Not-quite-day-drinking for National Rum Day

This year, National Rum Day is on a weekend (Today!), so you can celebrate all day long (assuming you don't have a weekend job that expects you to come in sober). Woman's Home Companion Cook Book (edited by Dorothy Kirk, 1955) has some recipes to help you start early.

If you like sweet rolls in the morning, try making rum rolls the night before.

Granted, they only use rum flavoring, and even if you had used real rum, it would bake off anyway. But you could use real rum in the rum confectioners' frosting.

That's a whole teaspoon in a batch of frosting that will cover (at least) a whole panful of rolls.

Well, you'll need protein anyway to go with those rolls, so maybe the rum omelet will help you give your breakfast a higher proof.

This uses 2-3 tablespoons of rum! But it's for 4-6 servings. And most of the alcohol will get burned off anyway when you ignite it. So, okay, this breakfast is probably fine even if you do have to go to work sober (assuming you can handle this much sugar first thing in the morning).

The more I look at it, the biggest thrill this menu is likely to provide is the chance to accidentally set your kitchen aflame when you're half-asleep, fumbling with rum and matches. You're probably better off with a much simpler solution if you want to start your celebration early-- put a little rum in your coffee. Your not-on-fire curtains will thank you.

Cooking with Hurpum

I know I should have written about the Women's Circle Home Cooking from July 1975 in July-- its 50th birthday! But I didn't get this until the start of August, so I'm posting it now. It's either that or forget my intention to post about it next July, when I'm busy with whatever catches my interest then.

My favorite thing about this copy is that whoever owned it before me liked to write on the cover. I can't quite figure out what's going on in the upper right. I'm assuming it's the owner's name, which appears to be... Hurpum Pasteer? That's my best guess, anyway.

Luckily, Hurpum's handwriting was better (or maybe just easier to read against the lighter background) further down on the page. I can tell their favorite recipes were "tomato skillet cabbage page 51" (written right above the pancake) and "cheese cake blueberry page" (written upside-down at the bottom of the page). The page number is not there, but "12" is written twice near the 51 under the tomato recipe, so I guessed it was on page 12.

And this is what we have on page 12:

I guess "Uncle Jan's Blueberry Cheese Torte" was too much to write. Looks like Hurpum's got some good taste, though. I will always be excited about something that gives me an excuse to eat cream cheese.

When I turn to the Tomato Skillet Cabbage, I am greeted by this figure:

Maybe Hurpum was caught up in '70s diet culture and felt the need to atone for liking mounds of sugary, buttery graham crackers covered by mounds of sugary cream cheese. Or maybe they just really liked cabbage cooked in tomatoes and beef bouillon. (The little checkmark next to the title doesn't suggest much emotion, so I was left to speculate.)

I, of course, was more intrigued by the odder recipes. I didn't think the Eggplant Patties with Tomato Sauce would be too surprising-- just eggplant mashed up with a binder and maybe some Italian-ish herbs (if the cook felt adventurous), then fried and served with the tomato sauce.

I never would have guessed the eggplant patties would be made with peanut butter. Is it there for richness? For flavor? (There's not much in the way of seasonings!) I don't know, but that tomato sauce-- a third water and with no flavorings other than salt and maybe some sugar doesn't sound like it would help much.... So weird, bland eggplant-and-p.b. to dip in a bland sauce. Yay. 

I was initially confused by a recipe from the "Cooking with Grandmother" section. 

Grannie looks so content, tasting something she's making with love. 

When I got to the Fruit Punch recipe, I expected it to call for mixing some red drink mix with maybe some frozen lemon- or lime-aid and ginger ale or lemon-lime soda-- something you could serve at a kid's birthday party or a bridal shower in the church basement. So I was really confused when it started out with sliced bananas-- more like the start of a smoothie recipe than a punch. 

But then it went on to sliced citrus fruits. Usually you'd at least peel them for a smoothie. Pineapple pieces would make sense, but raisins? How is this a drink?

And then I saw that after adding the sugar and water, you needed to stir it every day for 8 days, then strain. And now I know why grannie is so happy. This "fruit punch" is to help the grownups put up with the grandkids....

Thanks to Hurpum for giving up their copy of Home Cooking. I should make Uncle Jan's Blueberry Cheese Torte in their honor. (I won't, but I should.)

Pudding away the rice

I wasn't sure whether I would bother writing a post for National Rice Pudding Day. The problem isn't a lack of recipes; I've got hundreds of vintage rice pudding recipes. The problem is that they're usually pretty similar and not particularly exciting. Mainstream cookbooks use white rice, richer dairy, and regular sugar most of the time, while "health" food books often call for brown rice, leaner dairy, and honey. Both usually suggest adding raisins, perhaps along with other dried fruits or some nuts. So I almost didn't bother.

