Candied Sweet Potatoes with Pineapple: They're not bad if you like sweet potatoes with pineapple

The calendar says autumn is here, and the weather sometimes agrees! This means it's time to put pumpkins on the doorstep and sweet potatoes in the oven. Today, our friend who wrote in her copy of the Woman's Club of Fort Worth Cook Book an exciting idea for us.

Candied Sweet Potatoes and Pineapples About 1 pound sweet potatoes One (8-oz) can diced pineapple 2 tbsp brown sugar 1 tbsp butter ½ tsp nutmeg 1½ tsp cinnamon ½ tsp salt Cook the potatoes, whether by boiling, baking, or microwaving. Then remove the peels and cut into large cubes (one- to two-inch--- no need to be too uniform). Drain the juice from the pineapple can into a large pot (preferably nonstick). Then add the brown sugar and cook over medium heat until syrupy, about 3 to 4 minutes. Turn off heat. Add butter, spices, and salt. Stir until butter is melted. Then add the potatoes and pineapples. Cook over medium heat until syrup thickens too much to drip off of the potatoes, stirring constantly and scooping the syrup from the bottom of the pot and spooning it over the potatoes. Then remove from heat and serve. Handwritten note from The Woman's Club of Fort Worth Cook Book (1928)

This recipe comes from the person who gave us Elizabeth's rolls. It is one of the few handwritten recipes in the book that has nearly no instructions. Most of the others look like they were meant for someone else to use, but this reads more like a hasty note-to-self. I didn't even know if I should bake these until I deciphered some of the more ambiguous cursive and read "Sweet potatoes in well buttered cas," which presumably stands for casserole. No one puts food in a well-buttered casserole unless it goes in the oven. 

I think this recipe comes from the pencil of someone who knew how to bake sweet potatoes and only needed an ingredient reminder. It's like if someone today wrote out the ingredients for a soup and the line "simmer until done." Unfortunately, I don't know how to make sweet potato casserole. Even our anonymous friend gets a bit uncertain, ending the list with a question mark on "paprika?"

Our recipe has nearly no directions, so I didn't know whether the pineapple chunks go into the potatoes or on top. I tried stirring them in, and they turned into flavorless wads of fiber. But I should note that the pineapple juice was really good in the potatoes.

I figured we are probably supposed to put a lot of the ingredients on top instead of mixing everything together. After all, aren't baked sweet potatoes supposed to have something on top to get crisp and (hopefully) delicious? I imagined the paprika in the topping would have the same sweet-savory contrast as pineapple and pepperoni on pizza.

As aforesaid, our friend was uncertain about the paprika. I tried it a small spoonful before baking, and didn't like it at all. The paprika tasted out of place and oddly bitter. I tried making another batch with less paprika, thinking I may have overdone it the first time. But even the subtlest hint of paprika was subtly wrong. (In case you think I'm making multiple successive pounds of sweet potato casserole for this recipe, I made only a single-serving pan at a time, slipped next to whatever was already in the oven.)

I was ready to dismiss the recipe as a badly aged oddity. Then I made my great-grandmother's candied sweet potatoes and thought "Maybe these weren't supposed to be mashed..."

I had never heard of candied sweet potatoes before borrowing my great-grandmother's recipe, and genuinely thought that you always, always mash sweet potatoes if you're loading them with sugar. I also thought you were semi-required to put mini marshmallows on top and bake until browned and sticky. I never knew you could leave the potatoes intact.    

Because I wasn't already baking and didn't feel like turning on the oven for a single potato, I decided to try this on the stovetop. Mrs. Wilson of the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger did sweet potatoes on the stovetop, and her recipes have never failed me.

Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger; April 23, 1919; p. 12

And so, I more or less borrowed Mrs. Wilson's directions for our handwritten friend's recipe. This involved pineapple and, yes, paprika. (The part of me that really likes pineapple-pepperoni-and-bell-pepper pizza thought that paprika had potential.)

