Sue’s Baking Powder Biscuits

May 2, 2023January 8, 2023 VintageJenny

In this installment of Sue and Ruth Ann’s cooking lessons, Sue’s Baking Powder Biscuits take center stage. I find it interesting that When Sue Began to Cook waits until nearly the middle of the book to introduce biscuits. In many beginning cookbooks it appears as the first recipe that a young cook learns. It was that important to the vintage kitchen.

Hardly a week went by without seeing fresh biscuits on the table. Biscuits with butter appeared with dinner. Biscuits with jam appeared at breakfast, luncheon, and teatime. The recipe at the end of this post makes it easy for you to make Sue’s Baking Powder Biscuits, too.

This is Lesson 23 of When Sue Began to Cook, a cookbook from 1924 in the Bettina’s Best Recipes series. If you’re new to the series, click on the link to visit Lesson 1. This book contains a story along with the cooking lessons and you don’t want to miss anything!

Sue’s Diary from Biscuit Saturday

I really think this was the most interesting cooking lesson we’ve had yet!

Mother has often told us that it is very important to a cook to know how to make good baking-powder biscuits, because you use the recipe in so many ways. For meat pie, for instance, and strawberry shortcake, and those good little “roll-em-ups” that Grandmother makes. And oh, lots of other things. So I can tell you we were excited when Mother said we might try baking powder biscuits today.

I supposed biscuits would be very hard to do! But they weren’t, not one bit. They were easy. And it was such fun to see the fat brown little biskittens coming out of the oven looking for all the world like Mother’s own!

Mother says most people work too hard over them and handle them too much. And the main thing to remember is to handle them just as little as possible. And never, never use a rolling pin!

We ate up all of Ruth Ann’s as well as mine for lunch. And Ruth Ann said she was going straight home and make some more at her Grandmother’s for dinner, just for practice. (I hope she won’t learn to make such perfect ones that she’ll get ‘way ahead of me.)

Print Recipe

Sue’s Baking Powder Biscuits

from When Sue Began to Cook, 1924.

Course: Bread, Breakfast

Cuisine: American

Keyword: Bettina’s Best Recipes, Ruth Ann, Twenties recipes, When Sue Began to Cook

Ingredients

2 cups flour
4 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
3 tbsp lard
⅔ cup milk

Instructions

Mother had Ruth Ann and me each measure out our flour and our baking powder and our salt into a flour sifter and put it through twice.
Then we each emptied the mixture into our own mixing bowl. Then we measured the lard very carefully in on top of the flour mixture.
Then we each took our funny little spatula and cut the lard right into the flour. (Mother showed us how.) It took quite a while, but when it was all flaky and nicely mixed, we added the milk slowly and went on mixing with the knife.
After the milk was all mixed in, Mother had us press the mixture softly into kind of a little ball of dough, not handling it much, and lift it out onto the mixing board that we had sprinkled with a little flour.
We each patted our dough ball down with our fingers into a shape about half an inch thick. Then we each took a biscuit cutter, dipped it in a little flour, and cut out biscuits with it.
Ruth Ann and I each had about fourteen biscuits. We each lifted these into a pie pan, (no, we didn't flour or butter it) and baked them in a moderately hot oven for from twelve to fifteen minutes.
Note: Moderate oven = 375 degrees F.

Sue Makes Dixie Escalloped Corn

April 18, 2023January 8, 2023 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

Sue Makes Rice Custard Pudding

March 21, 2023January 7, 2023 VintageJenny

Custard pudding appeared on tables regularly from before 1900 to after 1940. It was considered a healthy way to use milk and eggs. Custard was an easy-to-digest food for invalids. (You can still get custard pudding in the U.S. hospitals if you’re lucky.) And frankly, it was — and continues to be — delicious. Sue makes Rice Custard Pudding for her 20th cooking lesson. This is a recipe she will be making for the rest of her life.

