Apricot Whip

hastily-slapped on message: 

As millions of people in the US are about to lose food benefits, a lot of us with spare funds are trying to help. If you are considering buying groceries to drop off at your local food bank, think about donating money directly to them instead. They often buy food at bulk rates, so your money will feed more people than if you did the shopping yourself. And of course, the people in charge of food banks have a firsthand view of what foods are needed. 

Right, on with the whip...

Things aren't really broken unless they break twice.

Apricot Whip 1 tbsp gelatin, or 1 (¼-oz) envelope 1 tbsp water 1 cup dried apricots (6 to 8 ounces) ½ tsp lemon juice, if desired 1 cup cream ½ cup sugar Mix the gelatin and water, set aside. Simmer the apricots until very soft. When they are done, save the cooking water. Force the hot apricots through a sieve, or puree them with a stick blender. Add the gelatin and (if desired) the lemon juice. Mix in enough cooking water to make them about the consistency of whipped cream. If desired, blenderize again after thinning the mixture. Whip the cream and sugar in a large bowl. (Add a little more sugar if the apricots are tart.) Then fold in the apricots. Transfer to the container of your choice. Chill and serve. Source: Handwritten manuscript, 1930s-1940s Notebook of Hannah Dannehy O'Neil

After we unplugged our refrigerator so it could melt out its internal ice clots, we had about a week of perfectly chilled food. In a fit of daring, I spent enough money to get a whole carton of eggs and a lot of fresh produce. A few days after our first normal grocery trip in over a month, things weren't quite as frosty as they had been. Before I knew it, the refrigerator couldn't even get cold enough to use as an oversized wine chiller. The damn thing was trying really hard to die again, and all our groceries were slowly expiring within.

Of course, we couldn't just go out and buy another refrigerator. In the pre-pandemic era, it was easy to get an old working one. A quick search through Craigslist (or the various sites that superseded it) always showed plenty of listings with agreeably low prices. But these days, nobody is unloading a perfectly good refrigerator just because it looks outdated. And so, we hastily bought a secondhand mini-fridge to tide us over (those are still cheap), ordered more parts, and endured a week of shipping delays.

Aside from the groceries, I really hated losing all the various things that I put in the back of the fridge for when the time was right. The lemon juice I occasionally add to marinades. The extra chopped bell pepper that I was going to throw into the frying pan the with the rest of dinner at some point. The half-egg I had saved a week earlier for the next time I wanted a very small batch of cookies. And a whole lot of other frozen odds and ends that are always nice when our food needs a little pep. Sometimes it's a nice way to surprise myself: "Oh, I forgot we had these extra tomatoes in here! They'll be really good in tomorrow's soup!"

And then came the reluctant auditing of "What can last a few days outside of the refrigerator, even if the label says we really shouldn't?" We went through the various bottles and jars with remarks like "They leave barbecue sauce out all day at restaurants, right?" and "I'm pretty sure the pickles will be fine."

But things weren't as bad as they could have been. For one thing, the mini-fridge was so big it barely fit in my car.  And we were suddenly grateful for the countertop ice maker that we hadn't liked enough to plug in for a long time. I bought it when I got tired of fussing with ice trays. We then used it for about three months before deciding it was even more of a faff than the ice trays it replaced.

This ice maker doesn't keep ice frozen. The machine just makes more as the ice slowly drips back into its water tank. Anyway, it had sat unused on the counter with a trash bag on top to keep out the dust. And now, it was one of the few things keeping me from completely losing my mind. If I'd lost ice-cold drinks on top of everything else, I would have snapped.

Then the refrigerator parts arrived, got installed, and things were blessedly cold again! We loaded it with all the cans in the pantry to see if it could keep up, or if it would fail to chill all the food. After it passed the test, we tentatively made enough dinner to have leftovers. After a week passed with no more appliance outages, I decided it was safe to officially welcome its return to service.

It was the best Diet Coke I've had in weeks.

I wasn't planning to celebrate the return of refrigeration twice. I'd rather the refrigerator had only broken once. But all good things should be celebrated. For this refrigerator party (hopefully the last), I consulted my great-grandmother's binder and found a nice, chilled salad.

