Sue Makes Cheese Potatoes

September 6, 2022June 18, 2022 VintageJenny

(This is the continuation of a series on When Sue Began to Cook.) Saturday December 30 brought Sue and Ruth Ann to the slow week between holidays. Christmas was over, and New Year stood several days away. Not much to do for a couple twelve year olds, so today’s recipe focuses on comfort food. Sue makes cheese potatoes (or Creamed Cheesed Potatoes)

Sometimes these potatoes are served from the stove, like you’ll find in the recipe below. Most often, though, the finished recipe goes into a casserole dish to be topped with cracker crumbs and then baked in the oven. That version appears in Sue’s notes.

Sue’s notes on cheese potatoes

Holiday week is a queer time for a cooking lesson, I suppose, and a queerer time to be learning to cook potatoes. But Ruth Ann and I were tired of Christmas candy, so we asked Mother today if we couldn’t make something plain and simple. Because, after all, we ought to learn to be plain cooks first.

‘How would you like to try creamed potatoes then?” Mother said. “It will be a good time to teach you to boil potatoes, and also to make good cream sauce. Every woman ought to know how to make good cream sauce. Just thick enough, and without any lumps in it.”

I asked Mother if we couldn’t try some Cheesed Creamed Potatoes because Father is so fond of them, and she said we might. “And Ruth Ann may take hers home and warm them up for dinner. It is time she showed her grandmother just what we’re learning in the cooking lessons.

Another way to finish the potatoes

And after all, I thought Ruth Ann had the best of it. When the potatoes were all done and it was time for her to go, Mother had her put hers in a little brown casserole. Then she showed Ruth Ann how to roll out some crackers with the rolling pin to make cracker crumbs, just about two thirds of a cupful. Then she had Ruth Ann sprinkle the cracker crumbs on top of the potatoes and spread them out nice and even. And then they dotted the top with little chunks of butter.

“Now, Ruth Ann,” Mother said, “when you warm up your potatoes, put them in the oven in this casserole (without the cover), and let the crumbs get a beautiful brown color.”

“A hungry brown?” I said, because that’s what Robin and I always call it.

“Yes, a hungry brown. By that time the potatoes will be good and hot. All ready to eat!”

I didn’t tell Mother so, but Ruth Ann’s potatoes in the casserole really looked much more companified than mine. Still, I can’t complain, because Father ate two helpings of the ones I made, and paid me for them with three kisses and a big hug.

Note: Warm the potatoes at 350º F for 20 – 25 minutes until the potatoes are hot and the crumbs golden brown.

Sue’s recipe for Cheesed Creamed Potatoes

Here’s the recipe that Sue made, without the cracker crumb topping.

Print Recipe

Cheesed Creamed Potatoes

From When Sue Began to Cook, 1924. One of the dishes Father likes best.

Ingredients

2 cups cooked potatoes diced That means to cut in little cubes.
4 tbsp butter
4 tbsp flour
2 cups milk
1 tsp salt
¼ tsp paprika
⅓ cup cheese cut in small pieces
1 tbsp pimientos, cut fine Mother says the pimientos aren't necessary. We put them in because we happened to have some.
1 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped fine

Instructions

Mother had us scrub the potatoes with a little brush till they were very clean. Then she showed us how to run a sharp knife around the equator of each potato, cutting through the skin to keep the potato from bursting when it is cooked. Then she had us each fill a little kettle with water and put it over the fire. As soon as the water was boiling, we added the potatoes. We covered them with a lid, and kept the potatoes dancing in the boiling water until they were done. We knew when they were done because Mother had us try piercing them with a fork every once in a while. When the fork would go right through them very easily we knew they had cooked long enough.
We drained off the water and let the potatoes get cool. Then we peeled them with a sharp little vegetable knife and cut them up in tiny half-inch cubes. (Mother says that a good cook always has her kitchen knives sharp). Mother showed us how to make nice neat little cubes all the same size. Then our potatoes were ready.
*Note: The vegetable peeler wasn't invented until 1928, and the Jonas peeler, with a swivel blade that follows the contour of the vegetable as you cut, wasn't invented until 1953. In 1924, a short vegetable knife was the only option in peeling a potato.
Next we took a clean little saucepan and put the butter in it. We let the butter melt over the fire and then we stirred in the flour and mixed them well. When they were all mixed, we added the milk and cooked it slowly, stirring all the time, until it was creamy. (We let it bubble for a few minutes to cook the flour thoroughly.) Then we stirred in the salt, paprika, cheese, (I forgot to say we had cut the cheese fine first of all), pimientoes and parsley. We cooked this all together for about a minute, still stirring all the time so it wouldn't burn. Then we added the potatoes and mixed them around well in the sauce. We let it cook for about two minutes more, and then Mother said it was ready.
Most people make their cheesed potatoes out of leftover boiled or baked potatoes, Mother says, but she didn't have us use any leftovers because she thought this would be a good time to teach us exactly how to boil potatoes.

Notes

This is a good example of when and how to use a white sauce in Twenties cookery.

