Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes Escalloped Potatoes

VintageJenny

Welcome to Lesson 25 of When Sue Began to Cook. If you’re new, click the book link to be transported to Lesson 1, where the adventure begins, and we meet Sue, her friend Ruth Ann, and Sue’s mother Bettina, Twenties homemaker extraordinaire. This week Sue makes Escalloped Potatoes under her mother’s guidance.

Scalloped Potatoes, or Escalloped Potatoes, are a U.S. tradition. The Henry Ford Museum posts a recipe from 1898 here. Escalloped potatoes are warm, filling, and cheap. They contain vegetables and dairy, two items on every Twenties cook’s daily list.

And then there are the pimientos. The Twenties cook put pimientos in everything. They provided color and just a bit of extra nutrition. When Sue makes Escalloped Potatoes during her Saturday cooking lesson, she puts pimientos in the recipe. Feel free to leave them out if you like. I probably will.

Let’s see what Sue has to say about making Escalloped Potatoes on this Saturday morning.

Sue’s Diary Entry for Escalloped Potatoes

This has been a cold raw Saturday for May, so Mother said it was just the day for Escalloped Potatoes. “We’ll use up the old ones I have on hand. New potatoes taste better than old ones in the Spring.”

Escalloped Potatoes sound hard, but are really very easy to make. Of course it isn’t easy to slice raw potatoes very thin, but I’m sure this lesson did us a lot of good. The little vegetable knife must be sharp!

Oh, I mustn’t forget to write something else down. We used only a part of the canned pimientos and Mother had us pur the rest in a little bowl and cover them carefully with cold water. She told us that pimientos would keep a long time if you renewed the water every day. Lots of houskeepers don’t know that, and their pimientos get mouldy very soon and have to bre thrown away.

Next week we are going to begin house cleaning if the weather is pleasant. And Ruth Ann is so excited over it that she has begged Mother to let her help every night after school. She says there isn’t anything so much fun as putting drawers in order. I’m afraid I can think of lots of things more pleasant than that, but then, it will help to have Ruth Ann here taking an interest in things. But Mother says we will have our cooking lesson next Saturday just the same. Not even house cleaning shall interfere with that!

Print Recipe

Escalloped Potatoes

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

Ingredients

  • 3 cups raw potatoes peeled and sliced very thin
  • 3 tbsp flour
  • 1½ tsp salt
  • ⅓ tsp paprika
  • ¼ tsp celery salt [you may want to reduce salt by ¼ tsp]
  • 2 tbsp pimientos cut very fine with kitchen scissors
  • 2 cups milk
  • 3 tbsp butter melted

Instructions

  • We peeled the potatoes and then sliced them very thin, just as thin as we could.
  • Then Mother had us each mix our potatoes, flour, salt, paprika, celery salt, and pimientos very carefully and empty them into buttered baking dishes.
  • Then we poured the milk and the butter over the top and baked the potatoes in a moderate oven for fifty minutes.
    Note: Moderate oven = 375 degrees F.
Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes Salmon Loaf

VintageJenny

In Lesson 24 of When Sue Began to Cook, Sue makes Salmon Loaf. Canned salmon provided a way for the landlocked portions of the United States to provide fish. Along with tuna, salmon was used in baked loaves like this one, casseroles, aspics, salads, and sometimes sandwiches.

This is Lesson 24 from the book When Sue Began to Cook, 1924. It was one of the cooking storybooks in the Bettina’s Best Recipes series. If you’re new to these lessons, click the linked book title in the previous paragraph to see Lesson 1 and follow the story from the beginning.

As always, Sue has much to say about her Saturday cooking lesson in her kitchen diary.

Sue’s Diary for Salmon Loaf

I certainly do have a good joke on Mother! She is always talking about saving dishes and telling us how good cooks simply things.

Well, after we had mixed up our salmon loaves just as she told us to, and had written everything down in our notebooks, I said to her, “Why didn’t you have us break the eggs in the mixing bowl first and then add the other things? That would have saved a dish!”

Mother looked surprised for a minute, and then she laughed. “Well, you’re surely right about that, Sue! That would have been simpler and easier, after all.”