(This is the 20th lesson from the book When Sue Began to Cook. If you are just now joining us, clicking the book title will transport you back to Lesson 1 so you don’t miss any of the evolving story.)

Sue plans to serve her pudding for dessert after dinner, but this also made a respectable breakfast dish. Her friend Ruth Ann takes hers home directly, perhaps for a special luncheon treat.

Notes from Sue’s Rice Custard Pudding Diary

“When I’m big and have a hosue of my own, I’m going to have boiled rice — lots of it — about once a week, because you can make the most fascinating things out of what is left over!” I told Ruth Ann this morning. “There’s Spanish Rice and Rice Custard Pudding, and Rice Croquettes (only we haven’t learned how to make them yet), and Green Peppers Stuffed with Rice…”

“The only sad part about that plan,” said Ruth Ann, “Is the plain boiled rice the first day. Who wants to eat that? Not I!” And she looked very scornful.

“Boiled rice isn’t so bad,” laughed Mother, “if it’s well made. It must be soft and good, not too dry, and every grain must stand out distinctly. Why, I think it’s quite a delicacy! But it does have to be good and warm, and have some melted butter on the top. And then of course there must be plenty of cream to eat with it.”

“Or gravy!” said Robin, who was hanging around as usual. “Let’s have the girls make gravy for their next lesson!”

“You act as if our cooking lessons ought to be planned just for you!” I exclaimed. “I’m learning to cook so that I can help Mother run the house —”

“Well, I’m part of the house, ain’t I?” said Robin.

I ignored the remark. “And Ruth Ann’s learning how so she can help her Mother.”

“And Mother likes plain boiled rice; I remember now!” said Ruth Ann with shining eyes. “Aunt Betty, I will learn to like it, and to make it your way!”

Print Recipe

Rice Custard Pudding

from When Sue Began to Cook, 1924

Course: Breakfast, Dessert

Cuisine: American

Keyword: Bettina, pudding, rice, Twenties recipes, When Sue Began to Cook

Ingredients

2 eggs lightly beaten together
⅓ cup sugar
¼ tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups milk
1¼ cup boiled rice Mother had this left over.
1 tbsp melted butter
½ cup raisins looked over and washed

Instructions

Mother had us each take a big mixing bowl and break our eggs into it. Then we beat them up very light with a Dover egg beater.
When they were light enough we measured the sugar, salt, vanilla, milk, boiled rice, melted butter and raisins. (We looked over the raisins first of all, and washed them by holding them in a little colander under the cold water faucet. We let the water run throuigh them for quite a little while and we stirred them around.)
We dumped all of these things, one by one, in the mixing bowl, and stirred them all up together.
Then Mother had us each butter a baking dish and pour the rice mixture into it. Then we set our baking dishes in a moderate [375 degrees F] oven and baked the Rice Custard Pudding for thirty minutes.
When it was done, we let it get very cold. (Father says deliver him from warm rice pudding!) Ruth Ann took hers home with her. I saved mine for dinner because I wanted Father to have some.

Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes Mother’s Best Gingerbread

March 7, 2023January 7, 2023 VintageJenny

On the last Saturday of March, we find Sue and Ruth Ann busy at work on their 19th cooking lesson. This week Sue makes Mother’s Best Gingerbread, with more ingredients than any she’s used before. This is the 19th lesson from the 1924 book When Sue Began to Cook. If you’re just finding the series, click the book title to see the first installment. This is the third in a series of cookbooks that tell a story. Known as the Bettina series, in this third and final cookbook-storybook we follow Bettina’s young daughter Sue as she learns her way around the kitchen.

It’s not surprising that Sue makes Mother’s best gingerbread at the beginning of Spring. Gingerbread was incredibly popular in the United States; in fact, one 1934 article in Woman’s Home Companion listed enough variations that cooks could make a different gingerbread every week of the year! That’s a lot of molasses and ginger.

