If you’re looking for a vintage recipe, vintage weight loss, gluten free adaptations, or suggestions on running and maintaining a vintage-style kitchen, this is the place to look.
Ham in a cream sauce over a baked potato. Delectable.
Everybody has leftover ham sometime, if they eat ham at all. It might be from last night’s celebratory dinner, or perhaps some deli ham is about to go south in the refrigerator. When that happens, this delicious recipe comes to your rescue. It is the BEST vintage ham with cream sauce recipe I’ve used so far. It’s tasty, the family loves it, and it uses up the ham that would otherwise molder in its refrigerator box.
The cookbook actually called this Ham with Cream Gravy. You may call it Delicious. The original recipe, of course, was written in one dense paragraph. I’ll break that down for you into steps in the recipe.
Making the ham and cream sauce
The technique is very simple. First you chop or dice the leftover cooked ham, and brown it in a pan on the stove. If you start with ham slices, learn about the benefits of snipping instead of chopping in this post I wrote about Ten Uses for Your Kitchen Scissors.
The beginning to a quick and easy dinner
Once the ham is toasty warm and a browned as much as you like, remove it to a bowl. The browning on the ham pieces give it flavor. While you don’t want to burn it, a bit of the brown brings out that savory-sweet ham taste.
Next, you will make a white sauce.
White sauce in process, ready for the diced ham.
Then, once your white sauce is thick and bubbly, re-introduce the ham to your pan. Let it simmer for ten minutes or so over low heat to combine the flavors, and then stir in salt and pepper to taste. It’s that easy, and that delicious.
Ham in Cream Sauce thickening for dinner
Serving it up
Although the recipe included no serving tips, I’ve found that one of the best ways to serve this is with potatoes. Any potatoes. I’ve used cubed fried potatoes, frozen potato tots and crowns, baked potato, and mashed potatoes. The beauty of Twenties recipes is that simple foods combined with imagination make some great meals. Use what you have. It will be awesome.
It will, however, appear very beige. A side salad or a green vegetable goes a long way towards making this a full meal. Steam broccoli on the back burner while you make the gravy or throw a simple salad together while the the finished sauce cooks on low to meld the flavors.
Actually, my absolute favorite way to serve this is in a tortilla wrap like a burrito. Place a light layer of cubed fried potatoes, top with a layer of the ham mixture, and roll up. Unfortunately, most gluten free tortillas don’t have the strength of those made with wheat flour. So unless you have a really strong gluten free tortilla in hand, this assembly becomes a frightful mess quite quickly. Because of that I abandoned the bread wrap and started serving it plated. And no one complained. They snarfed it down just like the wrap version.
Plus, tortillas don’t appear in many 1920s – 1950s cookbooks in the U.S., so if you add one to this dish you strike out into uncharted vintage cooking territory. It’s tasty, though. You may decide this is the best vintage ham with cream sauce recipe, too.
Since we don’t use much whole ham here, I buy one and dice it for this recipe, storing the rest in the freezer in 2-cup allotments. That way I always have “leftover” ham on hand!
The Best Vintage Leftover Ham Recipe: Ham with Cream Sauce
Use that leftover ham in this cream sauce that goes over vegetables, biscuits, or even wrapped in a tortilla.
Prep Time10 minutesmins
Cook Time20 minutesmins
Course: Main Course
Cuisine: American
Servings: 51/2 cup servings
Equipment
large saucepan or frying pan
small whisk
small bowl
Ingredients
2cupscooked ham, diced
4tbspbutter, margarine, or oil
2cupsmilk
Instructions
Cook the diced ham in a hot pan over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned. Remove the ham to a bowl, leaving any grease in the pan.
Check the amount of grease in the pan. If cooking the ham left a substantial amount, add butter or oil until you have about 4 tablespoons. If cooking the ham left no grease at all, add all 4 tablespoons of the butter or oil.
Add the flour to the melted butter, oil, or grease, and whisk together until completely mixed and smooth.
Pour in the milk slowly, stirring all the while. Continue to stir until thickened, and then return the ham to the pan.
Reduce the heat to low, and simmer for ten minutes. Taste, and then add up to 1/2 teaspoon and up to 1/2 teaspoon pepper if you like.
Serve over potatoes, biscuits, vegetables, or wrapped up in a tortilla.
Put together a porch party your friends will remember.
In the Twenties and Thirties porch parties gathered people together. In a day before air conditioning, home owners and guests embraced any opportunity to spend time outside. Picnics on the grass weren’t for everyone, although they were popular. The porch party gathered everyone onto the cool front porch. They sat in comfortable chairs and enjoyed special nibbles or even a full luncheon. And if the gang didn’t gather for a special occasion, such as a shower, guests usually brought along their workbags. Knitting, embroidery, tatting, and crochet kept hands busy while conversation flew. Porch parties were so popular that entire menus often appeared in magazines and cookbooks.
Revive this tradition and host a porch party of your own. All you need is a clean, nicely decorated porch, a few guests, and some food. Invite a few favorites over and give these recipes a gander. These recipes for your porch party will fit your vintage (or not so vintage) gathering perfectly. They were designed for outdoor entertaining in warmer weather.
You could add hot tea to this menu and call it an afternoon tea. Or use the Peruvian chocolate recipe from the list and call it a luncheon party. (You may want to have a pitcher of water available, however. The Peruvian chocolate recipe is very rich, iced or hot.)
