Cooking in the Golden Era

[pretty faythe]

One of the things I notice about vintage cookbooks is how much knowledge they take for granted, and how much leeway they give the cook -- compared to the more modern recipes that spell everything out like a military specification with exact measurements, exact temperatures, and all that. In a way, I think that approach to cooking can actually put people off from cooking, making them feel like they have to do it *exactly right every time* and that it has to come out looking *exactly like in the book* or else they've failed.

I have a 1960s reprint of the Old Virgina Housewife, and also a reprint of Fanny Farmers Cooking School (the original era for the first is Civil War, off hand can't think of the era for Fanny) and a lot of there recipies call for tea cups of flour or what ever. Still haven't figured out exactly how much a tea cup is, but I've managed to make some pretty good grub!

 

[Jack Armstrong]

I've found that old Life magazines can be a great source of vintage recipes. The various food companies (H.J. Heinz, Kraft, etc.) would incopororate recipes using their products into their full-page ads. I've made many a meal from them.

 

[Smithy]

In New Zealand where I'm from the cookbook everyone has is the Edmonds Cookbook.

The good old Edmond's Cookbook! Still one of the very best Miss Sis. I would imagine that those in other countries would find the Edmonds interesting. For those who don't know, it's pretty much good old traditional British grub with a Kiwi tweak (some would argue a bit like the country itself!).

It's funny how when you become older you hanker after the old favourites that your Mum made. I miss the big roast dinners, steamed puddings, cakes and all that.

Forget stir-fried sun-dried tomatoes on a bed of couscous with aioli and argle-bargle dressing, give me a roast leg of lamb with mint sauce anyday lol

Miss Sis - missing kumara by any chance :whistling

 

[Decobelle]

I've found that old Life magazines can be a great source of vintage recipes. The various food companies (H.J. Heinz, Kraft, etc.) would incopororate recipes using their products into their full-page ads. I've made many a meal from them.

That's right.... many of the womens' magazines feature those as well. Kate Smith had a regular recipe column/ad in McCalls and others in the 40s.

 

[Miss Sis]

Miss Sis - missing kumara by any chance :whistling

Nope - Sainsburys had real live NZ Kumara in and I cooked it for the BF the other week! I thought they were a bit woody but he liked 'em.

For those not up with Maori, Kumaras are Sweet Potatoes. They were a staple part of the Maori diet before Europeans arrived in New Zealand.

And yes, the Edmonds Cookbook is like a bible. When I came to the UK I bought mine with me and it's been really useful.

 

[Elaina]

lol I love Spam too, and my mother wasn't allowed to eat it because my grandfather HATED it and got tired of it in WWII.

Then I wasn't allowed to eat hot dogs because my dad worked in a hot dog factory as a young man and refused to have them in the house.

Best recipe I have from the era is the 1930's Coca Cola cake. The one they came out with in the 50's and the modern one is not the same.

 

[Haversack]

During the past weekend filled with friends and food, the topic of national cuisines came up. We discussed how different cultures have developed their particular cuisines over time largely based on local conditions, (climate, soil, hydrology, flora, fauna), influenced by human factors, (religion, transportation, migration & settlement patterns, preservation technology, cooking technology). A cuisine includes those foods and dishes which people commonly eat at home and with friends and whose preparation methods are passed from one generation to the next.

We started with the influence the "Fat Lines" have in French cuisines, (butter to the north, olive oil to the south, goose fat in odd pockets - Gascony), and then moved to the question of whether the USA has a national cuisine and what might it be. Using the above criteria we quickly identified several regional cuisines, (New England, Southern, South-Western), but then foundered a bit in discussing the rest of the country. It sort of all blended into "Generic American". But through further discussion of what made those regional cuisines we identified as being distinct, we saw that they were based in those parts of the country which had been settled the longest. - pre-19th Century. Consequently, that gave us the lens with which to examine the rest of the USA. The critical factors we identified were the creation of the railroad and the canning industry combined with a rapidly expanding population migrating out of the previously settled areas. This meant that foodstuffs could be preserved at an industrial scale and cheaply travel long distances. People newly settled could largely rely on these same familiar foodstuffs instead of developing a regional equivilent. In time, the low cost, common availability, and convenience of industrially preserved foodstuffs caused them to be incorporated into an American Cuisine. (There are, of course, some regional variations based on ethnic settlement patterns and local growing climate as well as special cases such as New Orleans.)

Take a look at a lot of the cookery books from the early 20th Century, especially those produced by church guilds, ladies' auxilleries, or within families. Most of the recipes call for a multitude of factory-prepared foodstuffs. Canned fruits & vegetables, ketchup, mustards, and other prepared condiments, condensed soup, etc. Sometimes even the brand is specified. (This is particularly so for cookery books produced at the behest of food corporations.) For example, I have my great-grandmother's recipe for baked beans. She was Danish-born and a ranchers' wife in California. The recipe was probably created during the 1910s when the family started raising beans because of the demand created by the First World War. (read Steinbeck's _East of Eden_) In addition to dried or fresh beans and a ham hock, the recipe called for chili powder, worcestershire sauce, and catsup. Pretty much all common ingredients found throughout the country.

I think that for all the reasons given above, one of the hallmarks of American cookery during the Golden Age, (as well as before and after) is a reliance on industrially preserved foodstuffs.

Haversack.