 

We only had to stir and baste this for a minute or two before the potatoes looked like they had been in the oven for hours. My great-grandmother's sweet potato recipe in the oven had made me think that the long baking time allows the syrup to really soak into the potatoes. But after making these in a saucepan, I couldn't tell the difference.

As I noted when making rice pudding, recipes like this have made me really appreciate nonstick pots. All this time, I thought the nonstick coating was merely a reason my mother hated seeing me use metal whisks at the stove. But now, I am willing to permit a few nonstick pots in the kitchen as long as they don't crowd out the stainless ones.

This turned out exactly like I imagined it would, but I didn't like it as much as I thought. The pineapple was a firm, juicy contrast to the soft potatoes, just like I hoped. The spiced syrup brought out a lot of delicious flavors in both of them. But it just wasn't very good. 

This recipe was a lot better than when I mashed the sweet potatoes and mixed everything together, though. (The paprika just added an out-of-place bitterness, and this is coming from someone who really likes paprika.)

If you omit the paprika (and even our handwritten friend wasn't too sure about it), this is a pretty good recipe if you like candied sweet potatoes. Or at least, I am pretty sure it is. But this is like me trying to decide if a steak was any good when I don't like steaks.

I should note that the pineapple juice was really good in this. If I make a pineapple upside down cake, I may save the juice from the can for future sweet potatoes instead of just pouring it over ice.

As I was putting the last of the sweet potatoes in the refrigerator, I realized that I have now made every recipe written in the book except one: 

To borrow a popular cop-out from math textbooks, this will be "left as exercise to the reader."

This is the only one with somebody's full name under it. I'd sooner have signed Elizabeth's rolls. The handwriting looks different, suggesting that our friend handed her cookbook to a dear acquaintance and said something like "Grace," (I think it says Grace), "You simply must write your chicken mousse in my book!"  1 cup cooked white chicken meat
1 small can mushrooms
1 tbsp unflavored gelatin
1¼ cup chicken stock, divided into ¼ and 1 cup portions
1 cup heavy cream

Sprinkle the gelatin over ¼ cup chicken stock. Set aside for at least five minutes.
Meanwhile, finely grind the chicken meat, being sure you have one cup after grinding. Drain and chop the mushrooms. Heat the remaining chicken stock.
Dissolve the gelatin in the hot stock. Then mix in the chicken and mushrooms. Refrigerate until it is about as thick as whipped cream.
When the gelatin mixture is ready, whip the cream and fold it in. Transfer to a gelatin mold and refrigerate until firm. Unmold when ready to serve.
Note: I still don't know how to unmold a gelatin, so I'm not giving instructions for that.

For anyone who's curious what other handwritten delights (and misfires) are locked away in my old school's copy of the Woman's Club of Fort Worth Cook Book:

• Elizabeth's Rolls (The best handwritten recipe in the book)
• Brownies (This would have been the best handwritten recipe in the book, but Elizabeth's rolls are hard to beat)
• Cranberry-Celery Salad (Unexpectedly good if you leave out the nuts)
• Fruit Cookies (These make regular appearances in our domicile, especially during the holidays)
• The Whiskey Thing (Nowhere near as good as I hoped, but if you like to get smashed without a shotglass you might like it)
• Chicken Mousse (If you make this I would love to hear how it went)

Second-Stab Saturday: Pear Upside-Down Cake

When first we made the apple upside-down cake (or apple pudding if you believe the recipe title), I speculated that it would be really good with pears in it. And wouldn't you know it, some pears landed in the kitchen!

