Party Dos and Donuts

“There’s party fun for everyone when Jane Parker Donuts join the festivities!”

When they join the festivities?

What are the donuts going to be doing? I really want to know. Are they sparkling conversationalists? Do they do magic tricks? Dance on tables?

Does Jane Parker also come along for the fun? If so, I hope she brings along Betty Crocker, that saucy wench.

Party donuts are not your ordinary dull, morning-coffee donuts, you see. That cup of coffee is just there to try and keep things a little bit quiet. It’s like the donuts’ chaperone – overheated, breakable, and yet all it can really do is – just sit there.

Those crazy donuts will just ignore the coffee. They’ll be swinging from the chandeliers! Telling dirty jokes! Leaving powdered sugar all over the guests’ fancy clothes (it’s hell on velvet, you know).

The drummer is there because…OK, why IS the drummer there? An escapee from the toy box. He’s going to lay down a groove. Well, if he can. I’m not sure if he can really loosen up. He is made of wood, duh.

Not exactly a Ringo Starr or a Keith Moon, is he.

Still, there are those damn donuts – in a drum. I get it. They’re the ones drumming up the fun. As soon as they get out of the drum, that is. Jane? Betty? Could you just tip them out onto the table? They’ll be fine once they get on a flat surface. Wait till you see them do the Twist!

And the coffee sits there thinking; if only I can get someone to start dunking.

The Culinary Waterloo

If you are a “Guardian Service Homemaker,” the above title would be in reference to pie-making.  I’ll bet you didn’t know that the pie business was quite so – serious. The final battle in the war that is wrangling a meal onto the table! The author of Guardian Service Tested Recipes (ca 1955), Betty Gay, writes a whole sidebar about this terrible pie problem, entitled “Now You Can Have Fresh Pies Without Lighting the Oven.” You are, of course, supposed to make them in a Guardian Kettle Oven, which actually does sound like fun. The picture above shows the noble Kettle Oven with some of its best friends.

She writes, “courage, dear ones, only remember to use these few tips, then flaky, tender crusts that melt in the mouth will be your proud triumph.” Betty is the Wellington of pastry chefs! Her sidebar instructions are pretty standard though – make sure the water is ice cold, add it a little at a time to the fat and flour, handle it carefully, chill it before you stick it in the Kettle Oven. Here is something that sounds quite good (minus the food coloring) that you can do with your triumphant crust:

GRAPE CHIFFON PIE

(1 9-inch pie or one dozen tarts)

1 1/2 Tb plain gelatin
1/4 cup cold water
1/4 lb marshmallows
2 cups grape juice
1 Tb lemon juice
Red food coloring
1 1/2 cups whipping cream
1 bunch Tokay grapes
1 baked pie shell

1. Soak gelatin in the 1/4 cup cold water. Place cup in boiling water to melt gelatin.
2. Place marshmallows and 1/3 cup grape juice in unit over low heat. Fold over and over until marshmallows are almost melted, remove from heat – add gelatin, continue folding until smooth, cool.
3. Add remaining grape juice, lemon juice, few drops food coloring, blend in one half of whipped cream. Chill. When beginning to congeal, pour into baked pastry shell.
4. After firm, spread with whipped cream. Arrange halved grapes cut down side to resemble cluster of grapes, cut angelica to form leaves and a stem, or use a real grape leaf. 

I really wish that they had called making Napoleons a Culinary Waterloo. The jokes would certainly turn out better, anyway.

Betty Crocker: Mistress of the Unusual and Exotic

Betty’s been sampling the Tea Punch in advance of the party, I suspect. It’s the only way to explain it. She writes, “Isn’t it fun when your friends exclaim with admiration over the unusual and exotic dishes you serve them at your parties?”

Yes, that does sound like fun. I think.

Friday night is party time. And our old pal Betty Crocker is giving what she calls a “Stand-Up Party.” She must have hidden all the chairs. And she is (if the title of the booklet is correct) serving Frankly Fancy Foods. Or perhaps she means Frankly Freaky Foods. Hard to tell.

But at this party I am going straight for the drinks. I’m skipping over those appetizers. Bambinos? Cock kabobs? What was going on with Betty in 1959? (FYI, the Bambinos are the little teeny pizza things hanging out on the top tier with the olives and grape tomatoes, and the, um, kabobs are at the bottom, next to the Pastry Boats being manned by olive slices).

I will have some more of that unusual and exotic Tea Punch, though.

“The Wiener The World Awaited!”