Undated newspaper (Chicago area), probably 1930s-1940s

As I often forget, "the relatives from Chicago" were by definition midwestern, so they probably thought a gelatin loaded with ginger ale, canned pineapple, marshmallows, and maraschino cherries was a salad. I'm still not sure why this isn't a dessert, but I think two things make it a salad: First, you're supposed to put mayonnaise on top (pineapple juice notwithstanding). Second, this recipe starts with a box of lemon Jello. From what I can tell, lemon Jello equals salad at least three-fourths of the time. (And of course, we are supposed to serve this on lettuce!)

I thought it looked like a perfectly nice dessert if you skip the lettuce and mayo. But for whatever reason, this recipe got politely hesitant responses from everyone else. Maybe they thought the marshmallows were a bit over the top? I flipped though the notebook, looking for another recipe that demands refrigeration. I thought about making a prune whip whether everyone liked it or not, but that recipe involved whipping raw egg whites. And while I normally don't get hung up on raw eggs, ours have been in a dying refrigerator twice. We're not even risking soft-scrambled eggs until we use the last of them up.

And so, a few pages away from the Mardi Gras "Salad," we found a recipe which doesn't involve any raw eggs and incited no complaints!

This recipe looks very on-brand for (I'm guessing) the 1930s. In one recipe, we have to puree dried fruit, whip cream, and then serve everything cold. Each of those steps is easy now that we have blenders, electric mixers, and refrigerators. But in those days, a recipe like this was a statement.

As I opened the package of apricots, I noticed it said "product of Turkey." In earlier times, I would have thought that was mildly interesting, or briefly contemplated the environmental implications of shipping fruit across the planet. But now, I was thinking "How much longer will we get these?"

While we were thinking about the geo-economical implications of fruit and international politics, our gelatin was soaking in its alotted tablespoon of water. That didn't seem like enough water, but I'm not the person writing down the recipe.

Cooking dried fruit seems like a basic kitchen task, but it's a totally new process to me. I had no idea how to tell when they're done. Since we're directed to "run thru strainer," I let them simmer until they were soft enough to do just that. Some of the apricots nearly dissolved in the water after 5 minutes, but others remained hard and tough for half an hour. (Also, that yellow-ish clod on top is the gelatin.)

To my own surprise, the stick blender wasn't faster than sieving the fruit like it's still 1930. (Or at least, it took about as long as I imagine sieving would have.) But I'm glad I used a blender anyway. Our sieve probably couldn't withstand the force of shoving things through it. 

This was a good time to pause and taste-test. The recipe says to "add more sugar if the apricots are tart," which is not a problem I can imagine anyone dealing with in this millennium. (Well, maybe if you know someone with an apricot tree in their yard.) I went the opposite route and added a tiny splash of lemon juice to help the flavor pop. 

As I mashed the stick blender into the paste, it looked I had ruined the apricots. Furthermore, the hot gelatin made the fruit smell like barf. Really, it's impressive that 1910s and 1920s marketers sold gelatin as the key to hyperfeminine and "dainty" desserts (they always used the word dainty). The horrible stink pushes all thoughts of lace and roses right out of my mind.

To my relief, the awful gelatin smell didn't spread throughout the house. The kitchen reeked, but the adjacent rooms only smelled like simmering fruit.

After blenderizing all our apricots, we had a really hard paste. And as we learned from Maida Heatter's chocolate chiffon pie, you want everything to be about the same consistency when folding together a gelatin. Our apricot paste would have knocked all the air out of the cream anyway. And if we deflated the cream, we wouldn't have an apricot whip, would we? So, I'm going to assume that my great-grandmother knew to thin out the apricot pulp. (Or maybe I was supposed to use fresh apricots instead of dried?) And if she copied this from a book, I think whoever originally wrote the recipe assumed that you didn't need an introductory course on gelatin.

After preparing the fruit paste to become a well-chilled masterpiece, I whipped the cream in the biggest bowl we have. I know it looks like a pointless use of extra-large dishes, but it is so nice to have all that extra room when you fold in the apricots. The big bowl gives you room to do it in a few quick, swoopy motions.