Apple (Or Pear) Upside-Down Cake 3 tablespoons butter ¾ cup sugar, divided into ½ and ¼ cup portions ½ teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 egg 1½ cups flour (cake flour if you have it) ¾ cup milk ½ teaspoon vanilla 2 cups pared and thinly-sliced pears or tart apples (2 apples unless the apples are very big or very small) Heat oven to 375°. Grease an 8"x12" or 9" square pan. Be sure to spray the edges and corners very well. If desired, line the bottom of the pan with paper cut to fit after you spray it. Then press the paper firmly into place, eliminating as many air bubbles as possible, and spray the top of it. Line the bottom of the pan with a single layer of apple slices and set aside. Cream butter, ½ cup of sugar, salt, and baking powder. Beat well. Add egg and vanilla, beat until light. Alternately add the flour and milk. Sprinkle the remaining ¼ cup of sugar onto the apples in the pan. Then pour the batter on them, carefully spreading it as needed. (Batter will be thin.) Bake 20-30 minutes, or until the center of the cake springs back when gently pressed with the finger. Ida H. Boerner, 916 Grand Avenue, Port Washington, Wisconsin. Chicago Tribune Recipe Contest, probably 1930s-1940s.

Aren't they pretty? I think they look like fruit that a Renaissance painter would have used for a still life.

Just like last time, the only tedious part of the recipe was peeling and slicing the fruit. I didn't bother carefully nicking off every last bit of apple skin, but the pears had tough, leathery peels. I had to peel them properly. This was how I discovered that our paring knife is a waste of drawer space. I had just gotten it sharpened, so the first parings all but fell off. But before finishing the first pear, I couldn't tell if I was pushing the sharp or dull side of the blade into the fruit. 

Well, now I don't need to feel guilty about ruining the blade by stripping wires. It wouldn't survive a single fruit salad.

After getting the batter into place, I realized I forgot to sprinkle the sugar into the pan. You might think that I'd simply bake the cake anyway, but I wanted that super special crispy layer on top. And so, I fished all the fruit out of the pan and tried again. Keep in mind that this recipe barely makes enough batter to cover the pan if you get it right the first time. We really needed the rubber spatula.

All right, let's try this again...

Here it is with that slightly shiny sugar layer that mattered so much!

I know the lightly-battered fruit ruins the look. But despite my fumbling, this is a good recipe. Once you cut into it, you can see that the cake has a really nice texture. And it tastes just as good as the batter did (which doesn't always happen with cakes). 

 

The pears didn't taste as different than I thought they would. They were a bit firmer than the original apples. If anything, they just tasted like fruit. 

I didn't think that switching species would make so little difference. But changing fruits didn't affect how quickly the cake vanished, either.

 

Kimbell Banana Bread

The Kimbell flour company's attempt at cake may have been a bust, but maybe they can do better with banana bread!

Banana-Nut Bread 2 cups flour ½ tsp salt ½ teaspoon baking soda ¼ tsp baking powder 1 tsp cinnamon (or more if desired) ½ cup shortening* ⅔ cup sugar 2 eggs ¼ cup buttermilk or sour cream 2 ripe bananas, mashed 1 cup pecans Heat oven to 350°. Grease a loaf pan. Mix flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Set aside. Cream the sugar and shortening. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each. Then alternately add the milk and the dry ingredients. Mix in the bananas and nuts. Pour into the pan and bake until the center springs back when lightly pressed, about an hour. *Or butter, or oleo Source: Kimbell flour canister, probably 1940s or 1950s

I made this purely because we had two bananas slowly blackening on the countertop, and the recipe calls for exactly that. At first I was very happy to keep our grocery money out of the dump. Then I realized: am I really economizing if I throw a lot of flour and eggs after nearly-rotten fruit?

Because I didn't want to make bland banana bread, I used oleo instead of shortening. A lot of older recipes use the word "shortening" to mean "any solid fat," so it's probably period correct. But mostly, I distrust shortening unless I am brushing it onto a hot waffle iron. It does not seem like it came from this good earth. 

I also added some uncalled-for cinnamon and vanilla because I could tell we would need it.

We are told to use "well beaten" eggs. Instead of getting out a little bowl for this, I figured the eggs would be well beaten by the time our mixer was done with them. We may have a dishwasher, but that doesn't mean I need to fill it as often as possible.

Even though I didn't add nuts, I will give the Kimbell Flour people credit: they explicitly call for pecans instead of walnuts. Pecans are what walnuts wish they could be. And they are so versatile: if you wish you had walnuts, simply let your pecans go rancid! But even through the Kimbell people got their nuts right, I just do not like nuts in cake.

