recipe

Frizzled Beef on Toast

From When Sue Began to Cook, 1924.

Course: Breakfast, Luncheon

Cuisine: American

Keyword: Bettina, When Sue Began to Cook

Ingredients

¼ pound dried beef
4 tbsp butter
4 tbsp flour Leveled off smooth with a knife
1 tsp salt Also leveled off with a knife. Nearly everything has salt in it if it's really good.
¼ tsp pepper
2 cups milk
4 slices nice fresh toast I cut mine in triangles and it looked so nice and partified.

Instructions

We tore the beef all up in tiny little pieces. Then we each put the butter in a frying pan over the fire (not too hot a fire!) and when it was all melted and bubbling, we added the dried beef. Then we let it cook, and kept stirring it around all the time till the edges began to curl up. Then we added the flour and mixed well. We let the flour get light brown (we kept stirring it all the time!) and then added the salt, pepper, and milk (still stirring!) and cooked it slowly till it was all thick and creamy.
Mother had us make our toast first, so it was all ready waiting on two hot little platters. We poured the frizzled beef over it as neatly as we could, and then decorated it with little sprigs of parsley from Mother's parsley box in the kitchen window. It looked almost too pretty to eat!

When Sue Began to Cook

July 12, 2022June 21, 2022 VintageJenny

On a rainy, dreary November afternoon, Sue complains to her mother that there’s nothing to do. Her brother is at a friend’s house, As for her best friend Ruth Ann — well, she cries all the time now that her mother has been sent away for her health. This is the beginning of When Sue Began to Cook, the last book in the Bettina storybook trilogy by Louise Bennett Weaver.

The complete title of the book is When Sue Began to Cook with Bettina’s Best Recipes. Bettina’s Best Recipes became the brand name of a whole line of cookbooks in the 1920s. Bettina was an authority on cakes and cookies, desserts, sandwiches, and salads. And each topic found its way into one of the Bettina’s Best Recipes cookbooks.

Like all the Bettina books, Sue’s story begins with some really bad poetry:

To every other little maid
Who longs to learn like Sue,
But feels a tiny bit afraid
It’s all too hard to do,
To all the little girls who sigh,
“I need a simple book
To help me!” “Here it is!” we cry,
When Sue Began to Cook
Dedication, When Sue Began to Cook, Louise Bennett Weaver and Helen Cowles LeCron

Bettina suggests that Sue invite Ruth Ann over for weekly cooking lessons. Then Bettina will teach them both to cook. The plan will occupy Sue at the same time that it gives Ruth Ann something to think about besides her sick mother. (In 1924 when the book was written, Ruth Ann’s mother probably has tuberculosis and was sent to Arizona for the dry air in hopes that it would cure her. The book, however, never says.)

Sue loves the idea, and runs to tell Ruth Ann about the new Saturday plans. The girls’ story unfolds from the notes that Sue keeps after each cooking session. Here are her notes from the first day:

I found Ruth Ann crying, as usual, but it didn’t take her long, after she heard about the Cooking Class, to hustle into a clean dress and hurry over. And oh, the cookies were delicious!
I intended to save mine for dinner tonight, but of course Robin and Ted came in perfectly ravenous and teased so hard that I had to give them ten or twelve apiece and that doesn’t leave many for Father when he comes. But how proud he’ll be to try his daughter’s first cookies. That is, the first ones I’ve made entirely alone, even to lighting the oven and washing the dishes afterwards.
When Sue Began to Cook, page 14.

As a first recipe, Sue and Ruth Ann make Cocoa Drop Cookies. Then the next week they start at the beginning and learn to make Frizzled Beef over Toast. This recipe is known regionally under many different names in the United States. Chipped beef, SOS, and S—- on a Shingle are but three of the ways people refer to this dish.

Each week Sue and Ruth Ann tackle a new recipe or cooking method, and they build a nice repertoire of recipes through the year. A winter Wheat Cereal with Dates progresses to gingerbread. Then spring brings Baked Ham with Browned Potatoes. The heat of summer brings recipes for Vanilla Ice Cream with Chocolate Sauce, Fruit Sherbet, and a Fruit Gelatin. Then the autumn rolls around again, with its traditional Twenties recipes for doughnuts, peanut brittle, and popcorn balls.

In Chapter 52, the last week of the year’s lessons. the girls present a party for their friends. They cook an entire meal from recipes in the book, and proudly present the fruits of their yearlong course.

When Sue Began to Cook makes a good beginning cookbook for teens interested in cooking history, for cookbook collectors, and for people who want to learn to cook simple recipes. Currently this book is unavailable in any free downloadable format, so you’ll have to search out a 1924 copy yourself.

If you’re new to the world of Bettina cookbooks, I wrote about the first one in the post A Cookbook Worth Reading.

Print Recipe

Cocoa Drop Cookies

Taken from When Sue Began to Cook, 1924.

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: American

Keyword: Bettina, cookies, Twenties

Ingredients

½ cup lard Mother says butter makes them too rich.
1 cup light brown sugar No lumps, remember!
2 eggs
4 tbsp water
1 tsp vanilla
2⅓ cups flour
4 tbsp cocoa Leveled off with a knife blade.
2½ tsp baking powder Leveled off with a knife, too. This is important.
¼ tsp salt All good cookies have salt in them.

Instructions

Mother had us each put the lard in a nice round-bottomed yellow bowl and cream it. (That means mash it down with a big spoon until it is very soft.) And then add the sugar and keep on creaming until the mixture looked all one color. Then we broke the eggs into a little dish and added them one by one to the sugar mixture. (Mother said to break and add them one by one so as to be very sure they were good.) Then we kept on stirring with the big holey spoon for two whole minutes. Then we added the water and the vanilla.
We put a little more than two and one-third cups of flour through the flour sifter and after it had been sifted once, we measured it out and took exactly two and one-third cups of it. Then we put it back in the empty sifter and added the cocoa, the baking powder and the salt. We sifted them through twice all together.
(Mother says we must always be very sure about the level spoonful. She had us take a knife and level the filled spoons off very carefully. This is important.)
We dumped the flour mixture into the bowl with the other things, and stirred just enough to be sure everything was well mixed.
Then we each greased our cooky-sheet with a clean piece of paper that had been dipped in a little lard. (Several pie pans will do instead, Mother says.) Then we took up a little of the cooky-dough on the end of the mixing spoon and scraped it oiff on the cooky-sheet with a knife. (She told us to be sure these little cooky mounds weren't too large; they oughtn't to be more than an inch across.) We dropped these bits of dough about three inches apart on the greased sheet and flattened each of them down a little with a knife that had just been dipped in warm water.
Then we baked the cookies in a moderate oven for about fifteen minutes. [Moderate oven: 350-375º F] Mother had us light the oven a few minutes ahead of time, and then turn it down so it wouldn't be too hot when the cookies were put in.
Chocolate or cocoa cookies burn easily, she said, so we looked at them often. Sometimes those on the edge of the pan got done first and had to be removed carefully and slipped onto another flat pan to cool. All our cookies couldn't be baked at once, so we kept the dough in a cool place (not near the stove!) until the oven was ready again.
As soon as the cookies were all finished and cool, we each packed them carefully away in a stone jar.

