Tag Archives: recipes

A Birthday Rubenstein Library Test Kitchen: Pastel Clouds (1978)

The Devil’s Tale turns nine today! Since those first blog posts in 2009, our online and social media outreach has grown a bit, to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram, but the blog is our first and dearest, and we’ll take any excuse we can get to make cupcakes.

And how could you not be motivated to bake something from this cheery 1978 cookbook from the Nicole Di Bona Peterson Collection of Advertising Cookbooks? It reminds me of Rainbow Brite, which was something I was in to when I was probably about nine, so it’s age appropriate.

Cover of "Jell-O Gelatin Rainbow Cake Recipes"

This little promotional cookbook contains a recipe for Pastel Clouds, cupcakes made from vanilla cake mix and flavored with Jell-O. Which is about all of the cooking energy I can muster on a Sunday afternoon. Here’s the recipe:

Page with recipe for Pastel Clouds, showing four finished cupcakes in pink, orange, and green.

Color photo of cupcake ingredients, including four boxes of Jell-O!I have not visited the Jell-O section of a grocery store in many years and . . . there are so many flavors of Jell-O! I may have gone a little overboard: I got strawberry, raspberry, lemon, and peach and decided I’d make strawberry cupcakes with lemon icing and peach cupcakes with raspberry icing. Which, since I planned to make only one batch of cupcakes, meant dividing lots of things in half, but I managed. And it’s finally October, so I also had a chance to use my spooky Halloween baking cups (which might not fit with the “pastel clouds” vibe, but oh well).

Somewhere along the way in making the cupcakes, I realized things weren’t really developing into one of our normal Test Kitchen posts, with arcane measures and techniques and curious ingredients. Jell-O is still as weird and wiggly as when I was a kid, the strawberry is still the best, and the lemon is still . . . way too reminiscent of school cafeterias. This recipe, while not quite how I’d make cupcakes normally, still holds up forty years later. We’ll see if The Devil’s Tale makes it to that milestone!

Happy birthday, Devil’s Tale and thanks for reading, everyone!

Color photo of plated finished cupcakes.

 

Pie, Punch, and Jello Cake (1977) – Rubenstein Library Test Kitchen

Cover of Duke University RecipesIf there is one truism about librarians it is that as a general rule, librarians are excellent cooks and bakers and they love to share their food. On the flip side, I’ve never seen food go to waste in a library. Your experimental cookie recipe didn’t turn out quite as you expected? Take them to work, someone will eat them.

This month, Amy McDonald and Beth Doyle of the Rubenstein Test Kitchen turn their attention inward to focus on our very own food culture. The recipes this month came from Duke University Recipes: A Collection of Recipes from the Duke University Community, Compiled by the Duke University Library Staff Association (DULSA). This cookbook, dated 1977, was one in a series of annual cookbooks compiled by DULSA.

Our first impression of the recipes in Duke University Recipes is that they are reminiscent of a particular type of independently-produced cookbooks (e.g. those created by churches, social clubs, member groups, etc.). If you are a fan of this genre of cookbooks you will recognize many of these recipes if not verbatim then by familiarity. They seem to be firmly situated in the culinary traditions of the 1970’s. The recipes often mix prepared food stuffs (so much Jell-O) with fresh (or “fresh”) foods to create something not quite from-scratch but better than from a box alone.

While there are many worthy entries in this cookbook, we wanted to pay homage to our colleagues by choosing three recipes submitted by Duke Libraries staff members who are still working at the library.

Orange Jello Cake (Recipe by Robert Byrd; baked by Beth)

Recipe for Orange Jello Cake, part 1Recipe for Orange Jello Cake, part 2

This recipe is one of those that is still popular today. It is usually called a “no bake cheesecake” or some variation of that theme. The recipe consists of a graham cracker crust, a cream cheese and whipped topping layer, and a Jell-O layer with canned fruit and orange sherbet added to the gelatin. When I asked Bob Byrd about this recipe he said, “I have only a vague memory of this recipe, and I disclaim all responsibility for it.”

