Tag: When Sue Began to Cook

Cooking Techniques · Recipe Collections · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes Pimiento Cheese Sandwiches

VintageJennyLeave a comment
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 · Recipe Collections · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes Sugar Cookies

VintageJennyLeave a comment
Sue and Ruth Ann get ready to cream butter with their “holey” spoons.

When I turned to Lesson 31, where Sue makes Sugar Cookies, I was a little surprised at how filthy the pages were. This recipe from When Sue Began to Cook was spattered with 100 year old flour stains. They sported a dot or two of grease, and even a little splash of age old vanilla extract. Apparently this is an excellent sugar cookie recipe.

This is our 31st lesson from this cookbook, and we’re a little over halfway through the year. My copy of the book was actually missing one of the earlier lessons on walnut fudge. The pages were ripped right out of the book. That must have been a sacred family recipe. If this is your first adventure with Sue and her friend Ruth Ann, click the linked book title in the first paragraph to be transported back to the beginning. A whole story goes along with these cooking lessons and you don’t want to miss any of it.

Last week Sue and Ruth Ann learned how to make a sponge cake and fold egg whites into a batter. This week they cream fat and sugar together. And Sue has lots to say about it…

Sue’s Notes from Sugar Cookies Day

“You may each get out one of the yellow mixing bowls,” Mother said, “and one of the holey spoons.” Ruth Ann and I were both glad because we knew that meant “creaming,” and we like to cream things.

We have a porcelain topped table at our house. It’s just the thing to roll cookies on. Mother had us sprinkle some flour on the clean table so the cookies wouldn’t stick. Then she had us take up half the dough in our hands and roll it together. (Of course, we washed our hands just before we began to make the cookies.) Then we put the dough on the floured table top.

Next we dusted the rolling pin with flour. Mother showed us how to roll out the dough as evenly as possible till it was about an eighth of an inch thick. Then we took the cooky cutter, dipped it into the flour and cut the cookies out. We really took several cooky cutters before we were through. We made our cookies in the shape of stars, ducks, and hearts.)

After we had cut out all the cookies we could, there was still some dough left. Mother had us make a ball of it and roll it out again and cut out some more cookies.

The Neighborhood Cookies

We made “neighborhood cookies” today, and at the time I write this, there isn’t a single one left!

There has been a regular epidemic of painting and yard cleaning in this neighborhood lately. I wrote about the McCarthy’s sudden interest in window washing. Well, after that was all finished they began to paint their house. It was so much fun with everybody standing around and giving advice that Robin and Teddy began to tease to paint something too. Of course, they are much littler than Clarence Patrick and Clyde. So Mother bought them some paint and let them paint the back fence between our yard and Teddy’s.

So today Ruth Ann and I announced that after our cooking lesson we would treat every real “neighborhood worker” to cookies. Everybody, that is, who had spent the whole morning in painting or gardening. Or cleaning up a back yard. Or doing something useful outdoors. It was a wonderful day for work and our cookies melted away like snowballs in August, as Father says. But it was worth it! This is getting to be the cleanest, neatest, shiniest, paintiest neighborhood in town!

Sue

And that is how Sue made Sugar Cookies during her Saturday cooking class.

Note: While I correct most of Sue’s atrocious spelling, her spelling of cookie as cooky, when talking about only one, is correct through the 1950s.

Print Recipe

Sugar Cookies

From When Sue Began to Cook, by Louise Bennett Weaver
Course: Dessert, Snack, Tea time
Cuisine: American
Keyword: baking, Bettina, cookies, dessert, Ruth Ann, Sue, teatime

Ingredients

  • ½ cup lard Any solid shortening should work here
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 4 Tbsp water
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 2⅓ cups flour
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • ½ tsp powdered nutmeg
  • 2 tsp baking powder