Notes

Recipe Collections · The Vintage Kitchen

A Christmas Dinner from 1924

December 23, 2021November 16, 2021 VintageJenny

Large metal bowl filled with unshelled and half-shelled walnuts. A metal nutcracker sticks out of the nuts at an angle. In the background we see part of a large Victorian style window and a small portion of a huge blazing fireplace.

Traditional meals look really big to us today. For those raised on hamburgers and french fries, or pizza and a soda, the multi-course meal seems huge. To give you an idea, here’s a Christmas dinner from 1924 along with a few recipes. Here you’ll find recipes to make Oyster Cocktail, Chestnut Stuffing, and Frozen Maraschino Pudding.

Why were these meals so lavish? Why did they contain so many courses? Well, for one thing, these big meals hearken from a time when they were cooked by servants and served by servants. Therefore, the person in charge of the meal only cooked. He or she wasn’t engaged in working full time outside the home. Actually, the cook also needed to complete no other housework or errands. The food could be delivered to the house. As a result, the cook could focus completely on turning out dinners like this one, night after night.

Given all that, why do we put forth all this effort? If you want to emulate the habits of the wealthy of old, what better time to go all out than the holidays? Plus, feeding a houseful of people really does take more food. One way to stretch the turkey, or whatever you plan to serve, is to include extra sides and an extra dessert. Even though this creates more work, in the long run it’s easier than making a second turkey or a second main dish.

This Christmas dinner from 1924 was designed to be carried out by one young cook in her early twenties. The magazine touted it as the “new bride’s Christmas dinner.” Can you imagine? This would take a lot of advance planning to pull off well as a solo cook.

Christmas dinner men

Oyster Cocktail
Tomato Bouillon, Whipped Cream
Toasted Saltines
Roast Turkey, Chestnut Stuffing
Giblet Gravy
Mashed Potatoes
Baked Onions Squash Soufflé
Jellied Cranberries
Endive French Dressing
Cheese Sticks
Frozen Maraschino Pudding
Sponge Cake
Coffee
Nuts Bonbons

The courses

This dinner would be served in five or six different courses, one after another. No normal Twenties dining table contained the space for such a repast if served all at once. So, to give you an idea what this looks like, here’s a possible breakdown of the meal:

Course 1: Oyster Cocktail. This is the appetizer.

Course 2: Tomato Bouillon with Whipped Cream. This is the soup course. The whipped cream is unsweetened. It’s just cream, whipped. The saltines accompany the soup.

Course 3: Roast Turkey, Chestnut Stuffing, Giblet Gravy. Accompanied by the vegetables, which are Mashed Potatoes, Baked Onions, Squash Soufflé, and Jellied Cranberries. This is the main course.

Course 4: Endive with French Dressing. This is the salad course, and it appears at the end of the meal. The Cheese Sticks listed under it accompany the salad.

Course 5: Frozen Maraschino Pudding, Sponge Cake, and Coffee. This is the dessert course.

After dinner: Not really considered a course, nuts and candy or mints sit in bowls on the table for nibbling after the completion of dinner. Perhaps guests enjoy them with a second cup of coffee.

If you want to undertake this or a meal like it, most of the items above are easy enough to replicate. Perhaps you already have recipes in your file. Maybe some of them you’ve committed to memory, like Mashed Potatoes. Really, you only need to roast a turkey once to know how it’s done. The next time, and after that, you only need to check to make sure the oven is set, look on the wrapper for hours to cook, and you’ve got it.

If you’d like it vegetarian

Or maybe you’d prefer to replace the turkey with a great nut roast, and make the meal vegetarian. If so, the best nut roast recipe I’ve ever made is the Cheese and Nut Loaf from the Greens cookbook. While this recipe isn’t vintage, it is really good! To help you find your own copy, I’ve linked to a slightly modified recipe from Epicurious in case you don’t have the cookbook on your shelf.

Oyster Cocktail

Ingredients:

3/4 cup tomato catsup
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 1/2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon celery salt
few drops Tabasco sauce, optional
3 dozen oysters
1 stalk celery, for garnish
1/2 green pepper, for garnish

To the catsup add the lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, and celery salt. If you want to add a few drops of Tabasco sauce, do it now.

Add the oysters to the mixture and chill. Serve in cocktail glasses, garnished with finely chopped celery and strips of green pepper.

If you like, you can replace the oysters with clams, lobster, crabmeat, or shrimp.

Recipe makes six servings.

Chestnut Stuffing

Ingredients:

3 cups chestnut puree
1 cup soft bread crumbs
1/2 cup melted butter
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
1 tablespoon grated onion
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1/2 cup cream

To prepare the chestnut purée, boil a quart of large French chestnuts until tender. Let cool until you can touch them safely. Remove the shells and skins and rub through a sieve. (A food processor would probably also work.)

To the puree add the bread crumbs, butter, and seasonings. Moisten with the cream and mix lightly.

Use this to stuff the turkey, or bake in a casserole dish. To bake in the oven separately, turn the mixture into a buttered or oiled baking dish. Cover the dish with foil. Bake the dressing at 400ºF for 30 minutes. Then, if you want a crispy topping, remove the foil and continue baking for 15 minutes or so until the top is golden brown.

Frozen Maraschino Pudding

Ingredients:

1/2 cup candied pineapple
1/2 cup maraschino cherries
1/4 cup juice from cherries
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup water
2 egg whites
pinch salt
1 cup cream, whipped
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Cut the pineapple into small pieces and halve the cherries. Add the cherry juice and let stand several hours.

Beat the egg whites until they are stiff.

Boil the sugar and water together until the syrup spins a thread (238ºF). Pour the hot sugar slowly onto the stiff egg whites. Add salt and beat until cool. (This will cook the egg whites. If you are concerned, you can use pasteurized egg whites in this dish.)

Fold in the cream, which has been whipped until stiff. Add the vanilla, lemon juice, and fruit mixture.

Freeze for three hours before serving.

Recipe makes six servings.

An alternate fluffy dessert

If you like the idea of the whipped cream and fruit dessert but the egg whites give you pause, here’s an alternative. This recipe for Fruited Cream Dessert contains many of the same ingredients, minus the egg. You can substitute candied pineapple and cherries for the fruit in this recipe, if you like. Be sure to soak the pineapple in the cherry juice before using. The soaking softens the pineapple.

Recipe Collections · The Vintage Kitchen

Sunday Sandwiches

December 21, 2021November 15, 2021 VintageJenny

Twenties recipes are known for their common, everyday ingredients. Most cooks created meals by the season. Unless it was canned from the home garden or available on a grocer’s shelf, all foods appeared within their season of freshness. You would not see asparagus, for instance, outside of spring meals. Even given all that, these Sunday sandwiches appeared a bit odd.

