Tag: Ruth Ann

Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes Cornbread

VintageJenny

Welcome to the 11th Lesson of When Sue Began to Cook, a cookbook in the Bettina’s Best Recipes series of cookbooks from the Twenties. Today, Sue makes cornbread. These recipes contain common ingredients, solid preparation techniques, and a whole lot of opinion to create customary 1920s food. If this is your first exposure to the series, you can start here or click the book title to jump back to Lesson 1.

For this Saturday morning cooking lesson Sue makes Cornbread. This lesson explains how to grease a baking dish with melted fat/oil before pouring the batter into it. This cornbread contains sugar, which I believe makes it a northern cornbread recipe. Throughout all the books in the series, Sue and Bettina’s location is never mentioned. However, mention of cold in the winter and warmth during the summer months makes their location Some Town in a Northern State. Somewhere.

The directions call for pouring the batter into a drip pan. Drip pans fit into the stove underneath something that could boil over. Or they fit into the icebox (refrigerator) to catch water drops from melting ice. The recipe uses less than two cups of flour/meal, so a regular 8×8 or 7×11 pan should work quite well. Really, any pan that’s a bit more than 1.5 inches deep and about the dimensions of the two pans listed should work quite well. My cornbread always goes into a Pyrex 8 x 8 inch baking dish. Thirty years later than these directions, but it works well.

In this lesson Sue mentions Aunt Lucy and Uncle John, who we first meet in A Thousand Ways to Please a Husband with Bettina’s Best Recipes. Bettina adores her aunt and uncle, so it stands that Sue would love them as well. Of course, they visit just in time for inclement weather to hit. And Uncle John still likes to tease. To learn the particulars, let’s peek at Sue’s cooking lesson notebook.

Sue’s notes on making cornbread

Aunt Lucy and Uncle John came in from the farm today to do some shopping. They always come to our house first and just as they arrived, a big blizzard arrived too. I like nothing better than a blizzard myself, but Aunt Lucy’s rheumatism was bad so Mother persuaded her to stay here all day and let Uncle John do the shopping. [This lesson takes place in February.]

“Just think, Aunt Lucy,” Mother said, “Sue and Ruth Ann are going to make cornbread today, and if you are here to lunch you can have some.” (Mother always is as enthusiastic as a girl.)

“Cornbread? That’s good news!” said Aunt Lucy. “With sour milk and soda?”

“No, with sweet milk and baking powder,” said Mother. “But it will be good just the same. You’ll see.”

“Cornbread?” said Uncle John looking out from behind the newspaper I thought he was reading. “I used to know a little girl who could make the best cornbread there ever was! Better, oh much better than yours, Susie!”

“How do you know it was better than mine, Uncle John?” I said indignantly. “You never ate mine in your whole life. And you go and talk that way about it, I won’t give you any this noon. So there!”

“This little girl’s cornbread,” Uncle John went on, just to tease me.

“What little girl? Mother?”

“No; a much littler girl than your Mother.”

At that I knew he meant Aunt Lucy, because he always jokes that way about her. “How old was she when you first ate her cornbread?” I asked him.

“Not a bit older than you,” he said. “But it isn’t only cornbread that she made. She could get the whole meal!”

“When she was only eleven?”

“Now John,” Aunt Lucy said. “Of course I couldn’t. I may have known how to make doughnuts and bread and a few common things like that, but I wouldn’t have dreamed of making Drop Cookies or Stuffed Potatoes or any of the hard things Sue can do.” (I could see Mother had been talking.)

“This noon,” I said firmly, “you will both have a chance to eat some of the best cornbread that ever was made, and if you’re very good, I may send some of it home with you. Uncle John,” I went on, “you’re going to see the day when I’m every bit as good a cook as Aunt Lucy.”

Uncle John gave me a big kiss when I made that rash statement, and Aunt Lucy said that just as soon as Spring came she wanted Ruth Ann and me to come out to the farm and do some cooking on her big “country stove.” Go? Well, I guess we will! There’s no place on earth as nice as the farm!

The recipe

Print Recipe

Twenties Cornbread

from When Sue Began to Cook

Ingredients

  • ¾ cup cornmeal
  • 1 ¼ cups flour
  • ¼ cup sugar
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 4 tsp baking powder
  • 1 egg
  • 1 cup milk
  • 3 Tbsp lard or butter

Instructions

  • We put the cornmeal, white flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder all together in the flour sifter and sifted them twice. (Mother said once was enough, but both Ruth Ann and I wanted this cornbread to be specially good.) Then we each broke our egg into a bowl and beat it up with the egg beater. Then we added the milk to the egg and beat it for a minute longer. Then Mother told us to put the egg and milk right in with the cornmeal mixture and she had us stir this all up together for about three minutes.
  • We were each going to bake our cornbread in a nice little square dripping pan, and of course these had to be greased so the cornbread wouldn't stick. So Mother told us to measure out the lard we were going to use, right into the dripping pan and set them in the oven for a few minutes to melt. When the lard was all melted, she had us move the pan around so that all of the bottom and sides were greasy. Then she had us pour the lard out into the cornbread batter (that means the unbaked cornbread) and stir it up again. And then we poured the batter into the pans. (You see, the pans were all greased and ready.) The batter was about an inch and a half deep in the pans. Mother says it always ought to be just about that deep to make good cornbread.
  • Then we baked our cornbread in a moderate oven [350º F] for about twenty five minutes. Mother says sometimes it takes thirty minutes. It ought to be a lovely "hungry brown" [golden brown] on top when it is done. Ours was.
Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue cooks Wheat Cereal

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!