Shredded Wheat Pudding (1924)

 The Home Maker’s Cookbook: Containing Tried and True and Tried Recipes by the Tewksbury (Mass.) Congregational Church Women’s Missionary Society (1924) 

The idea of publishing and selling a cook book was undertaken by a committee from The Women’s Missionary Society of the Tewksbury Congregational Church, consisting of Mrs. H. W. Pillsbury, Chairman, Miss M. Esther Marshall, Secretary; Mrs. John H. Nichols, Treasurer; Mrs. Arthur C. Tingley, Miss Blanche King, Mrs. Frank Gulliland, Mrs. H. P. Dinsmore, Mrs. Gertrude E. Bailey. They began the work in October, 1923, as their special gift toward a fund for an organ for the new church. After months of earnest work, the committee presents to the public The Home-Maker’s Cookbook as the result of their united efforts and painstaking thought.

This cookbook offers the 1924 version of a balanced diet. Whereas the current 2024 recommended diet is My Plate, 1924’s is as follows: 

EVERY WELL-BALANCED MEAL SHOULD HAVE:

One protein dish, two carbohydrate dishes, one mineral dish, one fat, one water dish (beverage).

Proteins: — milk, meat, eggs, poultry, fish, cheese, nuts, cereals.

Carbohydrates: — cereals, potatoes, rice, bananas, breads, macaroni, tapioca.

Minerals: — Fruits, green vegetables, tomatoes, cauliflower, cabbage, onions.

Fats: — Cream, butter, oleo, meat fats, vegetable fats, nut oils.

 

Also note that grains can also count as the protein.  So conceivably, 75% of your plate could be carbs.  

A beverage rather than necessarily dairy could actually be fine, as long as you’re getting some good source of calcium.  

And, of course, every church cookbook has to have The Recipe That Is Actually a Figurative Device. There is always at least one in every church cookbook.  It could be a recipe for happy marriage, or for friendship, or for raising children, but in this case, it is for life in general. 

 A RECIPE FOR A HAPPY LIFE

Take a large quantity of Cheerfulness and let it simmer with¬ out stopping. Put with it a brimming basinful of Kindness, then add a full measure of Thought for other People.

Mix into these a heaping tablespoonful of Sympathy. Flavor with essence of Charity. Stir well together and then carefully strain off any grains of Selfishness.

Let the whole be served with Love sauce and Fruit of the Spirit.

Mrs. Grace M. Taylor

But onwards to the recipe! 

SHREDDED WHEAT PUDDING

 2 shredded wheat biscuits 

3 eggs

½  cup molasses

 2 tablespoons sugar

A little cinnamon and salt

Put into medium-sized pudding dish, fill dish with milk, and bake. Mrs. Josephine Dows Harmon

 

Mixy mixy, poury poury

Cover with milk, sprinkle with cinnamon because you forgot to add it in 

Bake for like 30 minutes at 350 F. and chill

Serve to SUPER EXCITED family 

Verdict: Just kidding, no one was excited. I was hopeful, as this would be a good way to use stale cereal from food banks and whatnot. If it were good. Husband had one bite and said, “huh.” 12 year old had one bite, and said it tasted like cold, plain oatmeal.  10 year old finished a small serving, and said it tasted like nothing. I finished my serving. All agreed they would rather eat all the ingredients individually. Even if you think “breakfast” rather than “dessert,” it’s just cold, soggy… stuff.  “But wait!” you say, “doesn’t molasses have a taste?” to which I say, yes!  It does!  And if for some reason you have to eat a lot of molasses but do not want to taste it at all, and also hate chewing, this is the recipe for you! 

V(ictory) Loaf (1943)

 Cooking on a Ration: Food is Still Fun Marjorie Mills, 1943 

V Loaf 

2 cups cooked rice 

½ cup fine dry bread crumbs

½ cup chopped nut meats 

1 cup cooked tomatoes 

1 egg

1 small onion, chopped 

½ teaspoon salt 

⅛ teaspoon black pepper 

2 tablespoons chopped green pepper

4 tablespoons melted butter or margarine 

Mix all together to form loaf. Bake in greased loaf pan in moderate oven (350 degrees) 30 minutes.  Cover with mashed potatoes; put back in oven to brown. Serve with Tomato Sauce. Serves 6. This defies detection as a substitute meat loaf and is very good. 

Ever since the apple Brown Betty recipe, we keep a breadcrumb bag in the freezer

Weirdly meatloaf colored?  

Cover your sins with mashed potatoes! 