The first two layers came together fine. The Jell-O layer was weird. It had so much liquid added to the Jell-O that it never really solidified, which was fine until it was served up. When cut and plated, the orange layer just slid off the base. But, as one taster said, “It all mixes in your stomach anyway.” True enough.

Orange Jello Cake Layers
Pretty layers. Kind of like a sunrise at the beach, no?

Taste-wise, it wasn’t half bad. The squishy Jell-O layer played nicely with the cream cheese layer. The graham cracker crust provided a textural contrast to the soft upper layers. In terms of preparation, I think if you omitted the sherbet the Jell-O would set properly and not be so messy to eat.

Jello Cake on a plate!And, as a final note, one of our colleagues (who was born way after the 1970s) commented, “This tastes exactly like what I imagine the 1970s to have been like.” So there you go.

DULSA Punch (Recipe by Cathy Leonardi; poured by Amy and Beth)

Recipe for DULSA PunchWe were surprised at how many recipes in this book called for bourbon. We were pleasantly surprised we found one we wanted to try. According to Cathy Leonardi, “DULSA only served alcohol at one party each year, the Christmas party. The DULSA punch was the punch that was served.  Wink was like 7-Up.  The beauty of the punch was that it was easy to make.  I didn’t invent the recipe.  It was given to me by someone who had previously made it for the Christmas party.  I put the recipe in the cookbook so that it would be easy to find for future parties.” And are we glad she did!

As far as punch recipes go, this is an easy one. The hardest part was finding the Wink soda (or is that pop?). Yes, Wink is still available but it is often found in the mixers section, not with the other sodas.

DULSA PunchIt mixes up to a beautiful reddish color. This is a very sweet punch with a little hint of Southern Comfort. Admittedly, we purchased the lower alcohol Southern Comfort since we planned on serving this at a reception at work. (We made a non-alcoholic version, too, but . . . that was less popular.) The general consensus was that it was the best thing on the table when we taste tested the recipes.

Southern Comfort in the refigerator
Southern Comfort chilling in the staff refrigerator, along with everyone’s lunches.

Strawberry Pie (Recipe by Vickie Long; baked by Amy)

Recipe for Strawberry PieThis is a pretty simple recipe. I started out with tons of strawberries and a store-bought crust (yesssss!). Half of the strawberries got sliced and dumped (or arranged prettily, if you prefer) into the baked crust, and the other half got mashed and cooked with the cornstarch and baking powder into what I like to fondly call the “strawberry goop.”

I have a tremendous fear of burning things, so I may not have let the strawberry goop cook—and thus thicken—quite as long as I should have. I poured it into the pie, let the whole thing set in the refrigerator, and the result was a sort of sweetened strawberry soup, with bits of crust. Not terrible, but maybe not what you want to serve at your next dinner party. Or maybe it is? You do you, you know?

Soupy Strawberry Pie
A little . . . soupy. There’s a piece missing.

As a saving grace, I was going to make real whipped cream, but Beth thought Reddi-wip would be more authentic. And archivists are nothing if not historically authentic.

Thumbs Up!Duke University Recipes is available through the Duke University Archives, as well as online at the Internet Archives. There is also a copy of this 1977 edition in the Perkins Library that you can check out.

Let us know in the comments if you try any of the recipes!

Post contributed by Beth Doyle, Leona B. Carpenter Senior Conservator and Head, Conservation Services Department, and Amy McDonald, Assistant University Archivist.

Rubenstein Library Test Kitchen: Ice Cream No. 3 (1899)

Welcome back to the Rubenstein Library Test Kitchen! Every Friday between now and Thanksgiving, we’ll be sharing a recipe from our collections that one of our staff members has found, prepared, and tasted. We’re excited to bring these recipes out of their archival boxes and into our kitchens (metaphorically, of course!), and we hope you’ll find some historical inspiration for your own Thanksgiving.

With the warm North Carolina temperatures hanging on for dear life, now seems like the perfect time for a summer throw-back recipe, to take us back to moments hanging out by the pool and lingering over sweet, crisp ice cream. And what could better conjure up those images than a dairy free, nut based ice cream from Mrs. Almeda Lambert’s A Guide for Nut Cookery; together with a brief history of nuts and their food values?