Add a small bowl of mixed olives and a bowl of mixed nuts to the foods listed here and you have a beautiful Twenties porch luncheon. The cream mints provide the perfect ending to a vintage luncheon. They cleanse the palate after a meal, and appeared on tables regularly.
1. Sweet and Savory Sandwiches
These Sweet and Savory Tea Sandwiches offer four options for quickly made, tasty sandwiches. Serve them at your next vintage-style small gathering or formal tea. And if you’ve never hosted a formal tea but always wanted to, these sandwiches will start you off.
This Peruvian chocolate tastes like something between a normal hot cocoa recipe, and the thick drinking chocolate that you find in cafés. This is a drink to savor. It’s not too sweet. Enjoy this one with a friend or friends and some good conversation.
If you’re looking for a light and cool dessert for warm weather, look no further. This Fruited Cream recipe from the 1920s fills the requirement. It’s smooth, fruity, sweet, and cold. And Fruited Cream gives us an example of some of the best from the Twenties kitchen.
The Many Layered Jam Cake is one rich cake. A bit more involved than an everyday cake, Many Layered Jam Cake definitely tastes like more than a sum of its parts. This is a delicious, decadent cake for your next vintage gathering.
Looking for something to add sparkle to your next small get-together? These easy fondant Cream Mints are simple to make and they taste great! And even better, this 1920s recipe was almost lost to time.
Easy Fondant Cream Mints can brighten your next get-together.
Looking for something to add sparkle to your next small get-together? These easy fondant Cream Mints are simple to make and they taste great! And even better, the recipe was almost lost to time.
Before I started these I did a pretty extensive online search on cream mints. I got… nothing. Then I started hunting through my collection of vintage and antique cookbooks. Finally I found one mention, then another. Along the way I stumbled upon this easy fondant cream mint recipe.
Usually, cream mints are made from fondant. Not cream cheese, not marshmallows. Fondant. Like the creamy white or pastel centers you find in chocolate covered candies. It’s the same stuff.
Fondant Wars: Cooked vs. Uncooked
Fondant comes in two varieties: cooked and uncooked. Making cooked fondant requires sugar, water, cream of tartar, patience, a candy thermometer, a stand mixer or really strong arms, time, and patience. Did I mention patience?
One of the issues with cooked fondant is that it takes so much time. It creates a wonderful product that you can then use in all kinds of candies, but it takes two days to make. Literally. First you cook it and then it has to sit in the refrigerator for 24 hours to “ripen” so it’s ready to use. Once it’s ready you assemble a set of cooking utensils again and complete the candies.
While cooked fondant is fun to make (especially if you have the patience), today I’m going to talk about uncooked fondant. This recipe for easy fondant Cream Mints takes about half an hour to 45 minutes, plus drying time. (Cooked fondant requires drying time, too.)
Perhaps this uncooked fondant recipe fell out of favor in the United States because it calls for an uncooked egg white. I have a great substitute for that, and it’s meringue powder. Meringue powder is pre-cooked and safe to use. It’s what cake decorators use to make Royal Icing, that rock-hard icing used for cake decorations that will break your teeth if you chomp too hard.
Several different companies sell meringue powder, and you can get it online or locally. If you don’t have a local cake supply store, you should be able to find Wilton meringue powder at your local grocery or craft store. One container of it goes a long way.
Flavors Old and New
To flavor your mints you will need a food-grade oil such as LorAnn. I’ve used LorAnn oils for many years in candies and they work very well. You’ll only need 1/4 teaspoon of the oil, unless you want them really strong.
Today when we think of mints, we automatically picture the mint flavors: spearmint, peppermint, wintergreen (wintermint). That was not true for the vintage cook. Mint flavors in the 1920s and 1930s included lime, clove, and cinnamon in addition to mint. If you truly want to put a modern spin on this vintage recipe, you can make your mints taste like black cherry, fruit punch, or root beer. All these flavors are available from the LorAnn website, plus many more –– but they also make the traditional flavors of lime, clove, and cinnamon. Whatever you choose, get a flavor you like. These tiny bottles go a long way.
Using Your Mints
In the vintage household, nuts and mints often finished the meal along with a cup of coffee. A small dessert usually accompanied the meal. The sweet course already completed, the thoughtful hostess served coffee with mints rather than chocolates or anything heavy after a well-designed dinner or party. Mints cleansed the palate. They tasted refreshing. And they believed (perhaps rightly) that mints helped with digestion.
You can use these mints to spice up a small party. Color them to match your theme, or leave them pristine white. Include them in little nut baskets at each person’s place at the table. Or you can fill a small candy dish with them and watch them disappear as the evening continues.
Begin to include them after meals for your own dinners. They are easy to make, you can create whatever flavors you like, and you are no longer dependent upon the mint manufacturers of the world who produce peppermint and spearmint. Want clove-flavored mints? Make them!
The Basic How-To’s
To make these easy fondant Cream Mints, you will mix together meringue powder and water to equal two egg whites and then whip it with your mixer (or a whisk) until it bubbles. Then stir in your flavoring. If you want less than the 1/4 teaspoon called for in the recipe, use less. For a very light flavor you may want to only use a few drops.
