American Cookery: Thanksgiving Menus and Recipes - - (good books for high schoolers .txt) 📗
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Rupert contributed "Corn Popped in a Kettle." A large spoonful of lard and a teaspoonful of salt were placed in the bottom of a large kettle over a hot fire. A cup of shelled popcorn was added and stirred briskly with a mixing spoon. When the kernels began to pop, the kettle was covered and shaken rapidly, back and forth, until filled with fluffy, white popcorn.
With the fruit and "grape-juice lemonade," the sandwiches, doughnuts and popcorn made a pleasing "spread," Polly felt. She served everything on paper plates and used paper napkins, decorated with Thanksgiving designs.
To Make a Tiny HouseTeach me thy lore, be all in all to me.
Show me the way to find the charm
That lies in every humble rite and daily task within thy walls.
Then not alone for thee, but for the universe itself,
Shall I have lived and glorified my home.
Vegetable Tarts and Pies
Elizabeth Goose of Boston bestowed a great blessing upon American posterity when she induced her good man, Thomas Fleet, to publish, in 1719, "The Mother Goose Melodies," many of which rhymes dated back to a similar publication printed in London two hundred years before. Is it strange that, with this ancestral nursery training, the cry against the use of pastry goes unheeded, when as children, we, too, have sung to us, over and over, the songs of tarts and pies?
The word tart comes from the Latin word tortus, because tarts were originally in twisted shapes, and every country seems to have adopted them into their national menus. That they were toothsome in those early days is shown in these same nursery rhymes, and, that tarts seemed to have been relished by royalty and considered worthy of theft is evinced in the rhymes,
Pie-crust and pastry-crust that was the wall."
Again this ancient lore speaks of "Five and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie," and, too, there was that child wonder, "Little Jack Horner" who, with the same unerring instinct of a water wizard with a willow twig, could, by the sole means of his thumb, locate and extricate, upon the tip of the same, a plum from the Christmas pie.
American tarts and pies are in a class of their own. Pies were very closely allied to pioneer, and the Colonial housewife of early days was forced to concoct fillings out of sweetened vegetables, such as squash, sweet potatoes, and even some were made of vinegar. Yet the children still doted on these tempting tarts, pies and turnovers, for were they not trotted in babyhood on a
To see what Tommy can buy:
A penny white loaf, a penny white cake,
And a two-penny apple pie."
The next time you have a few varieties of vegetables left over, or wish a dainty luncheon side dish, try making a tray of vegetable tarts with various fillings, and they will prove as fascinating to choose from as a tray of French pastries.
While I have worked out these modern recipes in tempting ways of serving left-overs using common vegetables, I will lay all pastry honors to our fore-mothers, who passed on to us the art of pie-making. Proof as to the harmlessness of pies in diet is shown in the fine constitution of our American doughboy, who is certainly a great credit to the heritage of pastry handed down by the Daughters of the American Revolution.
The moral of this discourse is that, "The child is father of the man," and men dote on pies.
Potato Tarts à la Gratin
Line round muffin pans with pastry circles as for other preserve tarts, and fill with the following:
Dice cold-boiled potatoes, season with salt and pepper, moisten with white sauce, made of two tablespoonfuls of flour, two tablespoonfuls of lard, one cup of milk, one-half a teaspoonful salt. Mix with this grated cheese. Fill the shells and sprinkle grated cheese on top. Bake a light brown.
Baked Onion Dumplings
Parboil medium-sized onions in salted water. Cut half way down in quarters, add salt, butter, and pepper. Place each on a square of biscuit dough or pastry, rolled thin. Bring together opposite corners, twist, and place in a moderate oven to bake the onion tender. Serve with white sauce.
Fresh Tomato Tart Salad
With a round cooky cutter make rounds of pastry. Cut an equal number with the doughnut cutter. Prick, sprinkle lightly with grated cheese and bake a light brown. Place a plain shell on a crisp lettuce leaf, add a slice of tomato, not larger, on top. Then pour on a little mayonnaise and place on top the tart shell with a hole in the center. Serve at once.
Green Tomato Mince Pie
One peck of green tomatoes, put through a food chopper. Boil, drain and add as much water as juice drained out. Scald and drain again. Add water as before, scald and redrain. This time add half as much water, then the following:—
2 pounds raisins
2 tablespoonfuls nutmeg
2 tablespoonfuls cinnamon
2 tablespoonfuls cloves
2 tablespoonfuls allspice
2 tablespoonfuls salt
Boil all together, and add one cup of vinegar. Cook till thick as desired. Put in jars and seal.
To one pint of this mixture add one cup of chopped apple and the juice and rind, grated or ground. Sweeten to taste, fill crust and bake as the usual mince pie.
