Some things never change. People have always wanted to live healthier lives, and eating appropriate foods is considered a key part of healthy living. Both now and a hundred-years-ago, people worried that they were getting soft, and living lives not as conducive to health as their ancestors. Here are some excerpts from an article in a 1920 magazine on how to be healthier:

To Raise a Family in Whose Arteries the Blood Leaps

It is a matter of comment among many soldiers that the old men of Europe kept things going while the young men were at war. Women and graybeards kept the state alive, and took care of the nation’s affairs.

It was no rarity to see men seventy years of age in the morning look after the stock, and then go into the fields for real hard work.

What makes these people so hardy?

They live differently than we do.

It must be the simple life which provides these people with the panacea for a healthy old age. They do not know anything about dietetics. But neither do they know anything of high living. Their fare is of the simplest.

Can it be the fact that they eat meat but once a week that keeps them in such excellent condition? An excessive meat diet, while producing in life’s first half extraordinary energy and restless activity, leaves the body a used-up, empty shell after forty-five.

Can it be that on account of eating denatured grains (white flour bread) our children are suffering from eczema and eruptions?

Vegetables cooked in steam, and prepared with only butter, a little salt and pepper, will soon build up a run-down constitution.

Wild growing foods are bitter and full of fiber; they act in the stomach vigorously, like a brush. The bitter principles activate a copious flow of bile. The harness of the substance and the fibrosity required strong chewing. The vigorous exercise of the organs brought about a being with strength and muscular development.

Simple fare and correctly prepared foods will imbue the person with the chaste health of the country lassie. It will not develop excessive fat or obnoxious pugnacity.

American Cookery (January, 1920)

A popular 2020 New Year’s resolution is to eat better – and salads often top the list of “good” foods. People have been making similar resolutions for at least a hundred years. There is a poem near the front of the January, 1920 issue of American Cookery that is an ode to salads. Salads clearly were seen as a treat for epicureans.  I think the poem also suggests that salads are healthy – though I’m not sure.

“Receipt” is an archaic term for recipe that was sometimes used a hundred years ago.

Merry Christmas!

As the holiday baking season approaches, I’m always on the outlook for tips that will make it easier. So I was pleased to find advice for how to more easily make drop cookies.

To Drop the Cookies Easily

When making cookies or drop cakes, try using a teaspoon. Dip it in hot or cold water each time before putting in the mixture, and the dough will slides from the spoon without the aid of a knife or other spoon to push it. 

W.M., Me.

Source: Good Housekeeping (November, 1919)

To be totally frank, I wonder whether this tip actually solves a major problem. Many cooks use cookie scoops to quickly drop nearly uniform balls of dough on a baking sheet when a lever is pressed. I still use a spoon, and I often push the dough from a spoon using another spoon. But, it goes very quickly, and I never really considered pushing the dough off the spoon to be a problem. It almost seems more time consuming to dip the spoon in water between the dropping of each cookie – but maybe others will find this tip very helpful.

Some things haven’t changed much over the past hundred years. Similarly to now, people worried about their weight back then.  A 1919 home economics textbook even contained a table that showed the “ideal weight” by height for a 30-year-old woman.

The book also offered advice for women about the importance of improving their eating habits:

Many women say, “Oh, I know I’m fat, but I feel all right anyway.” Nevertheless such women should practice those habits which will keep weight down automatically, no matter how well they feel, because (1) excess fat is unattractive from the appearance standpoint; (2) overweight after 35 years (according to the best insurance statistics) is closely associated with a high death rate; (3) an excess weight particularly handicaps efficiency in work or recreation.

Every homemaker, then, should closely estimate her own dietary. If she has servants and merely makes the beds or does light dusting, etc., then she needs only approximately 1,800-2,400 calories daily; but if she does most of her housework, including the heavier work of room cleaning, laundry work, etc., then she will need more nearly 2,500-2,800 calories.

Source – Household Engineering: Scientific Management in the Home by Mrs. Christine Frederick (1919)

When I make chocolate icing it often is tasty, but isn’t as smooth and glossy as I’d like. Well, I think that I’ve found the cause, as well as the solution, in a 1919 magazine article.

Why Chocolate Icing Loses Its Gloss

If a chocolate icing is beaten too much before spreading, the gloss will be lost. It should be spread while it is yet a little “runny,” so that it flows of itself to a great extent over the surface of the cake. Sometimes if a knife-blade, dipped into hot water is used to smooth the icing, it will restore the gloss.

American Cookery (December, 1919)