Gingerbread Notes from Sue’s Kitchen Diary

Well, the McCarthy children had the best lunch today that they’ve had in a long time.

When our gingerbread was all hot and fresh and perfect, just out of the oven, Ruth Ann decided to cut up hers into big delicious wedges for the McCarthys. (Mine was to be saved for dinner tonight. Father likes it for dessert with whipped cream on top.)

“You want to have a regular orgy of giving, do you?” smiled Mother. (I looked up the word in the dictionary and I know what it means now but I didn’t then.) [Note: if you click the link, it refers to definition 2.]

“Well, you certainly may do just as you like, Ruthie. I’m sure our gingerbread won’t hurt those children one bit.”

“Because it won’t much more than go around,” I said sadly. “It would be fun really to fill them up for once, but I guess we can’t.”

“Still, we can cut it into pretty big pieces,” said Ruth Ann eagerly. “And who knows? Maybe it will taste so good to Gladys and Maxine and Hazel that they’ll long to become good cooks themselves. And maybe they’ll want to clean up the house too, and make their kitchen look as pretty and cosy as Aunt Bettina’s!”

Ruth Ann thinks our kitchen is just perfect. She has often told me so, and I think it’s pretty nice myself. A pleasant kitchen is really the best part of a house. The McCarthy’s love to come here, and they were certainly glad to get the gingerbread (which disappeared in about the twinkling of an eye). However, I can’t say that Gladys or Hazel or Maxine showed any signs of wanting to improve their own condition any. Though Ruth Ann and I plan that as soon as we’ve learned all there is to know about cooking and keeping house, we’ll become neighborhood missionaries and teach it all to them.

Print Recipe

Mother’s Best Gingerbread

from When Sue Began to Cook, 1924.

Course: Bread, Snack, Tea time

Cuisine: American

Keyword: baking, Bettina, snack bread, teatime, Twenties

Ingredients

½ cup lard or butter
1 cup light brown sugar without lumps
1 egg
½ cup molasses
1 cup milk
2½ cups flour general all purpose
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp powdered cinnamon
1 tsp powdered ginger (ground ginger)
½ tsp powdered cloves (ground cloves)
½ tsp mace the ground cooking spice
¼ tsp powdered nutmeg
¼ tsp salt

Instructions

Mother said not to let this long list of ingredients frighten us, because they didn't mean that gingerbread was awfully hard to make. But I think, after all, that it is the hardest thing we have made yet.
We pur our lard in a big mixing bowl and creamed it, which of course means that we mashed it down with a big holey spoon till it was soft. Then we added the sugar and the egg (broken in whole) and kept on mixing till it was all the same yellow color.
Then we added the molasses and the milk and stirred it up very hard for two minutes.
Next Mother had us put the flour, soda and all the other things (the dry ingredients, she calls them) in the flour sifter and sift them all through together. Then we added them to the other things in the mixing bowl.
Then came the hardest work of all, beating this all up thoroughly together for about two minutes. Mother says it makes it lighter to beat it.
Then we learned something new. Mother had us each take some white waxed paper and cut it in a square just a little larger than the bottom of a square cake pan. Then we each fitted our square into our cake pan. The paper was big enough to stick up abour half an inch on each side of the cake pan, but didn't come to the top. Mother said it must not come to the top because the gingerbread must have the sides of the pan to stick to. We asked her if she didn't want us to grease the sides of the pan but she said "No, then the gingerbread wouldn't stick. It is less apt to fall if it sticks a little."
After we had put the paper in the pans, we poured in the gingerbread batter and then we baked it in a moderate [375 degrees F] oven for twenty-five minutes. When the twenty-five minutes were up, Mother showed us how to test the gingerbread with a clean broom straw. We pulled straws out of the broom and washed and dried them and then each of us stuck one down in the gingerbread. Mother said if the gingerbread was done, the straws would come out clean, without any batter sticking to them. They came out clean and so we knew it was done.

Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes Meat Loaf

February 21, 2023January 7, 2023 VintageJenny

On their 18th Saturday cooking lesson, Sue makes Meat Loaf. This is a classic recipe that may be close to the one you know. We are cruising through the 1924 book When Sue Began to Cook, by Louise Weaver and Helen LeCron. If you’re just finding this series and you want to start at the beginning of Sue’s story, click the linked book title to go to the beginning.

Notes from Sue’s Diary on the Best Kitchen Helpers

“Can you guess the names of my two favorite kitchen helpers?” Mother asked us this morning when our lesson began.

(The answer ought to have been “Robin and Sue” but I somehow knew that wasn’t it.)

“Besides my two youngsters of course,” Mother went on with a twinkle in her eye. “Well, I’m thinking of my faithful food chopper and my kind kitchen scissors. I couldn’t keep house without them. Of course we had this meat ground up at the meat market (that is the easiest way when it’s possible) but Sue knows how often I grind up leftover meat for croquettes and meat cakes, and of course I always use the food chopper.”

“The chopper’s good for raisins and figs and dates to go in cookies, too,” I suggested.

“Yes, and for cheese when it isn’t too fresh. It’s much easier to grind it than to grate it. And it’s good for dry bread and crackers, too.”

I nodded my head. It’s my job to keep Mother’s crumb-jar filled. I take the stale ends of the bread from the bread box and put them through the chopper and then into the glass jar we keep for that purpose. “You chop cabbage in the food chopper, too, don’t you Mother?” I added, remembering the cole slaw we had for dinner one day last week.

“Yes, and for dozens of other things. But the kitchen scissors are just as convenient. I use them to cut up parsley and to shred lettuce, and to cut up green and red peppers for garnishing.”

“And for cutting off the pie dough around the edge of the pan,” I said.

“Yes, and for cutting up the fruit for salad or for a fruit cup,” Mother said. “You know the food chopper would press too much juice out of the fruits.”

“But how in the world do you ever get the chopper clean after you’ve used it, Aunt Bettina?” asked Ruth Ann.

“Well, after this lesson I’ll show you girls just how to take it apart and put it together again,” Mother answered. “And of course it has to be washed just like any other kitchen tool. But to clean it quickly I always run a piece of dry bread through it. In fact, I never use it for anything without putting a piece of bread through first. The bread takes up the odors of any stray piece of food that may have lodged in it.”

Print Recipe

Sue’s Meat Loaf

Recipe from When Sue Began to Cook, 1924.

Ingredients

2 cups round steak, ground up The butcher ground it. (We would call this hamburger.)
½ cup pork butt, ground up The butcher ground it. (Ground pork would work fine. ¼ lb is plenty.)
1 cup cracker crumbs
1 tsp salt
¼ tsp pepper
¼ tsp celery salt or use ⅛ tsp celery seed to limit the salt
1 tbsp onion, chopped fine
1 egg, lightly beaten
½ cup milk
1 tbsp melted butter

Instructions

Mother had us each put our round steak, pork butt, cracker crumbs, salt, pepper, celery, salt and onion in a big bowl and mix it all up together as well as we could with a spoon.
Then we beat the egg and added the milk and poured that into the bowl, too. We mixed it all just as well as we could.
Then we buttered a loaf-cake pan. We dipped a little clean brown piece of paper in some butter to do it. And then we emptied our meat mixture into the cake pan. Mother had us wash our hands and then pat the meat mixture into kind of a loaf shape in the pan.
Then we melted the butter and poured it all over the top of the loaf to make it get brown and nice.
We each popped our loaf into a hot oven and turned down the heat to make a moderate oven of it. And then we baked our loaves forty-five minutes by the clock. When we took the meat out, it was crusty and brown, and looked dee-licious!
Note: Hot oven = 425 degrees, Moderate oven = 375 degrees.

Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen · Uncategorized

Sue Makes Spanish Rice

January 24, 2023January 6, 2023 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.