Egg-Free Cake: or, The time is right

Who would have thought that eggs would disappear from grocery stores? 

Eggless Cake ½ c shortening* 1½ c sugar 1 tsp soda ½ tsp cinnamon ½ tsp nutmeg 3 c flour 1 c sour milk or buttermilk 1 c firmly packed raisins Heat oven to 350°. Grease and flour two 8" round cake pans. Chop the raisins, or put them in a cup and have at them with scissors, stirring them as you go so they all get snipped. Cream shortening and sugar. Stir in the cinnamon, nutmeg, and baking soda, mix well. Add the flour one cup at a time, alternating with the milk ½ cup at a time. Mix thoroughly after every addition. Stir in the raisins, being sure to break up any clumps. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until it springs back in the center when lightly pressed. *A lot of recipes from this time use the word shortening to refer to any solid fat. So if you prefer to use margarine or butter, go right ahead. Good Things to Eat, Rufus Estes, 1911

Only a few weeks ago, the very idea of an egg shortage seemed as preposterous as running out of toilet paper did before the pandemic. Eggs were always there, just like the flour and the canned corn. But these days, a movie scene like this hits a little different.

The Stepford Wives, 2004

As eggs get scarcer, we at A Book of Cookrye would like to share a cake recipe that doesn't use any. Of course, we can offer the War Cake, which also contains no dairy. We also have a one-egg cake, for those who want to make a single egg work for an entire birthday-sized layer cake. But today, we are making the eggless cake from Good Things To Eat As Suggested By Rufus. 

Because we already had sour cream in the refrigerator, we used it instead of buttermilk. It made the cake batter almost like cookie dough.  

Of course, having been here before, we know that this recipe will make a perfectly good cake if you put it in a cake pan and then bake it like a normal person would. If you look past the low-quality picture from when last we wrote about it, you can see that baking it as directed results in a very lovely cake.

But today, in order to give the oven a bit of rest, I'm putting the cake batter onto this Soviet waffle iron that landed in the kitchen.

Reminder: The cake batter is egg-free. There's nothing timely about this cookware at all.

I knew the cake would be good because it was the last time I made it. And it looks really cute coming out of a waffle iron. 

I'll admit it makes a better cake than waffles, but that's why the cookbook writer told us to bake it in the oven and not on a waffle iron. 

In closing, this is a great cake for saving eggs. It's old-fashioned and a lot firmer than what we're used to today. But it doesn't taste like you tried to bake with ingredients you didn't have. It is very good on its own.

Cabbage Cooked In Milk: or, Just like Great-Grandma used to make

Today, we are going back to my great-grandmother's binder of recipes and making cabbage.

Cabbage Cooked in Milk 2 cups milk 3 tbsp butter 3 tbsp flour 5 to 6 cups shredded cabbage (about half a cabbage-head) 1 cup cream or half-and-half Salt and pepper to taste Nutmeg to taste (if desired)* Heat the milk in a large saucepan. While you're waiting on the milk, melt the butter in a small frying pan. Add the flour and mix thoroughly. Reduce the burner to just enough heat to keep it warm. When the milk comes to a boil, add the cabbage to it. Cook for 2 minutes after it comes back to a simmer. You may have to press the cabbage into the milk until it softens, just like you usually have to gradually push spaghetti into boiling water as it starts to bend. After the cabbage has cooked for 2 minutes, stir in the half-and-half. Before the mixture has time to reheat, quickly mix in the butter and flour. Add salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a brisk boil and cook for 4 minutes, frequently stirring and scraping the bottom of the pot. *Nutmeg isn't in the original ingredients, but it's very good. Source: handwritten manuscript

Apparently she was a teacher. I think her cursive is just as incisive as the corrections she probably put under subpar homework.

Before proceeding, I should note that I only decided to make this recipe after seeing the relatively short cooking time. After all, very few vegetables are at their best after boiling for an hour. 

More so than the graham cracker cake or the brown sugar squares, this seemed like something my great-grandmother would have made. From what I've heard about her, and from seeing her perpetually stern face and rigorously serviceable clothes in photographs, she seems a lot more likely to serve cabbage than cake. 

