VIntage Advertising - Campfire Marshmellows

 

From Good Housekeeping magazine, February 1929.  If you want to give that recipe a try, left-click to enlarge.  A black and white copy of the entire magazine is available to read at the Cornell University Library digital collection.

Vintage Advertising - Eagle Brand Condensed Milk

 

From the Pictorial Review, February 1929.  The recipes look delicious; left-click to enlarge.

Vintage Advertising

 

With the holidays fast approaching, a timely little advert for Nonesuch Mincemeat (which is still around, btw).  From Woman's World, January 1922.  Downloadable from the Internet Archive in an issue that includes instructions on what to do with an incubator, and some forgettable fiction.

Southern Cooking

Slap yo mamma, that's good.

 

The Online Bookshelf - Seasoning Suggestions

 

An advertising cook-booklet from 1922, extolling the virtues of Lea & Perrins' Worcestershire sauce. They don't make covers like this no more.

 Free download from Project Gutenberg.

Vintage Advertising - Br'er Rabbit Molasses

From Woman's Home Companion, January 1921.

Oh, Sugar

image from kitchenklatterrecipes.com

From 1942 - sugar rationing had been announced and would take effect in May of that year, so home cooks were starting to swap recipes that substituted honey or molasses, or recipes that used little sugar.  I'd like to try those 'kolachy.'

The Kitchen Klatter website is a fun read, especially if you want to see the sorts of dishes real people - as opposed to advertising copywriters and cookbook publishers - were making.

Let's just ignore that salmon casserole though, shall we?

War Is All Hell

Suggested menu from Kitchen Klatter, March, 1942.

Vintage Advertising - Argo Cornstarch

And...another one I didn't record the magazine title/date.  I'm guessing Woman's Home Companion, one of the issues that has been digitized and can be found on Google Books.

Pretty desserts.

Vintage Advertising - Royal Baking Powder

From Woman's Home Companion, January 1921.  If you left-click you can probably enlarge the recipe enough to actually read it. 

Chocolate With A College Education

VASSAR FUDGE. 2 cups of white granulated sugar, 1 cup of cream, 1 tablespoonful of butter, ¼ cake of Baker’s Premium No. 1 Chocolate. Put in the sugar and cream, and when this becomes hot put in the chocolate, broken up into fine pieces. Stir vigorously and constantly. Put in butter when it begins to boil. Stir until it creams when beaten on a saucer. Then remove and beat until quite cool and pour into buttered tins. When cold cut in diamond-shaped pieces.

SMITH COLLEGE FUDGE. Melt one-quarter cup of butter. Mix together in a separate dish one cup of white sugar, one cup of brown sugar, one-quarter cup of molasses and one-half cup of cream. Add this to the butter, and after it has been brought to a boil continue boiling for two and one-half minutes, stirring rapidly. Then add two squares of Baker's Premium No. 1 Chocolate, scraped fine. Boil this five minutes, stirring it first rapidly, and then more slowly towards the end. After it has been taken from the fire, add one and one-half teaspoonfuls of vanilla. Then stir constantly until the mass thickens. Pour into buttered pan and set in a cool place.

WELLESLEY MARSHMALLOW FUDGE. Heat two cups of granulated sugar and one cup of rich milk (cream is better). Add two squares of Baker's Chocolate, and boil until it hardens in cold water. Just before it is done add a small piece of butter, then begin to stir in marshmallows, crushing and beating them with a spoon. Continue to stir in marshmallows, after the fudge has been taken from the fire, until half a pound has been stirred into the fudge. Cool in sheets three-quarters of an inch thick, and cut in cubes.

From Chocolate and Cocoa Recipes by Miss Parloa and Homemade Candy Recipes by Mrs. Janet McKenzie Hill, compliments of Walter Baker & Co. and available as a free download from Project Gutenberg. Why molasses should be associated with Smith and marshmallows with Wellesley is anybody's guess.

The Schoolgirl's Lunch, 1896

image from Pinterest

"A girl's luncheon? You mean the school luncheon? Let it be as nice as possible, and take pains to pack it very neatly for her, so that when the recess hour comes she may take an interest in what she eats.