I’m not sure that the world realized this. All the other issues at hand in the 1950s: the Cold War, the postwar economy, trying to fit into pencil skirts…all solved, nay “revolutionized,” by all the (gulp) “quickie meals” that would arise from Oscar Meyer Wieners in a Can. And also the Sack o’ Sauce. Can’t forget the Sack o’ Sauce, can we now?

Also: it is not a plus when a food (especially food in a can, or emanating from a sack) is “so different it’s patented!” It’s different, all right.

A decade after this ad, they had that commercial where the kids sing that they wanted to be Oscar Meyer Wieners, remember that? I do, it was on into the 1970s. I never actually knew any kid who expressed that desire; nor did I really want to be a hotdog. Supposedly the deal was that if you were one of those things, everyone would “be in love with you” – an idea that I don’t want to deconstruct right now (or ever, thanks) but…I think that it’s a more likely proposition that IF you are a hotdog, people will EAT you for dinner. Not be in love with you!

And if you are a hotdog in a can…oh, ugh. Never mind. Moving right along…

Here’s a recipe to go with this entrancing product. From Recipes For Young Adults (1973), here is a grown-up “After-The-Game Snack”:

WIENER WINKS

8 frankfurters
8 slices sandwich bread
1/2 cup grated cheese
butter
3 Tb chopped onion
3 Tb prepared mustard
toothpicks
8 stuffed olives

1. Cover frankfurters with boiling water; let stand 8 minutes; drain.
2. Butter bread (remove crusts if desired).
3. Combine chopped onion and mustard.
4. Dip buttered side of bread in grated cheese and spread onion mixture on unbuttered side. Place a frankfurter diagonally across each slice on onion-mustard side.
5. Fasten two opposite corners of slice with toothpick.
6. Place bread side down on broiler pan 3 inches from heat. Broil 2-3 minutes on each side to toast.
7. Perch stuffed olives on toothpicks.

Aw, the olives are perched on the toothpicks, how cute. I didn’t know they could do tricks. But now that wieners come in a can I guess anything is possible.

Note that if we make this recipe we will have a leftover Sack o’ Sauce. I can’t imagine what we’re going to do with that.

Bisquick Every Night, Josephine

Betty Crocker likes Bisquick. She likes it a lot – so much, in fact, that she will attempt to wrestle it into every recipe she can think of. And when Betty gives a party, she makes a party dessert. Makes sense. Quickly, put Bisquick in every one of those party desserts! It’s biscuity, and it’s quick – why, there’s a whole fridgeful of meaning in just that one word. Never mind what happens when you start adding layers of ingredients! For example, you might find yourself face to face with this party dessert chez Crocker - the natural partner of the faux Napoleon – the ersatz Josephine:

Josephines

Make Short Pie Dough (1 cup Bisquick mixed with 1/2 stick soft butter and 3 Tb boiling water), also adding 1/2 tsp almond or vanilla extract. Pat dough into twelve 3″x2″ oblongs with Easy Creamy Icing (i cup sifted confectioner’s sugar, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp vanilla or almond extract, 1 1/2 Tb cream). Sprinkle with chopped nuts. Put oblongs in pairs with chilled vanilla pudding between. Makes 6 tarts.

Oh, that Betty – her subtexts are  something else. Why no one’s written a dissertation about this is beyond me (believe me, they will – I remember being a bit desperate about thesis topics!)

For example: is a Josephine technically a tart. or is Betty being – well,  a little catty?

Depends on how you interpret the subliminal whatever-it-is, I guess.

Turkey and Igloos For The Go-Go Set

I have a couple of booklets about cooking things in Ontario, which theoretically is perfect for me, since I live there. One is called Cooking Ontario’s Eggs and the other is Cooking Ontario’s Turkey (apparently there is only one turkey in the province, better make good use of the leftovers!).

Of course I keep wishing that one was called Cooking Ontario’s Goose, but no such luck. The booklets were both produced by the Poultry Products Institute of Canada in Toronto, circa 1957. You can imagine the pedestrian nature of most of the text – how to cook the turkey in an oven, how to make stuffing, how to boil eggs. And then there is a recipe for turkey burgers or meatballs - ”for the Go-Go Set.” The burger has a face and a hat. The photo is above. What is the Go-Go Set, pray tell? Perhaps they are go-going far away from the smiling turkey burger. I would, certainly. They are probably not reading this book. Why, they are doing the Peppermint Twist at the go-go, Poultry Institute People – not home reading up on how to make Hot Turkey Salad For the Church or Club Supper.