I've never shredded a cabbage before, and honestly had no idea how. But Martha Stewart showed me how in exactly one minute. It's so rare to find cooking technique videos that aren't bloated out with theme songs or entreaties to "like and subscribe," so I was pleasantly surprised. Of course, I didn't manage to cut my cabbage as finely as the disembodied hands in the video, but I think I did pretty well for a first attempt. 

I didn't see how we could ever submerge this surfeit of cabbage in a pint of milk. But I figured it must have worked at some point, otherwise it wouldn't be written down. I thought that perhaps the cabbage would shrink a lot as it cooked, just like spinach does.

The cabbage barely fit into the pot, which took away a lot of my vegetable optimism. But as I often do when things look amiss on the stove, I followed the recipe exactly as written so I could blame someone else.

There's milk under there somewhere.

After two minutes, our recipe directs us to add the butter, flour, and second allotment of milk. Anyone who made it through the first six weeks of a home economics class would know that milk, butter, and flour are the starting ingredients of a standard-issue white sauce. With that in mind, I initially thought we're supposed to make a gravy which would in turn thicken the milky cabbage. But our recipe directs us, in formidably legible cursive, to "Combine the butter and flour and add with the top milk and seasoning to the cooking cabbage mixture." 

I was afraid that the butter and flour would harden into dumpling-clods as soon as it landed in the hot milk. But I can't argue with someone who (based on the recipe we're looking at) could competently use a fountain pen. And so, I dumped in the half-and-half (which today is filling in for the top milk). Before the pot of cabbage had a chance to reheat, I quickly added the butter and flour and stirred really hard to make them quickly mix into everything else. I didn't think it would work, but was happily surprised.

At this point, we had only one sentence left in the recipe: "Continue cooking the entire mixture rapidly for 4 minutes." When I turned off the burner, the cabbage was blessedly still green instead of a colorless overcooked slime. Unfortunately, it hung off the ladle like limp green tentacles.

Boy does this ever look like someone saying "Eat your vegetables."

The cabbage looked a lot better at the table than when I fished it out of the pot. Just for a bit of extra flair (and because we had the partial remains of a loaf on the countertop), I popped a slice of French bread into the toaster and then propped it up in the bowl.

 To my surprise, I liked this a lot. I had initially suspected that I was making a perfunctory recipe for joyless vegetables, but it was oddly satisfying on a cold night. It also was unexpectedly filling, which I imagine was ideal when my great-grandmother was feeding the kids. The short cooking time meant that the cabbage was still ever-so-slightly crisp. The cabbage became slightly sweet as it cooked, which I liked.

In full disclosure, I should note that some of the milk hardened onto the bottom of the pot (as often happens when putting milk on the stove). I had to soak it overnight in bleach-water before the cooked-on milk would lift away. Soaking a dirty pot overnight isn't laborious, but I do think it's worth keeping in mind. 

In closing, this was unexpectedly good and also really quick to make. If you are actually organized in the kitchen, you can have it ready in about half an hour. So, and I didn't think I would say this, I have already made this again.

Note: "Top milk" refers the cream that used to separate out of milk and rise to the top of the bottle. Because milk is now homogenized, that no longer happens. Back then, you had to shake the milk bottle to mix it before pouring, like you often do with salad dressings today. Many people would instead pour out the cream, then pour themselves a glass of milk, and then return the cream to the bottle afterward.↪

Onion Soup Gratinee: or, Every bit as good as I hoped

"Oh, go eat a boiled onion!"

