I’m currently planning my Thanksgiving menu, and trying to decide if I want to pull in some hundred-year-old recipes. The Thanksgiving menus in the November, 1924 issue of American Cookery give lots of options. Cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie – yes. Brussels sprouts, stuffed olives – maybe; Roast squabs with peanut stuffing, Roquefort cheese – no. By the way, what are bent crackers?
I’ve never given much thought as to what I should do with my knife and fork when I finish eating a meal. I typically just put the knife across the top of my plate and let the fork tines lay somewhere on my plate. But apparently a hundred years ago people worried about proper etiquette. Here’s what it said in a 1924 magazine:
What to Do with the Knife and Fork at the Close of Dinner
At the close of dinner, or at the close of a course, the knife and fork should be laid side by side, fork with the tines up, knife with the sharp edge nearest the fork, and a little to the right side of the dinner plate, and at right angles to the edge of the table. This should be the signal that the guest has finished the meal, or the course, and is ready to have his plate removed.
American Cookery (November, 1924)
I decided to see what this looked like, and tried to follow the directions (though used a clean plate rather than one with food scraps after I’d eaten). It looks really strange to me. And, why aren’t there any directions for what to do with the spoon?
Cranberries are a Fall favorite, so when I saw a recipe for Cranberry-Raisin Roll in a hundred-year-old cookbook I decided to give it a try.
Chopped cranberries and raisins were rolled into a baking powder dough and then steamed, which results in the roll having a different texture than if it had been baked. It is served with lemon sauce. The Cranberry-Raisin Roll was delightful and almost seemed elegant. It was soft, but slightly chewy, with the lovely tartness of cranberries that were slighted moderated by the sweetness of the raisins.
Here’s the original recipe:
The dough seemed too thick when I rolled it to a thickness of 1/2 inch, so I rolled it a little more until it was about 1/4-inch thick.
And, here is the recipe for Lemon Sauce:
I didn’t stir in boiling water when I made the Lemon Sauce. It didn’t seem necessary since the mixture was heated on the stove. I just used room temperature water.
Here are the recipes updated for modern cooks:
1 cup cranberries
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups flour
2 tablespoons butter
3/4 – 1 cup milk
Chop cranberries and raisins. (A blender or food processor works well to chop them.) Then put in a bowl and stir in the sugar. Set aside.
Put baking powder, sugar, salt, flour, and butter in a bowl. Add 3/4 cup milk, and mix using a fork until dough starts to cling together. If it is too dry, add additional milk. Turn onto a flour-prepared surface, and roll dough into an approximate 11-inch X 18-inch rectangle that is 1/4 inch thick. Evenly spread the cranberry and raisin mixture on the rolled dough to within 1/2 inch of the edges. Start at one of the narrower sides and roll, then put in a steamer over quickly boiling water and cover. Steam for 1 1/2 hours. Remove from steamer and serve with Lemon Sauce.
Lemon Sauce
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon corn starch
dash salt
1 cup water
2 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon grated lemon rind
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
Mix the sugar, cornstarch, and salt together in a saucepan. Stir in the water, and heat using medium heat until the mixture boils. Reduce heat and simmer until the mixture thickens. Stir in the butter, lemon juice, grated lemon rind, and nutmeg. Serve hot.
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:
Many popular apple varieties today did not exist a hundred years ago; and some popular varieties a hundred years ago are seldom seen today. Both now and then, there were lists of which apple varieties were best for different uses. Today lists often refer to apples for eating, and cooking or baking. A 1924 list refers to apples for cooking, dessert apples, and cider apples. Were dessert apples ones that were particularly good to eat raw?
Government agencies have produced cookbooks for more than a hundred years that promote the use of local foods. I recently came across a small apple cookbook published in 1924 by the Fruit Branch of the Canada Department of Agriculture. The introduction to the book says that “Canada produces the best flavoured, most highly coloured and longest keeping apples.” I can’t vouch for the accuracy of that statement, but I can say that the book has some good recipes – though I used possibly inferior (??) U.S. apples.
One recipe was for Apple and Coconut Pie. The pie was delightful. This recipe takes a classic pie, and adds a fun tropical twist to it.
Here’s the original recipe:
I used cinnamon rather than lemon. When I made this recipe, in addition to flavoring the apples with sugar and cinnamon, I stirred in a little flour to help ensure that the pie won’t be overly juicy.
The recipe author spelled “cocoanut” with an “a.” I think that this is considered an archaic spelling now, so when I updated the recipe, I spelled it without an “a.”
Here’s the recipe updated for modern cooks:
6 cups thinly sliced apples (cored and peeled)
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour
1 1/2 cups coconut
1 10-inch deep dish pie shell
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Put sugar, cinnamon, and flour in a small bowl; stir to combine. Add the sugar and cinnamon mixture into the sliced apples; gently stir until the apples are coated with the mixture. Set aside.
Sprinkle 1/2 cup of the coconut on the pie shell, then add the apple mixture. Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees, and bake an additional 30 minutes or until the apples are soft. Sprinkle 1 cup of coconut on top of the hot pie. Return to the oven and bake for an additional 5 minutes, or until the coconut is just barely beginning to brown. Remove from oven.
Today it’s generally considered impolite to show up at a friend or relative’s home without texting first. And, I’m often uncertain about whether friends prefer me to make a home-cooked meal or for us to go out for dinner. I’ve always assumed that it was very different a hundred years ago, and that people just dropped by with no advance notice and that home-cooked meals were the norm when it came to entertaining, so I was surprised to learn that it was much more nuanced back then. Here are few excerpts from an articletitled “When We Entertain Our Friends” that was in a 1924 issue of American Cookery
In the old days, such a thing as taking our friends out to eat would have been considered inhospitable in the extreme. Our mothers and grandmothers considered that relatives and social acquaintances came for the joy of sharing the intimate association of the family life whether it was humble or elaborate.
The visitors often came unannounced, and for a stay of considerable length. It was nothing to have a “load” drive up just a meal time, and the well-stocked cellar and pantry always responded nobly to such emergency demands.
—
[The homemaker] reasons that, everything considered, it is easier and no more expensive to take her friends out to a hotel or restaurant, than to go through the nervous strain of trying to play the gracious hostess under more or fewer handicaps.
And so, this hotel, and that well-known eating place, and some noisy restaurant, where an orchestra discourses sweet (?) and very loud jazz music, all are enriched by our money. Quite as likely as not, the meal is followed by an evening of paid entertainment, and anything in the nature of a comforting exchange of confidences or inspiring discussions, or brilliant conversations is crowded out entirely.
—
We are just learning in how many ways we follow a cycle in our lives today. We do not go backward in doing this. We keep moving ahead. And one of the progressive signs of the times is the increasing interest in having our friends share with us as good as we have, right where we live.
American Cookery (October, 1924)
The article’s advice is a hundred-years old, but it reinforces what I intuitively knew – entertaining at home is special. It builds memories, supports the development of strong relationships, and is just plain fun.