I found them within the pages of The American Needlewoman, an inexpensive magazine (some reports say subscriptions were 25¢ per year). These sandwiches are touted for Sunday evenings, after-theatre snacks, and hurried lunches. I’ll leave you to decide.

These recipes aren’t long enough to warrant their own recipe cards. They are ingredients assembled from the refrigerator and leftovers, placed on bread to form sandwiches.

An odd note

One strange thing about these sandwiches is that they seemed to be topped with a layer of mayonnaise or a slice of cheese. Normally we would put those things inside the sandwich itself. No notes describe whether these were supposed to be eaten by hand, or with utensils.

Creamed Egg Sandwich

You will need:

large baking powder biscuits, one per serving
butter
hard boiled eggs, one per serving, made earlier and chilled
white sauce (2 Tb butter, 2 Tb flour combined with 1 cup milk and 1/4 tsp salt to make a sauce)
bacon, cooked, probably in 1/2 or 1/3 slices

Split large baking powder biscuits. Brown the cut sides in butter. Spread one side with fresh butter.

Make your white sauce, “well seasoned.” In addition to the 1/4 tsp salt you might add the same amount of pepper. Slice the hard boiled eggs into the white sauce and warm them in the sauce. (If they are cold they will retain their shape better than if freshly boiled.)

Cover the bottom biscuit half with the warm creamed eggs. Set the top on, and cover generously with more of the sauce. Place two thin slices of bacon on top for added flavor.

Rye Sandwich

You will need:

rye bread, sliced thin
butter
cooked ham
onion slices
cooked bacon slices, 2-3 per sandwich
firm ripe tomato
mayonnaise
whole small dill pickle

Each sandwich requires 3 slices of thin rye. Spread all three sliced with butter.

Mince the ham and onion together. Spread that on the first slice.

Place enough slices of cooked bacon to cover the bread on the second slice. Two to three half slices should do it. Top the bacon with two slices of tomato, and spread mayonnaise over the tomato.

Top with the third slice of bread, butter side down. Slice almost all the way through the small dill, and lay it on top the sandwich as garnish, with the slices fanning out across the top of the bread.

Club Extraordinary

You will need:

three slices of toast per sandwich
sliced chicken
cooked bacon slices
sliced tomato
melted cheese, cheddar, American, or colby
canned lobster, 1 small can
mayonnaise

Spread a slice of toast with melted cheese.

Lay one slice of chicken, 2 slices bacon, and a tomato slice or two on the first slice. Cover with mayonnaise and another piece of toast.

On this second toast, spread with melted cheese again, and top with chopped canned lobster. Spread with a layer of mayonnaise, and top with the remaining slice of toast.

Combination Sandwich

You will need:

rye, wheat, and white bread slices, one of each per sandwich
chopped pickle, dill
cold sliced pork
minced ham
cheese slices, either cheddar, colby or American
butter

Take one slice of each kind of bread. Butter one side of all.

Spread one slice with chopped pickle, one with sliced pork, and one with minced ham. Put them together (presumably with the pickle and one of the meats facing. Or not.)

Top the sandwich with a slice of cheese.

Olive Sandwich

You will need:

two slices bread per sandwich
cold lamb
cold pork
olives
mayonnaise
butter

Make a filling by chopping together the lamb, pork, and olives. You might use 1 cup lamb, 1 cup pork, 1/2 cup olives, or a similar combination. Blend the chopped ingredients with mayonnaise until it holds together.

Spread the white bread with butter on one side. Top the bottom piece generally with the mixture.

Set the top slice on the sandwich, butter side down. Spread a layer of mayonnaise on top of the bread.

Final notes

See? These Sunday sandwiches are… unusual. They would be great for an off-beat picnic luncheon, with sandwiches safely packed in a cooler. These contain a lot of eggs and mayo. If you have the ingredients on hand, or can easily get ahold of them, they also might make an interesting after-holiday supper. After the turkey or ham is devoured and we’re all a wee bit hungry, bring out these sandwiches for a complete change of pace. Who knows? One of them might become a family favorite.

If you’re looking for something a bit more standard, but still unusual, this Tea Sandwiches article might be the thing.

Recipe Collections · The Vintage Kitchen

Homemade Christmas Candies

December 16, 2021November 15, 2021 VintageJenny

1920s illustration. Blue bowl sits on a table surrounded by red and green holly. The bowl is piled high with candy of all different shapes and colors. Pink, green, white, and brown squares and rounds fill the bowl.

The candy counter was a popular destination for shoppers. Chocolate Hershey bars, Teaberry gum, and a host of other sweets kept everyone’s sugar-loving tooth happy. For a nickel you could take home a small candy bar, if you made it that far without devouring it. Even so, one of the most popular Christmas gifts continued to be homemade Christmas candies.

Friends and far-flung family alike anticipated the arrival of the yearly candy box. Special homemade Christmas candies such as taffy, fudge, hard peppermints, and even gumdrops nestled happily against one another in the small tin. Some looked forward to the arrival of the tin all year. Homemade Christmas candies were a gift to treasure, and few turned up their noses at such an offering.

This worked to the candy maker’s advantage as well. For the price of a little sugar, chocolate or cocoa, and flavorings (some of which lasted for years on the pantry shelf) a home cook turned out enough candy for the family at home as well as friends and family local and far. A candy recipe makes a huge amount of sugar-laden food for one or two people. Fitting two or three of each kind of candy into a box made a beautiful presentation, and enough filled boxes left the candy maker with just enough of the sweets for home use.

Today I offer some of the old recipes so you can get a start on your home homemade Christmas candies box. Or platter. Or however you want to serve it, send it, or eat it. These recipes for Persian Sweets, Christmas Fudge, Boston Cream, and Frosted Gum Drops are only a few of the candy recipes available.

Note: If you are making candy, and boiling sugar of any kind, you will need a large, deep saucepan. A three to four-and-a-half quart pan should work well. Sugar will boil up and over the top of a pan, creating a burn hazard. The large pan helps to safeguard against this. Please be careful.

Persian Sweets

This recipe is uncooked and easy to throw together if you have the ingredients and a few holes in your candy box. Why this is called Persian Sweets, I have no idea. Other variations of this, with different fruits added, are known as Fruit Rolls. You will need:

One cup chopped raisins
3/4 cup chopped dates
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
1-2 cups powdered sugar, or enough to cover the candy
waxed paper

Mix the raisins, dates, and nuts together. This will be sticky. Knead on a board that you’ve covered with powdered sugar. Knead it until the mass sticks together well.

Roll the candy with a rolling pin, also coated with powdered sugar so it doesn’t stick. Roll until the candy is 1/2-inch thick.

Cut into small squares, no more than 1-inch square. One-half inch squares would make nice cubes, somewhat like Kraft caramels.