I didn’t intend to make a dairy free recipe. When searching through our catalog, I hoped to find a rich, creamy dessert, preferably one containing my two favorite foodstuffs: heavy cream and sugar. While I did find lots of those, Almeda Lambert and her 1899 work ultimately piqued my interest. And once I noted the brevity of “Ice-Cream No. 3,” I knew there was no other recipe for me.

The story of how Almeda Lambert became a vegetarian cookbook author begins in Cereal City (Battle Creek, Michigan) and could fill an entire weeks’ worth of blog posts. Her husband, Joseph Lambert, worked for the famous John Harvey Kellogg (he of famous cereals) at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, a health and wellness center dedicated to Seventh-day Adventist principles. While there, Mr. Lambert saw the birth of peanut butter unfold at the Sanitarium. The Lamberts were quick studies and knew then what we all know now: peanut butter is delicious. They soon decided to strike out on their own, opening up their own nut mill business, “Joseph Lambert & Co.” (Smith, 2007.)

They were also fans of built-in advertising! An ad for “wholesome nut foods” created by the Lamberts can be found at the back of A Guide for Nut Cookery:

Advertisement from A Guide for Nut Cookery

Although peanut butter became the Lamberts’ bread and butter (I’m so sorry!), Mrs. Lambert also had higher ambitions for her 434 page tome:

“It is the object of the author [Almeda Lambert] to place before the public a book treating upon the use of nuts as shortening, seasoning, etc., to be used in every way in which milk, cream, butter or lard can be used, and fully take their place.” (p. 6).

Within her work, Mrs. Lambert tested out recipes for mock fish, for the exotically named meat substitute “nutmeato,” and for custards, pies, drinks, and many other imaginative takes on traditional recipes. And while I’m not sure that her recipes have taken the world by storm since 1899, I hope that the proliferation of nut butters, flours, and oils out there would be a balm to her soul.

And now, on to the recipe! Below are some glamour shots of the recipe and the main lineup of ingredients:

Recipe for Ice Cream No. 3

Ice Cream No. 3 Ingredients

Luckily for me, “Ice-Cream No. 3” only calls for six, very common ingredients: nut butter, water, sugar, vanilla extract, egg, and corn starch. While there are recipes for nut butter in A Guide for Nutcookery, I was not bold enough to make my own and instead bought natural peanut butter from my local store.

As noted in Aaron’s and Patrick’s blog posts, historical recipes don’t tend to provide a lot of context, and “Ice-Cream No. 3” stays true to that established form. After assembling all the ingredients and reading the directions, I was still a little confused but decided to go with my gut instinct. This was pretty easy to do when there were only six ingredients involved.

To create the nut cream, I boiled until the nut butter and water reached a thick, seemingly ice cream like consistency. A small snafu with the eggs and sugar ensued (I forgot to pre-mix them), but vigorous whisking saved the day and the ice cream. Vanilla extract and cornstarch were then added, and my cream(y) concoction was ready to go into the freezer. All told, the entire recipe came together in twenty minutes. Now, that’s my kind of cooking.

Only after I put the cream in the freezer did I begin to wonder about how the ice cream would taste. Some in my household speculated that it would freeze into a giant ice cube, and that it would only be edible after melting. My fervent hope was that the egg would lend the ice cream a custard-y texture, so that I would never have to buy custard again.

Sadly, my dream proved elusive. In texture and in taste, “Ice-Cream No. 3” bore a strong resemblance to an Italian ice. My spoon did not glide through the ice cream; rather, I chiseled away at the block, making small inroads until a suitable amount had accumulated. It was the best workout I’d had in quite a while, and by the end, I felt like I had really earned my dessert.

Finished Ice Cream No. 3

Verdict: Although not quite ice cream by today’s creamy standards, “Ice-Cream No. 3” is a deliciously easy variation. The peanut butter taste runs strong and true, and it tasted exactly what you would imagine something combining peanut butter, sugar, and water to taste like: wonderfully.


