Vintage Cooking Booklets and Pamphlets

[MokaPot]

3 hours ago, Smithy said:

It's interesting to see Mazola described as "liquid shortening". Is it the same product that we now call Mazola corn oil, or were there changes made?

 

I'm guessing Mazola was trying to compete with Crisco and remind people that you could fry chicken, etc., in Mazola. IMO, it's probably the same product.

 

[Margaret Pilgrim]

7 hours ago, MokaPot said:

 

I'm guessing Mazola was trying to compete with Crisco and remind people that you could fry chicken, etc., in Mazola. IMO, it's probably the same product.

 

I remember making quite excellent pie crust with corn oil.   Corn oil and milk, if I remember correctly.    And my still favorite carrot cake is made with oil.   

[David Ross]

20 hours ago, Kim Shook said:

The mention of "salad oil" reminds me of my mom years ago searching every grocery store she went into looking for "salad oil".  She would not believe that it was the same thing as vegetable oil and swore it tasted different.  😁

My Mother was the same, she used salad oil.

[David Ross]

13 hours ago, Margaret Pilgrim said:

I remember making quite excellent pie crust with corn oil.   Corn oil and milk, if I remember correctly.    And my still favorite carrot cake is made with oil.   

Me too, my best carrot cake I've been making for decades uses corn oil.  Keeps it really moist. 

[heidih]

39 minutes ago, David Ross said:

Me too, my best carrot cake I've been making for decades uses corn oil.  Keeps it really moist. 

Ditto on the pumpkin and carrot cakes. Maybe the term shortening is associated with baking so they were getting you used to concept of oil in baked goods.

[Katie Meadow]

A personal bias: I stay away from corn oil. When baking cakes, if I want a neutral oil I like to use Grapeseed. If I don't have any I will use Sunflower oil instead, but I think the flavor or Grapeseed oil is more appealing. I know there are downsides and upsides to various vegetable oils, some related to agribusiness practices and some related to health, and truthfully I don't know how to make much sense of it. 

 

Olive oil seems to be the healthiest choice, but that's a very specific choice when it comes to cakes. Canola is frequently specified for a variety of recipes and often for deep frying. But when it comes to Canola oil I'm like those people who think cilantro tastes like soap (not me!). To me Canola oil smells like fish, so I stay away from it.

 

And I agree that carrot cake often benefits from oil rather than butter, but it need not be corn oil to get the same results.

[heidih]

19 minutes ago, Katie Meadow said:

And I agree that carrot cake often benefits from oil rather than butter, but it need not be corn oil to get the same results.

I just use vegetable oil and the one in the pantry from Kroger is soybean. After doing the olive oil orange cake I moved into olive with spice cake so sure it would be good with the carrot & pumpkin.  When it comes to vegetable oil I have to give props to Wesson for using Florence Henderson and her demonstration of how little is absorbed and you get a crisp crust. I think she was ith them for 25 years!  

 

[David Ross]

4 hours ago, heidih said:

I just use vegetable oil and the one in the pantry from Kroger is soybean. After doing the olive oil orange cake I moved into olive with spice cake so sure it would be good with the carrot & pumpkin.  When it comes to vegetable oil I have to give props to Wesson for using Florence Henderson and her demonstration of how little is absorbed and you get a crisp crust. I think she was ith them for 25 years!  

 

Looking closely she barely took a bit of that chicken, but it does look delicious to me.  

[heidih]

12 minutes ago, David Ross said:

Looking closely she barely took a bit of that chicken, but it does look delicious to me.  

Poor dear said in an interview they would do 25 or more takes! They did get the crunch sound in there and maybe not on the one I linked but they did used to mention the right frying temp was a key though they credited the oil and not the cook . 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

On 1/14/2021 at 11:58 AM, Katie Meadow said:

A personal bias: I stay away from corn oil. When baking cakes, if I want a neutral oil I like to use Grapeseed. If I don't have any I will use Sunflower oil instead, but I think the flavor or Grapeseed oil is more appealing. I know there are downsides and upsides to various vegetable oils, some related to agribusiness practices and some related to health, and truthfully I don't know how to make much sense of it. 

 

Olive oil seems to be the healthiest choice, but that's a very specific choice when it comes to cakes. Canola is frequently specified for a variety of recipes and often for deep frying. But when it comes to Canola oil I'm like those people who think cilantro tastes like soap (not me!). To me Canola oil smells like fish, so I stay away from it.

 

And I agree that carrot cake often benefits from oil rather than butter, but it need not be corn oil to get the same results.

 

My bias, when baking cakes, if I want a neutral oil I use a different recipe.*  Though seriously, when I want a neutral cooking oil grapeseed is my choice.  The thought of Canola (sorry Canadians) makes me gag.  Canola tastes rancid even if it's not.  (Unlike girl scouts and girl scout cookies.)  For deep frying purposes I choose peanut oil.  I also keep sunflower oil on hand for many Georgian recipes that call for it.  Much olive oil passes my lips but I would not pretend it's neutral.

 

 

*I can't abide oil based cakes in general.  God created butter for a reason.

 

 

 

[weinoo]

9 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

I can't abide oil based cakes in general.  God created butter for a reason.

Exactly what I learned from Nick Malgieri.

 

However, cakes specifically based on (good) olive oil because of where they are made and whose recipe it is, can be good.

 

Penelope Casas and Marcella Hazan are two I can think of.