Verdict:  Much better than expected, actually?? Visually, it’s pretty spot-on. Texturally, also reasonably close, but mushier. Reminds me of porcupine meatballs.  All agreed that if someone whose meatloaf they weren’t familiar with served them this meatloaf, the first thought upon tasting wouldn’t be “this isn’t meat” but rather “this person does not make very good meatloaf.”  When I told my husband it was Victory Loaf and he asked what it was made of, I told him victory.  The person who guessed the most ingredients was promised a prize. The prize was another helping. 

If you are one of those vegetarians who swears that black bean burgers, tofu, and seitan are just like meat, you will be blown away by this recipe. It’s very bland, but hey, it’s the 1940s!  The cuisine of the 1940s is not known for seasoning. With some more seasoning, this could go from “Huh.  Okay.” to “Well that’s kind of neat!” 75% of those polled agreed they would rather have this than just rice, walnuts, a piece of bread, part of an egg, a potato, etc.  and would rather have this than a tv dinner meatloaf.  100% rated it “inoffensive” and remained emotionally resilient. One child finished off seconds (because she was hungry, she hastens to add, not because it was that good).  

Macaroni and Cheese Custard (1943)

Cooking on a Ration: Food is Still Fun Marjorie Mills, 1943

It’s not necessary to be grim and determined about food; the nutrition pronouncements we try to follow aren’t an endless task or substituting something “good for you” for something you would rather eat. 

Macaroni and Cheese Custard

3 cups cooked macaroni 

2 ½ cups milk 

1 ½  t salt 

¼ t paprika 

1 T melted butter or margarine

2 eggs 

1 cup finely cut cheese 

Heat milk; add butter, cheese, and seasonings, and pour into slightly beaten eggs. Put macaroni in greased baking dish and pour over the milk mixture. Let stand in pan of hot water and bake gently about 30 minutes in a moderate oven (350 degrees), or until firm in the middle. Serves 6.   

Method: I microwaved the milk and butter together, then whisked everything else in and poured it over the noodles. I didn’t do the water bath, because my modern oven has more even heat than a 1940’s one. 

Verdict: This took about as long to prep as boxed macaroni and cheese, although there was a half hour of oven time as well. Everyone liked it!  It isn’t as good as homemade macaroni and cheese, but I think it’s better than boxed. My family said they slightly preferred boxed, but it was close enough that could be down to familiarity and nostalgia value. It’s certainly healthier than either, with only a tablespoon of butter and a cup of cheese (extra sharp cheddar, of course!) As a bonus, making this helps fight Hitler, and you can’t argue with that. 

In conclusion: give it a try!  See what you think. Is it worth it for you?  

—Interlude—

 

My 10 year old checks on the status of the bread pudding. There was a lot of stale bread, and we can’t waste wheat in wartime!  The Kaiser high-fives his friends whenever an American wastes food.  

String Bean and Potato Soup, aka “Sadness Soup”

 Most For Your Money Cookbook (1938)

“Thrifty Europeans, who, as a rule, live better than we do on less, claim that we throw away more than we eat, and that comes too close to the truth to be any comfort to our intelligence. But even if we won't stop wasting and listening to the siren call of radio experts who sell us foodless food, blown up bran at half a dollar a pound and readymixed gingerbread that costs more to make than the finished cake would be at an honest baker's, we certainly can stretch the food dollar by countless culinary tricks, all of which are appetizing, healthful and interesting.”

Life isn’t all cake and sweetbreads!  Sometimes it is the Great Depression.  The unique feature of this cookbook is that the recipes in each section are ordered from cheap to merely thrifty.  This is merely the second cheapest soup in the book. 

——————

STRING BEAN AND POTATO SOUP

In 1 tablespoons butter slowly cook a minced onion, but do not let it color. When tender add a tomato, either fresh or canned, and stir until it thickens. Then add the liquor in which about a pound of green beans have been boiled, and the water from 4-5 potatoes with a little of the potato, well mashed. Season with salt and pepper and pass all through a sieve. Reheat and serve.

The water in which almost any green vegetable has been boiled may be used in this manner. 

——————

Verdict: This soup isn’t bad!  It isn’t good either. It is… warm. I’m almost positive that in a blind comparison between this and water of the same temperature, I would be able to tell which one was soup. Probably. There’s definitely vitamins in there. It will help fend off scurvy. Husband and both girls agreed it was definitely orangish colored, and probably tasted different to water. The girls lovingly renamed this “Sadness Soup” or “Soup of Sorrows,” which I am sure is an affectionate nickname. The dog got a little bit (not too much, because salt), and decided to stop licking the dishwasher door interior in favor of it, so. There you are!  