Instructions

  • Measure out the lard into a bowl, and cream it with a wooden spoon (mash it down over and over) until it is very soft. The cookbook suggests using a spoon with a hole in the middle if you have one. Then add the sugar slowly, creaming all the time, until it is all added and well mixed.
  • Break the eggs into a smaller bowl, and add the water and vanilla. Beath this egg mixture up all together with a Dover egg beater and then add it to the sugar mixture. Beat it all up very had with the same spoon until it is well mixed.
  • Now take the dry ingredients and mix them up together, and then stir them into the wet mixture. (Or you can use a sifter, if you have one, and sift the dry ingredients over the bowl.)
  • Roll out until about one-eighth inch thick, and then cut out with a cutter dipped in flour. Grease a cookie sheet and bake in a moderate oven (350-375℉) for fifteen minutes.
Cooking Techniques · Recipe Collections · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes Sun Drops

VintageJennyLeave a comment

Welcome to Lesson 30 of When Sue Began to Cook. We’re working our way through a year’s worth of cooking lessons from the children’s cook book by Louise Bennett Weaver. If this is your first time tuning in, click the book title link to visit Lesson 1. This week Sue makes Sun Drops with her friend Ruth Ann.

Never heard of Sun Drops? Not a surprise. I’ve been reading Twenties recipes for years and this is the first time I’ve heard of them as well. Basically, Sun Drops are cupcakes made with a sponge cake batter. A cake sponge is made from eggs that are separated, with the stiffly beaten egg whites folded in last to give them volume. Many cake recipes from the 1910s through the 1930s were sponge recipes, simply because they required few ingredients, no expensive fats (like butter), and they looked and tasted great when they appeared at the table.

In today’s lesson, Sue learns how to create a cake flour substitute at home instead of buying a box of Swan’s Down. Ingredient storage space was at a premium in Twenties households. So anything that could be whipped up easily as a substitute was welcome, compared to yet another open box. As usual, Sue (or rather, her mother Bettina) has some opinions about the day’s activities:

Sue’s Sun Drops Diary

The Sun Drops looked so good we could hardly wait to try them.

A good sponge cake recipe is a useful thing for a housekeeper to have, Mother says. And she also says that she likes this particular one so much better than any other that this is the only one she uses any more. It doesn’t have to be baked in muffin pans. Very often she makes it in a square cake pan lined with waxed paper. When it’s baked that way, it takes about twenty-five minutes in a moderate oven instead of twenty. [Note: A moderate oven is 350 – 375ºF.]

Sometimes we have sponge cake like this, cut in squares and served with whipped cream, for dessert. Father loves it that way.

Mother says some pleasant day Ruth Ann and I may have a porch party and serve Sun Drops and lemonade for refreshments. They’re fine for an afternoon party or tea, Mother says.

Ruth Ann and I are feeling like grownup cooks today. We’ve learned to make sponge cake!

Sue

Print Recipe

Sun Drops

Sponge cake cupcakes from When Sue Began to Cook, by Louise Bennett Weaver
Course: Dessert, Tea time
Cuisine: American
Keyword: Bettina, cake, Ruth Ann, sponge, Sue

Ingredients

  • 4 eggs
  • 3 Tbsp cold water
  • 1 tsp lemon extract
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 7/8 cup all purpose flour (a full cup minus two tablespoons)
  • 2 Tbsp cornstarch
  • 1½ tsp baking powder
  • ⅛ tsp salt