Mix and knead
Add a little salt, and then stir in, a little at a time, up to four cups confectioner’s sugar. It may take awhile, and this is where your electric mixer comes in handy. You won’t stop until the mixture has a clay-like consistency. It won’t be as stiff as Play-doh, the wheat-based clay many of us grew up playing with. It will, however, be close. Your fondant needs to hold its shape.
The clay-like fondant ball is flavored and ready to tint.
When it reaches its clay fondant stage, remove it from the bowl and place on a flat surface to knead it until it’s smooth. If you have a marble pastry board, great! I don’t, so I used a silicone pastry mat. After all, a hallmark of the vintage life was use what you had at hand.
Now the ball is divided into three, and waiting for two drops of color to be kneaded in.
Color it beautiful
If you want your mints to be two or three different colors, this is the time to divide it. I divided mine into three balls about the same size. I poked a hole in each ball and added two drops of McCormick liquid food color. That was enough to get vibrant pink, yellow, and green. If you want even lighter pastel colors, only use one drop. If you want to color the entire batch one color, you’ll use 5 to 6 drops of color or less.
Pink, green, and yellow balls ready to roll and cut.
Cut and dried
Then you’ll roll the fondant out. Use your cutter to cut small shapes, no larger than an inch. I had an ivy fondant cutter on hand. Bento cutters would work, as would any set of mini cookie cutters.
Note: You can’t use metal cookie cutters on a silicone mat. They will cut right through it. Lift your rolled fondant to a cutting board or a sturdy platter if you want to use metal cutters and you use a silicone mat to protect your countertop.
Once your mints are cut out, you let them dry. Move them to a wax- or parchment-paper covered cooling rack. Let them dry for several hours, and then turn them over to finish drying overnight. Place your finished mints in a storage container. These do not have to be refrigerated, but you will probably want to separate colors with paper if you keep them all in one container. These should keep for several weeks in an airtight container.
Make these cream mints to add pizzaz to your vintage meals.
Prep Time30 minutesmins
Cook Time0 minutesmins
Drying Time23 hourshrs
Total Time23 hourshrs30 minutesmins
Course: Candies
Cuisine: American
Keyword: dinner mints, fondant
Servings: 12people
Equipment
Electric stand mixer, OR whisk, large bowl, wooden spoon, and lots of energy
Pastry board or mat for kneading and rolling
Rolling Pin
Small cutter for shapes
Cooling racks
Wax paper or parchment paper for drying
Ingredients
2tspMeringue Powder I used Wilton brand. It’s what I had on the shelf.
2tbspwater
1/4tspLorAnn Super Strength Oil Flavor, any flavorI had spearmint, so that's what I used.
1/8tspsalt
4 1/2cupsconfectioner's sugar, dividedYou will use 4 cups in the recipe. The rest is to keep the surface from sticking while you roll it out if necessary.
5-6dropsMcCormick's liquid food coloring or an equivalenI used 2 drops in each of three different colors.
Instructions
Combine the meringue powder and the water in the bowl of the stand mixer. Beat until frothy. If you have a whisk attachment, it works well for this.
Scrape the sides to make sure that all the meringue powder is dissolved. Add the salt and the flavoring.
Remove the whisk attachment, if you used it, and replace it with the general mixing attachment.
Add up to 4 cups of the confectioner's sugar, a little at a time. Mix on a medium speed to combine everything. At first the mixture will look like frosting. Keep adding the sugar. After awhile it will begin to clump together.
Turn the mixer off and inspect the mixture. Does it stick together in your hands like clay? If so, you're finished. If not, continue to add a bit at a time until it does.
When it reaches its clay fondant stage, remove it from the bowl and place on a flat surface and knead it for a minute or two until it’s smooth.
If you want your mints to be two or three different colors, this is the time to divide it. To make three different colors, divide the dough into three balls. Poke a hole in each ball and add two drops of food color. This is enough to get vibrant pink, yellow, and green. If you want even lighter pastel colors, only use one drop. If you want to color the entire batch one color, use 5 to 6 drops of color, or even less.
Roll the fondant to about 1/8” (3mm) thickness. You can make them a bit thicker if you like but they may take longer to dry. Use your cutter to cut small shapes, no larger than an inch.
Note: You can’t use metal cookie cutters on a silicone mat. They will cut right through it. Lift your rolled fondant to a cutting board or a sturdy platter if you want to use metal cutters.
Cut as many shapes from each color as you can, and move them to a wax- or parchment-paper covered cooling rack. Let them dry for several hours, and then turn them over. Let them dry several more hours, preferably 24. Move the finished mints to a storage container. These do not have to be refrigerated, but you will probably want to separate colors with paper if you keep them all in one container. These should keep for several weeks in an airtight container.
This chocolate drink recipe says it comes from the land where chocolate is taken seriously. Much more seriously than it is in the United States. Is this really a Peruvian 1920s recipe? I have no idea, but it tastes different from any other chocolate I’ve ever had. The 1920s article said this Peruvian chocolate is good iced or hot. And it is.
Not as sweet when cold, but definitely just as rich: Iced Peruvian Chocolate.
This Peruvian chocolate tastes like something between a normal hot cocoa recipe like you’ll find here, and the thick drinking chocolate that you find in cafés. This is a drink to savor. It’s not too sweet. Enjoy this one with a friend or friends and some good conversation.
Chocolate and coffee combine to make a rich drink.