I was going to put the batter into a loaf pan as specified, but cupcakes suddenly seemed like a better idea. After baking, I chose not to ice them. You see, this recipe is called banana bread. It is not banana cake. Therefore, these are not cupcakes but muffins. Therefore they are a healthy breakfast.

They baked up nicely, but in full disclosure a lot of them had deep holes on top. I figured anyone who complained didn't want muffins. (There were no complaints.)

All in all, these weren't bad. I didn't have to discreetly drop them into the trash after a few days. But like so many muffins, these were not as good as I hoped. They were so bland that I could have convincingly lied and said they're good for you. 

But with that said, this recipe has a really nice pound cake texture. I don't think the Kimbell people can top Mrs. Kahn or the Slovak-American Ladies Association, but I didn't violently scribble out Kimbell's banana bread like I did their marble cake.

 

Est! Est!! Est!!! Pizzelles

Somebody really liked this recipe.

Est! Est!! Est!!! Pizzelles 6 eggs 1 tsp vanilla 1 tbsp anise extract, or ¼ tsp anise oil 1 tsp orange or lemon extract 1 cup sugar 1 cup butter or oil Pinch of salt 2¼-2½ cups flour 2 tsp baking powder If using butter, melt it and set it aside to cool. Combine flour and baking powder in a sifter, set aside. Beat eggs and flavorings with an electric mixer until very light. Gradually add the sugar, beating the whole time. Beat until very thick. Gradually pour in the butter or oil, beating on high speed the whole time. Then set aside the mixer. Sift in the flour and stir it in by hand. Cook on a hot pizzelle iron until crisp and golden. If desired, take out about a third of the batter. Mix in ¼ cup cocoa powder. Cut this into the rest of the batter for a marbled effect. (Note: Apparently lots of people can make chocolate pizzelles, but the cocoa powder makes them stick horribly to the iron every time I try. So beware!) Source: handwritten recipe on a pizzelle iron box

I've been rehoming unwanted clutter on Ebay, which is kind of fun if you're not in it for the money. It's amusing to see how far across the country your junk--- I mean, your under-cherished treasures--- can go. Every now and then while I'm waiting for my listing photos to upload, I'll look at the suggested merchandise. Because I've already gotten everything I want, I am now immune to ill-advised purchases. (However, I am not above helping myself to interesting things I find on the curb.) This pizzelle iron turned up, and I knew I wouldn't buy it because I already have the same one perched on top of the refrigerator. (Again, I already have everything I want.)

Whoever first owned this iron wrote today's recipe on the box in big enough letters to cover the entire side of it. That is even more commitment than permanently writing a recipe into the blank pages at the end of a cookbook. Maybe they were like "This is the recipe. There are other pizzelle recipes, but I choose this one for now and for always." Naturally, I had make it.

As with so many pizzelles, this recipe starts off with beating the eggs until Miss Leslie would have approved. This is why I really love having a stand mixer in my life. I simply had to turn it on and leave it alone, which freed me to clear off counterspace to make room for the impending cooling racks. Within a minute or two, the egg (just the one, we're cutting down the recipe) looked like this.

This is only one egg.

This really is the kind of recipe that electric mixers were made for. Whipping everything into a beige custard would be an arduous ordeal if we were doing it by hand. Even a handcranked eggbeater would have left our hands a bit sore. But today, our pre-flour mixture formed peaks in less than five minutes. It also tasted insanely good, in large part because I added a truly excessive splash of almond extract.

Our recipe box (literally a recipe box!) tells us to add anise. I've learned that apparently anise is the traditional pizzelle flavoring, but it's not my favorite extract to add to the batter. So I left it out. (However, I love adding powdered star anise to chocolate fudge. As a bonus, everyone else thinks it tastes weird, so I get to eat all of it!)

After adding the flour, I could tell this was supposed to be on the cake-batter end of pizzelles instead of a firm dough. However, it was a little bit curdled. So I added a smidge more flour than the recipe called for. 