I tell you, I’m going to think about the dishes. Ruth Ann and I have to wash our own (we wouldn’t be really learning to cook if we didn’t do that, Mother says.) Sometimes it takes us a long time to get them clean. We try to remember to fill each cooking pan with cold water right away and let it soak till we can get at it. That makes a world of difference.

This is a warm, lovely, “open-window” May day, and we thought our salmon loaves would be best cold. So I’m saving mine for dinner tonight. We’ll cut it in thin slices and garnish it with lemon and parsely. Ruth Ann has taken hers home with her.

Print Recipe

Salmon Loaf

from When Sue Began to Cook, 1924.
Course: Dinner, Luncheon
Cuisine: American
Keyword: Bettina’s Best Recipes, fish, meat loaf, Ruth Ann, salmon, Sue, When Sue Began to Cook

Ingredients

  • 1½ cups salmon flaked with a silver fork. We took out the bones and pieces of skin.
  • 2 cups soft bread crumbs
  • 1 tsp salt
  • ¼ tsp pepper
  • ¼ tsp celery salt
  • 1 cup milk
  • 2 eggs beaten
  • 1 tbsp butter melted

Instructions

  • Mother says to write in our notebooks in big black letters: Never Leave Salmon in an Open Can. Just as soon as we get the can opened, we must empty the salmon out in a dish, because many people have been poisoned by letting the air get into the salmon and the tin.
  • After each of us had pur our salmon in a mixing bowl, Mother had us separate it in pieces with a silver fork.
  • Then we measured out the soft bread broken into crumbs, and added it to the salmon in the bowl. We also added the salt, pepper, celery salt, milk and beaten eggs.
  • Mother had us mix it all up together with the silver fork. Then she had us each butter a small loaf cake pan and pour the salmon mixture into it.
  • We shaped it up like a little loaf and poured the melted butter over the top.
  • Then we baked the two loaves for thirty minutes in a moderate oven. After they were done, we let them stand for five minutes and then we carefully helped them out onto two platters. They looked very brown and crusty and good.
    Note: Moderate oven = 375 degrees F.

Notes

Sue and Ruth Ann are each making a full recipe, hence two loaves in the oven. This recipe makes one salmon loaf.
Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue’s Baking Powder Biscuits

VintageJenny

In this installment of Sue and Ruth Ann’s cooking lessons, Sue’s Baking Powder Biscuits take center stage. I find it interesting that When Sue Began to Cook waits until nearly the middle of the book to introduce biscuits. In many beginning cookbooks it appears as the first recipe that a young cook learns. It was that important to the vintage kitchen.

Hardly a week went by without seeing fresh biscuits on the table. Biscuits with butter appeared with dinner. Biscuits with jam appeared at breakfast, luncheon, and teatime. The recipe at the end of this post makes it easy for you to make Sue’s Baking Powder Biscuits, too.

This is Lesson 23 of When Sue Began to Cook, a cookbook from 1924 in the Bettina’s Best Recipes series. If you’re new to the series, click on the link to visit Lesson 1. This book contains a story along with the cooking lessons and you don’t want to miss anything!

Sue’s Diary from Biscuit Saturday

I really think this was the most interesting cooking lesson we’ve had yet!

Mother has often told us that it is very important to a cook to know how to make good baking-powder biscuits, because you use the recipe in so many ways. For meat pie, for instance, and strawberry shortcake, and those good little “roll-em-ups” that Grandmother makes. And oh, lots of other things. So I can tell you we were excited when Mother said we might try baking powder biscuits today.

I supposed biscuits would be very hard to do! But they weren’t, not one bit. They were easy. And it was such fun to see the fat brown little biskittens coming out of the oven looking for all the world like Mother’s own!

Mother says most people work too hard over them and handle them too much. And the main thing to remember is to handle them just as little as possible. And never, never use a rolling pin!

We ate up all of Ruth Ann’s as well as mine for lunch. And Ruth Ann said she was going straight home and make some more at her Grandmother’s for dinner, just for practice. (I hope she won’t learn to make such perfect ones that she’ll get ‘way ahead of me.)