Thick drinking chocolate can be difficult to make. This recipe is relatively easy, and it makes four 1-cup servings. You can easily cut the serving size to 3/4 cup and serve five. The servings look small until you taste it.
You might want to serve a glass of water along with this cocoa, especially if you are serving anything with it, such as dessert. Too rich to drink quickly, guests might appreciate another drink option on the table besides this chocolate.
Step 1. Melt the chocolate over hot water and stir in sugar and vanilla.
This drink requires a lot of chocolate, four ounces to be exact. It needs an entire box of Baker’s choclate from the grocery store baking aisle. You can substitute four ounces of any chcolate that you wish. The better quality of chocolate you use, the better the drink will be.
Step 2: Chocolate and sugar mixed with the coffee. Ready for the milk.
You will need:
4 ounces chocolate, unsweetened or semi-sweet
3 cups milk
1 cup strong coffee
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
sweetened whipped cream, optional
If you have all this in stock, the recipe is straighforward and easy. Using a double boiler makes the recipe almost fool-proof, since you can’t easily burn the chocolate when it heats over water.
Using coffee makes this an “adult drink.” If you make this for children, substitute 1/2 cup water for the coffee and increase the milk to four cups. (Don’t worry; this variation is included in the printable recipe below.) Iced or hot, this Peruvian Hot Chocolate is a keeper.
This rich, not-too-sweet 1920s chocolate recipe falls somewhere between hot cocoa and French drinking chocolate.
Prep Time10 minutesmins
Cook Time20 minutesmins
Total Time30 minutesmins
Course: Drinks
Cuisine: American
Equipment
Double boiler
Whisk or egg beater
Additional large saucepan
Ingredients
4ouncesunsweetened chocolateI used Baker's unsweetened
2tbspsugar
1/2tspvanilla extract
1cupstrong coffee
3cupsmilk
1/2cupsweetened whipped cream
For Iced Peruvian Chocolate
1ice cube per serving
Instructions
Scald the milk in a large saucepan and set aside.
Melt the chocolate in a double boiler (or in a heatproof pan over hot water). If unsweetened chocolate is used, add the sugar and vanilla.
Add the coffee and continue to cook over hot water until thick and smooth. Cook until steam rises from the mixture. If you use hot coffee, and the mixture comes to a boil, boil for one minute. Stir constantly.
Add the scalded milk to the chocolate mixture and whip to a froth with an egg beater.
Cook in double boiler over hot water for ten minutes. Whip again with the beater.
Serve with sweetened whipped cream.
For Iced Peruvian Chocolate
Chill. Then shake each serving with a piece of ice before serving.
For Children's Peruvian Chocolate
Substitute 1/2 cup water for the coffee, and increase milk to 4 cups. Serve warm or iced.
Notes
This recipe makes four cups, to serve four. It is so rich, however, that serving 3/4 cup to five people works well too.
A 1929 recipe for Many Layered Jam Cake. This will become your new favorite!
The Many Layered Jam Cake is one rich cake. After trying it once, this recipe goes into my permanent rotation for entertaining. A bit more involved than an everyday cake, Many Layered Jam Cake definitely tastes like more than a sum of its parts. This is a delicious, decadent cake for your next vintage gathering.
The original 1920s recipe called for two different types of marmalade. It didn’t mean sweet orange marmalade and another sweet orange marmalade. This recipe calls for orange marmalade and lemon marmalade. Or maybe orange and lime. Even a sweet orange and a tart orange would be good.
Look at that rich deliciousness!
In search of marmalade…
I couldn’t find any of that locally. My area sells sweet orange marmalade. Period. While I don’t live in the middle of nowhere, I also don’t reside in a large metropolis. But the three groceries I checked all offered sweet orange marmalade and nothing else.
If you want to try this with other flavors, you may be reduced to making your own marmalade. Any citrus fruit can be turned into marmalade. Oranges, lemons, limes, even grapefruit marmalade can be successful. Here’s a recipe for Meyer Lemon Marmalade by the Ball Company. The Ball Company that makes canning jars. They know a thing or two about canning recipes, and their Blue Book is legendary. I own two copies. But I digress.
Cake pans ready to go into the oven. Each one held 1/2 cup of batter.
Without any other options, I made the cake with just sweet orange marmalade. And Oh. My. I won’t say that I saw taste testers fighting over the cake when we did the original tasting. But I can say that every time I looked in the refrigerator a little more of it was missing. Even the Resident Fruit Hater at my house loved it.
Ingredient substitutions
I made the Many Layered Jam Cake with gluten free flour because that’s what I have to use. The original recipe was written for ordinary cake flour. (To substitute regular flour for cake flour you simply measure a cup and then remove 2 tablespoons of flour from the measuring cup. Then, if you like, stir in 2 Tablespoons cornstarch to make up your full cup of flour.)
This cake is baked in layers. I used a 1/2 cup measure and ended up with seven very thin layers that baked in 12 – 14 minutes apiece. Once baked, I flipped them out of the pan and let them cool. And you know what? Cake layers that are only 1/4-inch thick cool really quickly. In less than half an hour after baking all the layers I was ready to assemble the cake.
Loose and fluffy
I used wax paper in the bottom of the pans to make removal easy. Changing the paper lining with each layer works best. Or simply grease and flour your pans really well so the layers don’t stick.