Onion Soup Gratinee 3 white or yellow onions 3 tbsp butter or margarine (or cooking oil if desired) 6 cups beef stock 1 clove garlic, chopped (if desired) 2 tbsp chopped parsley (fresh or dried) Salt and pepper to taste 3 tbsp grated cheese (we recommend provolone) ¼ loaf French bread, sliced to desired thickness Have a large casserole dish ready. Quarter the onions lengthwise and slice thinly. Melt the butter in a soup pot. Add the onions and cook until slightly golden. This will take a while, so have patience. If using butter, be sure to stir it often or else it will burn onto the bottom of the pot. Add beef stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes. While the pot is simmering, put the bread slices onto the bare oven racks. Then heat oven to 400°. Remove the bread from the oven when it is dried. After the soup has simmered 10 minutes, remove from heat and add the garlic, parsley, salt, and pepper. Pour into the casserole dish, and lay the bread slices on top. Sprinkle with the cheese. Bake until the cheese is browned on top, about 10 minutes. Note: If you have single-serving baking dishes, that is even nicer than baking the soup in one large pan. Source: Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933 via The Internet Archive

Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book, 1933

As the temperature dips in and out of freezing, heating up the oven for the express purpose of baking soup seems more justified than it did a week ago. And so, when no one was around to whine about the smell, I dared to bring forth an onion.

You can tell that this book comes from an era when we were economizing on time as much as money. Instead of chopping the entire onion into tiny pieces, we just had to cut it up like this. The onion didn't even have time to make me cry.

Less than two minutes after I got the onion out of the refrigerator, we were ready to heat up the saucepan. Now, because this cookbook came out in the middle of the Depression, our recipe calls for "butter or butter substitute." And so, with the recipe's blessing, I defied a century of cooking purism and put a big spoonful of cheap spreadable margarine into the pot.

 

This is period-correct economization.

And so, it was time to get our star ingredient off the cutting board and onto the stove!

I was kind of surprised that this soup contains onions and nothing else. I know it's called onion soup, but most soup recipes tell you to throw in a few other things besides the title ingredient. Truly, economizing was no joke in 1933.

We have learned that caramelizing onions takes a very long time. But you can also expect to spend quite a while at the frying pan if your recipe merely calls for "softened and lightly browned." For those who aren't using cooking oil like it's the 21st century, you should know that you need to keep stirring this the whole time because the butter (or butter substitute) will otherwise want to burn onto the bottom of the pan.

 

I had the audacity to leave the pot unattended and clean off the countertop. (After learning that onions require patience, I soon let myself get used to this sort of stovetop neglect.) Only a minute or so later, I returned to find that we had a few blackened spots on the onions. Because we are economizing, I didn't throw them out and start over.

You wouldn't have thrown this away if Old Man Depression was knocking on your door.

I've seen a lot of people say that recipes from this era are underseasoned, and I agree that a lot of them are. But I think the tiny seasoning amounts in most ingredient lists were meant to be starting points that you, the home cook, would expand on. With that said, I have to credit the recipe writers for using a truly huge amount of parsley in this recipe. This is exactly as much as the ingredients list calls for, and not a speck more. Perhaps fresh parsley would have been better, but we are economizing.

At this point, it was time to put our bread on top and get this into the oven. Our recipe calls for "one-fourth loaf of French bread," which I was only too happy to purchase. Even today, French bread is just one dollar per loaf at the grocery store near me. But then I started wondering: was French bread already a thing in grocery stores in the 1930s? I know that no grocery store today is complete without a rack of baguettes, but was that already the case in 1933? (Of course, supermarkets didn't really exist then, but that's another matter.) Or did most bakeries sell cheap French bread in those days?

Anyway, today's recipe taught me that bread shrinks when you toast it. I cut enough slices to cover this pan exactly. But after getting them out of the oven, I had to add two more to cover the empty space. 

In case you forgot that the Depression was on, this recipe calls for only three tablespoons of cheese to sprinkle over enough soup to serve a medium-sized family. Obviously, I let myself be a bit more extravagant than that. Provolone seemed like a great match, but I couldn't find any in brick form. I was mildly irked at having to pay the deli-counter markup for sliced cheese. But a good onion is worth it.

You can see the non-toasted last-minute bread already getting soggy, while the oven-dried bread is still perfectly fine.

After baking for ten minutes, the cheese was browned on top like every good casserole ought to be.

This soup tasted unexpectedly French in a way I couldn't explain. But it was also a lot better than a boiled onion has any right to be. The bread on top, despite being thoroughly dried out in the oven, got very soggy but kept a very thin layer of toasted crispness top. Some people might find that comforting, but I would rather make croutons and serve them on the side. However, I would definitely eat this again, and often.