Now, if I wanted to make these exactly like the original writer did, I would have made these on the stovetop iron that is identical to the one this recipe came with. But I wanted to get out the electric one and justify having bothered some unsuspecting electricians to fix its wiring. The batter looked unexpectedly pretty when it landed.

The lid put up some resistance when I tried to open it. I was already bracing myself for failure, because that usually means the batter has stuck to both sides of the iron and glued it shut. But after a few moments of gentle prising, the iron opened without tearing the pizzelless. However, they were were firmly attached to the lid of the iron.

I still haven't gotten the hang of putting the right amount of batter onto my electric iron. They're either runty or they ooze.

To my own surprise, I managed to lift them off in a single sheet. I fully expected to destroy them in my attempts to dislodge them from the iron. On a barely-related note, I love imagining generations of people saying that those fluffy bits of hot dough between the pizzelles are for the person working the iron.

These tasted like they wanted to be crisper than they ended up. I know I didn't undercook them because they had turned a lovely golden color. But even after these cooled completely, they were almost soft. On the one hand, I like pizzelles to be really crispy. But on the other hand, these didn't break into messy shards when you bit into them. And of course, I don't know enough about pizzelles to get away with being opinionated about them. These seem like they'd be really good with some sort of custard or cream spread onto them, or maybe clapped together with a filling like stroopwafels. Which I just might do in the near-ish future.

Cabbage au Gratin: or, Never has failure tasted so good

Mrs. Mary Martensen has let me down.

Cabbage au Gratin 3 cups chopped or shredded cabbage, boiled or steamed 1 egg 1½ cups milk ¾ tsp salt ⅛ tsp. pepper ¾ cup fine dry bread crumbs 1½ cups grated cheese (sharp) 1½ tbsp. butter Heat oven to 350°. Grease a casserole dish. Beat egg, milk, salt, and pepper together. Set aside. Place a layer of cabbage in the baking dish. Sprinkle lightly with the crumbs, then with the cheese. Repeat these layers until all the cabbage is used up. Pour the milk over the whole dish before adding the last layer of breadcrumbs and cheese. Bake until golden on top, about 35 minutes. Source: Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933, via The Internet Archive

Lured by a 50% markdown, we at A Book of Cookrye have been cooking a lot of cabbage lately. I didn't realize how much I liked cabbage until I learned about haluski, so the discount has only encouraged me further. If prices hold steady at twenty cents above nothing, I might actually get enough practice to shred cabbage into fine confetti. 

Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933

Before reading the recipe, I thought we would have to make a white sauce and then melt cheese into it. But Mrs. Mary Martensen's method allows us to economize on time as well as grocery money. We were more than halfway done after we had all our ingredients gathered together.  

Today's recipe involves a lot of cheese, which always makes vegetables good. It also avoids boiling the cabbage into slime. It's amazing how delicious vegetables can be when you don't boil them until quite dead. I am tempted to say that steaming the cabbage in the microwave (as we did) reduces heat in the kitchen and thus makes this recipe a lot more summer-friendly. But we still had a half-hour baking time ahead of us.

In case you forget this recipe came out in the middle of the Depression, have a look at how parsimonious Mrs. Martensen is with breadcrumbs. Even pulverized stale bread must be carefully rationed (if you even had enough bread for any of it to go stale).

After layering everything together, we only needed to dump in the eggy milk. Before I read the recipe directions, I had assumed we would be making cabbage in a cheese sauce. But this was shaping up more like a cheesy cabbage quiche.

Having reread the directions and confirmed that everything in the baking dish was as it should be, we only needed to put the final layer of crumbs and cheese on top. I even remembered to dot the top with butter.

I felt silly for putting a relatively small pan of cabbage into the oven for over half an hour. So, I decided to economize on oven heat by pushing dinner to the back corner of the oven and use the rest of the shelf space for cookies. Or at least, that was my excuse.