But my copy of Beatrice Trum Hunter's The Natural Foods Cookbook (copyright 1961, but mine is from a 1975 printing) was sitting out and I thought, "Why not just check?" And I almost didn't bother turning to the Molded Rice Pudding I found in the index, assuming that it was made with a thick custard and baked in a mold. Still, there was a chance this would be a weird gelatin mold, so I checked it out.

And my search paid off! This isn't the usual version of rice pudding. It's a fruit-juice gelatin, sweetened with honey and an added fruit of the cook's choice (Raisin-haters, rejoice!), then made creamy with "yoghurt." (The asterisk is suggesting the cook should use the book's yogurt recipe because health-obsessed cooks in pretty much any timeline are assumed to have the time to endlessly fuss around making everything from scratch.)

If you ever wanted rice pudding that was fruitier and less custardy/ raisin-y, this might be for you! And even if it's not, this is still another weird old gelatin dessert (or salad if you serve it over a lettuce leaf!) to gawk at. It's a win either way.

Frozen "delicacies" to show off your fridge

 What could be better than owning an electric refrigerator in the (probably) late 1920s or early1930s? 52 Recipes for Frozen Delicacies (from Copeland Dependable Electric Refrigeration) suggests the answer is having a new recipe for a frozen delicacy for each week of the year.

There's a lot of fairly standard stuff in this booklet, like lemon sherbet or chocolate mousse. Still, a few of the offerings caught my attention.

For instance, while I see a LOT of gelatin recipes, they are rarely minty. 

I think this Old-Fashioned Peppermint Delight would be better than Jell-O full of Grape Nuts and dried fruit or black cherries and olives.

As someone who often cooks my food until it's just this side of being burned because I like the hint of smoke, I was happy to see a recipe with "burnt" right in the title.

And the almonds aren't actually charcoal-- just roasted until "very dark brown." Sounds perfect to me!

I'm not quite so sold on the Russian Tea Ice Cubes, though.

It's not that uncommon to see recommendations to freeze fruit juices into ice cubes as a way to avoid watering down cold drinks, but the thought of potentially finding whole cloves floating in a beverage once they've been liberated from their icy home? Not so appealing.... And I can only imagine what Lace maker would have to say about potentially encountering a maraschino cherry in some tea!

But hey-- the inclusions in the ice cubes can really remind your guests that you have a fancy electric freezer, just in case they didn't notice that the cubes were composed of fruit juice. Part of the point of owning one of these is showing off, right?

I'm just glad I can lazily stock my freezer with vegetarian "chicken" and frozen veggies and call it a day, without having to make any frozen confections to show off that I have a freezer. Nobody would be impressed now anyway!

Harvest the oranges and cranberries! It's August

Cooking by the Calendar (edited by Marilyn Hansen, 1978) muses that "The steady golden hum of August is upon us with its humid heat and incessant growth. Yes, growth does seem to happen almost overnight, especially if we water regularly." And that is why this chapter is so devoted to using up produce. Of course, a big part of that is gelatin salads! 

Well, in theory, anyway. I'm not sure many of the readers are likely to be growing oranges, bananas, and avocadoes, but they make the chart, too. 

I expected something in this array of Jell-Os to sound appealing, but there's nothing too impressive. The apple, banana, and peach versions sound the most promising, but they still require gnawing through stringy celery and sogged-out nuts to enjoy the better bits. And then there are combinations like avocado, orange, and onion in a citrus gelatin; cheese and celery in a tomato-and-citrus gelatin; or grapefruit, celery, and olives in lemon.... 

I was also a bit surprised by the recommendation to make Cranberry Mousse with Raspberry Sauce.

I don't usually see cranberries in stores until about November. Why not a peach mousse with raspberry sauce if we're trying to use up the produce? Hansen just doesn't seem very committed to the premise for August's recipes.

The chapter also includes grilled recipes for family picnics. While it has the classics like barbecued ribs and barbecued chicken, I was more curious about the Grilled Leg of Lamb Nuggets.

Part of my confusion is probably from reading this in 2025 rather than in 1978. When modern readers see "nuggets," we're almost certainly thinking of finger food-- little breaded-and-deep-fried bits (probably chicken!) ready to dip in a sauce of some sort. These small bits of "lamb-leg meat [cut in] the individual shape nature gives" are not breaded-- just grilled-- and pre-seasoned with a marinade rather than served with a dip. I'm also not sure why any cook would want to try to make grilled nuggets in the first place. I imagine them all dropping through the grill grates. Wouldn't it be easier to just cook bigger pieces of meat?

The recipe that might make the most sense for the purported purpose of this chapter is this one that features one of the veggies of the month: cucumbers.

Hodgepodge Relish also incorporates a whole range of other veggies (though not the other featured veg of the month-- corn). You've just got to be willing to boil big bunches of  canning jars in one of the hottest months of the year to preserve the harvest for later. It's a bit of a tradeoff. (You've also got to like vinegar waaaaaay more than I do to actually enjoy pickles, but we all know I'm a picky five-year-old at heart.)

Of course, August is always a tradeoff--  the beginning of the end of long, sunny days, melting into the first days of school. I get the impulse to try to hold onto it just a little bit longer.