 Of course the ideal luncheon for Gertrude and Caroline is something hot, a nice hash or scrambled eggs, or else a chop and a baked potato, with some gingerbread, stewed fruit, oranges, or a cup-custard after it. A cup of chocolate or cocoa is good for growing girls at luncheon, and a glass of milk is a very nice addition to their bill of fare.

 But these beautiful hot luncheons cannot always be managed at school. Often the girls must carry their noonday meal from home, and as a general thing they take very little care about the matter themselves. Mamma or sister Mary must think for them.

 A dainty box or little basket, a fine soft napkin, and some paraffin paper are indispensable to the preparation of lunches. Sandwiches must be made of thin bread and butter, with potted meat, cream cheese, or jam spread between the slices. Rough edges and crusts must be cut off, and the bread and butter be of the very best. There are many delicious crackers, some salted, some sprinkled with cheese-flakes, some sweet and crisp like cookies, which are appetizing with one's luncheon. And fruit is always in order.

 If it is possible, and it usually is, to get a little boiling water, let the school-girl make for herself a cup of bouillon at luncheon. There are several excellent kinds of bouillon which come in small jars and bottles, and of which a spoonful added to a glass or cup of either hot or cold water makes a very refreshing drink. I prefer hot bouillon myself, but cold bouillon is very refreshing too, and much better with bread and butter than cold water, if the luncheon is a simple affair of that.

 A girl who eats her luncheon regularly, and avoids sweets, pastry, and candy between meals, will have bright eyes and a good complexion. She will not look sallow and pasty, nor have pimples and other signs of indigestion on her face."

 Harper’sRound Table, January 21^st, 1896.

Five O'Clock Tea

image from art.com

“…The ideal hostess makes tea herself in the drawing-room.  A table is equipped with spirit-lamp and shining kettle of silver, aluminium, brass, or copper, and dainty caddy, all laid ready upon a teacloth as fine and as elaborately embroidered as may suit the taste and means of the household.  It gives one a feeling of perfect confidence to see this table laid in readiness, and to note that the preparations are complete, even to the little silver strainer which prevents the leaves from entering the cups.

At many such tables there are three or four infuser spoons for the use of those who like tea made in the cup.  In these days of mal-digestion there are many who regard a teapot as a found of possible disaster, as, indeed, it sometimes is, when the tea is left so long upon the leaves as to extract all their tannin.

Hot cakes are served really hot, and freshly toasted, in the house of the perfect hostess.  Late comers are not offered them in a discouraging condition, dried up and hardened round the edges by having been kept hot in the oven.  The oven is no place for hot cakes.  Small plates are left ready for such as like to eat these cakes by the aid of the pretty little knives and forks made expressly for use at tea.  Some callers still prefer the saucer only, according to Victorian etiquette.  Hot toast, brown all over and well buttered, is indispensable to a good tea in cold weather.  In summer its place is taken by strawberries, cherries, peaches, nectarines, or whatever fruit may be in season.  Fruit knives and forks are laid in a little heap ready for anyone choosing fruit

Sandwiches of various sorts and bread-and-butter, brown and white, are the indispensable portions of fare provided.  Cakes, petits fours, and delicate litte sweet biscuits come next, and the thoughtful chatelaine will not neglect to provide the plain, dry biscuits to which so many of her friends are limited by medical advice, or by the counsels of their beauty doctor…”

Every Woman’s Encyclopedia, Vol III, ca 1910-12, available as a free download (one of a total of seven volumes) from the Internet Archive.

Nightmare Food

I can’t remember if I’ve posted this before (From Dainty Desserts for Dainty People, courtesy of Knox Gelatine circa 1915), but it looks as though it has fangs and would turn on anyone unwise enough to attempt to eat it. 

The rest of the illustrations in the booklet are far less menacing.

Those Who Can, Can

image from The Graphics Fairy

I put up a half bushel of apples, half sliced and frozen for pies and half as apple butter using the recipe in the Ball Canning Book (my preserving Bible, after Putting Foods By).  I’ve been snooping around in my older cookbooks and if we get any pears this year, I’m going to make this.