Evaporated apples may be used, but grind before soaking and do not cook.
These pies will not harm children, and are very inexpensive, as compared to those made of mincemeat.
Plum Tomato Preserves Turnovers
Make a circle as big as a saucer, or a square equal in area. Fill the center with plum tomato preserve and fold over matching edges, either as a half circle, or a triangle. Prick and bake.
Turnovers are especially ideal as pies for fitting into lunch boxes, and may be made of any sweetened vegetable preserve for school lunches.
King Cabbage Tarts
Use cabbage, which has been boiled in salted water and seasoned with salt and pepper to taste. Make a white sauce and pour over, mixing well with the cabbage. Fill round muffin pans lined with pastry circles, sprinkle with cheese over the top and bake. Carrots may be used the same way, omitting the cheese and using latticed strips of pastry over the top. These will be hardly recognizable as such common vegetables.
New Ways of Using Milk
While probably the best way of using milk is to drink it in its raw or pasteurized state, many children and adults will not use it in that form. In that case, the problem is to disguise or flavor the milk in some way so that the food value will not be changed or destroyed, and yet be more palatable than the natural product.
It has been found that children will drink flavored, sweetened milk when they will simply not touch pure milk. In order to demonstrate how universal the craving for sweetened, cold drinks has become, and how easy it is for the milkmen to cater to this demand, Prof. J. L. Sammis of the Wisconsin College of Agriculture conducted a booth at the 1921 Wisconsin state fair and dispensed milk in twenty-five new, pleasing, and attractive ways over a soda fountain.
Thousands of these milk drinks were consumed, and a report from a Tennessee county fair also revealed that 10,000 similar drinks were sold there by an enterprising dairyman. There is nothing elaborate about the proposition. If these drinks are to be prepared in the home, and the whole question is largely one of increasing the home consumption of milk, Professor Sammis declares:
"Take any flavor that happens to be on the pantry shelf, put a little in a glass, add sugar to taste, fill the glass with milk, and put in some ice. That is all there is to it. Be sure that the milk is drank very cold, when it is most palatable. Vanilla is a very good flavor."
It is not even necessary that whole milk be used, as condensed milk will do very well. Simply dilute the condensed milk with an equal volume of water, and use as whole milk. Condensed milk, however, has a cooked flavor found objectionable by many, and, in that case, a suitable substitute is powdered milk, which has no such cooked flavor.
To prepare a powdered milk drink, put the flavor into the receptacle first, then the sugar, and then the powdered milk with a little water. Beat the powdered milk with an egg beater until it is wet through, and then add the rest of the water, finishing with the ice.
By adding fruit colors these various milk drinks can be given a changed external appearance, and wise is the mother who will prepare them often when her children show an inclination not to drink enough milk. Served at the table, they attract every member of the family. These milk drinks are no more expensive than many of the more watery and less useful compounds, so often substituted.
Soda fountains might well consider these various forms of sweetened and flavored milk to attract new trade. At the fountains the various flavoring syrups would naturally be used, and no sugar is necessary. And instead of clear water, carbonated water is used. The variety of these drinks is limited only by the ingenuity of the dispenser.
Old New England Sweetmeats
Crab-Apple Dainty
Wash seven pounds of fruit and let boil with a little water until soft enough to press through a colander. Add three pounds of sugar, three pints of vinegar, and cloves and cinnamon to taste, and let the mixture boil, slowly, until it is thick and jelly-like.
Pumpkin Preserve
Pare a medium-sized pumpkin and cut into inch cubes. Let steam until tender, but not broken. Or cut the pumpkin into large pieces and let steam a short time and then cut the cubes.
Prepare a syrup of sugar and water, about three pounds of sugar and a pint-and-a-half of water, in which simmer the juice and rind (cut into strips) of two lemons. Drop the pumpkin cubes into the syrup and let simmer, carefully, until the pumpkin is translucent. Dip out the pumpkin and pack in ordinary preserve jars; pour over the syrup and lemon and close the jars.
Apple-Orange Marmalade
Take seven pounds of apples, all green, if possible; wash and remove any imperfections, also the blossom and stem. Cut, but do not core nor peel. Cut in very small pieces. Three oranges; wash and remove peel, which put through finest knife of food-chopper, after discarding the inner white peeling, also seeds. Put the apple on to boil, adding water till it shows among the fruit, and boil to quite soft; mash fine and put in jelly bag to drain over night. Boil the juice with the orange pulp, cut in very small pieces; add the orange peel and cook for twenty minutes, or till the orange is cooked. Add five (5) pounds of granulated sugar and let boil until a little in a cold saucer will jell.
This recipe has never been in print to my knowledge and will prove very satisfactory to the majority of people.
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