Instructions

  • We took four eggs and separate them. We put the yolks into one bowl and the whites in another. Then we beat the egg yolks until they are light and lemon colored. We measured the cold water and lemon extract into the egg yolks, and then added sugar little by little, stirring all the time until it was all added.
  • Then we measured out one cup of flour. We took two tablespoons of the flour from the cup. This left exactly 7/8 of a cup. Mother had us add the cornstarch and put it in the cup with the flour. This makes a level cup again. [Note: What you are doing here is making cake flour from regular all purpose flour. This is a great process to memorize, because Twenties recipes used a lot of cake flour!]
  • Then we measured out the baking powder and the salt and carefully piled them on top of the flour and cornstarch. We sifted the flour, cornstarch, salt, and baking soda right into the egg yolk mixture. Then we stirred it up very gently but thoroughly.
  • Next we beat up the egg whites until they were very stiff. After they were stiff we let them stand in the bowl for one minute. We emptied the egg whites into the other things and folded them in with a knife. They ought not to be beaten in, but they have to be mixed, so folding them over and over gently with the flat side of a knife is the best way.
  • We greased a muffin pan and then added a little flour to each compartment and shook it around so the pans would be both greased and floured. Then we dropped cake batter in the little compartments with a spoon, filling them about two-thirds full. We had already lighted the oven and it was warm. We baked the little sun drops in a moderate oven (350℉) for about twenty minutes. When they were dont they were a lovely golden brown color.
  • Mother told us not to take them out of the pans right away, but to let them stand for five minutes to cool. Then we helped them out very gently.
Cooking Techniques · Recipe Collections · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes Date Nut Bread

VintageJenny

In Lesson 27 of When Sue Began to Cook, Sue and Ruth move from salad dressings to quick breads. Date nut bread was a staple of the Twenties household. It provided energy, carbohydrates, something sweet, and a little bit of fruit all in one serving — a Twenties ideal! When Sue makes date nut bread she is learning to make a recipe she will use her entire life.

This recipe uses Graham flour, which is whole wheat flour named for Dr. Sylvester Graham who invented the Graham cracker. This was unsifted wheat with the bran and the germ still in it for nutrition. It also spoiled faster than white flour. You use whatever you like for this receipe. I’ll be using a gluten free one-for-one flour blend.

Sue’s diary for Date Nut Bread

After we carefully took the loaf out of the oven, Mother had us moisten a clean cloth with a little milk and brush it over the top of the loaf. “To soften the crust,” she said.

We didn’t put the bread away till it was cold, and Mother said it outghtn’t to be cut till the next day, or even the day after. Then it will make delicious sandwiches.

There isn’t any doubt in Ruth Ann’s mind as to what she is going to do with her date bread. She is going to make it into sandwiches for the McCarthys! Because the unexpected has happened, and Ruth Ann and I are to blame, or rather, it’s all to our credit.

We coaxed Mother and Mrs. Rambler to let Clarence and Clyde McCarthy wash their windows on the outside, and said we would be around all the time to see that it was well done. And we were. Every time the boys seemed to “slack up” a little bit, we would say, “Oh, what a beautiful piece of work this is!” And we would praise them for a shining pane. Then they would try all the harder.

And the funny part of it is that the very next day after Clarence and Clyde finished at Mrs. Rambler’s house they began to wash the McCarthy windows on the outside! That actually inspired Mrs. McCarthy and Maxine and Muriel to begin to wash windows on the inside, and really, it makes such a difference! Now Clarence and Clyde say they are going to paint the whole house if they can get their older brother Gerald, who lives in Omaha, to lend them the money.

I guess I’ll make some of my date bread into sandwiches for the McCarthys, too.

Print Recipe

Date Nut Bread

From When Sue Began to Cook by Louise Bennett Weaver
Course: Dessert, Luncheon
Cuisine: American
Keyword: baking, fruit, nuts, quick breads

Equipment

  • 1 loaf pan 9 x 5 preferred

Ingredients

  • 2 cups Graham flour (whole wheat)
  • 1½ cups white flour
  • 3½ tsp baking powder
  • ⅛ tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 cup chopped, seeded dates
  • ½ cup nut meats broken up fine
  • ½ cup brown sugar
  • 2 tbsp molasses
  • 1⅔ cups milk

Instructions

  • Mix the white flour, baking powder, soda, and salt together and sift it with the flour sifter. Empty this into a big mixing bowl and add the Graham (whole wheat) flour, dates, and nuts.
  • Add the brown sugar, the molasses, and the milk. Stir it all up with a big spoon until it is well mixed, and then pour it inot a well greased bread pan.
  • Put the loaf into the oven at 350℉ for 50 minutes. When it's done, take it from the oven and let stand for five minutes, then carefully turn it out of the pan. Let the bread cool completely before cutting.
Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue Makes Creamy Salad Dressing

VintageJenny

Welcome to Lesson 26 in When Sue Began to Cook. We’re halfway to the end! If you’re just joining us, a click on the linked book title will take you to Lesson 1 so you can follow along with the story. This week Sue makes Creamy Salad Dressing.

