Tag: side dish

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 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 · 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.