Bottom cake layer with a thin coating of marmalade. Ready for the next layer.
Confession: the recipe calls for 2 teaspoons of baking powder. I swear I don’t remember putting that in. If you use the baking powder, your layers will probably rise a bit more than mine did, and taste less dense. Either way, this Many Layered Jam Cake is amazing.
Using only one type of marmalade, it took most of a jar to assemble the seven layers. A thin spread of marmalade goes between each layer. Then top the assembled cake with a nice sprinkle of powdered sugar. It’s so rich that it doesn’t need more than that. Icing would not only be overkill, but it would dull the citrus flavors of the rest of the cake.
If the weather’s warm, enjoy your cake with a nice glass of iced coffee. I wrote about iced coffee in the 1920s in this blog post.
1¾cupscake flourworks fine with Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free 1 to 1 baking flour
2tspbaking powder
2tsplemon peel, grated
1jarmarmaladeor two kinds if you can find them
1/4cuppowdered sugaryou won't use it all; this is to spinkle on the cake top. I used about a tablespoon in a tea strainer.
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Prepare two round or oval cake pans. (The small oval cake pans in the photo are made by Wilton and available to go with their Level 2 or Level 3 cake decorating class materials.) Either grease and flour the pans liberally, or cut a piece of wax paper to fit the bottom of the pan, grease the bottom of the pan lightly, stick the paper to the pan, and then grease the paper.
Stir the flour and the baking powder together in a small bowl.
In the large bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter and add the sugar, unbeaten eggs, flour/baking powder mixture, and the lemon peel. Mix together slowly for one minute, and then beat on medium speed for two minutes. The mixture should turn a light yellow.
Place 1/2 cup of the cake mixture into each pan, and smooth it down until it forms an even layer. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, until done.
After you remove the cake layers from the oven, let them rest a minute and then loosen them with a metal spatula or something similar (don't use a rubber spatula that will melt from the heat). Turn each layer carefully onto a cooling surface like a cake cooling rack. Let them cool for 20 minutes or so.
Repeat the baking and cooling until you are out of batter. You should get 6 – 8 layers. I got seven, with the last layer a bit thicker than the others. I used it as the bottom layer to provide stability.
Once your layers are cool, assemble them. Between each layer, spread a thin layer of marmalade. If you have two types of marmalade, alternate flavors with each layer. Top your cake with a healthy sprinkle of powdered sugar. Refrigerate until needed, and then let it come back to room temperature before cutting.
Or maybe it’s a Fruited Cream Dessert Salad. If you’re looking for a light and cool dessert for warm weather, look no further. This Fruited Cream recipe from the 1920s fills the requirement. It’s smooth, fruity, sweet, and cold. And Fruited Cream gives us an example of some of the best from the Twenties kitchen.
An early forerunner of the famous ambrosia salad (or infamous, depending on your view), this cream goes together with very few ingredients and not much time. The largest time chunk of the entire recipe is the time that it needs to chill. To blend the flavors well, this recipe needs to cool in the refrigerator for at least four hours after you make it. Good thing it’s easy and quick!
The Twenties kitchen was known for simple ingredients. These were combined in innovative ways. Sometimes, as in this recipe, those combinations shine. Other times… well, let’s just say there’s a reason nobody makes Sardines and Boiled Egg on Toast anymore.
A recipe like Fruited Cream was made when the cook wanted to throw a small party. It surfaced as a special salad for a special occasion. This recipe would not appear on the table for a festival like Thanksgiving, Christmas, or another major holiday. Repetition over time scripted those menus. It would, however, be a delightful addition to a birthday lunch.
You need fruit, and cream, and sugar
Ingredients for fruited cream dessert.
To make Fruited Cream you’ll need two cups of any fruit. I used 1 cup strawberries and 1 cup crushed pineapple, but you could also use canned apricots or peaches. Or you can even mix the fruit with pineapple, like I did. Peaches with pineapple sounds divine, actually. Especially if you like both fruits equally well.
You’ll also need a cup of heavy whipping cream, vanilla flavoring, and powdered sugar. You’ll mince your fruit (a very fine diced cut). Then whip the cream until very stiff, and stir in the vanilla flavoring and powdered sugar. After that you chill, chill, chill. This needs to chill in the refrigerator for four hours or more to blend the flavors so it tastes like a salad and not like fruit stirred into whipped cream.
Scale it up if you want, but mince it fine
As written, this recipe serves 5. It would taste great served with an iced coffee like the one I wrote about here. However, you can multiply it as many times as you need to feed a small crowd. Fruited Cream should scale well. If you need less than five servings, well… it makes fine leftovers for a couple days. After two days the cream starts to break down. Before then, it tastes great for breakfast with a cup of hot tea or coffee.
When you put this recipe together, you want to make sure that your fruit is minced very fine. A 1/8 inch mince isn’t too small. Most of my strawberries evened out at about 3/16” in size, halfway between 1/8” and 1/4”. I tried to make none of the pieces as large as 1/4”.
Mince that fruit! It makes a difference!
The crushed pineapple you can smash with a fork when you drain it, and very little should need to be cut. I found a few pieces larger than 1/4” so I cut them down to the correct size.
