Sue Makes Baked Stuffed Potatoes

October 18, 2022June 19, 2022 VintageJenny

Potatoes. Easy to store, open to amazing variety. This week Sue makes Baked Stuffed Potatoes for her weekly cooking lesson. We would call these twice baked potatoes, and they dress up simple meals beautifully. Planning on hamburger steaks for dinner, because that’s what you have available? These baked stuffed potatoes jazz up the meal and make it special.

This is the 9th installment of When Sue Began to Cook, where we meet Sue and her friend Ruth Ann. They gather on Saturday mornings and learn to cook from Sue’s mother Bettina. If this is your first dip into this series, click the book title to be transported to the first lesson.

Each lesson provides a recipe and a chapter of an ongoing story. Ruth Ann misses her absent, ill mother. Sue and Bettina help Ruth Ann cope with her loneliness. They keep her occupied on Saturday mornings with the cooking lessons. The stories appear in Sue’s notes from each cooking lesson.

Sue’s notes on the Baked Stuffed Potatoes lesson

Of course, it wouldn’t make so many dishes if Ruth Ann and I both worked on one recipe, but Mother has us each do it separately. You see, she has it all arranged so there are enough cooking things for each of us, and that is where the fun comes in. It isn’t any real satisfaction to help somebody else cook, but when you make your own baked potatoes and cocoa cookies all alone they taste lots better.

Mother says dishwashing is an art in itself and a good dishwasher is a real artist. She always has us fill our cooking pans with cold water the very minute we’re through using them, and let them soak. It makes them wash so much easier! Ruth Ann put hot water in the little saucepan the milk was heated in for her stuffed potatoes and when she went to wash it, it wouldn’t wash. Mother said milk dishes ought always to be soaked in cold water. In fact, cold water is best for most things. But of course when we really wash the dishes, we have to have hot water and lots of soap suds.

Just so I won’t forget them, I’ll put down the dishwashing rules. First the glasses and then the silver, and you don’t rinse them at all, just wash them in nice clean hot soap suds and dry them with a nice dry clean dish cloth. But all the china dishes and cooking dishes have to be rinsed with scalding water before they are dried.

If you have lots of hot water and nice soap suds, washing dishes is really fun. Why, Ruth Ann and I laugh so much while we’re doing it that Robin and Ted actually come to the back door and beg us to let them help!

The Baked Stuffed Potatoes recipe

This version of twice baked potatoes is a little different from ones you may know. It uses milk to make the mashed potatoes creamy, and then you top it with cheese. Usually we cut potatoes lengthwise, like the twice baked potato skins appetizer from the 1980s. Twenties recipes often cut the potatoes across the middle, so the two ends look more like cups than like boats. When the directions tell you to cut the potatoes in this recipe, cut them around the middle instead of lengthwise.

Print Recipe

Baked Stuffed Potatoes

from When Sue Began to Cook, 1924

Ingredients

4 large good-looking potatoes all about the same size
2 Tbsp butter
1 tsp salt (this may be a little much)
¼ tsp paprika
¾ cup hot milk
⅓ cup grated cheese

Instructions

We scrubbed the potatoes clean with the little vegetable brush, and then made a cut right around each of them through the outside skin but not through the potato. Then we put them in a moderate oven and baked them till they were very done. It took nearly an hour because they were big fellows. Mother showed us how to test them to see whether they were done. Not with a fork this time, but with a clean dish towel. She had us take them out of the oven and hold them in the cloth, pressing them to see whether or not they were soft.
Note: Moderate oven here is 350 – 375º F.
When we found that they felt soft and mealy inside, we took them out and cut each one in two right around its waist, exactly where it had been marked with the knife before.
Then we each took all of the mealy potato part out of the skin of our potatoes with a big spoon. We put it in a bowl. (We were very careful not to break the skins while we were doint it, too. And we saved the skins.) When the soft potato was all in the bowl, we mashed it up with a potato masher till there waasn't a single lump in it. (Robin helped Ruth Ann but I did mine every bit alone.)
Then when all the lumps were out but the potato was still hot, we added the butter, salt, paprika and hot milk. Then we beat it some more just as hard and fast as we could, to make it light and fluffy.
When the potato mixture was fluffly and white, we piled it back in the skins again. Mother said not to mash it down but to pile it up roughly and lightly. When the potato cases were all filled we sprinkled the grated cheese over the tops. (Our cheese happened to be hard and dry so we could grate it easily. Mother says when the cheese is fresh and soft, to cut it up in very fine little pieces instead of grating it.)
Then we put all the potatoes in pie pans and set them in a hot oven for fifteen minutes. When we took them out the tops were all a beautiful light brown color. We had them for lunch without any meat because Mother told us the cheese in the potatoes would take the place of meat. My, they tasted good!
Note: A hot oven as directed here is 400-425º F.

