Tag: Twenties recipes

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

Sue Makes Pimiento Cheese Sandwiches

VintageJenny
An illustration from the Twenties that shows two young girls, one blonde and one with short dark hair, standing by a table in front of a window. Between them sits a pile of cheese sandwiches, and they are wrapping them with a napkin.
In this illustration from When Sue Began to Cook, Sue and Ruth Ann wrap their sandwiches to keep them from drying out.

For some reason, Pimiento Cheese Sandwiches were a picnic staple for families from the 1920s through the 1960s. I’ve seen many recipes for these sandwiches, but none that only used cream cheese and roasted red peppers (pimientos). that is, until now. Today Sue makes Pimiento Cheese Sandwiches along with her friend Ruth Ann. Sue and Ruth Ann are cooking their way to kitchen prowess in When Sue Began to Cook.

When Sue Began to Cook was a Twenties cookbook for kids by Louise Bennett Weaver. This is Lesson 33 in Sue’s year of 52 cooking lessons. If you’re just joining us, click the linked book title above to visit the first lesson and start at the beginning of the story (and recipes).

Sandwiches were easy and popular fare in the Twenties. Grab some white bread (or nut bread for tea sandwiches.) Spread the bread with anything handy plus a little butter and you have a feasible sandwich. Chopped nuts, celery, onion, cheese, and even little bits of roasted red peppers made their way into the Twenties sandwich.

This recipe calls for Creamy Salad Dressing, which Sue learned to make in Lesson 26. Click the link to see that recipe.

Sue and Ruth Ann make a dozen sandwiches, each of them working with twelve slices of bread. Although the recipe below calls for softened butter, Sue and Ruth Ann use butter right out of the icebox. Here’s how she explains it…

Sue’s Notes from Pimiento Cheese Sandwiches

After the cheese mixture was ready, we each cut twelve slices of bread very thin, and arranged it in pairs that matched so they could be fitted together. We softened the butter by mashing it down with a spoon. Then we spread one piece of bread of each pair with butter and the other slice with our cheese mixture. We used a silver knife for the spreading. Mother said that was best.

As soon as all the bread had been spread, we pressed the sides together to make sandwiches. Then we piled three big sandwiches on top of each other and cut them all across in half with a sharp knife to make smaller three-cornered sandwiches. Then we cut the other three in half. Then we each had twelve sandwiches. [Actually, they each had twelve half sandwiches, cut diagonally.]

When all the sandwiches were made, Mother gave us each an old clean napkin and had us dip it in cold water and then wring it out as dry as we could. Then she had us wrap up our sandwiches with it and put them away till we were ready to use them. [This is to keep the sandwiches from drying out in an age before plastics.]

Picnic time!

“We’re going on a picnic in the car tonight,” Mother said. “Yes, you too, Ruth Ann. I’ve already asked your grandmother and she says you may.”

“Goody!” I said, that being my favorite expression. “Are you going to let us get the lunch ready now? Oh, Mother, let us do it all!”

“Not all, just the sandwich part,” said Mother, laughing as she always does when I act very enthusiastic. “I want to have th whole lesson on sandwiches. Just one kind. You see, not many people know how to make very good sandwiches, and I want you girls to learn a few simple rules about sandwich making and never forget them.”

Here are some of the rules:

  • 1. Always use bread that is at least a day old, but don’t cut it until you are ready to use it.
  • 2. Cut the bread as thin as you can, but be sure the slices are very even.
  • 3. Always soften the butter by creaming it, but don’t ever melt it on the stove.
  • 4. Wrap your sandwiches in a damp (not wet) cloth till you are ready to use them.
Print Recipe

Pimiento Cheese Sandwiches

A recipe from When Sue Began to Cook, by Louise Bennett Weaver
Course: Luncheon, Picnic
Cuisine: American
Keyword: Bettina, Ruth Ann, Sue, Twenties recipes

Ingredients

  • 12 Slices white bread, cut thin
  • ⅓ cup butter, soft
  • ½ cup cream cheese
  • 2 Tbsp pimientos, cut fine
  • 2 Tbsp Creamy Salad Dressing
  • ½ tsp salt
  • ¼ tsp paprika

Instructions

  • First we put our cream cheese in a bowl and creamed it by pressing it with a spoon till it was very soft and creamy. We cut the pimientos very fine with the kitchen scissors, and put them in with the cheese. Then we added the salad dressing, salt and paprika, and stirred it all together until it was well mixed.
  • After the cheese mixture was ready we cut 12 slices of bread very thin, and arranged it in pairs that matched so they could be fitted together. Then we spread one piece of bread of each pair with butter and the other slice with the cheese mixture.
  • As soon as all the bread had been spread, we pressed the slices together to make sandwiches. Then we cut them in half to make 3-cornered sandwiches. (You are cutting the sandwich in half diagonally.)
Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue’s Baking Powder Biscuits

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.
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

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.
Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes Rice Custard Pudding

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 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 Makes Baked Apples

VintageJenny

An apple a day keeps the doctor away. We’ve all heard it, and by the 1920s it was a common saying. During the autumn and winter Twenties cooks attempted to keep the family healthy by providing a variety of foods. Since variety lessens with the wintertime if you eat local or regional foods, fruits like apples take on importance. Today Sue makes Baked Apples designed to tempt jaded appetites.