And then I came upon this little item. This must be where the turkey burger and his groovy meatball friends live.

Igloo Turkey Salad

3 cups well-seasoned mashed potato salad
3 cups well-seasoned turkey salad
2-3 Tbs mayonnaise

Use a large round-bottomed bowl (6-cup size). Spread mayonnaise as evenly as possible around inside of bowl. Carefully(and lightly) press all but one cup of potato salad in a layer about an inch thick around sides and over bottom of bowl. Spoon turkey salad into the centre. Press down lightly. Smooth remaining potato salad lightly over top to seal in the turkey salad. Chill an hour or longer. To unmold, run a thin knife carefully around inside of bowl, place a serving plate face down on top of bowl and quickly invert plate and bowl in smooth motion with a slight bounce as the bowl is turned completely upside down.

Garnish serving plate with lettuce and radish roses or tomato wedges. Cut with a knife into wedges with a wide flat pie server. Yields six servings.

For a buffet supper or teenage party the illusion of an igloo may be carried farther by scoring the surface of the unmolded salad to represent blocks piled up as in making a real igloo. Use strips of green pepper or ripe olives to outline the door.

First of all, I would like to know what mashed-potato salad is supposed to be. It doesn’t exist in nature, that’s what. But then neither do turkey-salad igloos. I guess it is mashed potato and mayonnaise. But you are smearing mayo in the bowl right away anyhow. That is a lot of mayo.

And I don’t think they use radish roses and tomato wedges as architectural decoration in the Arctic. Or anywhere. Or green peppers and olives as door frames.

Finally, why do 1950s cookbook writers think that teenagers – even 1950s teenagers – will be impressed by you scoring bricks into the mashed potatoes? Particularly since this thing will never ever unmold properly. It will just be a mashed-potato slag heap (perhaps an evocation of 1950s Sudbury?). Really, you need some industrial-strength gelatin to reinforce this sort of structure.

If we really want to cook Ontario’s turkey (or goose), let’s build something a little more geographically appropriate than an igloo (talk about your Canadian stereotyping). Maybe a CN Tower made of celery and turkey wings.

Santa Clara Salad

This one is just so silly I can’t resist. It’s a salad, supposedly – but not really. It is from dear old Ruth Berolzheimer’s 1951 edition of The American Woman’s Cook Book (with special Everywoman’s Binding, which seems to have something to do with Everywoman’s Magazine, according to the title page).

This is not really a salad though – it is sort of salad as theatre-of-the-absurd – Salvador Dali Salad. It is just a venue for prunes disguised as salad – it’s on a lettuce leaf, therefore it’s a salad! 

Don’t get me wrong, I like prunes, but not so many prunes at once. It’s like a National Prune Convention on a plate. And it takes place in – well, in Santa Clara, where else? I looked up Santa Clara, California and did not see anything about prunes. It did have a largely agricultural economy up until the last few decades but is now known for being the home of Silicon Valley. The closest I can come to prunes in Santa Clara is Apple headquarters. Well, they’re both fruits! Sort of.

Santa Clara Salad

24 prunes in sirup

6 oz. cream cheese

8 slices pineapple

Head lettuce

Maraschino cherries

Stone prunes. Soften cream cheese with evaporated milk, if necessary, and stuff prunes. Place pineapple on lettuce and arrange three stuffed prunes on each slice. Garnish prunes with bits of maraschino cherries. Serves 8.

The prunes are stoned? Must be some convention. Also they are stuffed. I get like that if I tag along to conventions – those opening night cocktail parties have such good snacks. There was one, oh years ago, where they had fresh strawberries and tons of jumbo shrimp on ice. I stayed right next to the shrimp – it was a once in a lifetime shrimp opportunity! I didn’t want to leave. I had to be dragged out and away from that shrimp, it was that good.

That’s a great picture of the “salad” too, isn’t it? The prunes look like little Edvard Munch faces. Wikipedia says that “The Scream” represents “the human species overwhelmed by an attack of existential angst.” So Santa Clara Salad would be perfect if you’re having a bunch of art critics over for dinner. What would you serve for the rest of the meal?

To Catch A Quiche

One of my favorite kinds of retro cookbooks are the ones that feature celebrity recipes – and I use the term “celebrity” fairly loosely, depending on the book. Good Housekeeping put one of these out in 1958, called Who’s Who Cooks: Favorite Recipes of Famous People. They tracked down “actors and authors, musicians and milliners, statesmen and skaters, and puppeteers” and asked them what they liked on their celebrity tables. Some of them didn’t cook, not surprisingly, so in that case you are getting the cuisine “perfected by their jewels-of-cooks.”