PEAR HONEY

9 c. sliced ripe pears

1 cup diced pineapple

Grated rind and juice of 1 lime

5 c. sugar

Grind the pears through the fine blade of a food chopper and combine all the ingredients in a preserving kettle.  Bring to a boil and cook the jam over a slow fire for about 20 minutes, or until the fruit is clear and the liquid is thick.  Pour into hot jars and seal.

The Complete Book of Home Preserving, by Ann Seranne, 1955.  Recipe as written, but I'm pretty sure Ms. Seranne expects the cook to peel the pears first.

Mystery Meat

I’m stumped.  Are these some kind of croquettes?  And what is a clear sauce?

“Meat Toast.  Take any sort of meat that has been served at table, cut it into small square pieces, and make a well-thickened ragout of it; when cold, put in the yolks of two raw eggs, arrange the meat upon some crumb of bread and draw a knife dipped in a beaten egg over it.  Grate some bead upon the whole, fry, and serve with clear sauce.”

Tempting Dishes for Small Incomes, by Mrs De Salis (1903).

Good For What Ails You, British Edition

INVALID COOKERY.

Beef Tea.

Ingredients.—One pound of shin of beef, one pint of water, a little salt, a few drops of lemon juice.

Method.—Take away all skin and fat from the beef, and shred it finely, putting it as you do so into a jar with the water, lemon juice, and salt; put on the lid and let it stand half an hour; stand the jar on a dripping tin with cold water, and put it in the oven for two hours. Stir up, pour off against the lid and remove any fat with kitchen paper.

Quick Beef Tea.

Ingredients.—Same as preceding.

Method.—Cut the meat up small and let it stand in the water twenty minutes; put in a saucepan and let it just heat through, pressing the pieces against the side with a wooden spoon.

Raw Beef Tea.

Ingredients.—Same as preceding.

Method.—Prepare as in the first recipe for beef tea; cover closely and let it stand for two hours; stir up and pour off. This must be made fresh often as it soon turns sour.

Strengthening Broth.

Method.—Take equal quantities of beef, mutton, and veal, and prepare in the same way as ordinary beef tea.

Mutton Broth.

Ingredients.—One pound of scrag of mutton, one pint of water, two ounces of pearl barley, salt, a blade of mace, a little chopped parsley.

Method.—Cut as much fat as possible from the meat; cut the meat up small and chop the bones; put the meat and bones in a saucepan with the water, mace, salt and barley, which should be blanched (see "Odds and Ends"). Put on the lid and simmer very gently for two hours. Stir up and pour off against the lid into a basin; stand in cold water in a larger basin for the fat to rise, skim well, re-heat and add a little chopped and blanched parsley.

Essence of Beef.

Ingredients.—One pound of shin of beef, two tablespoonfuls of water, a little salt, a few drops of lemon juice.

Method.—Scrape the meat, put it in a jar with the water, salt, and lemon juice; put on the lid and stand the jar in a saucepan of boiling water; let the water boil round it four hours. Stir up and pour off.

Raw Meat Sandwiches.

Method.—Scrape a little raw beef finely and put a little piece in the middle of some tiny squares of thin bread, cover with other squares and press the edges tightly together with a knife so that the meat may not show.

Meat Custard.

Ingredients.—One large egg, half a gill of beef tea.

Method.—Beat the egg and beef tea together and steam in a buttered teacup for twenty minutes.

A Cup of Arrowroot.

Ingredients.—Half a pint of milk, one ounce of arrowroot, one ounce of castor-sugar.

Method.—Mix the arrowroot smoothly with a little cold milk; boil the rest of the milk and stir in the arrowroot; stir and boil well, taking care it does not burn.

Cornflour Soufflée.

Ingredients.—Half a pint of milk, one egg, one ounce of cornflour, one ounce and a half of castor sugar, one bay leaf.

Method.—Mix the cornflour smoothly with a little cold milk; boil the rest with the bay leaf and sugar; stir in the cornflour and let it thicken in the milk; separate the white and yolk of the egg and beat in the yolk when the cornflour has cooled a little; beat the white very stiffly and stir it in very lightly. Pour into a buttered pie-dish, and bake in a good oven until well thrown up and a good light brown colour.