Print Recipe

Sue’s Baking Powder Biscuits

from When Sue Began to Cook, 1924.
Course: Bread, Breakfast
Cuisine: American
Keyword: Bettina’s Best Recipes, Ruth Ann, Twenties recipes, When Sue Began to Cook

Ingredients

  • 2 cups flour
  • 4 tsp baking powder
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 3 tbsp lard
  • ⅔ cup milk

Instructions

  • Mother had Ruth Ann and me each measure out our flour and our baking powder and our salt into a flour sifter and put it through twice.
  • Then we each emptied the mixture into our own mixing bowl. Then we measured the lard very carefully in on top of the flour mixture.
  • Then we each took our funny little spatula and cut the lard right into the flour. (Mother showed us how.) It took quite a while, but when it was all flaky and nicely mixed, we added the milk slowly and went on mixing with the knife.
  • After the milk was all mixed in, Mother had us press the mixture softly into kind of a little ball of dough, not handling it much, and lift it out onto the mixing board that we had sprinkled with a little flour.
  • We each patted our dough ball down with our fingers into a shape about half an inch thick. Then we each took a biscuit cutter, dipped it in a little flour, and cut out biscuits with it.
  • Ruth Ann and I each had about fourteen biscuits. We each lifted these into a pie pan, (no, we didn't flour or butter it) and baked them in a moderately hot oven for from twelve to fifteen minutes.
    Note: Moderate oven = 375 degrees F.
Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes Dixie Escalloped Corn

VintageJenny

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

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

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

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

Sue’s Diary for Escalloped Corn

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

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

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

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

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

Print Recipe

Dixie Escalloped Corn

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

Notes

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

Sue Makes Ham with Potatoes

VintageJenny

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

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

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

Sue’s Baked Ham Kitchen Diary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Print Recipe

Baked Ham with Browned Potatoes

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

Equipment

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

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

Notes

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

Sue Makes Rice Custard Pudding

VintageJenny

Custard pudding appeared on tables regularly from before 1900 to after 1940. It was considered a healthy way to use milk and eggs. Custard was an easy-to-digest food for invalids. (You can still get custard pudding in the U.S. hospitals if you’re lucky.) And frankly, it was — and continues to be — delicious. Sue makes Rice Custard Pudding for her 20th cooking lesson. This is a recipe she will be making for the rest of her life.

(This is the 20th lesson from the book When Sue Began to Cook. If you are just now joining us, clicking the book title will transport you back to Lesson 1 so you don’t miss any of the evolving story.)

Sue plans to serve her pudding for dessert after dinner, but this also made a respectable breakfast dish. Her friend Ruth Ann takes hers home directly, perhaps for a special luncheon treat.

Notes from Sue’s Rice Custard Pudding Diary

“When I’m big and have a hosue of my own, I’m going to have boiled rice — lots of it — about once a week, because you can make the most fascinating things out of what is left over!” I told Ruth Ann this morning. “There’s Spanish Rice and Rice Custard Pudding, and Rice Croquettes (only we haven’t learned how to make them yet), and Green Peppers Stuffed with Rice…”

“The only sad part about that plan,” said Ruth Ann, “Is the plain boiled rice the first day. Who wants to eat that? Not I!” And she looked very scornful.

“Boiled rice isn’t so bad,” laughed Mother, “if it’s well made. It must be soft and good, not too dry, and every grain must stand out distinctly. Why, I think it’s quite a delicacy! But it does have to be good and warm, and have some melted butter on the top. And then of course there must be plenty of cream to eat with it.”

“Or gravy!” said Robin, who was hanging around as usual. “Let’s have the girls make gravy for their next lesson!”

“You act as if our cooking lessons ought to be planned just for you!” I exclaimed. “I’m learning to cook so that I can help Mother run the house —”

“Well, I’m part of the house, ain’t I?” said Robin.

I ignored the remark. “And Ruth Ann’s learning how so she can help her Mother.”

“And Mother likes plain boiled rice; I remember now!” said Ruth Ann with shining eyes. “Aunt Betty, I will learn to like it, and to make it your way!”