In the case of Ray Bolger (who was as you probably remember the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz), “he takes his recipes to favorite restaurants and has them made to order.” Because he doesn’t have time to cook, you see. But wouldn’t schlepping all the way to some restaurant and trying to get a busy chef to make you Flaming Filet of Beef – one of Ray’s favorites, apparently – take more time than bunging it in the oven yourself? And why didn’t he have a jewel-of-a-cook?

Oh, never mind.

The celebrities range from people like writer/explorer Lowell Thomas  and newscaster John Cameron Swayze, to less famous ones like Sally Victor (famous in the 1950s for her hats) and Bil and Cora Baird (the puppeteers). I’ll write about some of their offerings down the road, but today I can’t resist sharing one of my favorites – Alfred Hitchcock’s Quiche Lorraine.

Who knew that Alfred Hitchcock was so crazy about quiche? I thought Real Men Didn’t Eat Quiche, and all that (remember that book from 1982, anyone?). He was clearly a man ahead of his time. Good Housekeeping informs us that Hitchcock told his friends that “I’m not a heavy eater. I’m just heavy, and I eat.” Whatever you say, Sir Alfred – just as long as you don’t bring any flocks of birds along to dinner, or anything.

Note the explanation in parentheses after the title – quiche was pretty exotic stuff back in 1958.

Hitchcock’s Quiche Lorraine (Swiss-Cheese Pie)

Sift together 1 1/2 cups sifted cake flour and 1/2 tsp salt. With finger tips, work in until crumbly: 1/4 cup butter or margarine (1/2 cup). Slowly add, stirring with fork: 1/4 cup cold water. Shape into ball; roll in waxed paper; refrigerate about 1/2 hour, or until easy to roll. Then start heating oven to 425 F. On floured board, roll dough into large circle, about 14″ in diameter. Fit into 11″ pie plate. Make attractive fluted edge. With fork, prick well. Place in refrigerator about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, make filling. Fry until crisp:

12 slices bacon

Crumble bacon into small pieces. Now, using fine grater, grate:

1/4 lb. natural Swiss cheese (makes about 1 cup)

Into bowl, break 4 eggs. Then add:

2 cups heavy cream

3/4 tsp salt

Pinch nutmeg

Generous pinch sugar

Pinch cayenne

Plenty of freshly ground black pepper

Beat with egg beater just long enough to mix thoroughly. Now spread pastry shell with about 1 Tb soft butter or margarine. Sprinkle bacon bits, then grated cheese, in bottom of pie shell. Pour cream mixture over all. Bake 15 minutes. Then reduce oven temperature to 300 F; bake 20 minutes longer, or until silver knife inserted in center comes out clean. Serve hot, cut into wedges. Makes 20 hors d’oeuvres, or 8 main-dish servings.

I am not sure about the sugar and the cayenne, or about the butter on top of the pie crust (followed by bacon) – but Hitchcock’s “great interest and good taste in food are sort of a legend,” and this is the way he liked his quiche. Let’s just be glad he didn’t put anything really strange in it.

Rawleigh’s Coconut Cream Pie

The W.T.Rawleigh Co. Ltd. was based in Montreal and Winnipeg and made a wide range of cooking and household products, roughly similar to the Watkins Company in Minnesota. They made medicines, spices, dessert mixes, artifical sweetener, food coloring, makeup – you anme it, they probably made it or something close.

The ad and recipe are from their 1959 almanac, which has lots of terrific full-page color ads for their products. In fact the almanac is mostly ads, which is great because I love old advertisements. I especially like the product packaging. Rawleigh’s give their medicines brilliant names like “Pleasant Relief” and Anti-Pain Oil.” Who wouldn’t line up to buy some of that? Just what I need after a long day!

And here’s another thing you and I might need: dessert mix. That’s right. Because you never know when hungry guests and ravenous school children are going to come marauding around, looking for pie! (Hopefully not at the same time, of course).

In the ad above, Rawleigh’s is pushing their pie-fillings-slash-puddings. They want you to serve them after meals and also as an after school snack (not the healthiest thing, but I guess it is 1959 and sugar= good energy).  I love how they urge you to keep a few on hand all the time “for regular and emergency use” – as if there was going to be some kind of pudding emergency cropping up, maybe after school. Or maybe you forgot to make something for your guests. And that will make them cranky. Low blood sugar is like that. So keep everyone happy with Rawleigh’s dessert mixes. And not to worry; this pie won’t take long to whip up.