Custard Shape.

Ingredients.—Half a pint of milk, two eggs, quarter of an ounce of gelatine, two ounces of castor sugar, vanilla.

Method.—Beat up the eggs with the sugar and milk; pour into a jug, stand in a saucepan of boiling water and stir with the handle of a wooden spoon until it thickens; dissolve the gelatine in it, flavoured with vanilla, pour into a wetted mould and turn out when set.

Sponge Cake Pudding.

Ingredients.—Two stale sponge cakes, three eggs, half a pint of milk, two ounces of castor sugar, a piece of thin lemon rind.

Method.—Boil the milk with the rind and the sugar; let it cool a little and add the eggs well beaten; cut the sponge cakes in pieces and lay them in a buttered tin, pour the custard over and bake gently until set. Turn out and set cold.

Lemonade.

Ingredients.—Two large lemons, one quart of water, a quarter of a pound of castor sugar.

Method.—Pare the lemons very thinly, so that the rind is yellow both sides, put the rind with the sugar and the lemon-juice in a jug, pour boiling water on it, and let it stand till cold, strain and use.

Barley Water.

Ingredients.—Two ounces of pearl barley, one quart of water, a small piece of lemon rind, one ounce and a half of castor sugar.

Method.—Blanch the barley; put it in a saucepan with the lemon-rind and sugar, and simmer gently one hour. Strain and use.

Toast and Water.

Method.—Toast a piece of bread until nearly black. Put it in a jug and pour cold water on it.

 From The Girl's Own Paper, October 1st, 1898.  Free download from Project Gutenburg.

"Next to a Good Disposition"

Continued from last week ~ 

“I would rather have a good frying pan to live with in camp than anything else except a good disposition, a good stove, and a good water container.  The iron frying pan does not burn so easily as thin steel, and food stays hot longer, for often in camp meals, one thing must wait for another to cook.  Provide a tight-fitting granite cover, for a tin one will rust, and take flat covers for two stew pans.  Cover carry best standing on edge in the box.  Pot roasts and New England boiled dinners are just as possible as steaks, pork chops, and corn-mealed fish if you provide deep kettles with tight covers.  I have made even dumplings.

Shallow light gray granite pie tins make inexpensive but satisfactory plates.  Gray does not rub marks upon being packed together as white will do.  Be sure, however, to get big white enamel cups without handles.  They are often to be purchased among hospital supplies as well as sports supplies.

Carry knives, forks, spoons, the all-important can-opener, butcher knife, short pancake turner or spatula, and scissors in a heavy muslin or dug bag, made wide enough to lay, not shove, the articles in.  The loose end is wrapped around the whole, making rattling impossible, and forming a protective pad.  A bag of this kind eliminates the bugbear of camp life – hunting this or that in a ‘don’t-know-where-I-put-it-place.’ Silver for table use does not need the care that steel does, and is more homelike.  Get an aluminum salt shaker, as this does not corrode; a size to carry at least a cupful of salt is best, the same shaker being used for table and cooking.  A paper circle laid inside shaker cover will prevent salt from spilling en route.  For butter, get a glass jar which will hold a pound, because some small-town grocers will not divide a pound.  A jar wider and shorter than a Mason jar and with as little shoulder as possible, is best.  An oilcloth-lined pocket is essential for carrying a damp dishrag.

You will need to watch to find square-shaped tin containers for coffee, sugar, rice, etc.  A tin cracker box makes a good-fitting bread and cake box for the average cabinet box.”

If Mother figures out a way to haul along an ice-cream freezer, this 1911 recipe (from the Boston Cooking School’s magazine American Cookery) would be a big hit with the whole family after a long drive on hot days.  Except, perhaps, for Father, who has to turn the crank.

