December with Martha Meade: An Interminable Parade of Poultry and Fruit

As I've read through the Modern Meal Maker cookbook (Martha Meade, 1935) over the past year, I've sometimes wondered how people back in the 1930s managed to weigh less than, say, their farm equipment. After all, the menus for each day were pretty heavy. Breakfasts usually consisted of fruit, cereal, a protein, and another carb (like coffee cake, biscuits, or sweet rolls), plus milk (often top milk-- which was mostly cream!). Lunches (or suppers on Sundays/ holidays) always had bread and dessert, plus a couple other components (often a cream soup or leftover meat and/or vegetables from the previous day dressed up with cheese and/or buttered breadcrumbs). Dinner was the most elaborate meal, with at least a protein, a couple of vegetables, some rice or veggies, bread, and dessert-- plus often a bonus appetizer or soup. Cookies were only sometimes considered a proper dessert by themselves, and more often served as a way to dress up a fruit- or dairy-based dessert.

Then I remember that a lot of people in the 1930s had to work hard on their farms rather than sitting at desks all day... and they didn't eat entire cans of Pringles on their tractors the way people now do at their computers.

As I started looking through December's menu, I was once again overwhelmed by wondering how 1930s people didn't dwarf their hay balers. The month is solidly holiday-themed. As in, cooks were supposed to make another stuffed turkey on a random Sunday between the stuffed turkey on Thanksgiving and the stuffed goose for Christmas. (Plus, the stuffing was another ingenious way to push Sperry's Wheat Hearts into everything.)

December actually has more cranberry recipes than the month of November, including cranberry apples, cranberry mold, cranberry nectar, cranberry tarts, and this unusual pie.

Don't even get me started on the fruit puddings and cakes. There's more than one a week, on average. Cooks were supposed to serve a steamed pudding full of raisins, currants, suet, and spices on the same day as the aforementioned random stuffed turkey. The month also called for a raisin pudding, a Sicily fruit cake, and a quick and easy fruit cake. There's an Old English Plum Pudding with Hard Sauce on the Christmas menu (to go with the Roast Goose with Wheat Hearts Stuffing, Cinnamon Baked Pears, Glacé Onions, Dinner Rolls, and Celery Victor).

And of course, all this is before the Scottish spin on fruit cake for New Year's Eve.

Yes, it's a fruit cake baked inside a pastry. Clearly, you've got to up the fruited-dessert game after a whole month of similar offerings.

Then I realized that the strategy might have been to make people so heartily sick of holiday food that they would give up on eating it long before the season was even over. Few people are really fans of fruit cake or big slabs of roasted poultry in the first place. Serve up an all-you-can-eat buffet of it for a solid month, and people will start pretending they're already full long before they gain an extra 50 pounds. Hell, maybe if the cook was lucky, the memories of all the repetitive menus would be enough to make the family insist giving her a little break the new year. Well played, Martha Meade! 

I loved spending a year with this cookbook, and don't worry. I've got something new waiting for 2021!