Betty Crocker's Chicken Caruso

Glorious. This is the illustration for Chicken Caruso from Betty Crocker's New Dinner for Two Cookbook [1972]. Have you noticed that it is a chicken in a clown costume singing opera? Have you?

For your edification, the recipe itself:

Chicken Caruso
1 slice bacon, finely cut
1/4 cup minced onion
1/4 cup minced green pepper
1 cup cut-up cooked chicken
1 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese (1/4 lb.)
2 tbsp. cut-up pimento (2-oz. jar)
1 cup cooked peas
1/8 tsp. each salt and pepper
1 cup hot drained boiled macaroni (1/2 cup uncooked)
parsley
2 to 3 tbsp. toasted slivered almonds, if desired

In a medium skillet, saute bacon until lightly browned and crisp. Stir in onion and green pepper; cook until almost tender. Stir in chicken cheese, pimento, and peas; season with salt and pepper. Mix in cooked macaroni. Cover ad keep warm over very low heat until ready to serve. Garnish with parsley sprigs; sprinkle with toasted almonds. 2 generous servings.

Note: For best color, use cooked fresh or frozen peas.


Anyone want to try this out?

Chicken and Chips Casserole, Orange-Grapefruit Pinwheel Salad, Extra-quick Butter Sticks, Mint Brownies

[1972]

Since our apartment dates back to the 40's or something, our time traveling this week took us to our same apartment, but in the 70's! That is why the background looks the same, despite the automatic wardrobe adjustment circuit. I feel sure whoever is living in our apartment in the 70's will not mind that we used their kitchen, especially as we left them brownies.






Tuna and Chips Casserole
2 cans (10 1/2 oz. each) cream of mushroom soup
1 cup milk
2 cans (7 oz. each) tuna, drained and flaked
2 1/2 cups crushed potato chips
2 cups (1 lb can) cooked green peas, drained

Heat oven to 350 degrees F. (mod.). Empty soup into 2-qt. baking dish. Add milk and mix well. Add tuna, 2 cups potato chips, and peas; mix lightly. Sprinkle remaining potato chips over top. Bake 25 min., until heated through. 6 to 8 servings.

Planned-over Meal? This dish, reheated the next day, tastes just as good.

Chicken and Chips Casserole
Make Tuna and Chips Casserole (above)--except substitute cream of chicken soup for mushroom soup and use 2 cups cubed cooked chicken for the tuna.




Orange-Grapefruit Pinwheel Salad
Arrange orange and grapefruit sections alternately in pinwheel pattern on lettuce [dang it, I forgot to put it on lettuce!] on each salad plate. Garnish center with sprig of deep green garnish (watercress, mint, parsley). Pass Ruby Red Dressing.


Ruby Red Dressing
1/2 cup currant jelly
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 tbsp. lemon juice
dash of salt
few drops of onion juice

Beat jelly with fork until smooth. Add remaining ingredients; beat again until smooth. Makes 3/4 cup.




Extra-Quick Butter Sticks
Heat oven to 450 degrees F. (hot). Melt 1/4 cup butter. Pour half into a square pan, 8 x 8 x 2". Roll unbaked biscuits from 1 can refrigerated biscuits, twisting to about 8" lengths. Place in pan. Pour rest of butter over tops. Sprinkle with caraway, poppy, celery, or sesame seeds. Bake 8 to 10 min., or until golden brown. Let stand in pan about 2 min. to absorb butter. Makes 10 sticks.

Leftover Butter Sticks? Wrap in foil; reheat in 375 degree oven for 20 min.


Mint Brownies
Prepare batter using 1 pkg. (15.5 oz.) regular fudge brownie mix adding 1/4 tsp. peppermint flavoring.


Verdict:

Chicken and Chips Casserole: This has got to be the trashiest casserole of all time! I did the chicken option as Husband is not a fan of tuna, but I did use canned chicken, so I feel I should get points for that. I also used frozen peas instead of canned, because baked canned peas are terrible and I just can't be having with that. Trashy as it was though... it was pretty good. It isn't worth the amazing amount of potato chips, but good. Don't serve this to someone with heart disease, but it's worth a try if you're in the mood for something trashy.

Orange-Grapefruit Pinwheel: Look how pretty! I might just keep this on file for when I feel fancy in the future. I made the dressing out of plum jam instead of currant, and it was pretty good actually. It sweetened up the grapefruit a little. If I did it again, I'd just do the jam instead of mixing it with other things though.

Extra-quick Butter Sticks: Oh my lands. These are fantastic. A whole half-stick of butter melted in there! Husband looooooved these. A lot. Really a lot. Look how they glisten!



Mint Brownies: How have I never thought of putting mint flavoring into brownies before? This is a brilliant idea!

Overall: Oh my golly gracious. Individually, all these were good. Most of them were great. Together, they are an unholy abomination of potato chips, melted butter, jam, and brownies. It isn't that they are bad together, it is that each one of them is so... much, that it is overwhelming. I could only finish half a brownie by the end. Husband happily nabbed the rest of my brownie and stuffed it in his mouth, only to sadly remark that it had turned to ashes in his mouth, so great had been the consumption of potato chips, melted butter (rather a lot, in his case!), jam, and brownie.