See? Done. And no need to worry about sloshing your anything onto the countertop.

Our apricot whip was an unexpectedly bright and cheery shade of yellow. I thought it looked really cute. It's true that we still had some persistent chunks of fruit pulp in there, but I had decided after 30 minutes on the stove that the apricots were as soft as they were going to get.

After transferring our creation to a smaller bowl, I took a taste off the rubber spatula. And... this is good. Like, really good. I thought it'd taste like apricots, but really it tastes like fruit. I was impressed that I got a flavor this good out of dried apricots with no artificial assistance- they're always so bland right out of the bag.

And now it was time to do those blessed directions: "Chill and serve." I am so glad we can now do that again.

This was a lot better than I thought it would be. It tasted surprisingly like I had used fresh fruit. And it had a perfect, airy texture. It's perfect for the summertime, or (since it avoids out-of-season fruit by using them dried) when you want things to seem a bit more summery in the bleak midwinter. It was a lot better than the ingredients suggested, and worth making if you don't mind how bad things look before you get to the end of the recipe.

Rice Pudding: or, You can probably leave the oven off for this one

hastily-slapped on message: 

As millions of people in the US are about to lose food benefits, a lot of us with spare funds are trying to help. If you are considering buying groceries to drop off at your local food bank, think about donating money directly to them instead. They often buy food at bulk rates, so your money will feed more people than if you did the shopping yourself. And of course, the people in charge of food banks have a firsthand view of what foods are needed. 

Right, on with the pud...

Today, we are making rice pudding!

Rice Pudding 3 cups milk 1 tablespoon corn starch 2 eggs, separated 1 pinch salt ⅓ cup sugar 1 cup cooked rice 1 teaspoon vanilla ¼ cup sugar (for meringue) Heat oven to 350°. Grease a medium-sized baking dish. Place it in a larger, empty pan. Have the egg yolks ready in a medium bowl, set aside. Cook milk and cornstarch ten minutes in double boiler, or over low heat if you're really good at preventing anything from sticking to the bottom of the pot. (You may want to mix the cornstarch with a little bit of the milk before putting it all in the pot-- it prevents having to chase lumps with a spoon.) After the time is up, start whisking the egg yolks, then slowly pour in about half the milk, beating very hard the whole time. Return to the pot. Add the salt, sugar, rice, and vanilla. Pour into the baking dish. Set on the oven rack and pour boiling water into the bigger pan around it. Bake in hot water until thickened (mine took 45 minutes). When it's ready, beat the egg whites until frothy. Gradually add the sugar, beating as you go. Continue beating until stiff peaks form. Carefully spread onto the pudding (no need to let the pudding cool first). Bake until golden on top, about 15 minutes. Allow to cool to room temperature, then refrigerate. I thought this was better the second day (even if the meringue didn't look nearly as nice). Undated newspaper clipping, Chicago area (probably 1930s-1940s), credited to "Mrs. B. E. B."

I don't usually get particularly excited about rice pudding, but the circumstances were right to make one. I had already turned on the oven after I was asked to make blueberry muffins yet again (I've almost memorized the recipe in time for Halloween), and we had leftover rice slowly drying out in the rice cooker. I may or may not have deliberately cooked too much rice just for this recipe.

Also, we have a recipe for rice pudding in my great-grandmother's notebook that's been staring at me for a while. The last sentence of the recipe is "This is excellent." 

It looks like the newspaper had a section where readers could send in recipes, because there are a few others pasted on the same page with various women's initials under it.

We are directed to start with milk and cornstarch. At this early stage, our recipe could become either pudding or gravy. I know we're supposed to use a double boiler, but I don't have one and didn't feel like holding a bowl over a pot of water.

Recipes like this have changed my mind about nonstick pots. I used to hate how people (usually my mom) were always like "Don't use a metal spoon in that! It's nonstick!" Now that I can choose my own pots, I only get ones that let me plunge an electric mixer in there as needed. But I must admit that nonstick is great for things that want to cling to the metal and then burn. In my usual pot, I would have been doing a constant fight with a rubber spatula. But with this one, I only had to gently but firmly stroke the bottom with a flat-ended wooden spoon.

