Pears On the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

Who could resist this delectable Chocolate Pear Gateau?

Ah, but wouldn’t the Cadbury Cocoa people be surprised at the number of hands being raised right about now.

There’s something fascinating yet disturbing about the coloring of the pears – they have obviously been residing in a tin for some time, but after their liberation were subjected to some bizarre tinting ritual. It’s like makeup for fruit!

Blusher, and then concealer in the form of whipped cream piped all around them, as if to partially conceal them. All of which brings to mind – well, Winnie the Pooh’s behind stuck in Rabbit’s front door, times twelve, for one.

Also, the tinned pears look terrified. As if they are hiding in that whipped cream. What are they so frightened of?

Perhaps they fear the cook wielding the blusher and the Bournville Cocoa. Perhaps they are frightened of the oven. Or of the hungry throngs gathered round the tea table in the next room. Whatever it is, burying yourself in cream cakes never helps, little pears! Trust me on that one.

[Why the title, one might ask? Oh, one might indeed...You could call it a failure of imagination, or else an excess of it. It just came into my head in the midst of the usual Desperate Search For A Title. It was a good movie, too. Antonio Banderas is in it, it was one of his earliest films. And those pears - they started looking more and more anxious to me as I wrote this...]

Thanks so much to Mags L. Halliday for this delectable image! Mags also presides over the wonderful Moosifer Jones’ Grouch, which I highly recommend.

The 1960 Winner of the Worst Romantic Gift Contest

Garbage and the method of its disposal is not a traditional sort of aphrodisiac. Or any kind of aphrodisiac, unless one is speaking of pigs in the farmyard.

Or perhaps of the lovely couple in this 1960 ad, who are so aroused by something called the In-Sink-Erator (ugh) that they can’t leave it in the kitchen (I believe it goes in or under the sink, judging from the name). Forget the champagne, the chocolates, the mood music. This is what really gets you going.

The ad is addressed to the guy – because as we all know, the guy is the one buying the household stuff, right? And what a saucy ad it is! She’ll want to thank you three times a day, eh?

I think that the operative word here is “want” – she’ll want to, but probably she won’t or can’t. Too much garbage to dispose of, maybe. Too much other housework (you need to buy her more machines!). Or maybe – just maybe – she can’t really, ahem, thank you because the damn In-Sink-Erator is in the way!

Or maybe she isn’t thanking you because she read the rest of the ad. It “frees the little woman from disagreeable trips to the garbage can,” from garbage “trudgery”!

I’m sure she loves being called the little woman! And she also must just love the picture of her life as endless trudging to and from the garbage. How romantic.

I doubt that the model in the ad does much trudgery, though. That’s a mighty fancy outfit you have on, madam! Just mind the In-Sink-Erator looming in the foreground, won’t you?

And your little man seems to have turned into the In-Sink-Erator…Or it is somehow taking him over.

Not going there on a Monday morning, that’s for sure. We’ll just leave it at that, shall we?

P.S. You can still get one of these, link here. Just so you know!

Purple Popsicle Eaters

Frank Epperson, the clever San Francisco lad who invented the popsicle (in 1905, at age 11), went out and patented it (when he was grown up). He didn’t even mean to invent anything. He just left some soda powder and water and a stirring stick out on the porch overnight and there was a cold snap and the inevitable happened. After the inevitable happened though, he waited 18 years to do something about it. Eighteen years! That’s a lot of hot summers without popsicles, Frank.

And it is thanks to him that today is National Grape Popiscle Day.

Today we celebrate not merely the popsicle, but the grape popsicle. Some people think that these are the best kind (usually children) and others (They Who Do The Laundry) think that these are the worst kind for getting the stains off of clothing after said children consume them.

Frank Epperson patented the popsicle in 1924, 2 years after they were first sold at Alameda, California. Epperson called his little frozen treats Epsicles, but his children came up with a better name. Hence the Popsicle. I like it! I think we’ve got something here.

What we’ve got is lots and lots of popsicles. We also have some links:

A Grape Popsicle Cocktail for the grownups, at GroupRecipes.

This guy made up the Popsicle Diet, which includes 15 grape popsicles a day (out of 50 total). He is kidding, of course (and also he forgot to include lemon popsicles, which cleanse the palate as everyone knows.)

The lovely picture of real grapes is from here. Frozen grapes are good in the summer, too.  

Bubblegum Kitchen

This is the first time that I have seen a pink kitchen (with pink appliances, I mean) since visiting family members who had one, back in the 1960s. They had the pink oven, pink sink, and pink fridge – and a little breakfast nook with booth seating, like in a diner (that wasn’t pink though - I don’t really remember what color it was). Well, I thought that this was just the greatest kitchen ever, it fascinated me. The notion that you could have pink kitchen appliances. Don’t start the revolution without me!