Roll the cut squares in powdered sugar until well covered. Wrap each square in waxed paper.

This will keep quite a while if packed in a tin or airtight container. It would be a good candy to send long distances.

Christmas Fudge

This is a chocolate-flavored fudge with a little molasses. It also contains no cream. You will need:

1 cup brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup molasses
2 rounded Tablespoons butter (each Tbsp would be about 1 1/3 Tbsp, so 2 2/3 Tbsp total)
2 oz unsweetened chocolate, bar form, grated (Lindt and Ghiradelli both offer baking chocolate)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Large, deep saucepan
pans for holding the fudge: 8 x 8 baking pan, loaf pans, etc.

Melt the butter in a saucepan, but do not let it brown.

Remove the pan from the heat. Mix in the sugars, molasses, and water.

Boil the mixture 2 minutes. Add grated chocolate and boil for 5 minutes. Always count the time from the point that bubbling begins.

Remove from the heat and add the vanilla. Cool. Then beat vigorously and spread into pans.

Mark into squares. When the mixture is cold, cut the pieces apart with a sharp knife.

Boston Cream

This is reminiscent of the Boston Cream Pie, without the cake.

You will need:

3 cups granulated sugar
1 cup white syrup (Karo or another brand corn syrup)
1 cup sweet cream (whipping cream, whole cream)
1 cup chopped pecans
1 teaspoon vanilla or almond extract
3 oz unsweetened chocolate (Lindt or Ghiradelli baking chocolate)
Large, deep saucepan
Buttered pans for cooling the candy. A loaf pan would work well, or even several miniature loaf pans.

Boil the sugar, syrup, and cream to a soft ball. In other words, you bring the mixture to a boil. Take a tiny bit on the tip of a spoon and drop it into a glass of ice cold water. The mixture should form a ball in the water but squish when you bring it out of the water. That is a soft ball. It is also 238ºF on a candy thermometer.

Once it reaches soft ball stage, remove the pan from the heat. Beat until the candy is white and smooth. This is going to take a while if you do it by hand.

Beat in the nuts and the flavoring. Turn into deep buttered pans to cool.

When cold, melt the chocolate and pour the chocolate over the top of the candy. Let it stand for several days to ripen.

Cut into slices to serve.

Frosted Gum Drops

These red and green jewels will brighten any candy plate.

You will need:

4 level tablespoons gelatin
1 1/2 cups boiling water
1 cup cold water
4 cups granulated sugar
red, yellow, and green food coloring
wintergreen or peppermint flavoring oil
clover flavoring oil
lemon flavoring oil
rose oil or flavoring extract
granulated sugar for rolling
Large deep saucepan for candy making

Soak the gelatin in the cold water for five minutes. Stir in the boiling water until completely dissolved.

Add the sugar and boil for 25 minutes from the time boiling begins, stirring constantly. If you don’t keep it moving it will stick and burn.

Pour the syrup into 4 heatproof containers. When it cools, flavor and color them. Use a drop or two of lemon oil for the first container. Do not color it. For container 2, use a drop or two of green and flavor with wintergreen. For container 3, use yellow coloring and rose flavor. If you use extract rather than oil, you will need a bit more than a drop. For container 4, use red and flavor with clove.

Pour each candy into a small pan that has been dipped into cold water. Loaf pans or other small pans would work.

Refrigerate overnight. Cut into cubes with a knife dipped in boiling water. Roll each piece in granulated sugar until well coated.

Set aside for two days to crystallize.

Note: These flavor and color suggestions are very vintage. If you’d rather use blue food coloring and blackberry flavoring, do so.

More options

Once you get started, candy making can become an obsession. It’s fun to do and generally popular. Taffy pulls bring people together. For that matter, so does a big plate of fudge surrounded by fresh cups of coffee!

Every candy box has a hole where you can tuck just one more thing. If you find yourself in that position, take a look at this no-cook recipe for Easy Fondant Cream Mints. They were a huge hit at my house.

The Vintage Kitchen

1914 Thanksgiving Menu

November 23, 2021October 29, 2021 VintageJenny

A photo from 1914. A vase of autumn leaves sits on a table. Next to it sits a round silver tray holding three clear glass cups, a pottery pitcher, and a dish of candies next to it. — Warm mulled cider with ginger, 1914

Every year the magazines tout the best, the simplest, the oldest, the newest holiday recipes. The holiday is irrelevant; they publish recipes for holidays spring, summer, autumn, and winter. You might think this is a relatively new phenomenon. Nope. Today I bring you… a 1914 Thanksgiving Menu.

Just in case you believe that things were easier 100 years ago, I give you this up-to-date 1914 Thanksgiving Menu. Why 1914? Because in many ways 1914 was one of the last years for over the top meals on occasions like this. Menu planning did get simpler in the Twenties, and often the periodicals offered several different menus to match various tastes. Have small children at home? Try this menu. Want something vegetarian? Here’s one for you. Are you strapped for cash this year? Here’s a budget holiday meal.

But in 1914, that sensible attitude towards entertaining was still a few years off. Modern Priscilla, where I found this article, also included very few recipes considering the length of foods on this list.

This 1914 Thanksgiving menu gives you an appetizer, soup, meat dish, fish dish, vegetable sides, salad, and desserts. In short, everything that made a good meal in 1914 appears here. All at one time, course after course. Imagine making all this for say, a dozen guests and family!

Clam Cocktails Brown Bread Sandwiches
Cream of Mushroom Soup Croutons
Deviled Crabmeat on Corn Fritters
Roast Turkey Chestnut Stuffing Giblet Sauce
Escalloped Oysters
Mashed Potatoes Riced Turnips
Smothered Onions Celery
Cranberry Sauce
Cider Frappé
Cabbage Salad Cheese Straws
Indian Pudding Pumpkin Pie
Ice Cream with Maple Walnut Sauce
Fruit Nuts
Coffee

Mulled Cider in the drawing room for after dinner

Can you imagine? One meal. Twenty four items. I would never survive putting on a spread like this. Of course, this assumes that anyone in 1914 eating meals of this stature had at least two servants in-house. Usually this would be a cook and someone to serve at the table. Otherwise you would spend your entire day cooking the meal, serving the meal, and removing the meal. When would you have time to eat?

When housekeepers started to do more on their own, meals became simpler. Someone finally realized that the average family did not need meat and fish in the same meal. One or the other would do. Soup remained a recommended starter for many years, however. And we still look forward to desserts today, although we usually settle for a prepared dessert or fruit rather than both options at once.

Most of the food options above you will have no trouble finding recipes to make. Indian Pudding is a pudding made from cornmeal and molasses and ginger that takes several hours to make.

If you’d like to offer a dessert other than Ice Cream with Maple Walnut Sauce to go along with the Pumpkin Pie, I suggest this 1917 Mocha Cake for coffee lovers on your guest list. It’s delicious and popular everywhere I take it.