Print Recipe

Rice Custard Pudding

from When Sue Began to Cook, 1924
Course: Breakfast, Dessert
Cuisine: American
Keyword: Bettina, pudding, rice, Twenties recipes, When Sue Began to Cook

Ingredients

  • 2 eggs lightly beaten together
  • ⅓ cup sugar
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 2 cups milk
  • 1¼ cup boiled rice Mother had this left over.
  • 1 tbsp melted butter
  • ½ cup raisins looked over and washed

Instructions

  • Mother had us each take a big mixing bowl and break our eggs into it. Then we beat them up very light with a Dover egg beater.
  • When they were light enough we measured the sugar, salt, vanilla, milk, boiled rice, melted butter and raisins. (We looked over the raisins first of all, and washed them by holding them in a little colander under the cold water faucet. We let the water run throuigh them for quite a little while and we stirred them around.)
  • We dumped all of these things, one by one, in the mixing bowl, and stirred them all up together.
  • Then Mother had us each butter a baking dish and pour the rice mixture into it. Then we set our baking dishes in a moderate [375 degrees F] oven and baked the Rice Custard Pudding for thirty minutes.
  • When it was done, we let it get very cold. (Father says deliver him from warm rice pudding!) Ruth Ann took hers home with her. I saved mine for dinner because I wanted Father to have some.
Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes Mother’s Best Gingerbread

VintageJenny

On the last Saturday of March, we find Sue and Ruth Ann busy at work on their 19th cooking lesson. This week Sue makes Mother’s Best Gingerbread, with more ingredients than any she’s used before. This is the 19th lesson from the 1924 book When Sue Began to Cook. If you’re just finding the series, click the book title to see the first installment. This is the third in a series of cookbooks that tell a story. Known as the Bettina series, in this third and final cookbook-storybook we follow Bettina’s young daughter Sue as she learns her way around the kitchen.

It’s not surprising that Sue makes Mother’s best gingerbread at the beginning of Spring. Gingerbread was incredibly popular in the United States; in fact, one 1934 article in Woman’s Home Companion listed enough variations that cooks could make a different gingerbread every week of the year! That’s a lot of molasses and ginger.

Gingerbread Notes from Sue’s Kitchen Diary

Well, the McCarthy children had the best lunch today that they’ve had in a long time.

When our gingerbread was all hot and fresh and perfect, just out of the oven, Ruth Ann decided to cut up hers into big delicious wedges for the McCarthys. (Mine was to be saved for dinner tonight. Father likes it for dessert with whipped cream on top.)

“You want to have a regular orgy of giving, do you?” smiled Mother. (I looked up the word in the dictionary and I know what it means now but I didn’t then.) [Note: if you click the link, it refers to definition 2.]

“Well, you certainly may do just as you like, Ruthie. I’m sure our gingerbread won’t hurt those children one bit.”

“Because it won’t much more than go around,” I said sadly. “It would be fun really to fill them up for once, but I guess we can’t.”

“Still, we can cut it into pretty big pieces,” said Ruth Ann eagerly. “And who knows? Maybe it will taste so good to Gladys and Maxine and Hazel that they’ll long to become good cooks themselves. And maybe they’ll want to clean up the house too, and make their kitchen look as pretty and cosy as Aunt Bettina’s!”

Ruth Ann thinks our kitchen is just perfect. She has often told me so, and I think it’s pretty nice myself. A pleasant kitchen is really the best part of a house. The McCarthy’s love to come here, and they were certainly glad to get the gingerbread (which disappeared in about the twinkling of an eye). However, I can’t say that Gladys or Hazel or Maxine showed any signs of wanting to improve their own condition any. Though Ruth Ann and I plan that as soon as we’ve learned all there is to know about cooking and keeping house, we’ll become neighborhood missionaries and teach it all to them.

Print Recipe

Mother’s Best Gingerbread

from When Sue Began to Cook, 1924.
Course: Bread, Snack, Tea time
Cuisine: American
Keyword: baking, Bettina, snack bread, teatime, Twenties

Ingredients

  • ½ cup lard or butter
  • 1 cup light brown sugar without lumps
  • 1 egg
  • ½ cup molasses
  • 1 cup milk
  • 2½ cups flour general all purpose
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 2 tsp powdered cinnamon
  • 1 tsp powdered ginger (ground ginger)
  • ½ tsp powdered cloves (ground cloves)
  • ½ tsp mace the ground cooking spice
  • ¼ tsp powdered nutmeg
  • ¼ tsp salt

