Tag: dinner

Cooking Techniques · Recipe Collections · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes Tuna Timbales

VintageJenny

Timbales found their way onto many a Twenties dinner table. They were relatively easy to make. Better yet, they used canned or leftover cooked meats in an inviting way. Today Sue makes Tuna Timbales with Ruth, but you could also make this recipe with leftover chicken or salmon.

This is Lesson 34 of When Sue Began to Cook, a 1924 children’s story cookbook by Louise Bennett Weaver. If you’re just joining us, click the book title to see Lesson 1, where the story begins. Actually, the story begins several books before this one, in A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband (with Bettina’s Best Recipes.) That too is a storybook cookbook, and it tells the story of Bettina as a young bride and her friend Ruth who became Ruth Ann’s mother. The link will take you to the Internet Archive’s copy, where you can read or download it.

But back to Sue and Ruth Ann. Timbales sound difficult to make but they’re a simple concoction of baked bread crumbs, cooked or canned meat, seasonings, and a little egg and milk to hold it all together. And they are delicious. You may know of it from the 1960s onward as tuna patties or salmon patties. It’s basically the same recipe prepared in a different shape.

Sue’s Notes on Tuna Timbales

Take the tuna out of the can just as soon as you open it. Mother told us both to write it down again so we would never, ever forget.

We don’t have any timbale pans at our house, so Mother had us bake the timbales in muffin pans. When they were done, we let them stand for about five minutes. Then we carefully loosened the little timbales and helped them out onto a hot platter without breaking a single one.

While the timbales were baking, we each made a creamy sauce. Just like the creamy sauce for Cheesed Creamed Potatoes, only without the cheese. We used four tablespoons of butter, four tablespoons of flour, two cups of milk, one teaspoon of salt and 1/4 teaspoon paprika. [You may want to reduce the salt to 1/2 tsp. A full teaspoon of salt is a lot of salt for two cups of white sauce.] When this was all done, and was creamy and hot, we poured it over the timbales on the platter.

A little timbale reassurance

“Tuna Timbales may seem hard to make,” Mother said to us while we were stirring our Creamy Sauce. “But it’s a good recipe to know. Instead of tuna, you can use any kind of leftover cooked meat or chicken, or turkey, or salmon. And people will like it exactly as well as they did the first time it was served.”

The little timbales did look delicious. We had them for lunch, with little hot biscuits and jam and iced milk and some of Robin’s lettuce. And we ate out on our little porch table. (Meals always taste better out there.)

Ruth Ann is already planning lunches she and her mother will have next summer on their porch table, and she says she is going to have us over very often.

Print Recipe

Tuna Timbales

from the book When Sue Began to Cook by Louise Bennett Weaver, 1924
Course: Luncheon, Main Course
Cuisine: American
Keyword: Bettina, Ruth Ann, Sue, tuna, When Sue Began to Cook

Equipment

  • 1 muffin pan or individual timbale pans if you have them

Ingredients

  • 1 ½ cups tuna canned, drained
  • 1 cup bread crumbs soft
  • 1 tbsp parsley cut up very fine
  • 1 tsp onion cut up very fine (minced)
  • 1 tsp salt or less
  • ¼ tsp paprika
  • ¼ tsp celery salt
  • 1 tbsp lemon juice
  • 2 eggs, beaten
  • ½ cup milk

Instructions

  • Place the drained tuna in a mixing bowl. Mother had us flake it — break it apart with a silver fork. Then add soft breadcrumbs, parsley, onion, salt, paprika, celery salt, lemon juice, beaten eggs, and milk. Stir it all together.
  • Butter the compartments of a muffin tin and fill them 2/3 full with the tuna mixture. Then place the muffin pan into a shallow larger pan, like a 9 x 13 pan. Fill the larger pan with hot water so that it comes up the sides of the muffin tin, about 1-inch deep. Then bake the timbales in a moderate oven (350℉) for 30 minutes.
  • When they're done, let stand for five minutes and then loosen them from the pan. Serve plain or with a cream sauce.
Cooking Techniques · Recipe Collections · The Vintage Kitchen

How We Made Veal Birds

VintageJenny

Welcome to Lesson 29 of When Sue Began to Cook, a Twenties story cookbook for children. This book continues the story of Sue and her best friend Ruth Ann. They learn to cook under the watchful eye of Sue’s mother Bettina. This week she showed them how to make Veal Birds. Bettina is herself a central character in a set of cookbooks by Louise Bennett Weaver. If you’re new to the series, click the book title to be transported back to Lesson 1.