Our recipe says to bake for 35 minutes, and Mrs. Mary Martensen's time proved to be exactly correct. After I had baked it for precisely that long down to the last tick of the timer, it had a beautiful golden-brown cheesy top.

I couldn't wait to dig in, but some daft fool had decided that this was a good time to make cookies with dinner in the oven. This meant I had to let the cabbage au gratin wait for at least fifteen minutes while I finished baking. When I finally got a spatula into our dinner, I found that the beautifully-browned top layer concealed a watery mess.

I didn't know which was weeping harder: the casserole dish on the countertop, or me as I thought about how much sharp cheddar was lost in this failure. Tasting this only made me more irate because it was amazing and wrong at the same time.  It's hardly a revelation that vegetables and cheese are friends, but sharp cheddar and cabbage are an extraordinarily good match.

But this recipe did not work. The egg coagulated the milk into some horribly slimy semi-cheese curds. Meanwhile, the actual cheese had not melted. Instead, the shreds were half-softened and almost rubbery. And the soggy breadcrumbs interspersed throughout only made everything worse. It was edible, but I needed a lot of willpower not to throw it away. 

 

I shared this online, asking if I had missed a step that would have been obvious when the book was new. Everyone agreed that the recipe had nothing to prevent it from turning into a soggy mess. 

To Mrs. Mary Martensen's credit, this allowed you to get something shoved into the oven with minimal effort. It definitely is a vegetable. And maybe if you serve it with bread to sop up the juices, it's not bad after a long day. But mostly, I hate how good this wanted to taste. Everything in it went together so, so well. If it wasn't a soupy failure, it would be amazing. But it can't live up to its own ingredients.

Chili As Apparently Made In Chicago

Keep in mind the small amount of beef in this recipe the whole time we're making this.

Chili 1 pound ground beef 12 scallions or 1 large onion, chopped ½ of a (20-oz) can chopped tomatoes, or 2 chopped and peeled medium tomatoes 1 16-oz can beans, drained ¾ cup water Salt, chili powder, paprika, garlic powder, etc to taste Brown the beef in a large skillet with a lid. Drain the fat unless using very lean meat. Add the onions, tomatoes, beans, and water. Bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat, and simmer for one hour. Add the seasonings about 5 or 10 minutes before you turn off the heat. (I've found that simmering dried spices for an hour cooks away all their flavor, which makes the house smell great but leaves the food bland.) 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 (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933

Since I live in Texas, you'd think I wouldn't have to go up to Illinois and 90 years into the past for a chili recipe. But I was curious to see what might have appeared on tables where chili is a food and not a religion. Turns out that like every other pot of the stuff I've ever made, it starts with beef.

At the sight of the greasy pan, our household's local chapter of the Society for the Conservation of Beef Fat called an emergency meeting. The recipe never mentions draining the meat, but we all agreed that no one wants to greasy chili. I know that some chili purists will mechanically repeat the mantra "fat equals flavor", but this was a lot. Like, you could probably get a half-batch of pizzelles out of this.

Also, the recipe calls for "ground round steak" and we used 80% hamburger. Maybe period-correct meat wouldn't have turned our skillet into a grease pit. And so, we drained the meat and economically saved the drippings for another time.

History doesn't always repeat, but it often rhymes.

Speaking of economizing, Mrs. Mary Martensen's chili only uses a half-can of tomatoes, thus allowing us to save the rest for another day. Tomatoes are one of the cheapest vegetables on the canned food aisle, so you know times are tough when you're splitting them in half. 

Setting aside the can opener, our recipe economizes on time as well as grocery money. This is all the knife-work required for the entire recipe. I think I spent more time peeling the onion than cutting it.

And here is where you can really tell this recipe comes from hard times: this is everything we're using to stretch the beef. Keep in mind how puny the meat looked by itself in the pan. 

The onion slices were impossible to stir into the pan, so I laid them on top and hoped they'd mix in better after they softened in the steam.

