I am always energized when we ring in a new year. For my blog posts I use recipes from cookbooks that are exactly a hundred years old. I bought several 1925 cookbooks off eBay and am looking forward to exploring them. One of the books I purchased is unique. Billy in Bunbury was published by the Price Baking Powder Company. It is a combination children’s picture book and cookbook.

Billy in Bunbury is an enchanting and whimsical story about a town where everything is made of wonderful foods. The streets are made of marble cake and the fences of pie crust. King Hun Bun learns that there is a boy named Billy who lives nearby who is very skinny because he will not eat his meals. Hun Bun tells Billy’s mother to give him “cookies, buns, and cake. And the other things that mothers make.” He also gives her a book with recipes that use Dr. Price’s Baking Powder. He then takes Billy to Bunbury. Billy is awed by the town and the foods in it. Later they return to Billy’s home. Billy’s mother has read the book and will make sure that he gets a treat at each meal. Interspersed throughout the story are recipes for cookies, cakes, doughnuts, and other sweets.

The book is colorful and well written. I feel certain that children a hundred years ago begged their parents to read the story to them repeatedly. That said, I have mixed feelings about this book. I may be looking at it through a modern lens, but it concerns me that children are being encouraged to eat so many sweets. King Hun Bun tells Billy’s mother:

And Madam, ‘stead of coaxing
Boys and girls to eat, ’tis wiser
To add a cake or cooky
As a little appetizer.

The book concludes that Billy (now referred to as Bill) is strong after eating treats with meals, and that readers should also tell their mothers to make treats:

He eats his lunch and breakfast
Each meal he finds a treat
The other fellows watch their step
When Bill comes down the street.

Cakes like he met in Bunbury
His mother makes him now
And if YOU want some too, this book
Will tell YOUR MOTHER how!

If you would like to read this book, it is available online via the Project Gutenberg at Billy in Bunbury.

Maybe I plan Christmas menus that are too complicated. A hundred years ago American Cookery magazine provided several “moderately simple” menu options.

I cook a lot and often the lack of detail in old cookbooks is not a problem. I just intuitively can figure out the how to make the recipe. However, when I make candy, it tends to be hit or miss whether it turns out exactly right.  These 1924 tips are helpful, but not very detailed. I also find some more recent tips very useful:

The Does and Don’t of Candy Making (Iowa State University Extension)

A Beginner’s Guide to Candy Making at Home (candymakingclub.com)

Candy Temperatures and Testing Your Candy Thermometer (The Spruce Eats)

 

Canapes and peek-a-boo sandwiches were popular a hundred years ago. Recipes for them, some of which seem very unusual today, are often found in old cookbooks.

A few weeks ago I posted a recipe for Mrs. Sigmund Weis’ Star Canapes which contained capers, hard-boiled egg yolk and white, chopped pickles and pimento, and anchovies on star shaped pieces of bread.  Shortly after I did that post I was at a party and friends had lots of comments and questions. “That recipe you posted was strange.”  “How do you pronounce “canape”? Did I say it right?” “Why was she called Mrs. Sigmund Weis? Didn’t she have a first name?”

This blog is always slightly quirky, but I came to the conclusion that the Star Canape post was quirkier than usual. Then I recently started working on my December posts and flipped through the December, 1924 issue of Ladies Home Journal. Amazingly, there was an entire article on canapes and peek-a-boo sandwiches. Apparently canapes and peek-a-boo sandwiches were the trendy food to serve at holiday parties a hundred years ago.

In case you wondered, canapes are a small piece of bread (sometimes toasted) or a cracker with a topping. They are a  type of hors d’oeuvre. According to the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, canape is pronounced “kænəˌpeɪ”, and if you struggle with that you can hear someone actually say the word on the Oxford site.

According to the 1924 Ladies Home Journal article, peek-a-boo sandwiches are a little larger than canapes and the bread is not toasted. Two slices of bread (which often is in a round shape) are used to make each sandwich. The bread slices are buttered. A filling is put on the bottom slice. Then a peephole is cut out of the top slice using a small cookie cutter. A garnish, which the old magazine article calls a “tempting morsal,” is put in the hole.

Here are some recipes for canapes and peek-a-boo sandwiches in the hundred-year-old issue of Ladies Home Journal:

Canapes

Peek-a-Boo Sandwiches

(The photo at the top of the post is my interpretation of the Salad Peek-a-Boo recipe.)

There are so many things to think about when planning a Thanksgiving dinner. Worried that your turkey won’t  keep its shape or roast evenly? Maybe you should use string to truss it to pull the bird into a more compact shape that will help ensure that it roasts evenly. Here are the directions in a hundred-year-old cookbook.

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?