Instructions

  • Mother said not to let this long list of ingredients frighten us, because they didn't mean that gingerbread was awfully hard to make. But I think, after all, that it is the hardest thing we have made yet.
    We pur our lard in a big mixing bowl and creamed it, which of course means that we mashed it down with a big holey spoon till it was soft. Then we added the sugar and the egg (broken in whole) and kept on mixing till it was all the same yellow color.
  • Then we added the molasses and the milk and stirred it up very hard for two minutes.
  • Next Mother had us put the flour, soda and all the other things (the dry ingredients, she calls them) in the flour sifter and sift them all through together. Then we added them to the other things in the mixing bowl.
  • Then came the hardest work of all, beating this all up thoroughly together for about two minutes. Mother says it makes it lighter to beat it.
  • Then we learned something new. Mother had us each take some white waxed paper and cut it in a square just a little larger than the bottom of a square cake pan. Then we each fitted our square into our cake pan. The paper was big enough to stick up abour half an inch on each side of the cake pan, but didn't come to the top. Mother said it must not come to the top because the gingerbread must have the sides of the pan to stick to. We asked her if she didn't want us to grease the sides of the pan but she said "No, then the gingerbread wouldn't stick. It is less apt to fall if it sticks a little."
  • After we had put the paper in the pans, we poured in the gingerbread batter and then we baked it in a moderate [375 degrees F] oven for twenty-five minutes. When the twenty-five minutes were up, Mother showed us how to test the gingerbread with a clean broom straw. We pulled straws out of the broom and washed and dried them and then each of us stuck one down in the gingerbread. Mother said if the gingerbread was done, the straws would come out clean, without any batter sticking to them. They came out clean and so we knew it was done.
Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes Meat Loaf

VintageJenny

On their 18th Saturday cooking lesson, Sue makes Meat Loaf. This is a classic recipe that may be close to the one you know. We are cruising through the 1924 book When Sue Began to Cook, by Louise Weaver and Helen LeCron. If you’re just finding this series and you want to start at the beginning of Sue’s story, click the linked book title to go to the beginning.

Notes from Sue’s Diary on the Best Kitchen Helpers

“Can you guess the names of my two favorite kitchen helpers?” Mother asked us this morning when our lesson began.

(The answer ought to have been “Robin and Sue” but I somehow knew that wasn’t it.)

“Besides my two youngsters of course,” Mother went on with a twinkle in her eye. “Well, I’m thinking of my faithful food chopper and my kind kitchen scissors. I couldn’t keep house without them. Of course we had this meat ground up at the meat market (that is the easiest way when it’s possible) but Sue knows how often I grind up leftover meat for croquettes and meat cakes, and of course I always use the food chopper.”

“The chopper’s good for raisins and figs and dates to go in cookies, too,” I suggested.

“Yes, and for cheese when it isn’t too fresh. It’s much easier to grind it than to grate it. And it’s good for dry bread and crackers, too.”

I nodded my head. It’s my job to keep Mother’s crumb-jar filled. I take the stale ends of the bread from the bread box and put them through the chopper and then into the glass jar we keep for that purpose. “You chop cabbage in the food chopper, too, don’t you Mother?” I added, remembering the cole slaw we had for dinner one day last week.

“Yes, and for dozens of other things. But the kitchen scissors are just as convenient. I use them to cut up parsley and to shred lettuce, and to cut up green and red peppers for garnishing.”

“And for cutting off the pie dough around the edge of the pan,” I said.

“Yes, and for cutting up the fruit for salad or for a fruit cup,” Mother said. “You know the food chopper would press too much juice out of the fruits.”

“But how in the world do you ever get the chopper clean after you’ve used it, Aunt Bettina?” asked Ruth Ann.

“Well, after this lesson I’ll show you girls just how to take it apart and put it together again,” Mother answered. “And of course it has to be washed just like any other kitchen tool. But to clean it quickly I always run a piece of dry bread through it. In fact, I never use it for anything without putting a piece of bread through first. The bread takes up the odors of any stray piece of food that may have lodged in it.”

Print Recipe

Sue’s Meat Loaf

Recipe from When Sue Began to Cook, 1924.