STRAWBERRY ICE CREAM  

1 quart of rich cream

1 cup of sugar

1 pint of strawberry juice

1 ½ cups of sugar

Juice of ½ a lemon

Mix the cream and cup of sugar and turn the crank of the freezer until the mixture is partly frozen; add the fruit juice, mixed with the cup and a half of sugar, and finish freezing.  Let stand an hour or two before serving, to ripen.*

*I personally have never been present at a hand-made ice cream churning where this would have been even remotely possible.

Meals a la Carte

Vintage photo from Pinterest

From the Woman's Home Companion, July 1921 (available on Google Books):

Are you planning a camping trip this summer?  It is well worthwhile to collect the utensils for it with care.  Even to those not intending "camp en route," a thoughtfully planned camp home is a "safety first" precaution, and for those who stay at home, the following suggestions put into realization as permanent summer fixtures on the car make possible daily suppers in the park, or country trips on an hour's notice.

The running-board kitchen is an untold convenience.  By curving the front end slightly the box can extend some distance upon the front fender and give added length.  Five-eight-inch lumber is the proper material for it, solidly joined at the corners, as the continuous jar of travel tests weak places.  Iron right angles, screwed inside as joints, should reinforce the corners.  Two strips of thin iron across the bottom (inside), extending up and screwed to the front and back sides will keep the box from spreading.  These iron pieces are very important, as through the holes in their centers the box is fastened onto the running board.  The bottom of the box should be made of galvanized tin nailed closely from underneath to the under rim.  The advantage of this is that, as it is thin, it gives greater depth than wood and also makes a smooth, sanitary surface to keep clean.

Paint inside of box and underside of cover light gray.  Place this box on right or parking side of the car.  Paint outside of box and cover the same color as your car.

Next week -- some information on equipment, but in the meantime, here is Bettina's idea of a cool-weather motor picnic, from A Thousand Ways To Please A Husband.

Warm Veal Loaf        Cold Potato Salad

Fresh Brown Bread       Butter

Spanish Buns     Bananas

Hot Coffee

Veal Loaf

2 lbs lean veal

1/2 lb salt pork

6 large crackers

2 T lemon juice

4 t onion salt

1 T salt

1/2 t pepper

4 T cream

Put two crackers in the meat grinder, add bits of meat and pork and the rest of the crackers.  The crackers first and last prevent the pork and meat from sticking to the grinder.  Add other ingredients in order named.  Pack in a well-buttered bread-pan.  Smooth evenly on top, brush with white of an egg, and bake one hour in a moderate oven.  Baste frequently.  The meat may be cooked in a fireless cooker between two stones.  It is perfectly satisfactory cooked this way, and requires no basting.

Boston Brown Bread

1 c rye or graham flour

1 c cornmeal

1 c white flour

1 t salt

1 1/2 t soda

3/4 c molasses

1/4 c sugar

1 1/2 c sour milk or 1 1/4 c sweet milk or water

2/3 c raisins

Mix and sift dry ingredients, add molasses and liquid.  Fill well-buttered moulds two-thirds full, butter the top of mould, and steam three and one-half hours.  Remove from moulds and place in an oven to dry ten minutes before serving.  If sweet milk is used, 1 T vinegar to the 1 1/4 c will sour the milk.  

Baking powder cans, melon moulds, lard pails or any attractively shaped tin cans may be used as a mould.

Good For What Ails You

Vintage seed catalog image found on Pinterest

We have taken two cuttings off the rhubarb already.  It was called Pie Plant in pioneer days, and was a welcome antiscorbutic  after the long winter months of eating dried and salted foods.Victorian cookery writer Elizabeth Lea had only one pie recipe for rhubarb in her 1845 cookbook, but gave a dozen medicinal uses for it.  Twice she calls for pills made of rhubarb and (shudder!) Castile soap.

RHUBARB PIE. Peel the stalks, cut them in small pieces, and stew them till very soft in a little water; when done, mash and sweeten with sugar; set it away to cool; make a puff paste, and bake as other pies. Some prefer it without stewing, cutting the stems in small pieces, and strewing sugar over them before the crust is put on. These pies will lose their fine flavor after the first day. They take less sugar than gooseberries.