Coconut Cream Pie

Vanilla wafers, crushed…..30

Brown sugar…..3 Tbs

Butter, melted…..1/3 cup

Semi-sweet chocolate pieces…..1 pkg

Rawleigh’s Coconut Pie Filling…..1 pkg

Rawleigh’s Vanilla…..1 tsp

Whipping cream, whipped

To make crust, mix wafer crumbs, brown sugar and butter together. Shape and press into a 9-inch pie plate. Place one half of chocolate pieces over sides and bottom of crust. Bake in 325 F oven for 10 to 12 minutes. Cool. make coconut filling according to directions on container, add 1 tsp. vanilla. Cool. Pour into crust. Cover top with sweetened whipped cream, flavored with vanilla. Sprinkle remaining chocolate pieces over top. Chill until ready to serve. Serves 6.

This sounds a lot like a Mounds bar, which is a great idea. The Mounds bar was created in 1920 by the Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Co. in Connecticut, which you can read about here.

From Buttons To Bumbershoots

One of the things I collect in addition to traditional cookbooks are books on entertaining and throwing parties (I also love old etiquette books and – well, all sorts of odd things, really). This one is probably from the 1950s and was written by Helen Campbell, who was the Director of the Chatelaine Institute in Canada. It’s called The Art of Entertaining and was done under the aegis of the London Life Insurance Company, whose interest in stag parties and wedding showers and their ilk is beyond me, but there you go.

This booklet, it is only 24 pages long, so I guess the art of entertaining was not considered hard to master. Miss Campbell does not think so. Mind you, she thinks that entertaining is all fun and friendly people and good times. She says that the reader (female, of course) “wants to know the answers to the problems of entertaining as delightfully as possible.”

Helen Campbell also thinks that my “own particular crowd” as she puts it, look like the people in the above illustration. Perhaps they have some delightful answers to entertaining problems, though I doubt it. They do have delightful hats, I can see that. Especially the woman, who looks like she got the hat from a St Patrick’s Day leprechaun costume. And Ronald Reagan seems to be answering the door, I don’t know what he’s doing there.

Anyhow, there are party games on the last page, and one of them sent me to the on-line dictionary to find out what in the world was a bumbershoot. All of Helen’s games are things people probably enjoy more if they are seven and at a birthday party, but whatever. This one is called “How’s Your Memory?” (“Oh, fine thank you, Mrs. Bumbershoot, and how is yours?”)

How’s Your Memory?

Give each guest a pencil and piece of paper. On a table in another room spread out about twenty different articles, anything from a button to a “bumbershoot.” Have the guests come in to look them over for one minute, then return to the living room to write down as many as they can remember – in five minutes. Then read out the answers and reward the winner. A bumbershoot is an old slang term for an umbrella. World Wide Words says that it was derived from the first syllable of umbrella, more or less, plus the ending (more or less) of “parachute,” the shape of which resembles that of an umbrella. The guests would not remember mine, I am sure, as it is cheap and small and black. It cost $1 in the loonie store, which is what we call dollar stores up here in Canada. The people in the picture would have elegant and memorable (and delightful) ones, though.Once you have a winner of that exciting game, you will of course reward him or her – being the gracious hostess that you are – and you are, aren’t you? You had better be, once you read this book. How about rewarding everyone – with a nice piece of Feather Cake, from the section on Showers (perfectly in sync with the umbrella theme!)

Feather Cake 1/4 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
2 cups pastry or cake flour
3 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup milk
1/2 tsp almond flavoring Cream the butter thoroughly, add the sugar gradually and continue creaming until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the egg and beat well. Sift the flour, measure and sift two or three times with the baking powder and salt. Add alternately with the milk to the first mixture. Add the flavoring and bake in a greased square tin or in two greased layer cake tins in a moderate oven (350 degrees Fahrenheit) for 30 to 35 minutes.Fresh Strawberry Icing1/4 cup butter
2 cups powdered sugar
1 Tb orange juice
1/3 cup (approximately) of fresh strawberry pulp
pinch of saltCream the butter thoroughly, add the sugar gradually until one cupful is combined. Add the orange juice, then the remaining cupful of sugar alternately with the strawberry pulp, beating smooth after esach addition and adding enough of the strawberry pulp to make of spreading consistency. Add the salt and spread on top and sides of the cake.