Ingredients

  • 2 cups round steak, ground up The butcher ground it. (We would call this hamburger.)
  • ½ cup pork butt, ground up The butcher ground it. (Ground pork would work fine. ¼ lb is plenty.)
  • 1 cup cracker crumbs
  • 1 tsp salt
  • ¼ tsp pepper
  • ¼ tsp celery salt or use ⅛ tsp celery seed to limit the salt
  • 1 tbsp onion, chopped fine
  • 1 egg, lightly beaten
  • ½ cup milk
  • 1 tbsp melted butter

Instructions

  • Mother had us each put our round steak, pork butt, cracker crumbs, salt, pepper, celery, salt and onion in a big bowl and mix it all up together as well as we could with a spoon.
  • Then we beat the egg and added the milk and poured that into the bowl, too. We mixed it all just as well as we could.
  • Then we buttered a loaf-cake pan. We dipped a little clean brown piece of paper in some butter to do it. And then we emptied our meat mixture into the cake pan. Mother had us wash our hands and then pat the meat mixture into kind of a loaf shape in the pan.
  • Then we melted the butter and poured it all over the top of the loaf to make it get brown and nice.
  • We each popped our loaf into a hot oven and turned down the heat to make a moderate oven of it. And then we baked our loaves forty-five minutes by the clock. When we took the meat out, it was crusty and brown, and looked dee-licious!
    Note: Hot oven = 425 degrees, Moderate oven = 375 degrees.
Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes Apricot Conserve

VintageJenny

Homemade jams and jellies were a way of life for Twenties households. Every house that housed a cook contained a shelf or cabinet of these jewel-like delicacies that brought color to the table during the winter and early spring. Bettina’s house is no different. In Lesson 17 of When Sue Began to Cook, Sue makes Apricot Conserve.

The recipe goes into great detail about how to seal jams and jellies with paraffin wax. This was done up to the early 1970s, but is no longer considered safe. Here’s a link from the University of Minnesota Extension Service that explains why: Canning Jams and Conserves. So don’t do that. Instead, use a hot water bath for canning, which is safe. Consult a copy of the Ball Blue Book on canning if you want detailed directions on canning jams and conserves.

Notes from Sue’s Apricot Conserve diary

When I am grown up, I intend to have my jam shelves full all the time, and everything marked with the neatest labels!

At our house we always make jam in March, because that is the time our supply begins to get low. And Mother says she couldn’t possibly keep house without jam on hand.

Ruth Ann wanted to send her jam to her mother, but we persuaded her not to do it this time. “But Grandmother has lots and lots of it on hand,” Ruth Ann objected.

“We’ll put away two of your jars to use when you and Sue have that luncheon for the girls next fall — the meal that you’re going to prepare all by yourselves to show your friends what you’ve learned this year,” Mother said. “But I’d like it if you’d use all the rest for yourself — for your school lunches.” (Ruth Ann always carries her lunch to school and she has told us she never feels like eating very much.) “And I’ll tell you how to make the best little jam sandwiches you ever ate!”

“How?” asked Ruth Ann, not so very much interested. I believe she’d really rather give her jars to Mrs. Rambler than to use them up herself.

“Just add a few chopped nuts to the conserve you are using, and then make your sandwiches,” Mother said. “All children like them, and they’re good party sandwiches, too. That’s a little trick I learned long ago. Besides, Ruth Ann, if you will really teach yourself to eat, and get fat and rosy, that will be the best gift you could possibly have for your mother when she comes home.”

“But I know what I’m going to do with my jars. At least four of them,” I said, suddenly thinking of something nice. “I’m going to tie them up in the cunningest way, with tissue paper and ribbon, and put them in a pretty fruit basket. For the table, you know. And I’ll send them to Cousin Kathleen for a wedding present.”

Print Recipe

Apricot Conserve

This is Mother's delicious jam recipe from When Sue Began to Cook, 1924
Course: Breakfast, Dessert, Tea time
Cuisine: American
Keyword: apricots, conserve, jam, pineapple, preserves, Twenties, When Sue Began to Cook

Equipment

  • 6-8 1/2 pint jelly jars The original recipe does not specify how many. At least six.
  • 6-8 Sets lids and rings for jelly jars
  • 1 wide mouth canning funnel
  • 1 Pair canning tongs For retrieving hot jars from water

Ingredients

  • 1 lb dried apricots
  • 3 cups water
  • 2 cups shredded pineapple We bought it already shredded, but you can cut the sliced pineapple very fine and use it.
  • 1 cup pineapple juice
  • Sugar I'll explain that later.