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

History · The Magazine Rack

Magazines for Everyone

April 1, 2021March 21, 2021 VintageJenny

If you glance through the pages of the popular household magaazines from 1920-1940 something may dawn on you. It did me. These were magazines for everyone, as long as the woman reading them matched the editors’ ideal subscriber.

Each magazine, of course, had its own dream reader. Woman’s World, for instance, was for the Midwest reader. Needlecraft positioned itself for the lower-income reader – many of its projects could be completed with a little fabric, a crochet hook or knitting needles, and thread. Every magazine, from Good Housekeeping to Ladies’ Home Journal, had its intended readership.

However, all these titles didn’t succeed as magazines for everyone. A good number of potential readers were excluded. For instance, although every magazine covered the national holidays and Christian holidays, no one printed a Passover menu for Jewish readers. They were on their own. Did the publishers just not think their readership would appreciate such an article, or did no one on the staff have the expertise to write it?

Half-Century Magazine

One glaring omission appeared in the African-American community. The women’s magazines featured dress models on the fashion pages that looked different from African-American family members, even though everyone dressed in the same styles. In 1916, Half-Century Magazine launched in Chicago and it filled that void. Half-Century Magazine used African-American models on its fashion pages. Only in publication for nine years, the magazine spoke to African-American homemakers. And frankly, it is a delight to read.

I don’t have any issues of Half-Century Magazine in their original paper format. Actual subscriptions never topped 16,000 so hard copies are difficult to find. In fact, when Negro Universities Press attempted to reprint the existing issues in 1969, it couldn’t find copies of all the issues. Paging through I found a placeholder which basically said “We couldn’t find this issue. If you know of a copy let us know and we will include it in a later printing.” They are that scarce.

Excellent Quality

They may be scarce, but they are excellent. An issue of Half-Century Magazine contained short stories, a serialized novel, current fashion, needlework patterns and sewing tips. Each month devoted a full half page to jokes and quips like this one:

“Yes, Bertha is going to marry for love.”
“How foolish!”
“Not at all. She had sense enough to fall in love with a millionaire.”
Half-Century Magazine, January 1920

If I had original copies of these magazines, I would love to reproduce the recipes from the cooking pages. Some of the recipes used inexpensive or unusual ingredients, like lamb’s kidneys. Others introduced innovative treatments of normal 1920s dishes, like adding nuts to a macaroni salad. Actually, quite a few I would love to recreate. One issue’s Tea Ring recipe in January, 1920, includes raisins but no yeast and would make a tremendous teatime or breakfast loaf.

Depending on the month of the year, subscribers read about dinner etiquette, household hints, and weight loss (an all-consuming seasonal topic in every woman’s magazine of the period). One issue illustrated current hairstyles, and the magazine offered a sewing pattern service to subscribers. Most issues included poetry.

Tackling Social Issues

The women’s magazines of the Twenties through the Forties took stands on various social issues within their pages, and Half-Century Magazine was no different. Its editors covered cultural and political issues. They published letters from subscribers who needed to vent. And a regular columnist answered questions about law and inheritance.

In short, everything a homemaker would need from month to month was included in Half-Century Magazine. I wish it had continued past 1925, but the publisher ceased publication in order to launch a newspaper he called the Chicago Bee. You can download the 1923 – 1925 years of Half-Century Magazine from Google Books and see for yourself.

History · The Magazine Rack

Saving Magazines for a Century

March 25, 2021March 20, 2021 VintageJenny1 Comment

Illustration of 1920s man and woman by Charles D. Mitchell. — Illustration for a short story by Charles D Mitchell, 1925.