All this mincing and measuring-by-eye may seem like a lot of effort for nothing, but it definitely tastes in the finished product. Instead of chunks of fruit in whipped cream, you taste a sweet creamy smoothness from the combination –– but only if your fruit is cut small enough. Remember, this isn’t your grandmother’s 1970s salad where the pineapple chunks compete with the mini marshmallows in a swirl of pistachio-flavored pudding. This is smooth, and creamy, and delightful –– a hallmark of the Twenties kitchen. This Fruited Cream will shine on your table as a dessert or a salad.
Almost everyone has a pair of kitchen scissors in the drawer. Some knife sets come with them. Maybe we always believed kitchen scissors were a must-have for any well-equipped kitchen. But do you use them? I’m guessing that you don’t. Or at least, that you don’t use those kitchen scissors to their fullest. These ten uses for your kitchen scissors take them out of the drawer and into your working arsenal.
And why don’t you use your kitchen scissors? I’ll tell you why I don’t use mine. I don’t think about it. I grab a knife, and a cutting board, and I set myself to a task. Even though, if I thought about it, said task would work better if I used the kitchen scissors.
Using your kitchen scissors offers several advantages. First of all, they are easy to clean. Some pairs even come apart for even easier cleanup. Using the scissors saves washing both a knife and a cutting board. Also, you can snip the food right into wherever it needs to go. Scissors make working with small amounts of food less frustrating. And finally, you can determine the size and shape of the food more easily with scissors than you sometimes can with a knife.
With all that said, be careful! Anything with a point can cut, and some kitchen shears are sharper than others. I have one pair that barely has a point at all. This pair finds plastic bags difficult. I also have these, a pair of Henkels scissors that will cut through almost anything I need them to, kitchen-wise.
Ten Uses for Your Scissors
Here are ten uses for your kitchen scissors. Although these ideas are from a vintage periodical, they still work for today’s cook. Whether you cook in a vintage kitchen or not.
Shredding lettuce. If you are eating the lettuce right away, it’s not going to turn brown if you cut it with your scissors. You don’t have to tear it. Really.
Shredding parsley. You know all those recipes that call for 2 tablespoons of parsley? Using your kitchen scissors to snip it is the quickest way to get there.
Dicing or cutting green peppers. Green peppers can be slippery. Especially when they are damp from rinsing. Use your kitchen scissors to cut those peppers into shape.
Clipping the bad parts from greens or cabbage. It never fails that you get that one leaf that only has that one small spot. Right in the center. Your scissors make short work of it.
Cutting raisins or nuts. You know when you need pecan pieces and you only have whole pecans? Try using the kitchen scissors to reduce them to the size you need. When the 1920s says “nuts” it means pecans or walnuts. Attempting to cut peanuts with kitchen shears will not only prove to be an exercise in frustration, it may also be dangerous. Stick to the flat nuts for safety.
Dicing bacon slices. If you need crumbled or diced bacon for a dish, start out that way by cutting the slices with your kitchen scissors. Or use your scissors to cut the slices after they are cooked and cooled.
Cutting candied orange peel, cherries, or citron for baking or decorating desserts.
Cutting leftover meats. A nice pair of kitchen scissors makes short work of chicken salad prep.
Snipping green onions. Often a recipe will call for only the white part –– or only the green part –– of a green onion. Scissors make this easy, and you can make those sections as long or as short as you like.
Cutting potatoes and vegetables. Kitchen scissors can open a baked potato, trim green beans, and cut asparagus. I definitely wouldn’t try to cut one of our modern whopper-sized potatoes raw with a pair of kitchen scissors, but if the potatoes are boiled and you need to dice them, go for it.
How do you use your kitchen shears? If you have a method not listed here, drop me a comment. I’d love to know more reasons for pulling the kitchen scissors from the drawer.
Sweet sandwiches filled with flavored cream cheese or marmalade.
Sometimes you want to serve something unusual that doesn’t take three days to make. These Sweet and Savory Tea Sandwiches offer four options for quickly made, tasty sandwiches. Serve them at your next vintage-style small gathering or formal tea. And if you’ve never hosted a formal tea but always wanted to, these sandwiches will start you off.
Paging through a Twenties magazine one day, I came across the recipe for these sandwiches. It was only a paragraph, tucked into a longer article, but they intrigued me. I liked the idea of sandwiches that didn’t include watercress and cucumber! Plus, sweet sandwiches proved very popular in the Twenties. It was time I tried them myself.
Savory chicken salad sandwiches on home made dinner rolls. Yummy!
Warm Weather Sandwiches
Designed for warmer weather, these light tidbits are cool and easy to eat. You could certainly serve them in the dead of winter as well, but you might want to pair them with something heavy like chocolate brownies or a fluffy cake for dessert.
One of the things I liked best about these sandwiches was that they sounded easy. I don’t mind spending hours in the kitchen, but it’s nice to find those recipes that taste special but go together fast.
These Sweet and Savory Tea Sandwiches use cream cheese, a spicy pepper jelly, honey, and pecans –– not all together! Other sandwiches use marmalade as a filling. Then to balance out all that cream cheese you make simple chicken salad sandwiches served on dinner rolls as a savory option.
Three fillings ready to be made into tasty tea sandwiches.
Twenties Fast Food
Really, for as much time as the Twenties cook spent in the kitchen, these quick sandwiches are equivalent to fast food. I used a mix and made my own dinner rolls, since I need to eat gluten free. However, if I bought the rolls and the sandwich bread, I could throw these together for any party almost at a moment’s notice.