Now in Texas, chili is a religion. Multi-generational feuds have been launched over a half-teaspoon of liquid smoke. People with pure hearts and true beliefs can argue for multiple days about whether garlic powder is a heretical shortcut (or if garlic should be permitted at all). But I think all of them would agree that noodles are sacrilege. And even those who permit noodles would agree that you don't boil them for an hour.

However, Mrs. Mary Martensen's chili isn't meant to win any cookoff prizes. It is for you, the housewife of 1933, whose grocery budget consists of a few pennies leftover from last week. Also, this recipe comes from Chicago in the 1930s. It was still an industrial town. No amount of noodle-free purism would hold up against a table full of people who just got home from a long shift. So, noodles it is.

Even after I decided to include the noodles, I thought I'd skip simmering them for an hour. But then I wondered if this would come out better than I thought. Perhaps the noodles absorb a lot of the chili flavors. Or, maybe they would dissolve and turn into an economical thickener. 

In the absence of a lid, we pressed foil on top of the pan as best we could. The chili barely fit in there, so we had to use a lot of pressure to keep it in place. Again, I have to give credit to Mrs. Mary Martensen and the home economics staff of The Chicago American. They made a single pound of beef nearly overflow the skillet.

As is customary with chili, I was going to make cornbread to go with it. Then I realized that the noodles made it redundant. Mrs. Mary Martensen really is looking out for her readers: she got meat, vegetables (if you count a half-can of tomatoes), and bread into a single, nearly-overflowing pot.

I did not stay in the house for the entire one-hour simmering time. When I returned from some errands, every room smelled like really, really good chili. Given the small amounts of seasonings, I was surprised. 

But when the time was close to over, I sampled a spoonful and immediately shook a lot of chili powder into the skillet. I'm going to charitably assume that this recipe's tiny doses of seasonings were meant as a starting point rather than the absolute final amount. Otherwise, anyone following this recipe would have eaten some very bland meat. 

On the positive side, I liked how the onion rings had turned into long noodles. It helped their flavor stand out more than if I'd chopped them. However, the actual noodles had turned to slime. As a result, our chili had become a slithery porridge that happened to have meat in it. You had to imagine your way past a lot of slippery, half-disintegrated noodles before you could like what you were eating.

But before I complain about the noodles too much, I have to note that I wasn't hungry again for hours. Like, some dinners have you drifting back to the kitchen before bed, but with this you're good until tomorrow. And that's worth a lot on a Depression-era grocery budget.

To give the recipe a better shake, I made it again without any noodles. I also tripled the seasonings and added some truly uncalled-for garlic. Omitting the pasta meant I economized on time since I didn't have to get out a strainer and a second pot. Also, the supermarket nearest me sells French bread for embarrassingly cheap, so we still economized on ingredients.

If you triple the seasonings and serve noodles on the side (if at all), this recipe is a pretty good way to make an easy meal-- even if it's not the most exciting. Even without the noodles, that single pound of beef went an astonishingly long way. And it was good enough that I was happy to have the leftovers. I wouldn't take this to a chili contest, but it's great for dinner at home.

Mock Cherry Pie: or, A Book of Cookrye makes a mockery of cherries

If you are looking for an adventurous way to delight and slightly bamboozle your relatives this Thanksgiving, this pie is perfect.

Mock Cherry Pie 1½ cups (5.5 oz) raw cranberries ½ cup (about 3 oz) raisins 1 cup water 1 cup sugar 1½ tbsp (or 4½ tsp) cornstarch 1 cup sugar 1 unbaked pie shell (plus enough dough for a top crust or lattice if desired) Heat oven to 350°. Cut the cranberries in half.* This is easier with scissors than a knife. Place raisins, cranberries, and water in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. While they are heating up, mix the cornstarch and sugar, breaking up all the cornstarch lumps. Stir the sugar into the boiling pot, and bring back to a boil. Cook, stirring constantly, until thickened and transparent. Then cool completely. (You can cool it faster by putting the pot in a larger pan of cold water— or ice water if you have an ice maker— and stirring it until it cools off.) While the filling cools off, make the pie crust if you're preparing one from scratch.  Pour the cooled filling into the pie shell. Make sure you leave room for it to bubble and boil up a bit in the oven. Finger-dab or brush water around the edge of the pie crust. Cover with a top crust, or a lattice. Or, if desired, leave the top open. Bake until the crust is golden on top, about 30-40 minutes. *If you don't want to cut all those cranberries in half, you can instead put them whole into the pot along with the water and raisins. Bring to a boil, cover with a lid, reduce heat to a simmer, and cook until you hear the cranberries stop popping. Then proceed with the rest of the recipe. The pie won't taste as convincingly of cherries, but it's still really good. Source: Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933, via The Internet Archive