I still really dig the pink. I even like the aqua/blue table and table settings. Not sure about the floor, it sort of looks like a school gym floor. But I am willing to overlook this. Oh, and the avocado jar on the counter? I want to keep it, but I think it goes in another room. The avocado room!

I believe that the rotisserie mentioned in the caption is on the far right.There seems to be a hunk of some sort of meat waiting on top of it. Why isn’t this next to the oven?

You can see a little bit of the next room, very woody and angular. I want to go right into the photo – like Mary Poppins and Bert went into the chalk picture, remember that? – and explore the whole house.

This wonderful picture is from the Ladies’ Home Journal Cookbook: New and Basic Recipes from 1960.

All This And Toll House Too!

This is for Vintage Thingies Thursday. The thingies from me are pretty much going to be vintage ads (from my vintage magazines and ephemera collection) and cookbook stuff, that’s mostly what I have got for you. Anything else will be the exception that proves the rule, and all that.

Oh, and this is also for National Chocolate Chip Day. I couldn’t miss National Chocolate Chip Day! You see, I was looking up all the food holidays ever since I found out about Fruit Cocktail Day, and lo and behold, I was right on time for the chocolate chips.

This is the original recipe, as found in Ruth Wakefield’s Toll House Tried and True Recipes (orig. pub. 1936, this is the 1940 reprint), a lovely book that is extra-special to me because it was my grandmother’s and has her pencilled annotations. She didn’t write anything about these, though:

TOLL HOUSE CHOCOLATE CRUNCH COOKIES

Cream 1 cup butter,
Add 3/4 cup brown sugar,
3/4 cup granulated sugar and
2 eggs beaten whole. Dissolve
1 tsp soda in 1 tsp hot water, and mix alternatively with
2 1/4 cups flour sifted with 1 tsp salt.

Lastly add 1 cup chopped nuts and
2 bars (7-oz._ Nestles yellow label chocolate, semi-sweet, which has been cut in pieces the size of a pea.

Flavor with 1 tsp vanilla and drop half teaspoons on a greased cookie sheet. Bake 10-12 minutes in 375 degree oven. makes 100 cookies.

 

Muriel Saves the Day

Muriel is unhappy with the kitchen reno. They forgot abut the old splintery floor. Mother says they have to wait, there’s no more money for a fancy new floor. This is 1934 after all, Muriel – the Depression, remember that?

Then Muriel sees an ad for Congoleum Gold Seal Rugs and Mother’s ready to whip right down to the store and shell out for a kitchen rug.  Huh? A rug? How is this going to solve any problems?

Happy ending: Muriel has the gang over for a “kitchen party” – wow, that’s some hot time they’re having. A couple of elderly F. Scott Fitzgerald clones talking about insurance over by the cupboards, Muriel sitting in a hard chair, and Muriel’s pal sitting on the table. Don’t they have more than one chair?

“Don’t bother about crumbs,” our gracious hostess tells the scintillating group. Which kind, Muriel? The cupcake bits that are being ground into the rug, or the ones wearing the Arrow collars?

The Poetry of Crisco, 1920

A Calendar of Dinners With 615 Recipes (1920), by Marion Harris Neil, was distributed by the Crisco Company. Crisco was first made by Proctor and Gamble in 1911. It is kosher and vegan-friendly, as it is all vegetable. Of course it is also 100% fat, so not exactly a health elixir. Though to read this little book, one might be lulled into thinking that it was. Why, Ms. Neil calls fat “man’s most important food” and Crisco itself is dubbed “this rich, wholesome cream of nutritious food oils in sanitary tins.” That’s pretty nearly poetry in a can.

Oh, sorry – I mean, in a sanitary tin.

After the inexorable march through 600+ Crisco-based recipes, Ms. Neil gives you a menu for every day of the year. I checked up on what we ought to be cooking today, and here’s what you ought to get going on the stove on April 20th:

Celery Soup
Braised Ox-Tongue
Baked Potatoes, Mashed Turnips
Cold Slaw, Cheese, Wafers
Rice Mousse, Coffee

All of the menus are like this, with many dishes. A year of this would be like going to my grandmother’s for Sunday lunch every single day. And not even my dear grandmother - a wonderful cook –  would have wanted to make fancy puddings and soups and roast whatnot day after day.

Note the old-fashioned term “cold slaw,” which is of course what we call ”cole slaw.” Here it says that in England the dish was originally called “cold slaw” but that the later use of “cole” came from the Latin “colis,” meaning cabbage.

I wanted to find the Rice Mousse recipe to share, but Crisco’s “Domestic Scientists” forgot to share it in the book. I found something else in the complex-carb line instead, though not a dessert.