Banana Chocolate Malted Milk

[1940]

I am a lucky girl, for because I have a grandma who loves me and got a degree in Home Economics in the 40's. As a consequence, I now have a whole stack of little informational booklets on just about every food group! Hooray! Even better, Refrigerator Desserts are a food group.



Banana Milk Shake
1 fully ripe banana
1 cup cold milk

Slice banana into a bowl and beat with rotary beater until creamy, or press banana through coarse sieve. Add milk, mix thoroughly and serve at once. Serve cold. Serves 2. Add 1 large tablespoon vanilla ice cream.
Banana Chocolate Malted Milk--Add 4 teaspoons chocolate malted milk and 1/4 teaspoon vanilla.

There will be no doubt as to whose milk shake is whose if the names are on little parasols

(I forgot to put my name on the parasol, so I am telling you now it is MINE. ALL FOR ME.)

Verdict: Mmmmmmmmmm. This stuff is great. I used a blender instead of messing about with a sieve, because that's just silly. There was no vanilla ice cream in my freezer for garnishing the top, but I did mix about a half tablespoon of heavy cream in. I love cream. It's not a thick ice creamy milkshake, it is just a little thick from the banana. Reminds me of a beverage I had at Jamba Juice once, or like an icy cold banana-y hot chocolate. I plan on making this again, possibly with an ice cube or two blended in.

The ABC of Canning

These pictures are from The ABC of Canning [1942]. And how splendid they are! And once again, it is Caption Time! Caption these photos, please.

Borden's Meat Biscuits

******This just in from:

New Article of Food - Meat Biscuit.

Some time since we noticed a new kind of Meat Biscuit, or “Portable Desiccated Soup Bread,” invented by Mr. Gail Borden, Jr., a highly respectable citizen of Galveston, Texas. The discovery being fully secured by a patent recently granted, we will give a brief but clear description of it, as it is an invention of the first importance, both to our own country, and it may be said, to the whole human race. The nature of this discovery consists in preserving the concentrated nutritious properties of flesh meat of any kind, combining it with flour and baking it into biscuits. One pound of this bread contains the extract of more than five pounds of the best meat—(containing its usual proportion of bone)—and one ounce of it will make a pint of rich soup. Biscuits by Mr. Borden’s process may be made of beef, veal, fowl's flesh, oysters, &c., and thus in a compact form the very essence of agricultural products, fitted for the traveller or mariner, or for the dwellers in distant cities, may be transported by sea or land, from distant rural districts, where flesh meat is comparatively cheap.



In a letter to Dr. Ashbel Smith, Mr. Borden thus relates the way he made this discovery:

"I was endeavoring to make some portable meat glue (the common kind known) for some friends who were going to California—I had set up a large kettle and evaporating pan, and after two days labour I reduced one hundred and twenty pounds of veal to ten pounds of extract, of a consistence like melted glue and molasses; the weather was warm and rainy, it being the middle of July. I could not dry it either in or out of the house, and unwilling to lose my labour, it occured to me, after various expedients, to mix the article with good flour and bake it. To my great satisfaction, the bread was found to contain all the primary principles of meat, and with a better flavor than simple veal soup, thickened with flour in the ordinary method.

...


“The nutritive portions of beef or other meat, immediately on its being slaughtered, are, by long boiling, separated from the bones and fibrous and cartilaginous matters: the water holding the nutritious matters in solution, is evaporated to a considerable degree of spissitude—this is then made into a dough with firm wheaten flour, the dough rolled and cut into a form of biscuits, is then desiccated, or baked in an oven at a moderate heat. The cooking, both of the flour and the animal food, is thus complete. The meat biscuits thus prepared have the appearance and firmness of the nicest crackers or navy bread, being as dry, and breaking or pulverizing as readily as the most carefully made table crackers. It is preserved in the form of biscuit, or reduced to coarse flour or meal. It is best kept in tin cases hermetically soldered up ; the exclusion of air is not important, humidity alone is to be guarded against.

For making soup of the meat biscuit, a batter is first made of the pulverized biscuit and cold water—this is stirred into boiling water—the boiling is continued some ten or twenty minutes—salt, pepper, and other condiments are added to suit the taste, and the soup is ready for the table.

I have eaten the soup several times,—it has the fresh, lively, clean, and thoroughly done or cooked flavor that used to form the charm of the soups of the Rocher de Cancale. It is perfectly free from that vapid unctuous stale taste which characterizes all prepared soups I have heretofore tried at sea and elsewhere. Those chemical changes in food which, in common language, we denominate cooking, have been perfectly effected in Mr. Borden’s biscuit by the long continued boiling at first, and the subsequent baking or roasting. The soup prepared of it is thus ready to be absorbed into the system without loss, and without tedious digestion in the alimentary canal, and is in the highest degree nutritious and invigorating. [March 23, 1850]*****

For those who are not culinary chronaviatrices, as I am, here's how to do it for yourself! We're basically going to make meat-flavored hardtack.