Sue’s Favorite Cocoa

August 23, 2022June 18, 2022 VintageJenny

This post continues a series of lessons from the 1924 book When Sue Began to Cook. The series began with the post When Sue Began to Cook. Now in Lesson 5, the date this Saturday is December 23. What a good time for Sue and her friend Ruth Ann to make a winter vacation treat like Sue’s Favorite Cocoa.

Hot cocoa is good almost any time of the year, especially with marshmallows. However, it becomes especially welcome during the colder months. This hot cocoa recipe from the Bettina’s Best Recipes cookbooks is a family favorite at our house, too. This is an updated recipe from the 1917 cookbook A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband with Bettina’s Best Recipes. It uses cocoa powder instead of a square of chocolate, which makes it much less expensive to make.

Sue’s notes from the cooking lesson

Here’s what Sue had to say in her cooking notebook:

At first Mother said we wouldn’t have a cooking lesson today because it was so close to Christmas, but Ruth Ann and I begged so hard that she finally relented, only she said we must make something easy.

“I know, Mother, let’s try cocoa. The kind with cinnamon in it!” I suggested. “Just think how much it will help if I really know how to make it!”

“Sue’s Favorite Cocoa?” Mother said, because that’s what she always calls it. “Perhaps if you know how to make it, you’ll make it so often that you’ll get tired of it.”

“Oh, I know I won’t!” I told her. “I think cocoa is delicious when it’s made right, but deliver me from a Mother who doesn’t cook it at all — just pours boiling water over it!” (That is the way Emma Jane’s mother makes it. I discovered that when our club met there.)

“If my mother would only come home, I wouldn’t care how she cooked!” cried Ruth Ann, bursting into tears.

Of course it is especially hard not to have your mother at home for Christmas, but I could tell from Mother’s face that she hadn’t realized how badly Ruth Ann was feeling. “Would it help any, Ruth Ann, if you stayed over here and hung up your stocking with Robin’s and Sue’s?” Mother asked.

“Oh, Aunt Bettina, of course it would! Won’t you ask Grandmother yourself? She’s sure to let me if you do the asking.”

“Goody! Goody!” I said. “Hurry, Mother. Telephone her first, and then come and teach us how to make the cocoa.”

Ruth Ann’s grandmother said she could stay, and perhaps that was the reason the cocoa turned out so well. It was seasoned with happiness as well as cinnamon, Mother said.

Sue’s Favorite Cocoa

Here’s the recipe for Sue’s Favorite Cocoa, just as it was written in When Sue Began to Cook.

Print Recipe

Sue’s Favorite Cocoa

From 1924 When Sue Began to Cook.

Ingredients

4 tbsp cocoa powdered, level measure
4 tbsp sugar
⅛ tsp salt
⅛ tsp powdered cinnamon
1 cup water
3 cups milk
¼ tsp vanilla
4 marshmallows

Instructions

We mixed the cocoa, sugar, salt and cinnamon together very carefully with a teaspoon. (If they aren't mixed well, Mother says the cinnamon floats on the top and the cocoa isn't so good.)
Then we each put our mixture into a saucepan and added the water. We cooked it slowly, stirring it all the time, until it got to be like a nice thick chocolate syrup. Then Mother had us add the milk slowly. We turned the fire low, and heated the cocoa till it was steamy and hot. (Mother told us not to let it boil.) When it was steaming hot, we added the vamilla and then beat the coca for a minute or two with a Dover egg beater. (Mother said that would keep it from getting scummy on the top. Robin likes the scum, but once he burnt his tongue on it, so I think Mother's way is best.)
Note: A Dover egg beater is a hand-operated mixer with two mixing blades. It was generally used to mix eggs, whip cream, and combine liquids. Oxo Good Grips makes a modern version that works relatively well, or you can use a whisk.
Mother had me put the four marshmallows in four cups and when we were ready, we poured the cocoa in on top of them. Of course people can use whipped cream instead of marshmallows if they have it, but most families don't, I've noticed. Anyhow marshmallow cocoa is very good.

Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue cooks Wheat Cereal

August 9, 2022June 21, 2022 VintageJenny

Sue and Ruth Ann make wheat cereal in 1920s double boilers.

On her third cooking lesson, Sue cooks Wheat Cereal with Dates. This lesson took place on Saturday December 9 according to When Sue Began to Cook. This would be considered a warm winter breakfast, although some Twenties families served it throughout most of the year for its nutrition.

If you missed the first two installments, you can start the series with When Sue Began to Cook. Lesson 2 is Sue Cooks Frizzled Beef.

Sue’s notes from the lesson explain why they are making cereal for their Saturday cooking lesson:

It all came about because Ruth Ann told us her Grandmother was always fussing at her because she wouldn’t eat any breakfast food. “But I just can’t, Aunt Bettina. Not even for Mother’s sake!” she said. “I’m never one bit hungry for breakfast.”

Eating breakfast

Ruth Ann is an emotional child, and when she told us about the great big dish of oatmeal her Grandmother set in front of her every morning, her eyes filled with tears, and she shivered almost as if she were cold. “In a thick old bowl, too!” she added. “No wonder I hate it!”