Does the thought of a Nineteenth Century vegetarian cookbook pique your interest? Good news, readers! Almeda Lambert’s A Guide for Nutcookery also lives on the Internet Archive. You too can try out any number of ice creams or even dare to be bold and make nutmeato sandwiches!


 Citations:

Lambert, A. (1899). Guide for nut cookery; together with a brief history of nuts and their food values. Battle Creek, Mich.: J. Lambert & Co.

Smith, A. (2007). Peanuts: The Illustrious History of the Goober Pea. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Post contributed by Liz Adams, our awesome Stacks Manager.

Rubenstein Library Test Kitchen: Rice Apples (1777)

Want to make history this Thanksgiving? Every Friday between now and Thanksgiving, we’ll be sharing a recipe from our collections that one of our staff members has found, prepared, and tasted. We’re excited to bring these recipes out of their archival boxes and into our kitchens (metaphorically, of course!), and we hope you’ll find some historical inspiration for your own Thanksgiving.

For my shift in the Rubenstein Library Test Kitchen, I wanted to try something truly old-school. (When the idea for this series of blog posts was first proposed, one of the names we considered calling it was “Antiquarian Culinarian,” with the idea of recreating the flavors of times gone by.) Browsing the library catalog for cookbooks of yore, I came across a title that looked promising: The Young Ladies’ Guide in the Art of Cookery, Being a Collection of useful Receipts, Published for the Convenience of the Ladies committed to Her Care, by Elizabeth Marshall (T. Saint: Newcastle, England: 1777).

The 200-page volume is part of the collections of the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, and it’s one of many titles the Bingham Center holds that offer a fascinating window into the domestic and social life of women in the eighteenth century.

Marshall (1738-?) ran a cooking school in Newcastle-upon-Tyne from 1770 to 1790. Such schools were not uncommon at the time and catered to women who aspired to work as housekeepers or cooks for the wealthier class. As Marshall explains in her preface, the book came about after frequent solicitations from her former pupils to put her most sought-after recipes in writing:

LADIES,

It is at your urgent and frequently repeated request that the following Receipts have at length come abroad. – You were sensible of the necessity of having an assistance of this sort to your memory; and the difficulty as well as expense of procuring the Receipts in manuscript, suggested the present form as the most proper and convenient for answering your intentions. – I hope this will be considered as a sufficient apology for the design. For its execution I have less to say. – The subject does not admit of elegance of expression, though I acknowledge the language might have been more correct. It was my wish to have rendered it so, but the various other duties in which I am engaged, would not allow me leisure sufficient for the purpose. – Such as the work is, I hope it will be received with candour, and consulted with advantage.

The eighteenth century wasn’t exactly the heyday of British cuisine, and many of the dishes in Marshall’s book hopefully won’t be making a comeback anytime soon. There are entries on how to make Herring Pudding, Calf’s Foot Jelly, Stewed Turbot’s Head, Eel Pye, and something called “White Soop.”

Inspired by the changing of the seasons, I opted for something a little more autumnal (and less zoological): Rice Apples! The recipe not only looked relatively easy and tasty, but it also presented a rare opportunity to use my apple-corer, a handy but sadly neglected implement in my kitchen that only gets a chance to shine once every couple of years.

Here’s the recipe, which I’ve transcribed below in case it’s difficult to read the old-fashioned ligatures:

Rice Apples Recipe

  • Boil a quarter of a pound of rice in three pints of water for a quarter of an hour
  • Strain off the water, and put to the rice, one pint of milk, one pint of cream, a stick of cinnamon, and lemon skin
  • Let them boil, and sweeten to your taste
  • Beat four eggs, leaving out two whites, put them to the rice, and let it stand on a slow fire a little
  • Keep it stirring till cool
  • Pare and cut the core out of your apples, put them in a dish well buttered, and strewed over with grated bread and sugar
  • Fill them with the above mixture, and cover them over with it
  • Strew it over with bread crumbs and sugar, and bake it a fine brown
  • Melt butter with sack and sugar, and cover them before they go to table

One thing you immediately notice about eighteenth-century recipes is their lack of helpful specifics. How many apples should you use, and what kind? Should the lemon skin be peeled or grated? (I went with grated.) Exactly how many minutes is “a little”?