I’ll leave you today with a recipe for Cider Frappé. I would like to give the recipe for Mulled Cider as well, but it contains raw eggs. I cannot imagine raw eggs in warm cider, so I’ll pass.

Print Recipe

Cider Frappé for a 1914 Thanksgiving Dinner

Frozen cider to serve alongside roasted turkey or as a separate course, before the desserts.

Prep Time5

Cook Time25

Freeze in ice cream freezer2 30

Total Time3

Course: Dessert, Side Dish

Cuisine: American

Keyword: Frappe, iced

Servings: 8 1/2-cup servings

Equipment

Ice cream freezer

Ingredients

1 quart apple cider
½ cup brown sugar, packed
6 whole cloves
6 whole allspice
3 inch piece cinnamon

Instructions

Boil all ingredients together for fifteen minutes.
Strain and cool.
Add to ice cream freezer and freeze according to manufacturer's instructions until it reaches a mushy consistency.
Remove to the freezer in a covered container to set until needed.

Notes

Serve in glass cups with roast turkey or serve as a separate course

The Vintage Kitchen

Mocha Cake from 1917

September 9, 2021October 23, 2021 VintageJenny

Tan slice of mocha cake with frosting on white plate. Cake server sits behind it, also on the plate. — Enjoying a slice of mocha cake. Over 100 years later, the recipe still shines..

Some of the old recipes are the best. And others are just weird, like the jellied frankfurter-Spaghettios combination from the 1960s that pops up every now and again. Thankfully, this Mocha cake from 1917 fits into the first category. It’s a recipe I make over and over again.

In my last post I talked about the joys of reading A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband… with Bettina’s Best Recipes. If you don’t know about this cookbook, you can read about it here. This recipe for Mocha cake is one of my favorites from that book. However, it’s not my only favorite. Many of the recipes in A Thousand Ways are worth the time they take to make, especially if you cook for a small household of 1-3 people.

This particular cake serves 12. It’s designed for either entertaining (which is where it falls in Bettina’s story), or for storage. I generally pop half the cake into the fridge after using it for dessert. The other half gets sliced and put into the freezer for another day. This, of course, is assuming that you have a family the size of Bettina’s, and not four hungry teenagers who live at your house. If you live with teens, even if one of you is the cook, prepare to say goodbye to this cake in one sitting.

Ways to make it your own

A two-layer cake with tan icing sits on a white platter. The platter sits on a black and white marbled surface. — Mocha cake baked, iced, and ready for dessert time.

When I make this recipe, I usually cook the layers in my vintage RevereWare 9-inch cake pans. Although the recipe itself doesn’t tell you what size pan to use, I find that partitioning a cake into 12 pieces Is much easier with a 9-inch cake than it is an 8-inch one, even if the layers come out a bit more flat. With the addition of icing, a small piece adds just the right sweet note to end a dinner along with hot tea. You can enjoy it with coffee or milk, too, if you like.

In 1917 the term mocha didn’t mean chocolate-flavored coffee. It meant coffee, period. So this is a coffee-flavored cake. No chocolate. No cocoa. Just coffee. It’s an inexpensive cake to make because it uses the leftover coffee from the morning’s brew, if you make it a pot at a time. The recipe calls for 1 1/4 cups coffee total.

When the original bakers made this Mocha cake from 1917, they had access to plain coffee. If you like flavored coffees, I encourage you to try one in this recipe. This time I made it with Michigan cherry flavored coffee and it was delicious. Even the household’s non-coffee drinker loved it.

Because this Mocha cake from 1917 yields a light coffee taste in both the cake and the icing, you might want to try it with hot tea or another beverage. Trying it alongside a cup of the same type of coffee you put into the batter gives you a cake that tastes sweet, but not particularly coffee-like.

Photo showing one complete and one partial pan of cake batter. This is mocha cake from 1917. A partial teapot sits behind the pans. — Ready to go into the oven. Soon we will have cake!

Make it yourself

This is a great recipe for drop-in guests or teatime with friends. A slice also makes a good midmorning snack or a decadent breakfast treat. It’s relatively quick to make, as cakes go, and it’s pretty sturdy. This means it travels great in a lunch box to the office or schoolroom. It would pack well for a picnic. I love it with a cup of hot tea while I sit at the table pouring over the current month’s vintage magazines.

Print Recipe

Mocha Cake from 1917

This cake delivers a mild coffee flavor. It contains no cocoa and no chocolate.

Prep Time30

Cook Time25

Total Time55

Course: Dessert, Tea time

Cuisine: American

Keyword: cake, coffee, mocha

Servings: 12 servings

Equipment

2 cake pans, 8 or 9-inch diameter or whatever you have
wax paper for bottom of pans
Mixer

Ingredients

⅓ cup butter softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup strong coffee brewed
½ teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour, all purpose I used Bob's gluten free 1 to 1 with good result
3 teaspoons baking powder

Mocha Icing:

4 tbsp strong hot coffee
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups powdered sugar May use 2 to 3 cups

Instructions

Prepare your cake pans by lining them with wax paper. Or, if you prefer, grease and flour your pans. Preheat your oven to 350° F.
Separate the eggs. Set the yolks aside and beat the whites until they are stiff. Pour the whites into a bowl for later.
Cream the butter. Add the sugar, and cream again.
Add the egg yolks and mix well.
Add the coffee, vanilla, flour, and baking powder. Mix until combined and then beat for 2 minutes.
Stir in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Be gentle, you don't want to undo all your hard work.
Pour the mixture into the prepared cake pans. Bake for 25-30 minutes in a 350° oven. Test for doneness by pressing the top center of the cake. If a finger indentation pops back up and disappears, the cake is done. If the indentation stays, it probably needs another ten minutes or so.
Let the cake cool before icing.

Mocha Icing Instructions

Mix the 1 tsp vanilla with the 4 Tbsp coffee.
Add the powdered sugar slowly until the mixture is thick and spreadable. You may need as much as three cups (even though the original 1917 recipe only called for 1 ½ cups).
Spread over one layer and place the other layer on top. Spread the icing on the top. Depending on the size of the cake, you may also have enough for the sides.

If you enjoyed this and would like to try another vintage cake recipe, this Many Layered Jam Cake from the Twenties is addictive and oh-so-sweet.

Recipe Collections · The Vintage Bookshelf

A Cookbook Worth Reading

September 7, 2021August 21, 2021 VintageJenny

A 1920s illustration of a woman sitting at a table. She has in front of her a plate, an open can of pineapple rings, and a bowl. Shelves of cookware and dishes sit beyond her. From a cookbook by Louise Bennett Weaver.

Every now and then I like to curl up with a nice cup of hot tea and a good cookbook. A cookbook worth reading is a wonderful addition to any kitchen library. A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband (with Bettina’s Best Recipes) qualifies as one of those books, and I’m reading it this month. To be truthful, I’m reading it again.