Our allotment of rice looked surprisingly small compared to everything else. I double-checked the measurements to make sure I'd added enough, and apparently it's supposed to look like this. Maybe the rice expands as it bakes?

After stirring it all together, can you tell any rice is in there?

We made an egg-tempering detour even though the directions don't mention it. I initially thought the other ingredients would cool off the milk and prevent making accidental egg-drop soup, but it was still steaming-hot. 

I would be annoyed that this didn't get mentioned, but you see a lot of omitted steps like this in older newspaper recipes. Column-inches were a precious resource, so they rarely wasted a single line on anything obvious unless they were publishing a cooking lesson.

The mixture already tasted good when I got it into the pan. Maybe it's because I happened to splurge on jasmine rice instead of the cheap stuff. The rice's flavor had started to seep into the hot milk as I was getting the other ingredients in.

This took a surprisingly long time to bake, making me think it would never set. I'm pretty sure we could have just done the whole thing on the stove to save heat and time. Maybe slowly baking it gives the rice more time to absorb the custard? Or maybe this recipe was printed in the winter, when people don't mind running the oven for multiple hours. (And keep in mind this was printed in Chicago. If it was cold, it was freezing.)

As the pudding refused to firm up in the oven, ire set in. How could such a simple recipe fail to work? And this was in someone's personal notes. Even if I didn't know whose binder this was, this recipe clearly worked for someone. So when the pudding threatened to fail on me, I scanned the same six lines of instructions over and over, getting more annoyed every time I didn't see a crucial step that I missed.

After all my fretting, the pudding eventually firmed up. It didn't turn into a sliceable custard, but I figured that if I left it any longer the eggs would scramble. At this point, the directions tell us to "cover with a meringue made from the egg whites" with no further measurements or directions. (See what I mean about skipping over a lot of implied steps?) 

I flipped through the book, found a pie with a meringue on top, and borrowed the instructions from that. When it was ready, I tried to carefully spoon it on top of the pudding in little mounds and then gently smear them together, but it didn't go very well.

The pudding looked really nice when it was freshly baked. I only say this because it didn't look that good a few hours. So before we get to how it looked when I actually served it, let's pause for a good while and see it looking right.

And now, let's see how it looked after it got cold.

The soggy white mess on the pudding looks like an ill-advised attempt to economize but still put something white and fluffy on top of dessert. Today, we live in a beautiful era where you can get whipped cream in a spray can, but back then meringues were the cheap way to top your desserts. After all, if you already cracked the eggs for the custard, why not divert the whites and put them on top? (Well, aside from how this looks really bad.)

I get the impression that it was considered improper to serve a bare pudding back then. The meringue is pointless otherwise. You could barely taste it, and it certainly didn't help with looks. I guess having a dessert with a topping made it seem special, but I would rather not have bothered. (Though to be fair, the top of the bare pudding wasn't very pretty either.)

This was underwhelming right after it got cold. But after it had an extra night to improve in the refrigerator, it was (to quote the last word of the recipe) excellent. It really benefited from an extra night to mellow. 

I like that the pudding doesn't have any butter in it. Not that I'm going on a hunt for runaway calories, but omitting the added fat kept the pudding from being too heavy. It didn't leave you in a post-dessert stupor. It also meant you could have "just a little more" without feeling it. I think the best desserts inhibit portion control.

With that said, I would rather do the whole recipe on the stovetop. It's an excellent pudding, but it's a waste of oven heat unless you really want a baked custard. You can't even push the pudding to the side of the oven while you're baking something else. Because it's in a larger pan of water, you don't have enough rack space. Nevertheless, I definitely have plans to make this again.

Hump-Day Quickie: Broiled Mushrooms

Today we're going to make something so fast it barely counts as a recipe!