Some Dahnke Salads

I had better hurry up and get to Marye Dahnke's Salad Book (1954) before summer slips away! (Yeah, I know it's only late July, but also, IT'S ALREADY LATE JULY!)

And just in case you're worried about pronunciation, the back cover assures readers that the author's name is pronounced "Mary Dank." I guess she was just a big fan of extraneous letters.

The book has what I expected-- recipes for leafy green salads like chef's or Caesar, recipes for the jiggly standbys like sea foam salad and sunshine salad. And of course, it has plenty of salads that reflect the trends of the time, like throwing olives and celery into absolutely everything.

Can't say I've ever looked at a peach half and thought what it really needed was celery and olives bound with some mayonnaise. (I'm almost always okay with nutmeats, though! 😄)

And of course there are salads attributed to other countries and cultures for reasons that are elusive at best. I have no idea how "Fiesta" got into the title of Fiesta Peach Salad.

I thought there might be avocado or cinnamon in there somewhere, but nope!  The peach halves, cream cheese, and maraschino cherries are just "fiesta-ed" for no apparent reason. The Mexican Vegetable Salad similarly has no real indications of how it got that name.

It's just a pretty unremarkable mixture of super-common salad ingredients. You could just as easily simply call it "Vegetable Salad," and diners would be happy not to expect something at least mildly spicy and instead get a plate of mayonnaise and otherwise-plain green peppers, onions, cabbage, tomatoes, and cucumber.

The Oriental Salad--aside from the less-than-ideal name-- is just as confusing.

I initially understood the naming-- almonds and peas are pretty common in American-style Chinese restaurant food-- but then I got to chopped dill pickles and cubed American cheddar cheese. And it's of course all coated in that most Asian of sauces-- mayonnaise. 

Speaking of Americanized Chinese food-- this one doesn't say it's sweet and sour, but it looked like a 1950s attempt to turn popular sweet-and-sour recipes into a gelatin salad.

I just can't see that pineapple-and-green-pepper mixture without thinking of all the sweet and sour recipes I've read. And if you've ever wondered what it might taste in a cream-cheesy lime Jell-O with Worcestershire sauce in it, well, this would be your chance to find out!

While there are plenty of recipes that surprised me, the book seemed to have a very poor gauge of what would be shocking. The headnote for Hot Chicken Salad starts with "Alice in Wonderland might exclaim: 'What, a hot salad?'" I'm not sure why readers at the time would be shocked, though, as plenty of old cookbooks have recipes for hot potato salad and often a hot slaw, too. 

I think readers are more likely to wonder why the hot chicken salad has to be served in grapefruit halves and topped with a mixture of cheese and crushed potato chips. (Okay, the second question has an easier answer-- It would taste good! The first question is more elusive, though. Maybe the grapefruit shells are just supposed to lull you into thinking this chicken-mayo-walnut-cheese-potato-chip concoction is light and healthy?)

My biggest surprise may have been that a salad book has a recipe for a salad that it compares to refrigerator cookie dough.

Just don't get confused, slice off the "dough" of cheese, pecans, hard-cooked eggs, chopped pimiento, pickle relish, and mayonnaise, and throw it in the oven! I could imagine a harried and distracted mom making disastrous "cookies" as an after-school snack and/or serving a plate full of chocolate-chip-cookie-dough-topped lettuce. At least the family would have a hilarious story to tell for years to come.

I loved going through all these old-timey salad recipes, even if I never found my grandpa's favorite: Honeymoon Salad. (If you don't know what it is, the recipe/ punchline is "Lettuce alone." I imagine that joke is at least as old as this book.)

A Saturday Morning "Treat"!

It's Saturday morning! You are a 1950s mom who is occasionally in the mood to cook and surprise the family with a special treat, so you decide to make homemade GRIDDLECAKES (Pancakes). So you get out the flour, eggs, baking powder, milk, etc., just as Woman's Home Companion Cook Book (edited by Dorothy Kirk, 1955) tells you to do.

And then you start worrying that if you make a these today, the family might expect them every goddamn weekend, which sounds like a lot of work.... at which point you notice something you might want to try in the list of variations below the main recipe.

And when the family comes to the table to eat, they wonder why the pancakes are being served with ketchup. And those bold enough to brave a ketchup-y bite soon notice the lumps of coarsely chopped clams hidden in the "cake" below.... And nobody complains because if you're capable of this, what else might you be capable of?

It's the perfect morning: You get the fun of making something when you're in the mood to spend a few minutes in the kitchen. There's little danger of running out of food and having to try to whip up a new batch when the ingredients are running low, or of needing to fend off a request for a repeat next weekend when you just want to sleep in. And you got to enjoy your slice of cinnamon toast while it was still hot and crisp-- rather than eating it cold and slightly damp after having to help Suzie with the orange juice and Peter with a second helping-- because you ate before you got started with everyone else's "treat." Only you know what a genius you are.