FOR SORE THROAT.  Make a gargle of cayenne pepper, honey and spirits, or sage tea, with alum and honey, or figs boiled, mashed and strained, and use it once in two hours. If it is very bad, steam the mouth with a funnel held over hot vinegar, and put on a hot poultice of hops, boiled in weak ley and thickened with corn-meal; there should be a little lard spread over; renew it every time it gets cold. Another very good poultice, is hot mush strewed with powdered camphor; put it on as hot as can be borne, and change it when cold. A purgative should be given, either of senna and salts, castor oil; or rhubarb and soap pills. An emetic is of great importance, and has caused the throat to break when persons have been very ill.

FOR THE CROUP. Put the child in warm water, and keep up the temperature by putting in more hot water; keep it in fifteen or twenty minutes, then wipe it dry and put it in a warm bed, or wrap a blanket round it and hold it on the lap; give it an emetic, and put powdered garlic and lard to the throat and soles of the feet; keep up the perspiration, by giving a few drops of antimonial wine every half hour. The next morning give it a dose of rhubarb tea or castor oil, and keep it from the air for several days. This treatment has been very beneficial when a physician was not at hand; and nothing had been done till his arrival, perhaps the child would have been too far gone to recover. In cases of croup, to wet a piece of flannel with, alcohol, and apply it to the throat as hot as it can be borne, has often a salutary effect, applied frequently. It is also good to use for a bad cold, &c.

SUMMER DISEASES. The food of children in summer, should be light and nourishing; if of milk, be careful that it is sweet. If you cannot get it fresh as often as you want it, boiling will keep it sweet. Sour milk and improper food sometimes bring on the summer disease, which is easier prevented than cured.

A little rhubarb tea or tincture, with a small quantity of prepared chalk, will sometimes check it in its early stages, but the most effectual medicine that I have tried is called by some apothecaries, "red mixture," of which I will give a recipe.

RED MIXTURE.  Take sixteen grains of powdered rhubarb, thirty of soda, fifty of prepared chalk, and two drops of the oil of spearmint, mixed in a vial with two ounces of water; keep it corked up and shake it before giving a dose. A child of ten months old should take a tea-spoonful every three or four hours. If there is much pain, two drops of laudanum may be added to every other dose. A table-spoonful is a dose for a grown person.

FOR RHEUMATISM. Persons are liable to have the rheumatism from taking cold in the winter. Where the pain is most violent, put on plasters of Burgundy pitch, spread on leather. Persons that are subject to it, should always keep pitch in the house to use, as it will give relief; a silk handkerchief tied round the joint, keeps it warm and relieves stiffness. If the pain is in the back part of the head, put a blister on the neck, by all means. When persons have a bad spell of rheumatism, they should always take medicine, and avoid eating meat for a few days. Equal parts of rhubarb and castile soap, made into pills, with a little water, is a valuable medicine for rheumatism, and suits aged persons; the pills should be taken at night on going to bed. They are easily made, and should always be at hand: it is valuable as a cathartic in almost every case where mild medicine is necessary. The use of the shower bath is also beneficial. Flannel should always be worn next the skin, and the feet kept dry. Bathing with camphor sometimes relieves the pain, but there is a danger of driving it to a more vital part. Salt and water is useful to bathe for the rheumatism, when it is of long-standing.

WARNER’S CORDIAL FOR GOUT IN THE STOMACH. Take one ounce of rhubarb, two drachms of senna, two of fennel seed, two of coriander seed, one of saffron, and one of liquorice; stone and cut half a pound of good raisins, and put all in a quart of good spirits; let it stand in a warm place for ten days, shaking it every day; then strain it off and add a pint more spirits to the same ingredients; when all the strength is extracted, strain it and mix the first and last together. Take from two to four spoonsful of this cordial in as much boiling water as will make it as hot as you can take it; if the pain is not removed in half an hour, repeat the dose, and if your stomach will not retain it, add ten drops of laudanum.

 (I have looked for a modern definition of “summer disease” and can’t find it.  Perhaps it was diarrhea, which would of course be rampant, not to mention deadly, in the days before refrigeration and IVs).

The rest of Mrs Lea’s rhubarb cures can be found in  Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers, a free download from Project Gutenberg.