This week Sue and Ruth Ann tell how they made Veal Birds. Veal steaks are no longer available in my local grocery stores, so if I were going to make this I would probably use chicken breast. First I’d cut it to 1/2-inch thickness, and then follow the recipe to see what happens.

Since this is the first time Sue learns to make a stuffed and tied piece of meat, she is quite chatty in the recipe. The recipe itself isn’t long, but the descriptions are. A highlighter might be useful to mark the important parts if you find yourself getting lost in the story of how Sue made Veal Birds.

Notes from Sue’s Diary This Week:

Veal Birds are a company dish at our house. We wanted to make them today because Uncle John and Aunt Lucy were coming in to shop this morning and take Robin and Ruth Ann and me out to the farm to stay over Sunday. School’s out, and we can do lots of nice things we’ve planned to do.

But we’ll go right on with our cooking lessons. I intend to practice the dishes I’ve learned to make over and over, so I’ll never forget them!

I am writing this while we’re waiting for Uncle John and Aunt Lucy. The table is all set, and our Veal Birds are in the oven keeping hot.

Mother says Veal Birds are very convenient to have for company. She says they can be prepared and cooked in the early morning and then reheated. Some people serve them cold in very hot weather. Here come the folks so I must stop.

Print Recipe

Veal Birds

From When Sue Began to Cook by Louise Bennett Weaver
Course: Dinner
Cuisine: American
Keyword: Bettina, frying, meats, Ruth Ann, Sue, veal
Servings: 4

Equipment

  • 1 Oven safe frying pan with oven-safe lid

Ingredients

  • 1 lb veal steak cut 1/2 inch thick
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 2 cups fresh bread crumbs (soft, not hard)
  • 2 tbsp salt pork chopped very fine
  • 1 tbsp parsley chopped very fine
  • 1 tbsp green pepper chopped fine (minced)
  • ½ tsp paprika
  • ¼ tsp celery salt
  • 2 tbsp butter, melted
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • 2 tbsp water, cold
  • 4 tbsp bacon grease
  • ½ cup water

Instructions

  • We wiped off our veal with a clean cloth dipped in cold water, and then cut it into four nice pieces. Then we made little cuts across each piece of meat both ways with a knife. Mother told us this would make it lie flat. In cutting, we hammered it down good. Then we sprinkled the salt on both sides of the meat.
  • Next we cut the salt pork and the parsley and the green pepper in quite small pieces so that we could measure it, and then we put it all in the chopping bowl and chopped it up quite fine.
  • Then we each put our fresh bread crumbs, salt pork, parsley, green pepper, paprika, celery salt, melted butter, beaten egg and two tablespoons of water in a mixing bowl and mixed it all up with a spoon. We put a fourth of this mixture on top of each piece of meat. Then Mother showed us how to roll up each piece and tie it with a nice white string so that the dressing would stay inside.
  • The birds were all ready then, so we each put the bacon grease in a deep frying pan and let it get good and hot. Then we put the birds in and let them brown on all sides. After they were good and brown, we poured the water in the pan. Then we covered the pan with a lid and put it in the oven. We let the birds cook in the oven (350 – 375℉) for about forty-five minutes. Mother showed us how to try them with a fork to see if they were good and tender. They were, so she had us take them out and cut the string with the scissors and take it off. Then we put the birds back in the frying pan to keep hot till they were needed.
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 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.