During the 19-teens, instructional novels became quite popular. These were books that taught you how to do something, but did it within the framework of a story. Thus, while the story entertained you and you found yourself caught in its grip you also learned something. The books tried to walk the fine line between instruction and entertainment. Some succeeded more than others at this task. This cookbook is from that genre.

A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband…

A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband, by Louise Bennett Weaver and Helen Cowles LeCron, first appeared in 1917. The story opens as Bettina and her new husband Bob step into their little cottage when they arrive home from their honeymoon. Each short chapter tells something about their first year of marriage. They also conclude with a set of recipes that serve two (or three or more, when Bettina and Bob have guests or she needs planned left-overs.)

Each month begins with a short and somewhat corny little verse. You can smile over them, laugh over them, or groan over them. Your choice.

Weary are we of our winter-time fare;
Hasten, O Springtime, elusive and arch!
Bring us your dainties; our cupboard are bare!
Pity us, starved by tyrannical March!
A thousand Ways to Please a husband with Bettina’s best recipes

While the First World War rages somewhere, and deeply affects the lives of readers, the book remains blissfully unaware of such events. Bettina exists in the pre-war world, where she shops carefully for meat and fills her days with decorating the cottage and cooking for small parties. In the course of this first year Bettina throws an informal luncheon party, a Sunday evening tea, a motor picnic, a porch party in the late afternoon, a porch breakfast, and a Sunday dinner for guests. She also hosts a shower for her friend Alice and a good-bye luncheon for another friend. Bettina and Bob host a Halloween party. They host friends for dessert regularly.

So what’s with all this entertaining? Did the authors have nothing to talk about but parties? Actually, not really. Within these 152 chapters the authors lay out, in story form, practically any occasion that a young bride might find herself hosting. Have a friend who’s getting married? Here are two shower menus, dinner menus for both the bridal party and bridesmaids, and an outline for how to gather the bridesmaids for a luncheon after the wedding. This information, and the stories that surround it, makes this a cookbook worth reading.

Recipes for every vintage occasion

Need to serve a somewhat formal dinner? Bettina did that when she made Sunday dinner and she helpfully provides the menu and the recipes for her trip to Aunt Lucy’s for Thanksgiving. She also gives a menu and recipes for Alice and Harry’s bridal dinner, probably the most formal menu in the book.

An interesting point of the book is that all dishes are alcohol-free. The book makes no mention of wine, beer, whiskey, or any other alcohol either as ingredient or beverage. The strongest liquid Bettina serves is coffee, and it seems like none of her friends imbibe either. I expect alcohol-free cookbooks during the 1920s, but A Thousand Ways saw publication a full two years before Prohibition. (Bettina and her friends do drink a lot of coffee! In fact, the only two beverage recipes listed in the index under Drinks are for coffee and hot chocolate.)

Thankfully this book contains a decent index, because if you find yourself immersed in the story you will have no idea where to find the hot chocolate recipe once you’re finished, other than “I think it was somewhere near the beginning.” That is one issue with a cookbook worth reading. Without a good index it becomes hard to find things later.

Similar books by the same author

This was the first Bettina book. Several more followed: A Thousand Ways to Please a Family, When Sue Began to Cook, and Bettina’s Best Desserts, for example. Please a Husband focuses on events like gatherings, informal parties, and unusual occasions –– like fixing dinner from the emergency shelf after you’ve been out all day. Please a Family, on the other hand, concentrates on holidays. This second book covers ice-skating parties, Valentine’s Day, Easter, May Day, summer cooking, Christmas, and New Year’s.

A Thousand Ways to Please A Husband proves more popular today than Please a Family, its sequel. For one thing, the tone of the two books comes across very different. In the first book Bettina can appear a bit bossy. In the second she’s downright insufferable. Which is a shame, because the story holding the second book together is just as cute in its own way as the tale of Bettina and Bob’s first year together.

In my copy of How to Please a Husband, several half-sheets of paper live inside the back cover. These are the names and page numbers of many recipes from the book that I want to try. Some of the recipes from this book are so good that they found their way into our regular family rotation.

If you’ve never experienced a cookbook worth reading, I encourage you to give How to Please a Husband with Bettina’s Best Recipes a try. I re-read it every few years, cover to cover. Sometimes it’s when I need a little encouragement to try new recipes. Usually, though, I find myself reading about Bettina’s adventures when I want to dip into the world of 1917 when cut flowers decorated every nice dining table, automobiles were new, and homemade candy sent through the mail provided an indescribable treat.

Read it for yourself

You can find A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband online at the Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg. If you’d like to try A Thousand Ways to Please a Family as well, you can download it from Google Books. Dover Publications has reprinted it as well, if you’d like a paper copy.

Recipe Collections · The Vintage Kitchen

Making Ice Creams, Ices and Sundaes

July 22, 2021June 29, 2021 VintageJenny

1020s photo of a round platter holding there spoons and two ice cream sundaes in glass dishes. A glass filled with a whipped cream fruit mixture sits beside them. — Enjoy a vintage Pineapple Marshmallow Sundae, South-Pole Sundae, or a Marshmallow Parfait this summer.

During the warmer months sometimes the weather gets really hot. Short of dumping ice water over your head, how do you stay cool? Before the advent of air conditioning, cold drinks, hand and electric fans, and ice creams helped to bring temperatures down. Not really, but it’s hard to be sad while you eat a nice bowl of ice cream. So today I’m going to talk about making ice creams, ices and sundaes –– straight from a Twenties source.

It’s relatively easy to make all sorts of fancy ice creams at home. You can go beyond bowls of plain chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, and peach, which were the Ice Cream Standards of the 1920s. Instead of a plain bowl of ice cream, why not serve a sundae? Even the most fancy version starts with a base of vanilla ice cream and then adds syrups and whipped cream. In the Twenties a sundae might also be decorated with preserved, fresh, or candied fruit.

Ice creams and sundaes from your own kitchen

This article will tell you how to make a Pineapple Marshmallow Sundae, South-Pole Sundae, Marshmallow Parfait, Caramel Ice Cream, and a Cafe Frappe. It assumes you already know how to make basic vanilla and chocolate ice cream. I have a recipe for those somewhere that I will post a bit later in case you need it.

Ice cream was classified three ways when sundaes were new. A French ice cream was made with eggs. Today we often call that an ice cream custard and we make it with egg yolks only. A Philiadelphia ice cream was made with thick whipping cream. American ice cream was made with fresh or condensed milk with a little whole cream added. 100 years later we are still making French ice cream with eggs, but the American ice cream has replaced the condensed milk with half and half (light cream) or simply milk with a bit of cream. Even in the Twenties, commercial ice creams contained gelatin to help it maintain its consistency.

Other options for frozen desserts included water ices. We call them granitas, and sometimes they were called granites. In some recipes cream was frozen without stirring in an ice cream maker. This created a parfait or a mousse (have you ever had frozen chocolate mousse? 1000 calories of pure heaven!).

