Need some ideas for a Halloween dinner? Look no further than the October, 1924 issue of American Cookery magazine. The menu calls for serving 16 foods plus coffee. Whew, what a lot of food! That said, I’m off to a good start making the foods on the menu:
If this isn’t enough, you could also serve an additional dessert option that I made years ago back when I was posting my grandmother’s diary entries:
Ice Cream Served in Orange Jack-o’-Lantern Shells
And, you could make these crafts to decorate for the dinner:
I love the little jack-o-lanterns! I think I recall making the apple witches many years ago.
They were fun to make.
I couldn’t get past boiled lettuce. Maybe it is not iceberg.
I’m trying to get my head around what Boiled Lettuce with Spinach might taste like. Maybe the spinach would be the predominant flavor. Another thought – maybe the lettuce would make the spinach taste less robust.
could go with everything but “prune soup and beet balls”.
Like you, I think that Prune Soup with Beet Balls doesn’t sound very appetizing. I also have doubts about the Salad of Oranges and Ripe Olives.
that I might like since I’m a big fan of salty and sweet.
the “red wintergreen candies” has me remembering the pink wintergreen tablets? lozenges? that my grandparents always had.
I remember those pink wintergreen tablets! I really liked them when I was a kid.
There is so much going on here, this dinner is quite a to-do. And so festive. The beet balls in prune soup doesn’t sound too good, but I guess the beet balls will make everyone’s lips red. I clicked on both your links to the orange jack-o-lantern shells (gorgeous) and the witch’s cake colored with red insects. Your cake was yummy-looking and probably best to leave the insects out. ha. Really enjoyed this, Sheryl, thanks.
Nice to hear that you enjoyed these posts. No idea where I’d get cochineal insect food color, so I had no choice but to go with a standard red food color. 🙂
This was a fun post again, plus, enjoyed going back and seeing the early posts on how you made your grandmother’s crafts! I have also had my morning tutorial of how to roast black duck, make a boiled lettuce and spinach salad, concord grape frappe, orange and ripe olive salad, and prune soup with beet balls. Yes, there are still current recipes for these foods! How cool is that! Also, a lot of similar sounding soups and salads using these ingredients and more are available. I think perhaps we get too much in a rut with what foods we eat, and might be missing out on some really interesting food tastes. Now, just to find those 1924 recipes!
Wow, I never would have guessed that there are still current recipes for some of those dishes. After I read your comment, I did a search on Orange and Ripe Olive Salad. I still can’t picture what it would taste like, but the salad was very colorful and made a nice presentation in the photo that accompanied the recipe I found. Sometimes I think that people ate a wider variety of foods a hundred years ago, then I think about the many foods (such as sushi) that we eat today that you’d never see in a hundred-year-old U.S. cookbook. Maybe we just eat a different mixture of foods.
prune soup? mm mm sounds great 🙂
cheers
sherry
I’m sensing just a tad bit of sarcasm. 🙂