Instructions

  • Friday night after school Mother had us wash the apricots by holding them in a colander under the cold water faucet till they were clean. Then we covered them with three cups of clean cold water and left them all night. (We put them in a good-sized enameled saucepan.)
  • This morning we put our apricots (water and all) over a slow fire and cooked them for twenty five minutes, stirring them almost all the time so they wouldn't scorch. When they were cooked long enough, we pressed them through the coarse-meshed colander with the potato masher until all the pulp was pressed through.
  • Then we put the pulp back in the white-enameled saucepan and added the pineapple and juice and cooked it very slowly for about fifteen minutes more. Then we took the mixture away from the fire and measured it very carefully with a measuring cup. We had to know the exact amount so we could add half as much sugar as there was apricot mixture.
  • We added the sugar and put it all back in the saucepan again, and cooked it slowly some more until it was very thick. We stirred it every little while with a wooden spoon. (A wooden spoon is good because it doesn't get hot.) Mother said it was done when the spoon left a track for a second in the bottom of the pan when we stirred. You see, the conserve was so thick it couldn't get back into place quickly.
  • We took the conserve off the fire right way and poured it into some hot sterilized jelly glasses. We let the glasses of conserve get cool and then we poured melted parafeen [paraffin wax] over the tops to seal them. Mother showed us how. This keeps the conserve from spoiling till we want to use it.
  • To sterilize the glasses (that means to get them perfectly clean) we put them on a clean dish cloth in the bottom of the [metal] dishpan and covered them with cold water. (Of course the glasses had been washed clean anyway.) We set the dishpan over the fire and let the water come to a boil. Not a fast boil, just a bubble once in a while. Mother had us leave the glasses in the water til we were ready to use them. We put them on [the fire] when we began to cook the conserve.
    [Note: I have a metal dishpan at my house and I would not do this. Instead, use a stock pot. A water bath canner would work too, provided you don't have an electric ceramic cooktop. For these small jars, though, a 6.5 – 8 quart stock pot should be fine. The dishcloth or towel in the bottom of the pot is so the jars don't clink against one another while they're on a soft boil. I never use one.]
  • When we were ready to fill the glasses we took them out and set them, right side up, in a flat-bottomed pan on another cloth with two inches of boiling water standing in the pan. We put a wide-mouthed funnel in each glass when we filled it, and then we could pour the conserve in without spilling it. We filled each glass about two-thirds full.
  • Mother keeps her parafeen in a little tin bucket and uses it over and over again. When she wants some parafeen, she sets the bucket over the fire til the parafeen melts and then pours it out on top of the jam or jelly to cover it. Of course you know that parafeen hardens right away.
    When Mother opens a glass of jelly she always saves the little cake of parafeen and drops it back in her little tin.
    [Note: It is no longer recommended to seal jars of jelly or jam with paraffin, let alone use it more than once. See Notes section below. I am including this information because I am releasing the book chapters verbatim.]
  • After the jars of conserve were cold, and sealed up with the parafeen, Mother let us stick little lablels on them, Conserve Delicious, printed as neatly as we could. Mother always marks everything like that and then she knows just what kind of jam she is opening.
    When I am grown up, I intend to have my jam shelves full all the time, and everything marked with the neatest labels!

Notes

This is an early spring/winter recipe, when no fresh apricots are available.
Note on paraffin and canning: Long ago (and in some cases not so long ago) melted paraffin wax was used to seal hot jellies and jams from the air. That is no longer considered safe because the paraffin can change with temperature, shrinking to allow bacteria into the “sealed” jams. So if you want to use this recipe you have three options: hot water bath canning, pressure canning, or freezing in plastic freezer containers instead of jam jars. An edition of the Ball Blue Book will give information on how to do all three. 
Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen · Uncategorized

Sue Makes Spanish Rice

VintageJenny

This is Lesson 16 from When Sue Began to Cook, a cookbook in the Bettina cookbook series by Louise Weaver and Helen LeCron. Sue and her friend Ruth Ann are learning to cook from Sue’s mother Bettina, a 1920s master of the kitchen. If this series is new to you, click the link to be transported back to Lesson 1.