Homemade Meat Biscuits
Beef bouillon
Flour
Water

1. Mix flour with bouillon. If it is the paste kind, which is my personal favorite, mash it together with your spoon until it is completely mixed together and looks like whole wheat flour because of all the speckles in the flour. Do not use too much flour, you are not making a bread, you are making a stabilizer for the bouillon.
2. Add just enough cold water to make a very, very stiff dough. It should hold together, but not be sticky.
3. Roll out quite thinly, and cut into pieces.
4. Bake at 300 degrees F. for 30 minutes, or until completely dry and hard.
5. To make into soup, smash it up in cold water with something heavy, like a meat tenderizer, then boil in more water.

Verdict: It was okay! The broth was pretty weak in the end, but more biscuits would have helped that. I thought the flour would thicken the soup, but instead it made little crumbly sediment at the bottom, which is fine. I can see how this would be a useful addition to a wagon headed west. These meat biscuits never got truly popular, but more than one wagon included a barrel of them amongst their supplies. "But Jana!" I hear you say. "Isn't it easier just to have bouillon?" Yes. Yes it is. But this is the 1850's. If you want bouillon, I will provide you with another recipe from this time:

1. Make beef stock.
2. Boil forever.
3. Pour into shallow pans and leave in the sun.
4. Leave it there until it is dry.

I had the chance to let husband think these were cookies, but did not take it. I am such a nice wife.

I feel like this product should have a jingle. Can you think of something?

Resources:
Today in Science History: Borden's Meat Biscuit
Wagon Wheel Kitchens: Food on the Oregon Trail

Oatmeal Mush with Apples, Hamburg Steaks, Creamed Potatoes, White Corn Cake

Cookery means the knowledge of Medea and of Circe and of Helen and of the Queen of Sheba. It means the knowledge of all herbs and fruits and balms and spices, and all that is healing and sweet in the fields and groves and savory in meals. It means carefulness and inventiveness and willingness and readiness of appliances. It means the economy of your grandmothers and the science of the modern chemist: it means much testing and no wasting; it means English thoroughness and French art and Arabian hospitality; and, in fine, it means that you are to be perfectly and always ladies--loaf givers.--RUSKIN.



Fannie Farmer once again provides us with a menu, this time from her Boston Cooking-School Cookbook [1896]. Thankfully, it does not include bread ice cream or egg sauce.




Oatmeal Mush with Apples.
Core apples, leaving large cavities; pare, and cook until soft in syrup made by boiling sugar and water together. Fill cavities with oatmeal mush; serve with sugar and cream. The syrup should be saved and re-used.



Hamburg Steaks.
Chop finely one pound lean raw beef; season highly with salt, pepper, and a few drops onion juice or one-half shallot finely chopped. Shape, cook, and serve as Meat Cakes. A few gratings of nutmeg and one egg slightly beaten may be added.



I didn't want to do creamed potatoes for the third time, so this picture is of Spry oven-creamed potatoes.

Creamed Potatoes.
Reheat two cups cold boiled potatoes, cut in dice, in one and one-fourth cups White Sauce I.

White Sauce I.
2 tablespoons butter.
2 tablespoons flour.
1 cup milk.
1/4 teaspoon salt.
Few grains pepper.

Make same as Thin White Sauce.



White Corn Cake.
1/4 cup butter.
1/2 cup sugar.
1 1/3 cups milk.
Whites 3 eggs.
1 1/4 cups white corn meal.
1 1/4 cups flour.
4 teaspoons baking powder.
1 teaspoon salt.
Cream the butter; add sugar gradually; add milk, alternating with dry ingredients, mixed and sifted. Beat thoroughly; add whites of eggs beaten stiff. Bake in buttered cake pan thirty minutes.

Verdict:

Oatmeal Mush with Apples: These were super tasty! Much like apple crisp with melted ice cream on top. Have I told you how much I love cream? I love cream. I filled it with microwaved homemade strawberry oatmeal. Yum. While thinking about how I could reuse the syrup as the recipe suggests, I thought you could use the syrup from canned fruit. That would be delicious! Raspberry would be fantastic, and would make the apples attractively rosy.

Hamburg Steaks: I think Fannie Farmer was afraid of onions, much like Aunt Jenny, with her "few drops onion juice." To obtain onion juice, cut the onion in half along the equator, then use your knife to scrape across the surface. I will be honest, I put more than a few drops in. I am a rebel in this way. They were a little bland, but fine.

White Corn Cake: Dryyyyy. So very dry. Apricot-nutmeg jam was helpful to fix this problem. Still not my favorite cornbread recipe.

New England: The Cradle of American Cookery

Click to embiggen

'K. New England? So much great stuff. The cradle of American cookery, it is not. Puritan recipes generally go like this:

1. Is it food? If yes, move to #2.
2. Boil it.
3. Yes, lettuce is food.

But, as ever in this particular cookbook, a fantastic job on that line drawing! Look at all those details on this couple going to a fancy dress party as Pilgrims. Bless them, they've even got buckle shoes and a buckle hat!