Our family calls the noon meal “lunch” and the evening meal “supper” – but I often feel out-of-step with my friends and neighbors who all eat “dinner” in the evening. So I was fascinated to read what it said in a 1921 home economics textbook about which meal was which:

In some families the meal served at noon is called luncheon and is followed by dinner in the evening; in others, dinner is the meal served at noon, followed by supper in the evening. Luncheon and supper are simpler meals than dinner.

Elementary Home Economics (1921)  by Mary Lockwood Matthews

Did you ever eat an orange with a spoon? I never did until I prepared this post and needed a photo to illustrate it.

Here are several suggestions for preparing oranges in a hundred-year-old cookbook:

Ways of Preparing Oranges for Serving

1. Wipe orange and cut in halves crosswise. Place one-half on a fruit plate, having an orange spoon or teaspoon on plate at the right of fruit. 
2. Peel an orange and remove as much of the white portion as possible. Remove pulp by sections, which may be accomplished by using a sharp knife and cutting pulp from tough portion first on one side of section, then on the other. Should there be any white portion of skin remaining on pulp it should be cut off. Arrange sections on glass dish or fruit plate. If the orange is a seeded one, remove seeds. 
3. Remove peel from an orange in such a way that there remains a one-half inch band of peel equal distance from stem and blossom end. Cut band, separate sections, and arrange around a mound of sugar. 

The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (1921 Edition)

Is it just me, or are the second and third descriptions not very clearly written?

For the second one – Is the author just providing a very detailed description of how to separate an orange into sections? . . . or is the author telling the reader to remove the outer membrane from each section?

And, for the third one – Why is a one-half inch band of peel left around the middle of the orange, only to then cut the band?

It can be tricky figuring out how to share kitchen chores with housemates. A hundred-year-old magazine article titled Homing-it in an Apartment had this advice for a group of four young women sharing an apartment:

Then there was the question of meals. It was determined to prepare their breakfasts and dinners and to put up lunches. To allow a certain freedom, it was agreed that each should pack her own lunch, and that regular meals should be cooked and served, turn and turn about, each partner acting for a week. A second member washed the dishes and took general care of the apartment.

American Cookery (November, 1921)

H.S. Anderson, the dietitian at Loma Linda Sanitarium, published a cookbook called The Science of Food and Cookery in 1921. The sanitarium was operated by the Seveth Day Adventist Church. Over the years the sanitarium grew and expanded, and is now Loma Linda Unversity.  According to the cookbook’s introduction, it was “not merely a vegetarian cookbook, but a treatise on food and nutrition as well; and as such we send it forth on its mission of health.” Many of the chapter headings include a quote that lays out the book’s philosophy.

Considerations when determining ice quality have changed across the years. Here is what it said in a 1921 home economics textbook:

Ice is frozen water, and is just as pure as the water from which it was made. Ice from a pond should never be dissolved in drinking water or other beverages. Artificial ice is made by freezing water in tanks, the freezing temperature being secured by the evaporation of ammonia. This ice should be much purer than ice from ponds, lakes and rivers. 

Elementary Home Economics (1921) by Mary Lockwood Matthews

Happy Valentine’s Day!

You might enjoy this hundred-year-old recipe for Valentine Milk Biscuit Novelties. These sweet biscuits with a cinnamon and sugar topping are tasty and easy to make,

Here’s the original recipe:

The original recipe makes a lot of biscuits so when I updated the recipe I made it for half of the old recipe.