Category Archives: vintage

August 3, 2012 · 10:40 am

Vintage Victuals: Queen of Puddings

as seen on Instagram

There are so many (millions?) of recipes contained within my cherished cookbooks, it’s difficult to choose which to feature here. I don’t want to focus solely on “unfortunate” combinations of ingredients, but at the same time I don’t often remember to photograph those I do make. What to do? Well, today concludes the first week of the London Games, so let’s return to the London-publishedÂ Cookery For Girls (19550, 1955). There are a number of recipes in here that I look forward to testing, but let’s start with one that will use up my last 2 eggs.

Queen of Puddings, from the book Cookery For Girls, pub. 1955

Queen of Puddings
Â½ pint milk
1 oz. butter
1 teacup breadcrumbs
grated rind of 1 lemon
1 oz. sugar
2 eggs
Jam
Heat oven. Grease pie-dish. Crumble bread into bowl and add sugar. Warm milk and butter and pour over bread. Soak 10 minutes. Separate yolks and whites, having whites on a plate. Add yolk to mixture in bowl. Mix all ingredients together and pour into pie dish. Bake in a moderate oven (350Â°F) for Â½ hour. Remove from oven and spread top with jam. Beat whites stiffly, fold in 4 ozs. castor sugar, pile meringue on top of pudding. Bake slowly till meringue is pale brown.

Note that the meringue is made with 4 ozs. of sugar which goes unmentioned in the list of ingredients. Also, that a “teacup” of breadcrumbs is somewhat arbitrary, but approximately 6 fluid ounces. I used a Â½ cup measure for this preparation. In addition, the reader has to flip to page 17 to determine what a “moderate” oven temperature is, but I’ve included that rather necessary bit of information for you inline with the directions. As for spreading the top with jam: I used about Â¼ cup for a thin, but flavorful, layer. Apply while the pudding is still warm enough to melt the jam for an even layer. “Bake slowly until pale brown” took about 20 minutes at 350Â° at this mile-high altitude.

hot out of the first stint in the oven

Baking a meringue slowly at this temperature will result in an overall beige-ing rather than the white-with-brown-tips that we are currently accustomed to as a pie topping

My choice of apricot jam leads to a rather monochromatic pudding

Result: I quote the boyfriend as saying, “This is damn tasty.” He also made some pun on “Queen,” but that was 12 hours ago and my memory isn’t that good. My notes for repeating this recipe: less sugar in the meringue, and maybe a smaller-in-diameter baking dish to lend a deeper structure to the finished dessert. Maybe it’s supposed to rise, but maybe not. This one didn’t, and looks shallow.

Go forth and bakeify!

Vintage Victuals: Ring Around the Tuna

Pro Tip: When promising an entire week Vintage Victuals posts, be sure to clear some space in your refrigerator. Or have more than one person to feed. I neglected to do this and had already set the water to boiling for today’s planned delight when I realized that there was no way it would fit in the fridge until I eat my way through all of the grapes and cherries (this has been a delicious cherry season) and finish (or sadly toss) the aging shepherd’s pie leftovers.

Today, you get something I wouldn’t make unless under significant duress. And I can’t imagine what sort of duress would require a lemon-lime-tuna gelatin mold.

I will take a moment here to point out that there is nothing odd about lemon and/or lime juice squeezed over tuna. It’s the SUGAR in the gelatin mix that makes this so very wrong. Back in the 1960s, Jell-O brand gelatin produced unsweetened salad flavors—Celery, Mixed Vegetable, Seasoned Tomato, Italian Salad—specifically for dishes like this. HOWEVER, this recipe, although printed in a 1962 book that includes salad-flavored recipes, does not suggest one of those.

Ring Around the Tuna
A beautiful jewel-like entree salad for your luncheon or buffet table.
1 pkg (3 oz.) Jell-O Lime or Lemon-Lime Gelatin
¼ tsp salt
1 cup boiling water
¾ cup cold water
2 Tbs vinegar
2 tsp grated onion
½ cup diced cucumber
½ cup diced celery*
2 Tbs chopped pimiento*
2 Tbs sliced stuffed olives
1 can (7 oz.) tuna, drained and flaked
Dissolve Jell-O Gelatin and salt in boiling water. Add cold water, vinegar, and onion. Chill until very thick. Stir in remaining ingredients, Pour into individual ring molds or a 1-quart ring mold. Chill until firm. Unmold on crisp salad greens. If desired, serve with additional tuna and top salads with mayonnaise. Makes 3⅔ cups, or about 4 entree servings.

*Or reduce celery to ¼ cup and substitute ½ cup chopped tomato for the pimiento.

As for that shepherd’s pie I mentioned earlier? No real recipe there, I made it up as I went along.
1 lb. ground turkey
½ bag frozen peas and carrots, thawed
1 small yellow onion, diced
1 sachet of Trader Joe’s vegetable broth concentrate
1 cup chopped mushrooms stems (I’d used the caps for a previous dish)
dash or two of Worcestershire sauce
2 cups of mashed potatoes
Mix first 6 ingredients together and brown/crumble in a skillet. Put mixture into an oven-safe casserole, top with mashed potatoes, and pop it under the broiler until the mashers start to brown.

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Filed under food, kitchen, vintage

August 1, 2012 · 5:38 pm

Vintage Victuals: Dinner Pancakes

A little background: this was not today’s planned post. I was going to cook, then post the recipe for, a dish called Queen of Puddings. But it’s getting late in the day, and there were going to be too many desserts on this week’s menu, and I have this inside thing about pancakes with my friend Daniel who is currently recovering (recovering! woo!) from cancer and who is now learning how to eat again after five months on nothing but IV nutrition and so this is dedicated to him. Hi, D-san!