Broiled Mushrooms Mushrooms (as many as desired)* Butter (about 1 or 2 tablespoons for every four mushrooms if the mushrooms are small, or one tablespoon each for large ones), cut into small pieces Salt and pepper to taste Move the oven rack to a higher position than you use for baking, and heat the broiler to high for a few minutes. Meanwhile, line a pan with foil, and coat it with cooking spray. We recommend using a pan that has raised edges on all four sides, so the juices can be contained. Break off the mushroom stems and save them for another use. Wash the caps, and place them dome-side up on the pan. Broil them for 2½-3 minutes, until they just barely start to exude a little bit of juice. Remove from the oven and flip them over. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place a small piece of butter in each one. Return them to the oven and broil for another 2½-3 minutes, or until the butter is melted and the mushrooms are cooked. Serve quickly because they cool off fast. Carefully keep them open-side up so they hold on to all their juices. If desired, serve on pasta or buttered toast. *The original recipe calls for large mushrooms, but this is also delicious made with small ones. Source: Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933, via The Internet Archive

Even reading the recipe excited everyone else. When people asked what I was making with dinner, I wordlessly pointed to the book and got back to cutting up the butter. One of them stared at the page for just a little too long and then said "Woah."

We're using miniature mushrooms instead of the full-sized ones in the recipe. I know nothing about mushroom cultivation, but the prices suggest that it is difficult to raise them until they're big. Since this book came out in the middle of the Depression, I think Mrs. Mary Martensen would have understand if I fudged things for budgetary reasons. And if I wanted to be fancy, I could say these were "canapé-sized."

 

As I got these into the oven, I thought "Is this really this easy?" Like, this doesn't seem like a recipe worth writing down. But then again, I never thought of broiling mushrooms like this.

Because I wanted to do this recipe justice, I popped some bread into the toaster. (I kind of had to. If you omit the toast, you've skipped half the written steps.)

I think anyone that anyone in the 1930s would appreciate that French bread has been $1 per loaf lately (or at least, they would love the price after adjusting for inflation). In addition to rounding out dinner with economical carbs, the toast was better than toast should be after all the mushroom juices soaked into it.

These are far too good for how easy they are. One person cautiously lifted one off the pan, tasted it, then went wide-eyed and came back for half of them. 

I've seen a lot of people say "Fine dining is extra butter." Or sometimes you see people say "Don't ask how much cream is in it." And after making these, I finally get it. We had no leftovers. These are absolutely divine. You owe it to yourself.

As a final note, these are also really good on top of noodles. The mushroom juice spills all over the pasta and makes everything amazing. 

 

The Whiskey Thing

Whiskey is the only legible word in this recipe. 

Found in a copy of The Woman's Club of Fort Worth Cook Book, 1928

 

The Whiskey thing 1 tbsp (or one ¼-oz envelope) unflavored gelatin ½ cup cold water 1 dozen ladyfingers (or stale cake cut into narrow slices) 6 eggs, separated* 1 cup sugar, divided in half 2 or 3 tsp vanilla A truly unholy amount of whiskey In a very small bowl, sprinkle the gelatin in cold water. Put this in a larger bowl of hot water and let sit for three to five minutes. (Or, skip the bowl-in-a-bowl business. Soak the gelatin and then microwave it, three or four seconds at a time, until it melts.) While the gelatin is soaking, split ladyfingers open and thoroughly soak them in whiskey. Grease a loaf pan and put them around the edges. (If you don't want to try to unmold this, it'd look very nice in a clear glass pan.) Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Then gradually add ½ cup of sugar, beating constantly. Add the vanilla, and continue beating while you slowly pour in the gelatin, or add it one spoonful at a time. Put this into the pan, cover tightly, and refrigerate for at least 8 hours. Just before serving, make the sauce: Beat the egg yolks and remaining ½ cup sugar in the top of a double boiler. Add whiskey to taste and place over boiling water. Cook until thickened, stirring constantly. (We recommend stirring it with a rubber spatula.) *Refrigerate the yolks immediately after separating the eggs, since you won't be using them for a while. If raw eggs are a concern for you, use pasteurized-in-the-shell eggs. Found in a copy of The Woman's Club of Fort Worth Cook Book, 1928

This recipe was handwritten in my college library's copy of The Woman's Club of Fort Worth Cook Book. It was printed in 1928, but this particular book had recipe clippings from right after Repeal* tucked between the pages.