My sandwich bread was pretty small, as gluten free bread tends to be, and I used about 1 ounce of cream cheese plus added flavors per sandwich. So from eight ounces of cream cheese and its mix-ins, plus 1/2 cup of marmalade, I could easily get a total of 9 sandwiches that I then cut into one-inch wide strips. Actually, since I was feeding only three of us, I made one of each type plus several chicken salad rolls. And I had plenty of the fillings left for another round.
If you use Parker-House size dinner rolls, you should be able to get six chicken sandwiches from the amounts I list in the recipe. If your dinner rolls are larger, you may want to double the recipe if you need half a dozen sandwiches.
Twenties chicken salad is very simple. Mixed and ready to fill those little rolls.
Assuming you plan to feed 3-6 people, I give you recipes that start with 1/2 cup of cream cheese or marmalade. After all, a party of two can be fun, but it’s a pretty small party. If you find that you have leftovers, they’re still tasty the next day. Store them in the refrigerator.
And if you want to add some 1952 munchies to your party, try the original Chex Mix Recipe. You can find it here.
Brighten your next gathering with these sweet and a little bit spicy tea sandwiches in three flavors.
Prep Time20 minutesmins
Total Time20 minutesmins
Course: Luncheon, Tea time
Cuisine: American
Servings: 6people
Author: VintageJenny
Equipment
small bowl for mixing ingredients
Ingredients
18sliceswhite bread
6small dinner rolls
Sweet and Spicy Pepper Filling
4ozcream cheese
2tbsphot pepper jelly or spreadI used Meijer brand
Sweet Pecan and Honey Filling
4ozcream cheese
4tbspchopped pecans
2tbsphoney
Marmalade Filling
½cuporange marmalade
Savory Chicken Salad Filling
1chicken breast, cooked
1stalkcelery
¼cupmayonnaiseor more as you prefer
⅛tspsalt
⅛tsppepper
Instructions
Remove the crusts from the bread slices. It's easier to trim the crusts before you make the sandwiches. Then stack the slices in pairs so they match. (If you like, transfer the crusts to your favorite freezer container and freeze them. You can use them for croutons, bread pudding, or something else later.)
Slice the dinner rolls horizontally to make small sandwich buns. Set them aside.
To make the Sweet and Spicy Pepper Filling: Mix the cream cheese and the pepper spread/jelly in the bowl with a cooking spoon until completely combined. Spread the filling on three slices of bread, top with three slices, and set them aside. If you have any filling left, transfer it to a small container for the refrigerator. Wash your small mixing bowl.
To make the Sweet Pecan and Honey Filling: Mix the chopped pecans and honey with the cream cheese in the mixing bowl until completely combined. Spread the filling on three slices of bread, top with three slices, and set them aside. If you have any filling left, transfer it to a small container for the refrigerator. Wash your small mixing bowl.
To make the Marmalade Filling: Spread the marmalade on three slices of bread, top with three slices, and set them aside.
Refrigerate until you are ready to serve. Then cut each sandwich into 1-inch slices and arrange on a serving plate.
To Make the Chicken Salad Filling
Mince the cooked chicken breast. You should have about one to one and a half cups of minced chicken. Place the minced chicken in the mixing bowl.
Trim the celery and mince it. Add it to the chicken.
Stir in the mayonnaise.
Add the salt and pepper. You can add more or less than the amount listed, to taste.
Spread the chicken salad onto the lower half of the dinner roll, and top with its top half.
Refrigerate until you are ready to serve. These sandwiches are best assembled right before serving.
If you love oatmeal in a bowl but don’t have the time or inclination to make it every morning, these oatmeal gem muffins might be the perfect solution. Only slightly sweet, these muffins taste like you’re eating prepared oatmeal from the palm of your hand. Best of all, you start them overnight. Then you only need to stir in a few ingredients in the morning and bake them.
Oatmeal gem muffins, ready to eat!
Published in 1919, this recipe was called Oatmeal Gems. Gems are muffins baked in cast-iron gem pans. A gem pan could look like a muffin pan, or it could turn out half rounds of bread. Usually, a gem pan contained some kind of open area to allow air and heat flow around the individual muffin cups. If this concept fascinates you, The Cast Iron Collector web site gives more information on gem pans than you will ever need for a vintage home kitchen. After all, the well-equipped home kitchen contained one gem pan. Just one. The vintage kitchen provided no room for storing extra, unneeded utensils and pans. (Thankfully, I have a garage that I use to do just that.)
Muffins in the vintage kitchen
In the vintage home, muffins accompanied a meal, or they provided part of a teatime heavy snack. Today we eat muffins as a standalone meal replacement and although that may be a vintage reality, it was never touted as the ideal. When I made these I grabbed a couple and ate them with a fresh cup of coffee. That was breakfast.
Eaten hot from the oven, these muffins provided the cereal part of a good breakfast along with fruit, coffee or hot cocoa, and perhaps eggs. Later in the day, served at room temperature or re-warmed in the oven still hot from cooking dinner, they saved the household cook from making a second type of bread on a non-baking day. Since they aren’t very sweet they would go well with a dinner menu.
These muffins taste sweeter at room temperature, although they also go down well with a smear of butter. They are chewy, dense quick breads.