This week Sue and Ruth Ann learn to make Spanish Rice. The recipe for Spanish Rice has changed quite a bit over the past 100 years. I don’t make it now like I made it in the 1980s, even. And this recipe is older still.

Once in a while you will find a recipe for Spanish Rice in an antique periodical, but not often. Of the three 1920s cookbooks I consulted from the shelf, the recipe appeared in only one of them, and it was similar but a different version and a completely different preparation. You may find Sue’s comments and description of cooking rice a bit hilarious. I know I did. Unless you want to recreate this for historical purposes, please don’t cook rice like pasta. The rice will thank you.

Sue’s Spanish Rice Diary

We had Jean and Aunt Alice here to lunch and Mother let us serve the Spanish Rice we made this morning! And they each had two helpings of it!

Mother doesn’t believe in making company of people. She says the very nicest way of all is to have things simple and dainty and good all of the time, and then you don’t mind who happens in — you’re always ready. (But of course Mother keeps her Emergency Shelf stocked with extras, so she always knows there is plenty of food in the house.)

But to get back to my story. Mother told us this was a good time to have a lesson in table setting and she said she would make it a company meal, so that it would be more interesting. “We’ll ‘phone to Jean and Aunt Alice and see if they can’t come over.”

“But will Spanish Rice be enough to give them?” I asked.

“Spanish Rice and hot chocolate, and a good fruit salad,” said Mother. “And for dessert we’ll have some burnt sugar cake with whipped cream. That’s enough for anybody. You girls can make the Spanish Rice and set the table, and I will attend to the rest.”

Of course I knew in a general way how a table should be set, but Ruth Ann didn’t, and so Mother gave us a regular lesson on the subject and the table really did look lovely. (We used a tablecloth this time and not doilies.)

Print Recipe

Spanish Rice from When Sue Began to Cook

Sue and Ruth Ann learn to make Spanish Rice in 1924
Course: Side Dish
Cuisine: American
Keyword: lesson, rice, Twenties
Servings: 6

Ingredients

  • ⅔ cup rice to make 1½ cups cooked instructions for cooking in recipe
  • ½ cup bacon, cut into small pieces
  • 2 tbsp chopped onion we cut it very fine with the chopper in the wooden bowl
  • 2 tbsp green pepper also chopped fine
  • 1 tsp salt
  • ¼ tsp paprika
  • 2 cups tomato pulp This can be pureed tomatoes or diced tomatoes pureed in a blender or food processor, with part of the juice

Instructions

  • Mother said this was a good time for us to learn to make good boiled rice. (She doesn't think very many people make it right.) She had us each wash two-thirds of a cup of rice by putting it in a fine meshed sieve and holding it under the faucet till the rice was clean. Then we each put five and a third cups of boiling water in a saucepan and added the rice. (Rice ought to be cooked in eight times as much water as there is rice.) Then we added 2/3 of a level teaspoon of salt. (There ought to be a level teaspoon of salt for each cup of rice.) I forgot to say that Mother had us put the rice in the saucepan slowly so the water wouldn't stop bubbling.
  • We boiled the rice (the water bubbling all the time) for twenty minutes by the clock, and stirred it with a fork every once in a while during the cooking. (A fork is better than a spoon because a spoon mashes it down and makes it mushy.)
  • When the rice had cooked long enough, we poured it into a strainer and let the liquid drain off, and then we let cold water from the faucet run through the cooked rice to wash off the extra starch. Then our boiled rice was ready to be used.
  • To make the Spanish Rice, we put the pieces of bacon in a frying pan (of course I mean that Ruth Ann and I each had a frying pan) and when the pan was hot we added the onion and the green pepper. We cooked it all, stirring around all the time with a fork, until the onion was brown.
  • Then we added the salt, paprika, and boiled rice, and kept on cooking and stirring until the rice was light brown. Then we added the tomato pulp and cooked it together for about ten minutes more. It was quite thick by that time. Then it was ready to be poured into hot dishes and served.

Notes

The 2/3 tsp salt in cooking the rice is in addition to the 1 tsp salt that goes into the finished Spanish Rice recipe. Omit the salt from cooking the rice if you like.