Setting aside Prohibition and history, I think I may have inadvertently landed on an example of an iconic type of southern dessert: the severely alcoholic cake. Apparently certain genteel ladies' associations prefer to get drunk off of dessert (perhaps because doing shots is unladylike?). It seems like every novel set in the American south has at least one old lady whose boozy cake sent someone to detox. Even if alcoholic food not a plot point, southern novelists will often add some "local color" by having a character offhandedly mention that somebody was banned from bringing her signature sherry torte to the Christmas benefit dinner after the year someone else's nephew got into an argument with the chickens and then went headfirst onto a fencepost.

Speculation aside, I've been semi-sporadically staring at this recipe ever since I first scanned it from my college library's copy of The Woman's Club of Fort Worth Cook Book. It always looked like an intimidating assembly project, so I never dared make it.

But recently, our refrigerator clogged itself with frost. The fix was easy: unplug it for a day and let its internals melt. Of course, that meant we had to put all the food somewhere. Fortunately, we have a chest freezer that has slowly become a resting place for leftovers I feel bad about throwing out but refuse to eat after everyone else loses interest. I also borrowed ice chests from Mom and other people.

As a brief warning to anyone with the same problem, your refrigerator will take longer than you think to re-chill itself. I planned to plug it in before bed and reload it when I awoke, but it took a lot longer. You'll need to re-ice your coolers more times than you think before you can transfer everything back.

As I returned our eggs and green onions to their rightful place, I decided that this was the perfect time to have a refrigerator party! And what better way to celebrate the return of the refrigerator than by making something that would be a health hazard without it?

The recipe starts off with ladyfingers, which are really hard to get nowadays. A lot of older dessert recipes begin with "Soak one package of ladyfingers in syrup/juice/wine/etc," but apparently all of those things went out of style while none of us were looking. I used to be able to get ladyfingers on the cookie aisle, these days it's a toss-up whether I can get them from an actual bakery. I thought about making them myself from scratch, but we conveniently had a lot of Mrs. Mary Martensen's sour cream cake going stale on the counter.

I thought this particular cake was perfect for soaking in liquor. It had a nice flavor on its own. And it had that firm, slightly springy texture that made it seem perfect for getting sopping wet. Things got a bit crumbly while I sliced, but the cake would soon be too drunk to care.

This brings us to the whiskey. I got this for being in my brother's wedding party, and then I skipped his wedding twice. (He got married in 2020, and had another ceremony the next year when it was safe-ish to actually invite people). Even for his second wedding when we all had the vaccine, I was leery of going through an airport. So instead of wrangling all the relatives into a photogenic row, he sent me a bottle of alcohol in return for staying at the house.

Any readers who like whiskey, let me know: Did my brother have good taste?

I haven't opened this bottle until today. I'm not saving it for a special occasion; I just lost interest in alcohol a long time ago. For all I know, I'll use the rest of the whiskey as lighter fluid the next time someone in the house is daft enough to try grilling over a wood fire instead of propane.

Anyway, we got the cake absolutely soaked. Thinking of Fanny Cradock making a trifle, I pressed lightly on the cake to feel for dry spots, and poured more whiskey wherever it was needed.

Meanwhile, our gelatin was soaking in water. Our recipe writer tells us to then put the bowl into a larger bowl of hot water to melt it. But we at A Book of Cookrye live in the modern era, when we can microwave our gelatin instead. It was ready in four seconds.

It looks like plain water, but it is so much more.

Logically, we needed to line our mold with cake. I first coated it with cooking spray in the hopes that I could unmold our masterpiece intact, but I wasn't too worried about failure. Even if this creation ripped apart on its way out of the bowl, I still could serve it "attractively heaped in bowls" (to quote a lot of recipes from the time).

Purely out of curiosity, I tried a piece of cake as I was arranging it into the bowl and found that I might have overdone it with the whiskey. I am no stranger to boozy desserts, but this is the first time a cake has ever burned.

Note that we even found a place for the crumbs because we do not waste cake.

Setting aside our intoxicating cake, it was time to make the meringue. 