This is Lesson 10 of a 51-lesson cooking course from 1924 called When Sue Began to Cook. Click the link if this is your first exposure to the series and it will take you back to Lesson 1.

In the book this recipe is actually called Ruth Ann’s Baked Apples. Sue’s mother Bettina spends lots of time trying to devise a way to get Ruth Ann to eat more. She thinks of naming a food after Ruth Ann as an enticement. We’ll see how that works out in Sue’s notes from the day’s class.

Sue’s notes on Ruth Ann’s Baked Apples

It seems to me Mother is a good deal more interested these days in what Ruth Ann eats than in what I eat, and ever since she gave her the blue bowl she has tried and tried to improve her appetite. (Ruth Ann’s appetite, of course.)

“We must teach her to cook the things she ought to eat,” Mother said to me this morning. “Her grandmother doesn’t realize what a thin little thing she is. We’ll have to make her rosy and strong before her Mother gets home.”

Baked apples was one of the foods Mother thought Ruth Ann ought to eat, and of course it was one of the things she ‘specially disliked. But Mother told us she had invented a new dish called Ruth Ann’s Baked Apples, a kind that every child — girl or boy — was sure to like.

“Mmm,” said Robin. “Make enough for me, too!” But I guess he doesn’t need any new dishes to make him eat.

These baked apples were good, much better than the common ones. And Ruth Ann really liked them. In fact, she ate two which was as many as Robin had.

While they were baking, Mother talked to us about oven meals. And about learning to plan, when you were using the oven for one dish, to make it a whole oven dinner. Of course with our two pans of baked apples there wasn’t a lot of room left in the oven. But Mother popped a little casserole of escalloped salmon in for our lunch so it could be cooking at the same time. “By the time this year is up,” she said, “I want you girls to be able to plan meals as well as cook them, and plan sensibly, too.” And I want you to help me do the marketing this summer.”

“Goodie!” said Robin. “I’ll go along with my wagon and haul the things home.”

“Fine,” said Mother. “And we’ll all learn to keep account of the money we spend.”

“Can I go marketing too?” Ruth Ann asked. “Will I be in the way?”

“In the way? Of course not!” replied my darling Mother. “Why, I want you to learn how so you can be the housekeeper when you’re back in your own house again.”

“If that time ever comes!” sighed Ruth Ann. But her eyes were shining and I knew she was feeling happy.

Make your own Baked Apples

Baked apples can be as simple as hollowing out apples, filling them with butter and a little brown sugar, and baking them. This recipe adds a little more flavor to make them special.

Print Recipe

Ruth Ann’s Baked Apples

From When Sue Began to Cook, 1924.

Ingredients

  • 4 large red apples all about the same size
  • 1 cup light brown sugar
  • 1 tsp powdered cinnamon
  • 4 marshmallows
  • 4 halves English walnut meats
  • 8 raisins
  • 1 cup water
  • 2 Tbsp butter

Instructions

  • First of all we washed the apples and then Mother showed us how to get the core out with the corer. We did it by digging a hole right around the core but not clear through the apple. You see we had to make a cup of each apple to hold the filling, so it had to be a hole and not a tunnel. Then we washed the apples again and we each set ours (open side up, like a cup) in a little whte enamelled baking pan.
  • Next, Mother had us each take one third of our cup of light brown sugar and mix it with the cinnamon. We put this into the cavities of our apples and then stuffed a marshmallow, a nut-meat, and two raisins in on top of it. On top of that we put half a level tablespoon of butter in each apple. Then Mother had us mix the rest of the sugar (we each had two-thirds of a cup left, of course) with the water and pour that over the tops of the apples.
  • Then we put the baking dishes in the oven, just a moderate oven, Mother said [350º F]. And baked our apples 40 minutes. Oh yes, I forgot to say that Mother had us baste the apples several times while we were cooking. I had heard people talk about basting a turkey, and I always supposed that meant sewing it up with a thread. It doesn't at all. Basting means to take a big kitchen spoon and dip up the juice in the pan and pour it over whatever is cookihg. Well, we basted our baked apples several times to make them juicy and good, and it surely worked. They were the nicest, fattest, juciest baked apples you ever saw.
Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes Baked Stuffed Potatoes

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.