Good White Cake with Gelatine Frosting (1893, 1900)

 Cooking for Profit: a new American cookbook adapted for the use of all who serve meals for a price, by Jessup Whitehead (1893)

The White House cookbook : a comprehensive cyclopedia of information for the home; containing cooking, toilet, and household recipes, menus, dinner-giving, table etiquette, care of the sick, health suggestions, facts worth knowing, etc. (1900)

The first of these books is unique because it is not intended for private homes, but people who are trying to make a living. As such, it suggests sneaky tricks to maximize profit while maintaining customer health and happiness. Think if you have seen any of these nowadays….  Examples: 

1.) Lots of fish have a whole bunch of names. Collect these, and when you have a glut of one particular sort, just pick a different one of its names for the menu every day, so people think they are getting something new and fancy. 

2.) Do not skimp on bread!  Always make really good bread no matter what, because then people will fill up on bread, which is cheap, and not eat lots of the expensive stuff. 

3.) When using expensive fruit like berries for fillings, use mostly apple cut with just enough juice and berries to make it colored and flavored. 

The real best part of the book is the running account of the author’s feud with her neighbor Mrs. Tingee, a rival and frenemy. 

My custard pies are big and fat — three big cups of custard in each one, and there is room to dive down deep in them; but this! Oh, Mrs. Tingee how could you! It is only the ghost, the shadow, the skeleton of a custard pie. […]Her custard pie is primped and crimped around the edges, but there is nothing of it. It consists of a sheet of bottom crust about as thin as paper, with a yellow layer of custard about as deep as a sheet of blotting paper upon it.

Mrs. Tingee also has something against Italians. 

 “I never could understand,”said Mrs. Tingee, one day, "how the Italians can be so poor, as the papers say they are, and yet eat so much macaroni as the papers tell us they do : I should think it would break them up buying eggs to cook it with.”

How dare they eat pasta!  They are too poor to eat pasta, even homemade! They are probably just pretending to be poor, to trick decent people, when here they are splashing out on a couple eggs shared between the whole family!  OUTRAGEOUS.

I had 5 egg whites leftover from when my daughter made ice cream, so a no-fuss white cake recipe (that doesn’t mind a little bit of egg yolk contamination) seemed just the ticket!  I put in some raspberry flavoring and the last little bit of raspberry jam in the jar.  The #1 most common cake frosting in cookbooks of this era is raw egg white with powdered sugar, or a couple variations of the same.  As raw eggs are not quite The Thing nowadays for safety reasons, I was glad to see the author recommend an alternative gelatin recipe.  It was kind of chonky and gelatinous (which…makes sense), but her recommendation of putting it in a warm place (in this case, a microwave for about a minute and a half) worked like a charm.  This coating should prevent the cake getting hard and gross for a few days!  

 609— Good White Cake.

A great deal of the fuss and labor some people go through every time a white cake is to be made is altogether needless : to prove it try this easy cake and be surprised that it can be put together so quickly. 

2 cups sugar — a pound.

1 cup melted butter— 1/2 pound.

10 whites of eggs.

1 cup milk.

2 teaspoons baking powder.

1 teaspoon cream tartar.

6 cups flour — 1 1/2 pounds.

Put the sugar and melted butter into the mixing pan along with the whites, not whipped, then take the wire egg beater and beat them together a minute or two; add the milk, powder, cream tartar and flour and some flavoring extract if you choose, and beat it up with a spoon thoroughly. The more it is beaten the whiter and finer the cake. If there is no cream tartar handy use the juice of a lemon. Makes nearly 4 pounds; costs 34 cents. Ought to be frosted the easy way. No. 3; or, with frosting that will slice without breaking. No. 635.

635— Cake Frosting without Eggs.

It is not necessary to have white of eggs to make cake icing or frosting. A better kind of frosting that will not break when the cake is sliced, is made of either dissolved gelatine or powdered gum arabic. They need only be dissolved in boiling water to make a mucilage like the common bottle mucilage in thickness, then beat up sugar in it just the same as with white of eggs. It is quicker to make than the egg kind and is extremely white. If too thick on the cakes, set them in a warm place and this kind of frosting will run down smooth and flossy. There is a powdered kind of gelatin called granulated, that is very good for this purpose.

GELATINE FROSTING. [White House Cookbook]

Soak one teaspoonful of gelatine in one tablespoonful of cold water half an hour, dissolve in two tablespoonfuls of hot water; add one cup of powdered sugar and stir until smooth.

Before heating: clumpy and mucusy

Verdict: Not a bad cake at all!  Kind of dense, more so than than when one whips the egg whites separately to stiff peaks, but not a problem.  It rose a lot in the middle, which made it donut shaped in the Bundt pan, so possibly better in a loaf pan. I made half the recipe and baked it at 350 F. for 45 minutes. All agreed the frosting was better than the stuff from a jar from the store, but not as good as say, buttercream. It’s somewhere between a powdered sugar/water glaze and a frosting, and it does give a beautiful glossy sheen.