Lemon Butterflies

This recipe comes from a British book by the name of Cookery for Girls (1950/1955), A Junior Teach Yourself Book. The premise is that cookbooks of the era (and I can attest to this) assumed that the reader already had a working knowledge of how to cook. Any young girl wanting to surprise Mother with a tea-time treat was apt to run into recipes that instructed her to “pour the mixed ingredients into a prepared tin, and place in a hot oven” without previously mentioning to prepare a tin (or how) or to preheat the oven. This book, rather than being made of super-simple kiddie “recipes” for things like peanut butter stuffed celery, is a real cookbook including prep instructions. Much like just about any cookbook published today!

Dinner Pancakes

Dinner Pancakes
Â½ pint batter (Â¼ lb. flour, 1 egg, Â½ pint milk, pinch salt)
lemon juice
sugar
lard to fry
Prepare batter (Measure flour into bowl. Break egg into flour. Add salt. Add half the milk and stir till well mixed. Beat for 10 minutes with a wooden spoon to incorporate as much air as possible. Add rest of milk and stir gently.) and lay aside. Heat ashet.*Â
Lay sugared paper on board.
Cut lemon in two. Make lemon butterflies (see above). Have knife ready, also dish-paper for ashet.
Pour batter into small jug or cup.
Melt Â¼ oz. lard in frying pan. When faintly smoking, pour in enough batter to cover bottom of pan. Cook on one side till brown, loosen edges with knife, shake pan then toss pancake or turn with knife. Cook second side.
Turn on to sugared paper, sprinkle lemon juice, roll up and serve on hot ashet with dish-paper.
Repeat process, greasing pan each time.
NOTE: Hot jam may be used as a filling.Â

*Serving plate

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July 31, 2012 · 8:52 am

Marshmallows!

Strawberry Marshmallows

When I said yesterday that I’d post retro recipes all this week, I had no actual plan in place. Oops! In spite of myself, I still managed to pull together my very first batch of marshmallows, as made from a recipe found in The Joys of Jell-O (1962). I love marshmallows. Looooove marshmallows. When I was practicing my Only Sustainable Animal Products experiment, I missed marshmallows like crazy. I still mostly stay away from gelatin products, but this is already my second gelatin-containing treat this summer. Agar is great, but it’s just not the same “bounce.” I have purchased some vegetarian gel stuff from Whole Foods and will report back on that, but in the meantime:

Pastel Marshmallows
1 pkg (3 oz) Jell-O Gelatin, any fruit flavor
2/3 cup boiling water
1 cup sugar
3 Tbs light corn syrup
Confectioners’ sugar
Dissolve Jell-O Gelatin in boiling water in a saucepan over low heat.* Stir in sugar until dissolved. (Do not boil.) Blend in corn syrup. Chill until slightly thickened. Line an 8-inch square pan with wax paper; grease with butter or margarine.** Then beat gelatin mixture at highest speed of electric mixer until soft peaks will form, about 5 minutes. Pour into pan. Let stand in refrigerator overnight.
Then place mixture on board heavily dusted with confectioners’ sugar. To remove wax paper, dampen surface and let stand a few minutes; then peel off paper. Dust top with sugar. Cut into 1-inch squares. Roll cut edges in sugar. Makes about 6 dozen.

Messy? Yes. Not as bad as I expected, but don’t try this with kids or they will be head-to-toe sticky, not to mention your kitchen. The resulting marshmallows are more chiffon-like and delicate than the store-bought variety, but I was following instructions and cooking over low heat. A few more degrees would likely have stiffened up the syrup, for a firmer result. I was drawn to this recipe because it didn’t require a candy thermometer, but I could see where one would come in handy if you want to repeat this recipe with consistent results.

How about you? Have you made marshmallows the traditional way? Will you try it this way and compare?

*Over low heat, my water evaporated before it would get near boiling. I boiled over med/high heat, then turned it down when I added the gelatin mix.

**I used cooking spray. Less mess, and the wax paper later peeled off with ease.

Lettuce Was Ahead, Tomato Had To Catch Up

Ah, the busy-ness. The lack of posts last week was due to my being called in to work on-site at a client’s office. Which I enjoy, especially for that particular client, but it does take a bite out of my post-writing time. I’m playing catch-up this week, so the posts will likely be brief while I try to get back into the swing of shooting/measuring/counting/posting items in the shops.

Catch-up? Get it? Whether you spell it catsup or ketchup, here’s a recipe for you all to get ahead on, as I plan to bake up a batch later this week. It comes from a 1938 copy of The Household Searchlight Recipe Book. If you follow me on Instagram (@ampersandwich), you’ve already had a peek at this one.

Raisin Catsup Cookies
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup shortening
31/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbs catsup
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup raisins, chopped
1 egg

Cream shortening and sugar. Add catsup and unbeaten egg. Beat thoroughly. Add raisins. Sift flour, measure, and sift with baking soda and salt. Add to first mixture. Mix thoroughly. Turn onto lightly floured board. Knead thoroughly. Form into roll 2 inches in diameter. Chill overnight. Cut in thin slices. Place on well-oiled baking sheet. Bake in hot oven (410Â°F) about 10 minutes. 24 servings.

Hmmm, I think I’ll perhaps post recipes all week. I have a fruit-flavored marshmallow recipe in one of my Jello-O cookbooks (go figure) that I’d like to try. Maybe I’ll do that this afternoon. Instead of the 20 other things I should be doing. :)