 

[Smithy]

Nope - Sainsburys had real live NZ Kumara in and I cooked it for the BF the other week! I thought they were a bit woody but he liked 'em.

Kumara in the UK!!?? They've probably had to start growing it for the multitudes of Kiwis living there now lol

It's one thing I do miss when I'm overseas and no other kind of sweet potato tastes anything like a kumara.

You'll have to try the BF out on pavlova now, with sliced kiwifruit on top of course!

 

[Miss Sis]

Kumara in the UK!!?? They've probably had to start growing it for the multitudes of Kiwis living there now lol

You'll have to try the BF out on pavlova now, with sliced kiwifruit on top of course!

Smithy, they WERE from NZ. Grown there and flown here. That's probably why they were woody! lol

I made mini Pavlovas for Christmas and they were met with enthusiasm, but not from the BF. He doesn't like sweet things but he did try a taste of mine and gave it the thumbs up. The rest of his family thought they were lovely and I got much praise

 

[Smithy]

You'll have to have a whack at doing a hangi (for those not in the know - a Maori way of cooking grub, buried and with hot stones) for the BF if savoury is his thing. Great fun! Although you might get a few odd looks from the neighbours and the fire brigade might have something to say about it lol

 

[Sweet Leilani]

Here are my vintage cookbooks- if I see some, I can't resist them! There are a couple Trader Vics on the top shelf.

Every time I have a question about how to cook something, though, they always come through for me. For example, my dad wanted peanut butter frosting for a cake one time. Ever try to find it in the store or in a modern cook book? But there was a recipe in one of my 1950s Better Homes & Gardens books! I have just about all of the original volumes in that series- many of the photos Lileks used in his book (someone else mentioned that here) are from these cookbooks. I also love the pamphlet-type books decodame mentioned. The recipes are good, but the graphics are better!

Here is my 1946 Sunbeam Mixmaster- I just found the original bowls for it at a thrift store last week. I use it a couple of times a week and it runs like a champ. A great website for vintage mixers is: http://www.angelfire.com/home/flexibleshaft/

These are some of the other vintage cooking tools I use regularly. The scale is very accurate.

 

[Story]

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/home_blog/2010/04/lost-la-guardian-service-century-metalcraft.html

Lost L.A.: Cookware for the modern mother
As Lost L.A. columnist Sam Watters writes in his latest piece, in the late 1930s and '40s, the Guardian Service line of cookware was a symbol of modern living through good design. Manufactured with Bakelite, glass and pressed aluminum, the pots promised healthful cooking with good looks to match.

 

[rue]

*bump*

I'd love to know if anyone else collects these old cookbooks and possibly share recipes??

 

[HepKitty]

*bump*

I'd love to know if anyone else collects these old cookbooks and possibly share recipes??

Love the new profile pic!

Yes, I collect cookbooks of all kinds, really. I think I posted a recipe for a cake called Lady Goldenglow in the favorite recipes thread. Nope it's in the chocolate thread http://www.thefedoralounge.com/showthread.php?48010-chocolate.-Chocolate.-CHOCOLATE!!!/page3

Someone suggested compiling recipes posted here for our own book... Might be a good idea since there are so many threads, bread, drinks, seafood, vintage, faves forget era, etc

 

[sheeplady]

This is a great resource: http://hearth.library.cornell.edu/h/hearth/about.html

HEARTH has digitalized books regarding home economics from 1850 until 1950, but does not include many cookbooks (these were considered outside of the scope of the project when it was created). However, there are many great books and journals that have been digitalized in the collection. Some journals are available and indexed through the 1990s.

You can do a full text search as well.

 

[rue]

^ Thanks girls

Here's one of my books:

I love the pictures in it and the fact that it has the name and address of someone that owned written inside:

There's a diet guide too:

 

[HepKitty]

yes as all summer diets should include mint juleps for comfort. hey where's the whiskey in this recipe?

 

[Puzzicato]

That is really interesting - I used to have a flatmate who offered to make mint juleps one afternoon, and I was HORRIFIED to be handed a cup of fruity gingerale punch. She said her grandmother always used to call it mint julep. I just thought her grandmother was giving the children a drink with a fancy name, but I guess she wasn't the only one!

 

[Old Rogue]

This is a bit of a divergence from the most recent focus of this thread, but is in line with the subject matter asked for in the original post...

On the way to work this morning the gentleman that I carpool with and I were talking about memories of our grandparents. One of my favorite memories is watching my grandmother make homemade biscuits. She started by sifting a layer of flour in the bottom of a flat wooden bowl. She then added other ingredients such as lard, buttermilk and more flour to form the dough. She would then knead the dough with her hands for a while, roll it flat with a rolling pin, and then knead it some more. When it was ready for baking (somehow she just knew when it had been kneaded and rolled enough) she would pinch off lumps of the dough onto a baking pan and put it in the oven. She's been gone for over 25 years now, but I still remember how I loved to watch her make those biscuits, and loved eating them even more!

 

[BinkieBaumont]

I heard someone talking on the wireless about shortage of food during WW2 in England, instead of steak, one would cook oatmeal or Porridge till it was really thick, pour into a big square tray, allow it to cool and set, cut it into steak shapes, add salt, pepper and seasoning coat in bread crumbs and fry, sounded revolting, although the Italians do a similar thing with polenta , which is probably where the idea came from , one supposes