Not surprisingly, the sanitary-tin-wielding Domestic Scientists are especially keen on desserts (though not on Rice Mousse, seemingly). There are lots of good cakes and puddings in here.  But desserts are not all they can test, oh no! I also came across this unusual recipe for a meat-free sausage:

POTATO SAUSAGE

1/2 cupful Crisco
1/4 lb chopped onions
1/2 lb cold boiled mashed potatoes
1/2 lb breadcrumbs
salt and pepper to taste
2 beaten eggs

Mix all ingredients thoroughly well together with wooden spoon, then form into sausages; tie each well in cloth, and boil exactly as a roly-poly. If not to be eaten when newly cooked, put aside, and untie when wanted. This sausage is also good when oatmeal is added instead of breadcrumbs, or it may be made of half oatmeal and half breadcrumbs. Sufficient for twelve sausages.

This is in the “Vegetarian Dishes” section, which implies that a significant number of people were vegetarians in the 1920s. Here is a sensational post at Edwardian Promenade about the history of vegetarianism. I feel fortunate to live in the age of soy sausages, I really do.

The Kitchen Cabaret

Oh boy, this is something I just don’t understand. Why would you want your kitchen to sing? When I go in there I don’t want a Disney movie. You know, like Beauty and the Beast. All those plates and the teapot with the voice of Murder She Wrote (which is to say, Angela Lansbury). All that singing and – and cuteness.

I just want to cook something that’s halfway edible. That’s all I want. Oh, and a cold drink, it’s kind of hot out now. First rain, then hot. I feel like a piece of steamed broccoli.

And also – getting back to this lovely ad, which is from 1953 – why would cabinet-edging inspire any sentient being (or inanimate object for that matter) to burst into the sort of frenetic high notes that I fear are coming from the disembodied mother and girl in the upper left hand corner? Why are they up there anyway? Get down please, you know you’re not supposed to climb all over the furniture. Even if it IS singing.

But wait, there’s more. “Your kitchen can ‘dance’ with sparkling decorative color for pennies, in minutes.”  Dancing, too? I don’t want my plates and glasses dancing, thank you very much. The only thing that’ll be sparkling is the shards of glass all over my kitchen floor, that’s what.

A Drama Queen Of A Dessert: Mount Vesuvius

Mount Vesuvius isn’t just a volcano – it is also a curious dessert that reminds me a little of Baked Alaska. (The above photo shows a vacherin, as I could not find a picture of the volcano-as-dessert). 

The recipe comes from The Vest Pocket Pastry Book (1901), a tiny and charming little book that really could fit into the vest pocket of a chef. It was written for restauranteurs. Mount Vesuvius is near Naples, Italy and is the only volcano in mainland Europe to have erupted within the last century. 

Mount Vesuvius

Take vanilla ice cream, firmly frozen; mix into it coarsely broken macaroons. Build this on a glass, porcelain or silver stand, to represent a mountain. Impress a meringue shell about the size of half an egg on top, fill with alcohol. Garnish the piece with small fancy cakes and kisses; ignite the alcohol and serve.

The meringue shell seems pretty small relative to the ice cream mountain, but then again you would not want to have a big shellful of brandy or whatever, up there, igniting. And you would not want to be carrying the mountain around after you lit the top.

The recipe for kisses in this cookbook states that they are meringues in fancy shapes.  And there is also a recipe for fancy cakes:

Fancy Pastry Cakes

These cakes are made of puff paste. A great variety can be made: for instnace, rolling out the paste to 1/8 of an inch thickness, and cutting out half moons, diamonds, wreaths, etc.; brush them over with water and bestrew with sugar. Bake in a rather brisk oven. When done, holes can be made in center of the cakes and filled with jelly or cream, etc.

The perfect dessert to serve to a gathering of drama queens, or conversely to wake up placid guests who might be a little bit bored.

Image is from the 1961 Larousse Gastronomique of the closest thing I could find, a magnificent and frilly vacherin, which consists of rings of meringue or almond paste, filled in with heaps of ice cream and fruit and more meringue.

Whopovers

Here we have the oddly named cousin of the popover, from The Horsford 1886 Almanac and Cook Book. Horsford’s was a brand of baking powder  made by the Rumford Chemical Works, which fine company we met briefly on Pi Day. They also made Bread Preparation, Cream Tartar Substitute, Yeast Powder, Acid Phosphate(for drinks), Sulphite (“for preserving cakes”) and Anti-Chlorine (“for paper makers”). I guess if you got tired of preparing bread and drinking phosphates, you could make a little paper. Makes a nice change of pace!

Whopovers

Mix two heaping cups sifted four with one heaping teasponnful Horsford’s Baking Powder; then add two eggs, one large spoonful sugar, a piece of butter as large as a walnut, two cups sweet milk, a little nutmeg and salt; melt the butter. Bake in cups in a quick oven.

The picture above says, “A significant characteristic of Horsford’s Baking powder is its invigorating quality.”

Especially, I would think, Whopovers – which are clearly served to (or rather aimed at) people through some sort of small cannon.