I recently flipped though the May, 1924 issue of American Cookery magazine and was surprised to discover a book review of a hundred-year-old cookbook that I’d purchased off eBay. It’s nice to know that the magazine liked The New Butterick Cook Book. I’ve enjoyed this cookbook, and have made several recipes that were in it.
Each morning my husband reads Morning AgClips. A few days ago, he said, “You’ve got to read this. You have a seriously strange hobby.” He was referring to an article titled, SeriouslyStrange Hobbies You Didn’t Know About.
I read the article and learned about Extreme Ironing where people iron clothes while rock climbing and sky diving, about Cheese Rolling where rounds of cheese are rolled down a hill, and about Soap Bubble Art where people use a variety of techniques to create interesting effects with soap bubbles. And, then the article went on to describe . . . drum rolls please . . . Historical Cooking which “which involves trying out recipes from the past.”
Oh, my goodness, who knew? Do I have a seriously strange hobby?
According to a hundred-year-old cookbook, there are four reasons for using a pressure cooker:
Value of a Steam Pressure Cooker
Less time for cooking – Whatever food is inside the pressure cooker is subjected to moist heat at a high temperature and cooks in much less time than it would at an ordinary temperature in an ordinary kettle. This fact has advantages for the housekeeper who has to meet emergencies in hasty preparation of meals.
Cereals may be deliciously cooked in twenty minutes in the pressure cooker, as compared with three hours of cooking on the stove. Beans may be well cooked in forty minutes instead of requiring five or six hours of cooking on the stove. A steamed pudding placed in the pressure cooker is ready to serve after being cooked for thirty minutes under ten pounds of pressure. Three hours would be required to accomplish this in any other way.
Even beef neck or flank, which would required from three to five hours of cooking on the stove, may be cooked in forty minutes in the pressure cooker.
Less fuel used – In most pressure cookers, only a short period of time is required to attain ten pounds of pressure. A low fire will maintain the pressure throughout the cooking process.
Micro-organisms killed – Micro-organisms that cause spoilage in canned foods are killed at the high temperature made possible by the use of steam under pressure.
Thorough cooking – The combination of high temperature and moist heat attained by the pressure cooker is probably more effective than any other methods of cooking for making certain foods digestible and tender. Cereals, with their large proportion of cellulose, and meats with tough fiber are among such foods.
Graham flour is a coarsely ground whole wheat flour that contains the endosperm, the bran, and the wheat germ. Year ago it was considered a health food. Graham flour is named after its inventor Sylvester Graham. He began making graham flour in the 1830s, and promoted it as part of a health movement which encouraged eating vegetarian meals and unseasoned foods.
A hundred years ago graham flour was a popular type of flour, and cookbooks contained recipes for graham bread, graham muffins, graham pudding, and other graham foods. Several years ago I bought graham flour at my local store and made a couple old recipes that used graham flour for this blog:
However, when I recently wanted to make a recipe from a 1924 cookbook that called for graham flour, I looked for it at half a dozen stores and couldn’t find it. I eventually bought some (at an outrageous price) off the internet. Each of those stores probably sold at least two dozen other types of flour, some of which sounded very exotic to me. But, why no graham flour? Have tastes changed so much across the past hundred years that a food that once was a common staple is now extremely difficult to find?
While searching for information on graham flour, I learned that modern graham flours sometimes have most of the wheat germ removed to prolong shelf life and to help keep it from going rancid. Some websites say that coarsely ground whole wheat flour can be substituted for graham flour, though as with modern graham flours, most of the wheat germ may have been removed. I guess that even if I follow an old recipe calling for graham flour exactly that I’m probably not accurately replicating it. Sigh. . .
Ever struggle to use left-over pancakes? They tend to just languish in my refrigerator (if I don’t immediately toss them). There actually are lots of ways to use them. Here’s two suggestions in a hundred-year-old magazine:
Other Ways to Use Cold Pancakes
“I use them,” writes our correspondent, “in two ways. First, after they are quite cold I cut them into very thick strips, like noodles, with a very sharp knife, put them in the soup tureen, and pour over them a well-seasoned beef broth. This makes, when served at once, a very good soup. My second way is to make them into a dessert. The cold cakes are spread with a mixture of sugar, ground cinnamon, and raisins, each pancake is rolled with the mixture inside, and they are placed in a baking dish in a row, and quite close to one another, milk is poured over almost to cover them, and then they are put in the oven and baked. This makes a very good pudding, not unlike a bread pudding.”
A hundred-years-ago men’s roles and women’s roles were defined very differently. Women were responsible for cooking, and their culinary skills were considered a measure their success. This poem in a 1924 cookbook reminds me of the old saying that “food is the way to a man’s heart.”
