Old-Fashioned Cottage Cheese and Tomato Salad

Sometimes I get in a rut when making salads, and basically make the same lettuce salad almost daily. It was time to look for some “new” salads, so I started browsing through my hundred-year-old cookbooks and came across a recipe for Cheese and Tomato Salad, or to be more specific, Cottage Cheese and Tomato Salad.

Medium tomatoes are stuffed with a cottage cheese, paprika, and chopped almond mixture; and, served with a vinaigrette dressing. The salad was lovely, with the sweet, slightly acidic taste of the tomatoes balancing nicely with the mild, salty, tanginess of the cottage cheese. The chopped almonds added a nice, crunchy texture.

Here is the original recipe:

Recipe for (Cottage) Cheese and Tomato Salad — Source: Westminster Cook Book:1926 (Cherokee, Iowa)

I decided to stuff three tomatoes, so, in the updated ingredients list, I included amounts needed to stuff that many tomatoes. A hundred-years-ago tomatoes were often peeled, but today they are seldom peeled, so I did not peel them when I made the recipe. Since cottage cheese (as well as the French Dressing) already contains salt, I did not add additional salt to the stuffing mixture.

The old recipe called for serving the salad with French Dressing. A hundred years ago, French Dressing was a vinaigrette dressing, and quite different from the commercial, orange-colored French dressing that is common today. There was no recipe for French Dressing in the cookbook that contained the salad recipe, so I found a French Dressing recipe in another cookbook:

Recipe for French Dressing — Source: The New Winston Cook Book of Guaranteed Recipes (1926)

This recipe makes more French dressing than needed for three stuffed tomatoes, so I halved the recipe.

Here’s the recipe updated for modern cooks:

Cottage Cheese and Tomato Salad

Servings: 3
Time: 15 minutes
Difficulty: moderate
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3 medium tomatoes (Select tomatoes that are nicely shaped and that will be level when placed on a plate.)

1/2 cup cottage cheese

1/8 teaspoon paprika (plus additional paprika to garnish, if desired)

2 tablespoons almonds, chopped (plus additional chopped almonds to garnish, if desired)

lettuce leaves, if desired

Step 1. Cut the top of the tomatoes and then scoop out the pulp in the center. (Be sure to leave the shell of the tomato.) Turn tomato upside down on a plate to drain out any remaining liquid.

Step 2. Make the filling for the tomatoes by putting the cottage cheese, paprika, and almonds in a small bowl; stir until mixed.

Step 3. Stuff the tomatoes with the filling. If desired, sprinkle additional paprika and chopped almonds on top. The stuffed tomatoes may be served on lettuce leaves and with French Dressing (recipe below).

French Dressing (Vinaigrette Dressing)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon paprika

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon vinegar

Step 1. Put the salt and paprika in a small bowl.

Step 2. Gradually add the olive oil while stirring constantly.

Step 3. Then slowly add the vinegar, a small amount at a time, while continuing to stir.

http://www.ahundredyearsago.com

Old-fashioned Chives and Cottage Cheese Salad

Chives and Cottage Cheese Salad

Cottage cheese is a nutritious and healthy food, and I’m always looking for new ways to eat it, so was intrigued when I came across a hundred-year-old recipe for Chives and Cottage Cheese Salad. The salad included cottage cheese, a bit of mayonnaise, chives, parsley and pimiento. The ingredients worked well together, and the salad was very tasty.

A unique feature of the Chives and Cottage Cheese salad was that the mixture was supposed to be shaped into marble-sized balls, and served on lettuce. This gave the salad a very old-fashioned look, though I was a little disappointed that the balls were very moist and didn’t stay together very well.

The verdict: The salad was lovely, but if I made it again, I just put it into a dish and skip shaping it into balls.

Here’s the original recipe:

Here’s the recipe updated for modern cooks:

Chives and Cottage Cheese Salad

Servings: 3 - 4
Time: 15 minutes
Difficulty: moderate
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1/2 pound (1 cup) cottage cheese

2 tablespoons mayonnaise

1/2 tablespoon chives, finely chopped (Green pepper may be substituted for the chives.) – I used chives.

2 sprigs parsley, finely chopped

1 tablespoon pimiento, finely chopped

lettuce

Put cottage cheese and mayonnaise into a bowl; stir to combine. Add chives, parsley, and pimiento; stir until evenly distributed throughout the cottage cheese mixture. Shape into balls the size of large marbles, and put on a plate covered with lettuce leaves.

http://www.ahundredyearsago.com

Hundred-Year-Old Cottage Cheese Pie Recipe

Occasionally a recipe that I pass over when selecting what to make for this blog will somehow get stuck in my memory, and I keep getting pulled back to it. The recipe I’m sharing today for Cottage Cheese Pie is one of those recipes.

I first saw this recipe for Cottage Cheese Pie in a hundred-year-year-old magazine almost a year ago, and made an image of it. But it sounded just different enough that I didn’t actually make it at the time. Every time I cleaned up my blog material files, I’d see this recipe again and wonder, “What does Cottage Cheese Pie taste like?” –and I couldn’t quite bring myself to discard the recipe.

Well, a few days ago I finally made Cottage Cheese Pie and I now know what it tastes like. The rich cottage cheese custard contains dried currants and just a hint of lemon. Even though I’ve never eaten Cottage Cheese Pie before, it immediately fell into the comfort food category for me. It is not very sweet–and could be eaten either for lunch or as a dessert.

My first reaction when I took my first bite of Cottage Cheese Pie was, “hmm . . . This is a little different.”

When I took the second bite I thought, “It tastes like cottage cheese, but it’s sort of like a cross between a quiche and a cheesecake.”

By the time, I finished the slice I was thinking, “This actually is pretty good.”

And, a half hour later I wanted to eat another slice (and had to struggle to convince myself that I really should wait until dinner to eat any more of the pie).

Here’s the recipe updated for modern cooks:

Cottage Cheese Pie

Servings: 5 - 7
Time: 1 hour
Difficulty: easy
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2 cups cottage cheese

2 eggs, beaten

2 tablespoons milk

2 tablespoons sour cream

1/3 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon lemon extract (or reduce the milk to 1 tablespoon and use 1 tablespoon lemon juice instead of the extract)

1/2 teaspoon flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup dried currants

1 9-inch pie shell

Preheat oven to 425° F. Put the cottage cheese, eggs, milk, sour cream, sugar, lemon extract, flour, and salt in a mixing bowl; mix until combined. Stir in the currants, and put the mixture in the pie shell. Bake 15 minutes; then reduce heat to 350°. Continue baking (about 30-40 minutes) until a knife inserted in the center of the pie comes out clean.

Smearcase (Cottage Cheese) and Apple Butter

17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:

Saturday, November 2, 1912: They made apple butter this morning. I had to get the dinner and then had to be teased about it in the bargain. Went to Watsontown this afternoon and stayed longer than I meant to.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

Apple butter sounds delicious—even if Grandma’s dinner wasn’t.

How did the Muffly’s eat the apple butter?. . .on bread? . . . or with smearcase?

In Pennsylvania, cottage cheese is often called by its Pennsylvania Dutch name—smearcase. And, the best way to eat smearcase is with a little apple butter stirred into it. It might sound (and look) odd—but it’s really, really good. The rich, slightly sweet taste of the apple butter nicely complements the cottage cheese.