I never thought anyone would need to imitate cherries. Even when fresh cherries are out of season, stores always have canned cherry pie. Maybe cherries were impossibly expensive in the 1930s. Or perhaps Mrs. Mary Martensen created this recipe so for the busy home cook who didn't have time to waste with a cherry pitter. Even cutting cranberries in half one at a time is faster than pitting cherries. Or, maybe cranberries used to be so cheap that people needed to disguise them, like someone serving turkey sixteen nights in a row because it was on discount.

Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933

The halved cranberries kind of look like miniature apples, don't they?

 

Our filling was done only a few minutes after turning on the stove. But as we learned with the honey fruit pie, things go very wrong when you pour steaming-hot filling into a raw pie crust. We're here to make a mockery of cherries, not find fifty new reasons for kitchen profanity. I therefore let the pie filling cool off, after which it slid right into the pie pan without ruining anything.

I was going to make a lattice top out of our excess pie dough, but I had a sudden attack of laziness. So, I just laid some strips across the top and declared it done.

While the pie baked, I decided to try the syrup that remained in the pot. (I may or may not have done a deliberately bad job with a rubber spatula.) And it tasted astonishingly like cherries. You had to carefully examine the flavors before you could tell that something was amiss.

Before the pie had finished baking, I had already filed this recipe away for next fall. When fresh cherries are in season and everyone the house starts buying them by the sack, I start craving cherry pie. But the cherries get eaten too quickly for me to bake them, and I cannot justify swatting everyone else away from fresh fruit.But I know that I won't need to defend cranberries and raisins against anybody.

I don't know if I'll ever be comfortable with an oven this large. Yes, I could put a whole turkey in there if I wanted. But even a full-sized pie looks puny in such a massive space, which makes me feel bad about the wasted heat.

After the pie was baked, it even looked like it was loaded with cherries. The cranberries and raisins had dyed each other as the filling bubbled in the oven, and their respective colors had averaged out to a reasonable approximation of cherry red. You can really see the near-perfect cherry color if we zoom in on the edge of the pie, where the filling bubbled up a little bit as it baked.

But really, I was just amazed at how pretty this pie is.

I would have never thought that cranberries and raisins add up to cherries. But when I brought this pie with me on a visit, none of my friends believed me when I said it is cherry-free. Everyone thought I was testing their gullibility.

The pie doesn't taste exactly like cherries, but it gets unnervingly close. If no one told you otherwise, you would think it was mostly cherries with a few other things stirred in. And even if you were told the truth, you might not believe it. (Again, my friends thought I was lying.)

Because I had enough cranberries to make this again, I tried it without snipping the cranberries in half. I wanted to know whether all that fruit bifurcation was really necessary, or if it was yet another instance of older recipes adding pointless extra steps (which happens surprisingly often). 

Borrowing methods from the cranberry-celery salad, I boiled the cranberries until they popped. Then I added the raisins and everything else. And... the pie still tasted cherry-ish, but it wasn't as convincing. Maybe cutting the cranberries allows all of the flavors to meld, rather than keeping the berries' interiors half-shielded by their own skins. It was still a really good pie, but it wasn't as good of a cherry pie.

I made this recipe because I thought a cranberry-raisin pie would be good on its own. I wasn't prepared for it to actually taste like cherries. If this cookbook tells me that I can mix corn and avocados and it will taste like bacon, I'm not going to argue without trying it first.