I've never mixed gelatin and egg whites like this, but dumping it all in at once seemed like it would end badly. So, I slowly dribbled the gelatin in while the mixer ran. Naturally, the egg whites and lukewarm hooves smelled absolutely dreadful. But we got all of the gelatin in there without deflating everything.

I hadn't expected this to work so well. Whipped whites always seem so fragile, like they'll lose their air if you look at them in the wrong tone of voice. I would have never thought you can pour gelatin into them without ruining all those delicate little bubbles. But our gelatinized egg whites were just as light and airy as they did before we added that magical yet malodorous powder. They even looked just a bit creamier.

 

At this point, I realized that the recipe didn't mention adding anything besides sugar and gelatin to our meringue. I didn't want to fill our whiskey-soaked cake with a flavorless fluff. I veered a bit off-recipe and added some vanilla. We already had plenty of whiskey in the cake, so the white part was free to taste like something else. Besides, I'm pretty sure vanilla extract has about the same ABV anyway.

Sooner than I thought, we had reached the moment where it all comes together. I had always thought this recipe would be a long, difficult process, but it was over in 45 seconds. I tried to get the white stuff into all the gaps between the cake slices. I don't think I did very well because the cake kept falling out of place on contact with the meringue.

Based on this recipe, I think I can confidently say that whoever wrote it down had an electric mixer or at least a hand-cranked eggbeater in her house. If you have one of those, this is a cinch. Like, this was almost as fast as Fanny Cradock making souffles.

The next day, our dessert was beautifully chilled as only a working refrigerator could do. I was kind of surprised when it slid right out, but slide right out it did.

I have never really ventured into the exciting world of unmolding gelatins, but you can see what this could have been in skilled hands. The soggy cake and gelatinous meringue almost make an attractive striped pattern. But I must set aside my lack of experience and give credit to our handwritten friend. This recipe does exactly what it should.

Since we were ready to serve, it was time to make the sauce. Speaking of which, I didn't understand this whole "sauce to be made just before serving" business. It makes this dessert difficult to serve at all. If you're bringing this to someone else's house, you can hardly go into their kitchen and get their pots dirty. And if you're having a party at your own place, you still have to duck away from the guests and say "Excuse me, I have to make the sauce." Even if you're only serving this for family and not for guests, who wants to get up from the table and stand over a stove between dinner and dessert?

Then I realized: this person probably had household help to deal with all sauce matters. As a reminder, we found this in the Fort Worth Woman's Club cookbook. This is the photo of the clubhouse on the frontispiece.

So if our handwritten friend didn't have a cook in the house at all times, I'm sure she could afford to hire someone for when she was entertaining. 

We are told put our yolks in a pot, stir in a half-cup of sugar, and to then add an unspecified amount of whiskey. I had no idea what I was doing, but I figured it would be about right to add enough whiskey for this to turn into a custard instead of a paste. I may have turned the stove up a little high, because we did get one or two bits of scrambled egg in there. But if you poured this through a tea strainer, no one would ever know.

Today's recipe is a great reminder that people in "the good old days" could drink us under the table. Like, I think drinking straight shots would burn less. After all, a shot of whiskey is over in less than a second. This might be an amusing novelty dessert on someone's 21st birthday (or whatever the drinking age is where you live). It is also perfect for a distillery-sponsored cookoff. But I really did not like it.

 I tried carefully carving out some of the fluffy stuff from the center to see if it was any good when separated from the drunken cake. But over the course of the night, the alcohol fumes from the cake slices had thoroughly penetrated it. I was tempted to see if the dessert would ignite if I set a match to it, but I don't have any pans I'm willing to risk ruining with a flaming gelatin. 

But I have to credit whoever wrote this down: everything in the recipe comes together as intended. You could slice this just like a cake. And it had just enough gelatin to keep the egg whites fluffy without making them too rubbery or bouncy. Like the Radio Pudding, the recipe succeeds even if it's not very good.

