"vintagerecipes" news and stories

Lo these many years ago, a UK-born boss of mine attempted to wheedle me into swifter production by offering me a small mincemeat pie if I finished a pressing task by 4 p.m. I begged to be allowed to take only half if I knocked it out by 3, and remain fully un-minced if I had everything squared away by 2.

In theory, I should love traditional mincemeat. I'm a huge fan of a meat 'n sweet one-two punch -- especially when there's cookin' booze involved -- but I've never been able to wrap my head around the flavor of suet. It's the hard fat from around the loins and kidneys of sheep and cows, isn't especially full and meaty like lard, and is possessed of a particularly high melting point, making it the perfect base fat for many classic British steamed puddings. It seems to be the definitive flavoring agent in all the mincemeat I've had, but I've not been able to convince myself to care for it. I tend to be a stickler when it comes to ingredient lists for traditional dishes from my vintage cookbooks, but I'm wondering if there's a fat I can sub in that would render a texture that would cleave closely to the original. Most suet-centric recipes I've come across warn that the use of butter, margarine, lard, shortening et al leaves the whole dish overly greasy and flat, but if any of y'all have met with a successful swap, I'm all ears. There may even be a bit of Spotted Dick in it for you.

Other Cooking and Traveling the Cape Cod Way highlights include Forefather's Day Succotash (look for that recipe on December 21st), Beach Plum Jelly, Irish Moss Pudding, Scootin'-Long-The-Shore, Skully Joe and a wicked lot of mouthwatering Portuguese cookery. I'm more than happy to share if there's any interest.

In addition to her roles as a singer, performer and talk show host, Dinah Shore was also know among her friends and acquaintances as something of a cook. In 1971, she took all that food knowledge and put it into this book, Someone's in the Kitchen with Dinah (lucky for her, she just happened to have the best name ever for a cookbook). She included over 200 recipes, most of which being things she did like to cook at home, as well as a few from close friends.

She opens the book up with a chatty introduction and then moves into some party planning tips. One interesting piece of advice is to give two or three parties in a row, so that you can return a number of invitations on the same flowers and boxes of crackers, while keeping the numbers manageable. It makes some sense, although I don't think that there are quite so many rules about the reciprocation of invitations as there once was.

Surprisingly, her recipes are nearly universally good. They all bear the marks of a true home cook, someone who likes to make big, tasty pots of soups and stews or a batch of meatloaf quickly and without fancy ingredients or fanfare. The only suspect thing I spotted was a hamburger recipe that called for a teaspoon of MSG. I guess this was before the days when it was determined that it isn't so good for you. There are a number of recipes I've marked in the book that I'd like to try, including the Fried Chicken Cuffy, the Tennessee Lasagna and the Beef Stroganoff and Kasha (her Jewish upbringing really shows here, which delights me!)

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I have something of a weakness for old recipe indexes. I love that I was able to get my hands on my grandma Bunny's recipe file and I also treasure the box of recipes that I picked up at an antique mall some years ago. There is something about a collection of recipes that were gathered, tested and loved that makes them special and wonderful.

A couple of months ago, Garrett at Vanilla Garlic inherited his grandmother's recipe files. When I first read his post, I was deeply envious, as those card files are ten times the size of the one I have from Bunny (not that I'm ungrateful for what I have). But now that he has started posting recipes and I'm just appreciative, because it's fun to see what his grandmother made and what he chooses to feature.

The first recipe he took out for a test drive was for Banana Cookies. I have made more loaves of Banana Bread in my life than I can count, but I've never thought of using bananas in cookies before seeing this post. He broke the batter into three segments, baking one off plain, stirring in some chocolate chips into the second and mixing in some pecans in the last third of the batter (he liked the pecan batch the best). He says that they turned out to be soft and cakey, two characteristics I particularly admire in a cookie.

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Here's another recipe from an old card file. This one comes from a recipe box I picked up at an antique store about five years ago. The wooden box is scarred and stained, the finish puckered from years of sitting near a hot stove. There isn't anything that would identify the original owner by name, but I've gotten to know her through the things she cooked. She served flank steak on Christmas Eve, a cheese ball with chutney as a cool appetizer for a patio dinner and kept a note taped to the top of the box on how to use low fat yogurt in place of sour cream.

This recipe is fairly seasonal, if you replace the canned peaches for fresh (which are flooding the markets in my area). I do believe that these peaches would be sensational over ice cream.

image by Marisa McClellan