The recipe basics
The recipe starts with sour milk. You can easily make sour milk yourself by adding a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar to a cup of milk. Since the recipe calls for a cup and a half of milk you would add a tablespoon and a half of vinegar. Regular white vinegar will work, too, if you don’t have any apple cider vinegar. However, apple cider vinegar seems to produce a slightly thicker product.
Oatmeal and sour milk, with baking soda and egg added and flour standing at the ready.
The next morning you mix in some baking soda, an egg, salt, flour, and sugar. Then you bake them. I used a mini muffin pan, which helps them cook all the way through. Since this is an older recipe it offered no oven temperature outside of “hot.” I baked these minis for 15 minutes at 375º to give them a bit of brown on top. I was using gluten free flour. If you use regular flour, baking them for 13 minutes might be enough.
Fresh from the oven with gluten free flour, which gives less of a browned top than regular wheat flour.
Whether you eat them with your morning coffee or tea like I did, or incorporate them into a proper vintage meal, these oatmeal gem muffins are good to have in your repertoire. They mix up easily, cook quickly, and need only a few everyday ingredients.
1. Mix the apple cider vinegar and the milk. Let stand ten minutes to sour.
2. Place the oatmeal in a medium bowl and add the milk. Stir, cover, and set in the refrigerator overnight.
3. In the morning, preheat oven to 375º F.
3. Add baking soda, egg, flour, salt, and sugar to the oatmeal mixture. Mix well, and fill the wells in the mini muffin pan.
4. Bake mini muffins for 13 – 15 minutes. When they are done, the tops should pop back when pressed lightly. Or use the tried and true toothpick method to check.
Notes
This recipe was tested with Bob’s Red Mill 1 to 1 Gluten Free Baking Flour. Use gluten free oats if you need them.
If you try these, please leave a comment to let me know how you like them. When I make them again I may sprinkle a little sugar on the tops before baking, or I might stir some mini chocolate chips into the batter. This is a variation unknown in 1919, since chocolate chips weren’t invented until 1937.
For many home managers from 1909 to 1929, the fireless cooker seemed truly a wonderful appliance. While everyone complained about the cost of coal (which everyone seemed to do, constantly) the cook who owned a fireless cooker had an advantage. She could prepare dinner early in the day, set it up, turn off the stove, and go about her day. It also saved on fuel costs, a double-win.
Patent for a 1907 fireless cooker.
Although invented near the end of the 1860s, the fireless cooker really took off after 1900. A bright new century dawned with new ideas. Many gadgets filled the home during this time and the kitchen received a good number of them. Manufactured fireless cookers were popular. They walked in step with the time-saving future. Cookbooks of the time sometimes instructed the cook to “drop the mixture into the fireless cooker” so that they could continue with their day. Some even contained an entire chapter of fireless cooker recipes.
How Fireless Cookers Work
The concept behind fireless cooking was simple. You prepared a recipe that needed a long time to cook, such as a bean soup, hot cereals, or meats that benefit from long slow cooking. The work that goes into the preparation is important. Food needs to be heated to a high enough temperature that it continues to cook for the next several hours without additional heat. Therefore, most of the time the recipe is boiling when it transfers to the fireless cooker.
The cooker itself (sometimes called a hay box) consisted of a metal or wooden box with a lid and one or two holes. Each hole contained a metal pot with a lid and two stones, like pizza stones but thicker. These stones went into the oven to heat while you mixed and heated your recipe.
Illustration of a Thermatic fireless cooker setup by the Diller Manufacturing Company, who made them. 1911.
When your recipe boiled and your stones were hot, you removed one stone from the oven and placed it into the bottom of the hole. Then you filled the metal pot with your boiling hot mixture, carefully moved it to the cooker, and put the lid on it. Another hot stone went on top of the lid. Finally, you closed the lid of the cooker and the heat came from top and bottom stones to keep your meal toasty and cooking until it was time to eat.
Some cookers operated a bit differently. However, the goal was to keep the heat inside a tightly insulated box long enough to cook the food and keep it safe. When it was time to eat you opened the box lid and took the lid off the canister. Like magic, dinner was ready. The trick was learning to cook an entire meal in a fireless cooker so that you only needed to whip up dessert.
Reading Further… and Recipes
While fireless cookers are no longer made, material abounds on the Internet and maybe even at your local library on how to make your own. Homemade Fireless Cookers and Their Use, by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture in 1919 explains how to construct a cooker. Then it provides several recipes for its use. Since this is a historical document, the first page states that modern scientific standards are not in use here. In 1913, The Fireless Cook Book provided instructions for creating your own cooker as well as 250 recipes to delight your household.
In 1917 a patent emerged for an electric fireless cooker. Then in the 1970s that idea emerged again. This time we called it the Crock Pot. Later I’ll write about some fireless cooker recipes I stumbled across recently. If making your own fireless cooker for your kitchen doesn’t thrill you, you can always adapt these recipes for use in your home crock cooker.
Making Your Own – Safety First!
If you do construct your own fireless cooker, be sure to adhere to current safety standards. Many of these were filled with asbestos. While I’m sure they retained heat, I hate to think what else they did. And remember: These cookbooks do not adhere to current food safety standards. You may need to do some research to ensure the food will be safe.
Thinking about making one yourself? If you do, let me know how it goes. I’d love to hear.