Saving magazines for a century? Or even fifty years? Why would people do this? What was so engaging about these periodicals that they lived in the bottom of a cupboard or drawer for that length of time?

Some of these magazines stay with a family for three or four generations. I’m a third generation owner myself. While visiting my husband’s 94 year old grandmother on my honeymoon, we uncovered a stack of needlework magazines from the 1930s. She sent them home with me. I’ve taken care of them lovingly ever since. In not too many years they will reach their centennial anniversary. Maybe I’ll bake them a cake.

Learning New Skills

Actually, people held onto their magazines for several different reasons. They were considered valuable. Women’s magazines often contained step by step cooking instructions for new cooks. Divided into twelve to fourteen months (or even longer), each article told how to create a specific type of food. If you used those magazines to learn how to cook, or even to refresh your memory, you aren’t going to throw out the “breads” issue.

Experiencing the Best Authors and Illustrators

Photo of short story by Gene Stratton-Porter. — Gene Stratton-Porter, the author of ‘Girl of the Limberlost,’ also wrote short stories for magazines.

They also contained some of the best writers of the day. Edna Ferber, Mary Roberts Rhinehart, Kathleen Norris, Temple Bailey, and Faith Baldwin filled the pages. These authors, and more like them, kept women reading and subscribing for more. Usually the stories focused on relationships, but sometimes readers found a mystery or humor. Some of the stories focused on a social problem. And many times subscribers read through a new serialized novel by a famous author before its publication. Each issue published a few chapters of the novel until it was complete. The magazines with the best stories tended to be kept by their owners. Scroll through one of those magazines, Woman’s Home Companion.

Some magazines published new or famous art prints that could be removed and framed for the home. Others specialized in current or new popular artists. (Norman Rockwell, for instance, illustrated for The Saturday Evening Post for years.) Almost all these illustrations used charcoal, pencil, or ink drawings printed in black and white. They were still eye-catching and well done. Some magazines placed a color seasonal print on the cover every month to catch readers’ eyes. Others used the cover to highlight a project inside.

Reading for New Recipes

Picture of woman standing over stove, 1920s. Menus for One Week in February. — A welcome sight for the weary cook. All meals planned with some recipes included.

As the seasons turned, home managers turned to the pages of last year’s periodicals looking for useful, seasonal recipes. All cooking in the 1920s and 30s was seasonal cooking, unless the cook could obtain food in a can, or personally canned it herself the year before. Although many periodicals preached meal planning, the monthly menu calendar proved a welcome sight to many a weary cook. Sometimes published recipes were family favorites. Others combined familiar ingredients in new ways. During the Colonial revival of the 1920s, some periodicals published colonial-style recipes that used cornmeal as an ingredient.

Providing Patterns for Crafting

Clipping from Anne Orr needlework page, showing purse frame and embroidered purse blank for purchase. — Anne Orr was a famous needlework designer of the time.

Some readers saved magazines for the needlework patterns. For example, filet crochet reached its heyday during the 1920s and 30s. Needleworkers who enjoyed that type of crochet work kept their magazines so they had ready access to patterns that all too soon dipped into obscurity. If someone liked to tat lace, the magazines provided a goldmine of patterns. Each issue of a needlework periodical until the 1940s or beyond featured one or more tatting patterns to keep those shuttles moving. My favorite tatting pattern of all time dates from 1919. Without saving magazines for a century, I never would have met this pattern.

Often, the magazines stayed around to be brought out every now and then in a fit of nostalgia. “Do you remember when…” can be a great story starter. A comment about an article sparks a family story. In addition, there is something precious about keeping Grandma’s magazines that she loved enough to treasure for fifty years. Paging through them brings up memories of Grandma’s baked bean recipe – with no barbecue sauce, thank you. Only savory beans for Grandma. Looking at the needlework patterns brings to mind the room dividers she embroidered in brown and green. (Wonder what ever happened to those?) Memories become as mellow as the pages that turn when we look through the old magazines that stay in the family generation after generation. There’s something to saving magazines for a century. Especially if they’re good ones.

Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

The Wonderful Fireless Cooker

March 11, 2021March 11, 2021 VintageJenny

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 drawing for a fireless cooker showing a wooden box with two round metal cannisters for holding hot food. — 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 company's fireless cooker showing box, individual metal cooking pots, and heating stones. — 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.