“What’s the bowl got to do with it?” jeered Robin, who always hangs around on our cooking days. “You don’t have to eat the bowl too, do you?”

We all laughed at that, although Mother shook her head at Robin and told him to run out and feed his rabbits. “I know just how you feel about the bowl, Ruth Ann.” she said. “Because I was your kind of a little girl myself once. Of course you must eat your breakfast food, but I’m going to show you just how you can do it and really enjoy it. First, you’ll have to make it yourself!”

Ruth Ann making her own

Ruth Ann looked doubtful. “Maybe Grandmother won’t let me,” she answered. “And besides I don’t know how.”

“You can soon learn,” said Mother. “In fact, you can learn today. And then I am going to give you a little blue bowl to eat it in, a bowl I had when I was a little girl.”

“Oh Mother, the one that used to be Aunt Mattie’s?” I cried, very much surprised. I knew that was one of Mother’s chiefest treasures.

“Yes, dear, Aunt Mattie’s,” Mother said. “Ruth Ann may have it for hers, and I know she’ll take good care of it. See, Ruth Ann!”

I was full of envy when Mother brought out the lovely little round porridge bowl, so thin and dainty. She would scarcely let Robin or me touch it, not to mention using it for our breakfast food!

“It seems to me even oatmeal would taste good in that,” said Ruth Ann with shining eyes. “That is, if I didn’t have to eat too much of it!”

“Wait till I show you how to make my kind of wheat cereal with dates,” said Mother. “It will give you as big a breakfast appetite as Robin’s! But in order to have the charm complete, you must do a third thing for me.”

“Oh, I will! I will! What is it?” cried Ruth Ann eagerly.

Nutrition and exercise go hand in hand

“While the cereal is cooking in the double boiler, you must put on your coat and hat and run around the house six times, no matter how cold and snowy it is.”

“Of course I will if you say so, Aunt Bettina!” (Mother isn’t truly her aunt, you know. She only calls her so because her Mother and mine were such good friends when they were little girls.)

“And then you must come in, finish cooking the breakfast food, and eat a good sized dish of it in the little blue bowl.”

“Oh, I will! I will! And I’ll write and tell Mother all about it!”

“Splendid! said Mother. “But now we must get to work on our third cooking lesson and learn exactly how to make Wheat Cereal with Dates.”

Make it yourself

Here’s the recipe for Wheat Cereal with Dates as it appeared in the book.

Print Recipe

Wheat Cereal with Dates

from How Sue Began to Cook, 1924.

Course: Breakfast

Cuisine: American

Keyword: Bettina, When Sue Began to Cook

Ingredients

3 cups boiling water
¾ cup wheat cereal such as Cream of Wheat
1 tsp salt Don't forget this if you want it to be good
½ cup seeded dates, cut fine

Instructions

First, we looked over the dates and washed them well. Then we took out the seeds with a sharp little knife. Then we cut them very fine. (The dates, not the seeds.)
We each put three cups of water in the top of our own double boiler and set it directly over the fire. We had the under part of the double boiler half full of hot water on another part of the stove. We let the three cups of water come to a slow boil and then we added the salt. We stirred the cereal in slowly, mixing it with a spoon all the time. (Mother told us not to let the water stop dancing while the cereal was being added.)
* Note: Today's double boilers are not usually designed to sit on a stove's heating element without the bottom portion. Only the bottom part fits on the stove. If you use a double boiler, it will take longer to bring the water to a boil with both sections together. Or you can use a heavy pot directly over the flame, but it must be stirred well or it will stick and scorch.
When all the cereal was in, we let it boil hard for about three minutes, stirring it all the time.
Then we each set the utensil (I mean the upper part of the double boilder holding the cereal) into the lower part that had water in it, and let it cook that way slowly for about forty five minutes.
After the cereal had cooked for thirty minutes we added the dates and let it cook fifteen minutes more. ("The kitchen clock is the cook's best friend," Mtoher says.)
If you'll just try it yourself and serve it warm with sugar and cream, you'll never say again that you don't like breakfast food! Mother says we can use raisins or seeded prunes cut fine the next time we make this cereal, but as for me, give me dates!

Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Cooks Frizzled Beef

July 26, 2022June 17, 2022 VintageJenny

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

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

Sue’s thoughts on the lesson

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

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

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

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

Frizzled beef for lunch

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

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

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

Continue with the series

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

Make the Recipe

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

Print Recipe

Frizzled Beef on Toast

From When Sue Began to Cook, 1924.

Course: Breakfast, Luncheon

Cuisine: American

Keyword: Bettina, When Sue Began to Cook

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

When Sue Began to Cook

July 12, 2022June 21, 2022 VintageJenny

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Print Recipe

Cocoa Drop Cookies

Taken from When Sue Began to Cook, 1924.

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: American

Keyword: Bettina, cookies, Twenties

Ingredients

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

Instructions

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

Notes

Recipe Collections · The Vintage Bookshelf

A Cookbook Worth Reading

September 7, 2021August 21, 2021 VintageJenny

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

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

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

A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband…

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

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

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

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

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

Recipes for every vintage occasion

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

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

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

Similar books by the same author

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

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

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

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

Read it for yourself

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