Although it contains egg yolks, this is a cooked recipe. Thus, it’s safe to make in the US with store bought eggs. They do not have to be pasteurized.

Salad dressings in the Twenties came in to main flavors: French, which was a very tart vinaigrette (not the red sweet French we know today) and cooked creamy salad dressing like this. I’m usually putting the salads together last thing before dinner, so I whip up a Twenties French dressing and call it a day. This salad dressing is cooked and refrigerated, and then thinned as it is used with cream or milk or unsweetened whipped cream.

Here’s a peek into Sue’s weekly kitchen diary:

Sue’s Diary from Creamy Salad Dressing Saturday

Another warm beautiful day that makes us think of picnics. And picnics, Mother says, mean salads and sandwiches. And salads and sandwiches mean salad dressing. So Ruth Ann and I have been learning how to make it.

A little jar of salad dressing makes a good present, Mother thinks. Ever since she said it, Ruth Ann has been trying hard to thihnk of someone to give her little jar to. I’m afraid Mrs. Rancher will get it in the end, after all. Just at present, though, Ruth Ann is considering whether a lovely little gift of salad dressing mightn’t inspire the McCarthy’s to make some of their own later. I doubt it. We’ve been cleaning house for a week and they haven’t shown any signs of beginning on their house yet. So I’m afraid a good example doesn’t mean much to them.

Speaking of gifts, Mother has just given Ruth Ann a funny one! A little bundle of paper straws to drink milk through. Ruth Ann doesn’t like milk, and never would drink it till Mother had her try it over here through a straw. And she didn’t mind that one bit. As Mother is very anxious to have Ruth Ann grow strong and fat before her Mother comes home, she has given her the straws to use at every meal. Won’t Aunt Ruth be pleased!

Print Recipe

Creamy Salad Dressing

from When Sue Began to Cook, 1924.
Course: Dinner, Luncheon, Salad
Cuisine: American
Keyword: Bettina’s Best Recipes, picnic, Ruth Ann, salad, Twenties recipes, When Sue Began to Cook

Equipment

  • 1 Double boiler

Ingredients

  • 3 tbsp sugar
  • 3 tbsp flour
  • 1 tsp salt
  • ½ tsp dry mustard
  • ¼ tsp paprika
  • 2 egg yolks beaten thoroughly. *Note* This is a cooked dressing recipe. It is safe to use yolks from the fridge.
  • ⅓ cup vinegar
  • ⅔ cup water
  • 1 tbsp butter

Instructions

  • Mother had us each measure the sugar, flour, salt, and mustard very carefully into the top of the double boiler. Then we mixed it all thoroughly with a spoon.
  • We each put our two egg yolks (Mother used the whites for the tops of two lemon pies) in a bowl and beat them up. Then we added the vinegar and water and kept on beating for a minute.
  • Then we poured the mixture slowly into the flour mixture, stirring with a spoon all the time as we added it. (I mean of course that we stirred the mixture in the top of the double boiler.)
  • When it was all added, we beat it for a minute with the egg beater and then put it over the fire. Of course, we made sure we had plenty of water in the lower part.
  • Mother had us each leave our Dover egg beater in the salad dressing, and as it cooked we gave it a good beating every few minutes.
  • It took only about ten minutes for the dressing to cook; when it was done it was as thick as thick, creamy custard. Just before we took it off the stove we added the butter. That makes it smoother.
  • Ruth Ann and I each poured our dressing into a nice clean little fruit jar that we had first moistened on the inside with cold water. Mother says this keeps the dressing from sticking to the jar. After the dressing was cool, we put the lids on our jars and put our dressing away in the ice box. Ruth Ann is going to take hers home tonight. Mother says salad dressing like this will keep for months if it's stored in a cold place. Before you use it on salad the first thing to do is mix it (just the part you are going to use, of course) with thin or whipped cream.
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 Salmon Loaf

