Vintage recipes

[lola]

I have a mimeographed copy of my hometown Monday Study Club's "Favorite Recipes", 1951. I love collections like these, Especially ones from the pre-Cool Whip and Cream of Mushroom Soup era.

There are two Jam Cakes and a Jam Pie, Divinity, French Fried Chicken. The contributors are all Mrs. Somebody, old guard bastions of civilization in our town.

One recipe calls for saffron, and notes that you can buy it at the drug store. Some call for exotic ingredients like soya sauce. One woman, who was clearly showing off her sophistication, gave recipes that called for crab meat and oysters.

Mrs. Abington shares her recipe for "Cheese souflee" that calls for white bread, rat trap cheese, butter, sweet milk, and eggs.

Somewhat bizarrely, the wife of Missouri's former Secretary of State gave a recipe for Mineral Oil French Dressing:
1 c mineral oil
7 tbsp. vinegar
1 1/2 tsp salt
paprika
honey
Beat with a dover egg beater. Whatever that is.
She notes that garlic clove floating in dressing will improve flavor.

My great grandmother submitted Red Hot Apple Salad, which involves cooking cored apples in a syrup of red hots, sugar, and water, then when cool filling the centers with pecans, cream cheese, a small bottle of stuffed olives, crushed pineapple, vinegar, salad dressing.

[Deleted]

That salad dressing probably cures constipation instantly.

[mockchoc]

I assume the dressing was only fed to her husband.

[Don Cuevas]

"My great grandmother submitted Red Hot Apple Salad, which involves cooking cored apples in a syrup of red hots, sugar, and water, then when cool filling the centers with pecans, cream cheese, a small bottle of stuffed olives, crushed pineapple, vinegar, salad dressing."

Please, someone, move this to Abominable Foods!

[bjd]

What on earth is "rat trap cheese"?

Those recipes remind me of having to take "Home Economics" in grades 6 and 8. (It wasn't fair because the boys used to do woodworking, the girls had to do sewing and cooking, learning to wash dishes.) Anyway, it was all very Anglo -- open face sandwiches on white bread with the crusts removed, carrot curls, radish roses and grapes peeled and stuck in the freezer and dipped in sugar. That was for a supposed time when you invited ladies over. This was in the 1960s!

[onlymark]

In the late 60's, early 70's I did Home Economics at school. And the girls did woodwork and metalwork.
In the exam I got a 9 out of 10 for my salad.

[bixaorellana]

rat trap cheese, aka rat cheese = nice, old-fashioned cheddar, the kind cut from a big wheel.

What Bjd describes was more common than not for far too long. I remember one of my cousins, whose mother was an excellent cook, coming home furious from school one day in the mid-1970s. The "recipe" du jour in Home Ec was cut up wienies heated with a can of beans.

One of my nieces is still in high school. She's a very girly-girl, also a star athlete and ace woodworker. Times have finally changed.

[bjd]

I think times changed a while ago. My nephew turned 40 on Saturday and he had to sew an apron in school.

[auntieannie]

haha... when it was time for me to take home economics, the boys still did woodwork and such wonderful things. My cooking teacher was a proper weirdo.

By the time my cousin (two years younger than me) got there, students could decide what they wanted to do. Apparently the first few years all the boys wanted to learn to cook and all the girls wanted to try their hands at the traditionally male occupations.

[bixaorellana]

Just came across this and am happy to finally know what a "shrub" is in the food sense:

www.grist.org/article/2011-10-25-quench-your-thirst-with-a-shrub

[Deleted]

Too many of these things are excessively labor-intensive for us lazy city folk.