Suggestions for great results using your ice cream freezer

If you use an ice cream freezer that requires ice and salt, you might want to try kosher salt instead of rock salt and crushed ice instead of larger ice chunks. Actually, the instructions suggest that you pulverize your rock salt, but I don’t know anyone who wants to sit outside with a bag of rock salt and a hammer when you can get kosher salt instead.

Most ice cream maker instruction manuals tell you to pour in a layer of ice and then top it with a thin layer of salt, and repeat. Why not try mixing the ice and salt thoroughly in a large pan before putting it into the freezer? One part salt to three parts ice keeps it very cold. Add the ice and salt to the freezer before you add the ice cream mixture. If you add the mix to the container and then add the ice and salt, the mixture begins to freeze at the bottom before the top is cold. It then freezes unevenly.

Avoiding that grainy consistency

Have a problem with grainy ice cream? This often happens when the crank turns too rapidly at the beginning of the freezing cycle. Turn the crank slowly but keep up a steady motion. When the dasher starts to turn hard (and you’re beginning to get tired from all the turning) that’s when you beat hard and steady for one full minute.

Then remove the crossbar that holds the contraption together, remove the container lid and take out the dasher. (I always tried to find a small child who wanted a taste. The little ones are very willing to hold the dasher and try the ice cream for you while you attend to the rest of the procedure. Voilá! You no longer need to find a place to set the dasher.)

Pack the ice cream down, replace the lid on the canister, and plug the hole with a cork. Remove the icy, salty water from the pail and repack it with salt and ice to ripen the ice cream. This ice can be larger than crushed, and use about half the salt you used before. If the weather is very warm (assuming you are doing this outdoors because it creates a mess) you may have to redo the ice and salt before the ice cream is ripened.

Covering the ice cream freezer with an old blanket or a thick cloth helps to keep the cold in. If you get it wet before laying it over the freezer, it will help keep it that much colder. The original instructions said to keep the blanket wet with the brine from the ice cream freezer, but I can’t imagine what that level of salt water would do to old fibers in a blanket. Maybe this is where all the old quilts went.

And on to the cold treats!

Now that you have an idea of some of the forgotten advice on ice cream making, let’s make some warm weather goodies. Making ice cream and sundaes at home can be great fun. Like most Twenties recipes, some of these may sound a little odd at first. Give one or more of them a try and you can have your own Old Fashioned Ice Cream Social.

All of these recipes should serve from four to six.

Pineapple Marshmallow Sundae

You will need:

Vanilla ice cream
Marshmallow cream filling (like Fluff or Jet-Puffed Marshmallow Cream. Look for it at your grocery store.)
One slice of canned pineapple per person
Shredded coconut (packaged. Moist. Not dried coconut. Available in your baking aisle.)
Whipped cream
Juice from the canned pineapple

Instructions:

Half fill a sherbet glass with vanilla ice cream.
Top this with a dollop of marshmallow cream filling.
Press a slice of canned pineapple onto the marshmallow cream.
Top with a tablespoon or so of the soft shredded coconut.
Finish off with a topping of whipped cream.
Pour a little of the pineapple syrup over the top of the sundae.

South-Pole Sundae

You will need:

Vanilla ice cream
Real chocolate fudge. You don’t have to make it fresh for this; if you made chocolate fudge in the past couple days you can reheat it and pour it over the ice cream. Melt it enough to pour by placing it in a pan set in a larger pan of boiling water. It shouldn’t be very hot. A double boiler works, too. Or [Sh!! Don’t tell!] even a quick zap in the microwave.
Candied cherries or Maraschino cherries

Instructions:

Place a tablespoon of vanilla ice cream in the bottom of a glass. I would use a six or eight ounce glass Pyrex dessert dish.
On top of this pour a just a little of the soft chocolate fudge.
Heap the glass bowl with ice cream.
Give it a thin topping of fudge.
Decorate with candied cherries.

This tastes a little like the chocolate covered ice cream bars that were all the rage in 1922. The secret to this is to make the fudge layers thin, like a frosting.

Marshmallow Parfait

You will need:

1 cup whipping cream
2 Tbsp sugar or to taste
2 bananas
1 orange
1/4 lb marshmallows
2 Tbsp shredded pineapple
Candied cherries/ Maraschino cherries

Instructions:

Whip the cup of cream and sweeten with the sugar. Set into the freezer to chill while you make the rest of the dessert, or set on ice in a bowl.
Cut the bananas, orange, and marshmallows into small pieces. Stir in the pineapple.
Remove the cream from the ice or freezer. Beat the fruit lightly into the cream and fill tall glasses with the mixture.
Decorate with candied cherries or maraschino cherries.

If you find that you like this parfait, which is not actually frozen, you may also like this recipe for Fruited Cream. It’s similar.

Caramel Ice Cream

You will need:

1 cup brown sugar
4 cups half and half
4 cups whole/heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions:

Heat the brown sugar into a small frying pan and stir over medium heat until it melts and begins to smoke a little. You want it melted and hot enough that it tastes caramelized but not dark enough that it tastes burned.
Heat together the half and half (light cream) and cream, mix the liquid sugar with them and flavor with vanilla.
Remove the mixture from the fire and stir until it cools.
Strain the mixture to remove any large sugar particles.
Freeze in an ice cream freezer as usual.

The flavor of this ice cream is varied by the length of time the brown sugar is cooked. Be very careful –– hot melted sugar like this can cause dreadful burns.

Cafe Frappe

This is the original method of making a frappe, without the help of a blender. It’s more of an ice than an ice cream, since 3 of the five cups of liquid are water based.

You will need:

3 cups strong black coffee
2 cups cream
1 1/3 cups granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
Whipped cream for serving

Instructions:

Scald the cream and dissolve the sugar in it.
Set aside to cool.
Mix coffee with the sweetened cream. Add the vanilla.
Pour into an ice cream freezer and freeze slowly until it reaches a mushy consistency.
Serve in glasses with a spoon of whipped cream on top.

I hope you enjoyed these recipes for making ice creams and sundaes in your own kitchen.

Parties and Visits · The Vintage Kitchen · Vintage Entertainment

Plan a Summer Automobile Picnic

July 20, 2021June 28, 2021 VintageJenny

Family of five enjoying a picnic outdoors in the 1920s. Mom unloads the hamper while little sister enjoys a drink, little brother munches a sandwich, and dad talks to big sister, who sits with a warm cup of coffee or tea.. She holds a teacup in her hand and an insulated Thermos bottle sits in front of her. — Ah….. enjoying the great outdoors and meal at the same time!

Wide automobile ownership brought the great outdoors within reach of a whole new audience. Previously, people could go as far as the local streetcar, the interurban, or the train could take them. Or they could ride a horse if they had one. For short excursions a bicycle would work well. But nothing beat an auto when you wanted to plan a summer automobile picnic an hour or so away from home.