VintageJenny

In Lesson 24 of When Sue Began to Cook, Sue makes Salmon Loaf. Canned salmon provided a way for the landlocked portions of the United States to provide fish. Along with tuna, salmon was used in baked loaves like this one, casseroles, aspics, salads, and sometimes sandwiches.

This is Lesson 24 from the book When Sue Began to Cook, 1924. It was one of the cooking storybooks in the Bettina’s Best Recipes series. If you’re new to these lessons, click the linked book title in the previous paragraph to see Lesson 1 and follow the story from the beginning.

As always, Sue has much to say about her Saturday cooking lesson in her kitchen diary.

Sue’s Diary for Salmon Loaf

I certainly do have a good joke on Mother! She is always talking about saving dishes and telling us how good cooks simply things.

Well, after we had mixed up our salmon loaves just as she told us to, and had written everything down in our notebooks, I said to her, “Why didn’t you have us break the eggs in the mixing bowl first and then add the other things? That would have saved a dish!”

Mother looked surprised for a minute, and then she laughed. “Well, you’re surely right about that, Sue! That would have been simpler and easier, after all.”

I tell you, I’m going to think about the dishes. Ruth Ann and I have to wash our own (we wouldn’t be really learning to cook if we didn’t do that, Mother says.) Sometimes it takes us a long time to get them clean. We try to remember to fill each cooking pan with cold water right away and let it soak till we can get at it. That makes a world of difference.

This is a warm, lovely, “open-window” May day, and we thought our salmon loaves would be best cold. So I’m saving mine for dinner tonight. We’ll cut it in thin slices and garnish it with lemon and parsely. Ruth Ann has taken hers home with her.

Print Recipe

Salmon Loaf

from When Sue Began to Cook, 1924.
Course: Dinner, Luncheon
Cuisine: American
Keyword: Bettina’s Best Recipes, fish, meat loaf, Ruth Ann, salmon, Sue, When Sue Began to Cook

Ingredients

  • 1½ cups salmon flaked with a silver fork. We took out the bones and pieces of skin.
  • 2 cups soft bread crumbs
  • 1 tsp salt
  • ¼ tsp pepper
  • ¼ tsp celery salt
  • 1 cup milk
  • 2 eggs beaten
  • 1 tbsp butter melted

Instructions

  • Mother says to write in our notebooks in big black letters: Never Leave Salmon in an Open Can. Just as soon as we get the can opened, we must empty the salmon out in a dish, because many people have been poisoned by letting the air get into the salmon and the tin.
  • After each of us had pur our salmon in a mixing bowl, Mother had us separate it in pieces with a silver fork.
  • Then we measured out the soft bread broken into crumbs, and added it to the salmon in the bowl. We also added the salt, pepper, celery salt, milk and beaten eggs.
  • Mother had us mix it all up together with the silver fork. Then she had us each butter a small loaf cake pan and pour the salmon mixture into it.
  • We shaped it up like a little loaf and poured the melted butter over the top.
  • Then we baked the two loaves for thirty minutes in a moderate oven. After they were done, we let them stand for five minutes and then we carefully helped them out onto two platters. They looked very brown and crusty and good.
    Note: Moderate oven = 375 degrees F.

Notes

Sue and Ruth Ann are each making a full recipe, hence two loaves in the oven. This recipe makes one salmon loaf.
Cooking Techniques · The Vintage Kitchen

Sue’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.