Modern cookbooks don’t leave much room for interpretation. They give exact measurements, precise times and temperatures, and sometimes even brand-name ingredients, so that your dish looks and tastes as close as possible like the one in the book.

Not so with Mistress Marshall. Her instructions are more like general guidelines. A little this, a little that. But I actually appreciated that about her style. Cooking is more fun when it’s improvisational and you have to use your own judgment. In keeping with m’lady’s free-spiritedness, I even made a few modifications along the way, whenever I thought they might improve the final result. I’ll describe those here.

The recipe calls for three pints of water to cook the rice. That’s six cups of water, which is way more than you need for less than a cup of rice, and it would take forever to boil. I reduced the water to two cups, which was enough for the rice to absorb without having to strain any off.

I chose small snack-size Golden Delicious apples, the kind you can buy in a bag, instead of the jumbo-sized genetically modified ones you often see in the grocery store. The smaller ones seemed more historically authentic, closer to the size of apples you would probably find two hundred years ago. After coring and peeling the apples, I put them in a bowl of water with a little lemon juice to keep them from browning.

After adding the eggs to the milky rice mixture, you’re supposed to let it stand over low heat for “a little” and stir. I did this for about 15 minutes, until it started to thicken. Then I took it off the burner and stirred periodically for another 15 minutes or so, until it had the consistency of lumpy cottage cheese.

Instead of store-bought breadcrumbs, I bought a baguette and used a food processor to make fresh ones. And before popping the whole thing in the oven, I sprinkled a little ground cinnamon on top for good measure, because cinnamon and apples were made for each other. I think this was a good addition. I used a 350-degree oven and baked the dish for one hour.

The final step of the recipe calls for pouring over the apples a mixture of butter, sugar, and “sack.” I had to look up what sack was. Turns out it was a kind of sweet, fortified white wine from Spain, the forerunner of sherry. I’m not a big sherry fan, but I picked up a cheap golden variety in the wine aisle at the grocery store.

The verdict: Quite delectable, by Jove! The apples were tender and sweet, and the milky-rice-breadcrumb mixture was like an envelope of bread pudding. The sherry added a subtle boozy kick that seemed especially English. I would have no qualms serving this to company, however high or low their station.

 

Guest post by Aaron Welborn, Director of Communications, Duke University Libraries. Special thanks to Gwen Hawkes (T’16), Library Communications Student Assistant, for her help in researching this recipe and its historical context.

Rubenstein Library Test Kitchen: Apple Kuchen

Want to make history this Thanksgiving? Every Friday between now and Thanksgiving, we’ll be sharing a recipe from our collections that one of our staff members has found, prepared, and tasted. We’re excited to bring these recipes out of their archival boxes and into our kitchens (metaphorically, of course!), and we hope you’ll find some historical inspiration for your own Thanksgiving.

Happy Oktoberfest!  To kick off our Rubenstein Library Test Kitchen series, I prepared a recipe to celebrate the German festival, which runs this year from September 20th to October 10th.

The Recipe and Duke History

I found a recipe for apple kuchen, or apple cake, in the Ted Minah Papers.  The recipe was grouped with a series of recipes apparently intended for Duke’s Woman’s College, [1] ranging from barbecued meatballs to a lemon soufflé pudding.  Although a sweet cake, interestingly, the recipe was labeled as a bread recipe rather than a dessert.

The recipe helped me learn more about some of the culinary history at Duke, especially about the influential Theodore W. “Ted” Minah.  Minah was the director of Duke University Dining Halls from 1946 to 1974. By his retirement in 1974, Minah had transformed the dining halls at Duke University from a small operation to 12 dining halls serving approximately 15,000 meals each day.