Taking off in your auto

The automobile picnic actually became a term on its own in magazine articles. With the extra space afforded by the car, owners could pack it to the windows and take practically every luxury with them when they headed out for their nature dinner.

When you think of supplies, you may want to use fabric shopping or tote bags instead of hampers if your car space is small. Bags can be hung from the clothing hooks or tucked into places that a large hamper will not go.

The prepared picnic addict kept a special shelf of supplies, plus more hidden away in the automobile trunk. If you wanted to pull a picnic together on short notice, you needed a few items on hand. Here is a bona fide Twenties picnic list that will help you plan your summer automobile picnic.

Supplies that make easy work of the picnic lunch

Wherever you store your seasonal things, you should have these available:

Paper plates
Tablecloth
Napkins
Cups
Doilies
Empty cracker boxes
Rolls of paraffin (waxed) paper
Strong market bags with handles (paper or burlap are good materials. Today I’d suggest a reusable fabric shopping bag. The Twenties picnicker would have loved such a light and useful item.)
Thermos bottle
Lemonade pail (a covered/lidded pitcher with ice makes a good, sanitary substitute.)
Picnic hamper

… And the shelf-stable food

These are the foods that should sit on a picnic shelf of your pantry so you can throw together a great vintage summer automobile picnic in a short amount of time:

Stuffed olives (or simply jarred olives. They really don’t need to be stuffed.)
Jellies (grape, strawberry, mango…whatever your family loves)
Grape and pineapple juice
Mixed pickles (these are different vegetables all pickled together like small onions, carrots, cauliflower, tiny peppers… and they often would be home canned in small 8-ounce jars for portability and cost. Check the Ball Blue Book if you want recipes (Amazon link; look for it wherever canning supplies are sold), or take a look at this Hot Pepper Mix of pickled vegetables from the Ball website to get an idea.
Pickled herring — sh! This is great on crackers as an appetizer. If you like pickled herring, that is.
Potted ham or chicken (This was an early solution for canned meats. Substitute a can or two of whatever meat you like canned. You can still buy potted meat. You may or may not like it. Think Spam.)
Canned soups
Boxed cookies
Boxed salted and plain crackers (This is calling for saltines and.. say.. an unsalted cracker like… do we still have those? I can’t think of any. If you know of an unsalted cracker on the market please let me know in the comments.)
Pimientos (This was the Twenties cook’s solution to adding color and nutrition of various meals. Roasted peppers in everything! They kept better this way than in the refrigerator and fresh.)
Canned salmon
Canned tuna
Prepared salad dressing
Sweet wafers (These are very thin cookies often used to decorate desserts. You may be able to find them in the grocery with the Italian cookies. Look on the top shelf. Pizzelles are a type of sweet wafer. If you happen to have an ice cream cone waffle iron, a small flat waffle cone makes a great wafer. I do, because gluten free ice cream cones are few and far between.)

Let’s not forget the refrigerator!

Lest you think that everything for your picnic needs to come off the longterm storage shelf, you will find a few items in your fridge to spice up your day:

Mayonnaise
Home-made salad dressings
Hard boiled eggs
Cold boiled potatoes
Green peppers
Celery
Fresh tomatoes
Young onions (we would call these spring onions or green onions or scallions.)
Lettuce
Lemons
Fresh fruit

Of course you won’t use all of this! This is your store from which you pull all the things you need for the ultimate picnic. Maybe you have a fresh loaf of bread on hand. You can make tuna sandwiches, or chicken salad sandwiches. You can have hard boiled eggs (transport them cold in the shell and let everyone peel their own), or you can make deviled eggs (transport them filled and facing each other, wrapped in plastic or waxed paper. Unwrap them, twist them apart and each person has two deviled eggs!)

Pull some fresh fruit, some cookies, and pack a drink and you’re done! See how easy this can be when you have supplies ready and on hand? Not every picnic needs to be fried chicken and corn on the cob.

Note: if you are fixing anything with mayonnaise, please keep it chilled in a cooler until it’s consumed. Warm mayo, while it probably won’t kill you, is less than tasty on a sandwich or in deviled eggs.

Add a Sweet Surprise

If you like, and you have the time and the equipment, you can make up two quarts of ice cream a bit ahead of time, pack the container in a cooler with ice, and tuck it into the car for after lunch or dinner. Even simple vanilla made with milk, half and half (light cream), sugar, and vanilla tastes heavenly when it’s fresh.

Traditionally, of course, this could be made in the kitchen sink: fill the sink with ice and enough kosher or rock salt to make it even colder, and place a metal bowl into the sink with your prepared ice cream mixture. You should have enough ice to make the bowl cold. Start stirring. Stir until you think your arm is going to fall off, and then stir some more. Switch arms. Hold the bowl steady and stir with your other hand. Every now and then you’ll need to scrape the stuff off the sides of the bowl so new unfrozen stuff can take its place. Is this easy or quick? Nope. But I hear it works if you have no other alternative.

Don’t forget the auto supplies!

Filling your car with picnic-ready equipment will ensure that you’re always ready for a trip. Consider these additions:

Canned heat, stand, and pan to fit on it. (I keep my canned heat on the pantry shelf because my car gets really hot in the summer. You may want to, as well.)
Charcoal, in case you find yourself at a park with usable grills.
Toy pail and shovel for each child, especially if you are going where there is sand. Or rocks. Or loose dirt. Or leaves.

Two tasty on-the-go meals

Here are two options for picnic meals, Twenties style. Each of them can be made largely from the ingredients made above, with some additional items that you’ll notice. Substitute wherever you like. Plan your summer automobile picnic to make yourself happy. This is your picnic.

A Fireless Meal

For those days when you can’t fire up the park grill, here’s a menu that you can pack and go:

Potato salad (using those cold boiled potatoes from the fridge)
Eggs stuffed with Ham (minced ham + a little mayo in a hard boiled egg white. Use the yolks, or not.)
Sliced fresh tomatoes
Nut bread sandwiches (nut bread sliced thin; two pieces held together with cream cheese or butter)
Lemonade
Cookies (fresh or from the shelf)
Sliced fruit in Raspberry Jelly (this is probably calling for sliced fruit in something like raspberry jell-o)

An Automobile Lunch

Hot Buillion from the Thermos Bottle
with Salted crackers
Sandwiches of cream cheese and maple sugar with graham bread (this is a sweet sandwich to balance the soup; graham bread is whole wheat bread.)
Vegetable salad (prepared fresh or steamed cold veggies with a little salad dressing to perk them up, whatever you have)
Sweet pickles
Chocolate cake
Iced Tea

Neither of these will take a huge amount of time to put together if you already have most of the ingredients. And they are substantial meals for on the go. Use these, or rely on favorite foods when you plan your summer automobile picnic this year.

If you’d like an option for more of a tea-party picnic than a traditional picnic, you might like my entry on creating a summer porch party. These recipes require a bit more care in packing but they are just as tasty.