[David Ross]

Home Baking Made Easy by Virginia Roberts, 1944.  Sponsored by the Occident Home Baking Institute, Occident Flour Company, Russell-Miller Milling Co., Minneapolis. The little 50c sticker tells me I either got this at an estate sale or someone bought it for me at a vintage shop.  It's a real treat to have this one. In the insert in the booklet there are some recipes the owner clipped out of magazines and the local paper for Chocolate Crisp Cookies and Peanut Butter Soup.  Those appear to be from the 1970s, some thirty years after it was printed.  But on the inside back cover is a recipe that looks like it is from the 1940s based on the writing.  No recipe title, but I think it is a sort of refrigerator cake of vanilla wafers, pineapple filling and cottage cheese.  This one is spiral bound, 108 pages and measures 6 1/2 x 9 1/2".

 

 

[heidih]

That cottage cheese and pineapple seems to have been a popular "fancy" thing - in jello too. 

[David Ross]

29 minutes ago, heidih said:

That cottage cheese and pineapple seems to have been a popular "fancy" thing - in jello too. 

I don't mind an old-fashioned vanilla type of pudding dish with vanilla wafers, and pineapple wouldn't be too awful, but they got me with the cottage cheese.  But it sure would be something my Mother made, I think she use cottage cheese in just about everything.  And remember back in those days, a "diet" plate was hamburger patty, cottage cheese and maybe a leaf of lettuce and a slice of tomato.  

[heidih]

5 minutes ago, David Ross said:

I don't mind an old-fashioned vanilla type of pudding dish with vanilla wafers, and pineapple wouldn't be too awful, but they got me with the cottage cheese.  But it sure would be something my Mother made, I think she use cottage cheese in just about everything.  And remember back in those days, a "diet" plate was hamburger patty, cottage cheese and maybe a leaf of lettuce and a slice of tomato.  

Oh yes! I ate my share of those plates. It was, I think, the days of little dairy selection thus it also landed in lasagna, in our cheese strudel,,,,, Also a "thrifty and nutritious choice" during the reign of home economists. 

[kayb]

...rather sheepishly admitting I LIKE cottage cheese.

[heidih]

17 minutes ago, kayb said:

...rather sheepishly admitting I LIKE cottage cheese.

Oh me too - just had to get over its association with those traumatic intense dieting years. It melts!  Perfect tossed with hot pasta, stirred into a creamy soup etc. Yes should  have remembered it as sub for ricotta in lasagna but we used ricotta. Sat in salon couple years ago and an elderly client brought in a lemon jello, pineapple, cottage cheese tupperware bowl and plastic spoons, The ladies were raving. Sure the recipe is in one of the pamphlets posted in this topic.

[Katie Meadow]

Cottage cheese was used growing up for only one thing: my dad liked to mix it with sour cream and stir it into sliced cucumbers and radishes with salt and pepper. I still like that once in a while in hot weather. I used to like cottage cheese with cantaloupe sprinkled with cinnamon. Then I switched to ricotta and cantaloupe and never looked back.

 

I can eat good ricotta with a spoon out of the container any time. Now I am partial to to any rustic toast spread with butter then ricotta and salted. But I digress; I know these old pamphlets are comfy homes for all kinds of bizarre concoctions with cottage cheese. I can't say as I have ever had cottage cheese with jello or with pineapple. Jello was typically available if you were sick or had your tonsils out. It was considered dessert, not salad, and made  appealing only with do-it-yourself Redi-Whip. Despite how dreadful that sounds I would eat it now in my altered pandemic/MSNBC haze, but only if I didn't have to get off the couch. 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

I never cared for cottage cheese (somehow I associate cottage cheese with canned peaches).  But what I really loved was junket.  I'm sure there must be junket recipes in these books.

 

[heidih]

28 minutes ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

I never cared for cottage cheese (somehow I associate cottage cheese with canned peaches).  But what I really loved was junket.  I'm sure there must be junket recipes in these books.

 

I thought those were mostly back of box recipes. We went through a period with the red one. Much more pleasant texture flavor and taste than Jello. Rennet based. 

https://www.amazon.com/Junket-Danish-Dessert-Raspberry-4-75-Ounce/dp/B00473UBEQ

[SusieQ]

1 hour ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

I never cared for cottage cheese (somehow I associate cottage cheese with canned peaches).  

 

Canned peaches over cottage cheese. That's it, nothing else. Standard 1950s salad, but considered a bit high(er) class -- at least in my family and neighborhood circles. 😄

[heidih]

I can not see images of the classic Knudsen in the pink container with pineapple without remembering love of life husband - daily lunch. Don't see it anymore. Almost forgot.  https://www.instacart.com/landing?

[Katie Meadow]

@JoNorvelleWalkerif you hadn't mentioned Junket it probably would have been buried in my brain for the rest of my life. Thank you? I wonder if that stuff they sell as Junket Danish dessert on Amazon is like the original.

[David Ross]

"Recipes-Oregon Trawl Seafood."  For decades my Father worked for the Oregon Dept. of Agriculture and one of his main responsibilities was working with the various State Commodity Commissions.  Everything from the Dairy Commission, Beef Commission, Strawberry Commission, Filbert Commission and dozens of others.  This booklet dates from the 1970's and was given out at trade shows and fairs to promote Oregon Trawl Seafood.  Mind you, fishing practices are different today than they were back then.  To this day I still make the Cioppino recipes.

 

 

[Smithy]

I think the cover is very appealing! That's always been a favorite style of mine. I like that little header, "Fish aren't so dumb -- they eat very well" as a reason to think of seafood as healthful.

 

Sole Josephine gives me pause, however. Have you ever tried that recipe? I'm none too sure about the combination of fried (okay, breaded and sauteed) bananas and fish. Maybe I'm just short on imagination.