The context for the recipe collection wasn’t clear – the ingredient proportions were for smaller portions, usually 4 to 6 servings.  Since it was coming from the collection of the Dining Hall director, I expected the recipe to be scaled to serve large groups of students, but perhaps the recipes were designed for a Woman’s College cookbook?  I’ve seen university-related cookbooks in other collections, like the “Culinary Casebooks” in the Duke Law Dames records (possibly a topic for a future “Rubenstein Library Test Kitchen” post!).

Like many older recipes, it was short and to the point – no lengthy descriptions of methods or ingredients to coddle the home cook.  I did encounter an interesting culinary term I’d never seen before, but which continues to appear in other archival collections I’m processing: Oleo.  Oleo was a common colloquial term used to refer to margarine, whose full name is oleomargarine.  I admit that I strayed from the recipe and used butter rather than margarine, but that substitution didn’t seem to hurt the recipe.

The Results

As often happens in the archives, I learned a variety of interesting new facts that I would have never guessed I’d encounter – from the history of the university, to colloquial cooking terms!

AppleKuchen in pan

Overall, the recipe was perfect for fall – the tart apples, cinnamon, and somewhat unusual cake batter made a tasty seasonal treat.  The recipe was easy and quick to make, used common ingredients found in any grocery store, and should appeal to even the pickiest eater.

apple kuchen on plate

Rating:  4 out of 5 stars!

Stay tuned for more tasty recipes from our collections!

1. The Woman’s College was established at Duke in 1930 as a parallel to Trinity College for men. The Woman’s College fostered a community that allowed for shared university faculty, curriculum, and educational facilities with the men’s college, while giving women an opportunity for leadership through separate student government, social standards committees, and judicial board.  The Woman’s College merged with Trinity College in 1972.

Post contributed by Patrick Dollar,  Drill Intern, Duke University Archives.

 

Turkey leftovers? Problem Solved.

Need something to do with the turkey leftover from Thanksgiving? One of our 1950s advertising cookbooks put out by the Poultry & Egg National Board had 33 suggestions, including turkey and corn casseroles, turkey macaroni loaf, and something called “Turkey Red Devils.” However, the Home Economic Staff of the PENB Laboratory Kitchen (pictured below) really got creative when it came to putting turkey in salads. Tied for grossest in my book are the Jellied Turkey Pineapple Loaf and the Turkey Mousse. Which wins your vote? Let us know below, or suggest a third choice in the comments!

Turkey Mousse:Cookbook from the Poultry & Egg National Board

  • 4 envelopes unflavored gelatin
  • 1 cup broth
  • 1½ cups boiling turkey broth
  • 2 cups finely chopped or ground cooked turkey
  • 1 cup finely diced celery
  • ¼ cup finely diced sweet pickle
  • ¼ cup finely diced green pepper
  • 1 pimiento, chopped
  • 1 cup mayonnaise or salad dressing
  • ¾ tsp. salt
  • ¼ tsp. white pepper
  • Dash of cayenne
  • 2 to 3 tbsp. lemon juice
  • 1 cup heavy cream, whipped
  • Parsley or celery leaves
  • Deviled egg halves

Soften gelatin in the cold broth. Dissolve thoroughly in boiling broth. Chill until jelly-like. Combine turkey, celery, pickles, pepper and pimiento. Add mayonnaise, seasoning and lemon juice. Add thickened gelatin mixture. Fold in the whipped cream. Taste and add more seasoning if necessary. Pour into a 1½  to 2-quart mold. Chill. Unmold. Garnish with the greens and deviled eggs. 10 to 12 servings. Increase gelatin to 5 envelopes in warm weather.

Jellied Turkey Pineapple Loaf:

Pineapple Layer:

Home economists debating a turkey
"Have some Turkey Mousse. I molded it into a turkey shape." "It's beautiful! Too bad I've already had dessert in the form of a Jellied Turkey Pineapple Loaf!"
  • 1 package lemon gelatin
  • ¾ cup hot water
  • 1 cup pineapple juice, drained from a No. 2 can crushed pineapple (2½ cups)
  • 1¼ cups well-drained crushed pineapple
  • ½ cup grated carrot

Turkey Layer:

  • 1 package lemon gelatin
  • 1 chicken bouillon cube
  • ¾ cup hot water
  • 1 cup cold water
  • Grated rind of 1 lemon
  • 2 tbsp. lemon juice
  • 1 cup finely chopped cooked turkey
  • 1 cup finely diced celery
  • ¼ cup sliced stuffed green onion
  • ½ tsp. salt, or more

Pour hot water over lemon gelatin. Stir until gelatin is dissolved. Stir in pineapple juice, pineapple and carrot. Blend and cool until mixture is thickened. Pour into a 1½ quart mold. Chill until set. Pour turkey layer on top. To make turkey layer: Dissolve the gelatin and the bouillon cube in the hot water. Add cold water stirring constantly. Cool until mixture is thickened. Add remaining ingredients. Season to taste with salt. Pour mixture over top of set pineapple layer. Chill until firm. Turn out of mold on lettuce or other greens. Serve with salad dressing. 8 to 10 servings.

Now that you’ve perused and possibly tried them both, we want to know: Turkey Mousse or Jellied Turkey Pineapple Loaf? Vote now! Or, peruse the Emergence of Advertising in America cookbooks and find your own options for turkey leftovers.

Post contributed by Liz Shesko, Intern for the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History.

Soup or Salad? Sealtest Suggests Soup.

Sealtest Recipes CoverToday’s Thanksgiving menu comes from a 1940 advertising cookbook published by Sealtest Dairy, which was a division of the National Dairy Products Corporation, a predecessor to Kraft Foods. They marketed their dairy products as having “scientific supervision unsurpassed,” and printed recipes developed in their Laboratory Kitchen. Despite the cover image showing turkey, a creamy soup, and cheesy potatoes, their dairy-heavy Thanksgiving menu had pork as a main dish:

  • Pea Soup Supreme with Cheese Croutons
  • Roast Stuffed Shoulder of Pork
  • Mashed Turnips
  • Buttered Broccoli
  • Hot Rolls with Butter
  • Orange Salad with French Dressing
  • Pumpkin Pie with Whipped Cream and Ginger
  • Coffee with Cream

Pea soup, you say? Why yes, complete with a quart of milk, butter, and cheesy croutons!

Thanksgiving menu
Sealtest's Thanksgiving menu, featuring pea soup and pilgrims

Pea Soup Supreme with Cheese Croutons

  • 1 cup diced potatoes
  • 1½ tbsp. chopped onion
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1 cup water
  • 1 No. 2 can peas
  • 2 tbsp. butter
  • 2 tbsp. flour
  • 1 quart milk
  • Few grains pepper

Combine the potatoes, onions, salt and water in a saucepan. Cover and cook until potatoes are tender. Add the peas and liquid and heat thoroughly. Drain and boil down the liquid to ¾ cup. Press vegetables through a sieve. Melt the butter in a double broiler, add the flour and mix well. Add the milk gradually and cook, stirring constantly until thickened. Add the pureed vegetables and liquid. Reheat. Season with salt and pepper. Serve with Cheese Croutons made as follows: Sprinkle small toast squares with cheese and place under the broiler until cheese is melted and lightly browned. Serve on the soup. Serves six.

You can find more recipes to complete your meal in the Hartman Center’s Emergence of Advertising in America cookbooks!

Post contributed by Liz Shesko, Intern for the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History.

A Thanksgiving Menu from the Hartman Center

In honor of all the cooking and eating we’re planning to do for Thanksgiving, we wanted to share a few menus and recipes from Thanksgivings past. Over the next couple of days, look for delicious posts drawing from the Hartman Center’s extensive collection of advertising cookbooks.

Today’s recipe comes from a cookbook published by the Calumet Baking Powder Company in the 1920s. The following Thanksgiving menu, the author suggests, is perfect for “the average woman, who must prepare for her parties alone or with one maid to help,” without making everyone “uncomfortable” by becoming “a flushed and worried hostess.” I think we’d all appreciate the help of that maid this year!