Going back to what we said about Repeal, I think that our handwritten friend was a little too excited about buying liquor again. And really, I wouldn't be surprised if the whole country had a collective post-Repeal binge-drinking phase. Just look at these people from the night alcohol was relegalized. Like, they were prepared for this. One of them has a novelty glass boot the size of his forearm. And the guy drinking out of a barrel doesn't care that the man holding it is about to burn a cigarette hole in his jacket.

Wikimedia

As for the recipe: I'm willing to try it again, but I'd borrow an idea from Fanny Cradock and use 50-50 orange juice and sauterne wine. I don't have the alcohol tolerance of a Southern lady. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*For those outside of the US, capital-R "Repeal" refers to the end of the United States' prohibition on alcohol in 1933. The US banned alcohol by constitutional amendment in 1920 and repealed the ban by popular demand thirteen years later. Alcohol is the only reason a constitutional amendment has been repealed in all of US history. ↪

Fiesta Hot Slaw: or, The first cole slaw I have made in my life

Today, we're having an Illinois fiesta!

Fiesta Hot Slaw 1 medium head cabbage, shredded fine 1 2-oz jar chopped pimiento* ½ cup chopped sweet pickles ½ cup cider vinegar ¼ cup water ½ tsp salt ¼ cup sugar ¼ tsp paprika† ¼ tsp dry mustard ¼ cup cooking or olive oil 2 eggs slightly beaten ¼ cup heavy cream Place the cabbage, pimiento, and pickles in a large salad bowl. Set aside. Mix the vinegar, water, salt, sugar, paprika, and oil in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil. While you're waiting, whisk the eggs and cream in a medium or large mixing bowl. When the mixture in the pot, pour it slowly into the eggs and cream, whisking thoroughly the whole time. Return everything to the pot. Cook over low or medium-low heat until it thickens, stirring constantly Pour the dressing over the cabbage, toss lightly, and serve at once. This is also good (if not better) served cold. Just make the dressing ahead of time, chill the cabbage, and toss everything together when ready to serve. *The original recipe says "2-oz can pimento, cut into thin strips," but it seems like you can only get chopped pimientos these days. †I used a lot more than this. Undated clipping (probably l930s or l940s), Chicago Tribune

This comes out of my great-grandmother's binder. Apparently the Chicago Tribune had an ongoing reader recipe exchange with prizes, just like the Philadelphia Inquirer did. And just like the Inquirer, the Tribune printed each person's address under their recipe. I understand printing each proud winner's name, but I don't see why they shared their addresses with the entire greater Chicago area. Maybe you were supposed to send a postcard that said "Dear Mrs. Peter Follis, I loved your fiesta slaw that was in the paper yesterday!" 

Incidentally, I have never made cole slaw before (hot or cold). 

Today's fiesta slaw starts with oil and vinegar dressing. I didn't think we were using a lot of vinegar until it got hot. Then the steam brought tears to my eyes.

Every recipe can teach you something new. Today we learned something minor but really nice. After using the same measuring cup for the oil and then the cream, the cream slid right out with nearly nothing left behind. I may start spritzing cups with cooking spray when measuring out cream.

After mixing everything and cooking for five minutes, the dressing had thickened up nicely and tasted a lot like thousand island. And because I had a brief flareup of planning ahead, we had our cabbage waiting with its pimientos and pickles already in place.

I'd like to note that I've gotten better at shredding cabbages since my first time. Also, this the perfect time to remind everyone to keep your knives sharp! You simply cannot make cole slaw (hot or otherwise) if your knife is dull enough for the kids to play with. I can't sharpen my own knives (not even with those "foolproof" sharpeners), and have to take them to a knife shop every few weeks. But my knives are always sharp anyway (and hidden from everyone else in the house, along with the fabric scissors.)

Despite my efforts to "serve immediately," our fiesta slaw cooled off before I could finish taking it to the table. I probably should have tossed everything over the stove for a minute, or at least taken the cabbage out of the fridge a lot earlier. But honestly, it was better after the leftovers had time to refrigerate. Like, this seems like it would taste best when someone brings it out of an ice chest when everyone's grilling at the park. 

With that said, the dominant flavor here is cider vinegar. If you don't like your cole slaw on the tart side, this might not be the recipe for you. But I think this would be really satisfying on a hot day.