  • Assorted canapés
  • Turkey with chestnut stuffing and giblet gravy
  • Baked onions
  • Baked squash
  • Caramel sweet potatoes
  • Mashed potatoes
  • Molded cranberry jelly with celery and olives
  • Orange delight salad
  • Pumpkin pie
  • Caramel Nut Cake
  • Salted Nuts
  • Bonbons

The featured recipe – Caramel Nut Cake (pictured below) – of course contained Calumet Baking Powder. The picture doesn’t look too appetizing, but it sure sounds good. And where can I get one of those mini turkeys?

Caramel Nut Cake

  • ½ cup shortening
  • 1 cup sugar
  • ¾ cup milk
  • 4 eggs
  • 2 cup sifted flour
  • 2 level tsp. Calumet Baking Powder
  • ¾ cup chopped nuts

Sift flour three times with baking powder. Cream shortening, add sugar, gradually add egg yolks and nuts. Add dry ingredients alternatively with milk. Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites. Bake in 2 layers in a moderate oven  (375 degrees F.). Ice with caramel icing, sprinkle the top and sides of cake with chopped nuts.

You can check out more images like these in the Emergence of Advertising in America digital collection. Stay tuned for more recipes later this week!

Post contributed by Liz Shesko, Intern for the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Marketing, and Advertising History.

Devil’s Food

Our celebration of National Dessert Month has been surprisingly chocolate-free, so we’re aiming to correct that today with recipes from Chocolate and Cocoa Recipes, published around 1922. Instead of boring candy bars, we at The Devil’s Tale want our plastic pumpkins filled with Devil’s Food cake!

Devil’s Food

2 cups sugar
3/4 cup butter
4 ounces Baker’s Premium No. 1 Chocolate
4 eggs (3 may be used)
2 1/4 cups flour
4 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon clove
1 1/4 cups milk

Cream butter and add sugar gradually, while beating to a cream; add chocolate, melted, and beaten yolks and mix thoroughly. Sift together flour, salt, cinnamon, clove and baking powder and add to butter mixture, alternately with the milk. At the last, fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites and bake in a deep pan and ice when cold.

And, just because you can never have too many chocolate recipes (and because there were no pictures of the Devil’s Food cake):

Chocolate Jelly

1 pint boiling water
Pinch salt
1 square Baker’s Premium No. 1 Chocolate
2 tablespoons gelatine
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Put the water, salt and chocolate in a saucepan. Cook, stirring until the chocolate melts, then let it boil for three or five minutes. Soften the gelatine in a little cold water and pour the boiling mixture over it. Stir until disolved, then add sugar and vanilla. Pour into a mould and set aside to harden, serve with cream and powdered sugar or sweetened whipped cream.

Not Even Covered in Chocolate Sauce

Wonders never quite cease at the RBMSCL. If ever there were a foodstuff that we strongly believed should not be associated with dessert, it was cauliflower. And then we discovered The Dessert Book: A Complete Manual from the Best American and Foreign Authorities with General Economical Recipes (written by a Boston Lady in 1872). So, in honor of National Dessert Month, we present:

Not dessert.
Not dessert.

Meringues in the Form of Cauliflowers

Fill a biscuit-forcer with Italian meringue-paste, and push this out upon bands of paper, in knobs, or large dots, superposed or mounted one upon the other in such form or fashion, that, when complete, it shall represent, as nearly as possible, the head, or white part, of a cauliflower (of course, on a very diminished scale, of the size of a pigeon’s egg, for instance): this pat of the cauliflower, when fashioned, is to be sprinkled over with rather coarse granite sugar.

The under part, or green leaves, which envelop a cauliflower, are imitated in a somewhat similar manner to the above by pushing out the paste in pointed dots upon bands of paper, in the manner and form as directed for the imitation of the heads, only somewhat flatter: these, in order the better to represent green leaves, are to be sprinkled over with green granite sugar; and when both parts have been dried in the closet, or screen, stick the head, or white part, upon the leafy or green part; thus you will form more or less truthful imitation of a cauliflower, according as in a greater or lesser degree you may have displayed your taste.

Should you want to make these for your next dinner party—imagine the aghast looks on your guests’ faces!—you’ll find the recipe for Italian Meringues after the jump.

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