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)

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 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. ↪

Caramel Carrots: or, Serve as a vegetable or a dessert

Autumn is here, and the carrots have struck again!

Caramel Carrots 8 medium-sized carrots, scrubbed 1½ cups sugar ½ cup butter ½ tsp salt 1 tsp nutmeg 1 tsp cinnamon ¾ cups water (saved from the cooking water if you boil the carrots) Scrub off the outer layer of the carrots. Slice them. Cook the carrots until tender, either in the microwave (place them in a loosely covered bowl with two or three spoonfuls of water) or by boiling them. Drain the carrots if you boiled them. Mix with all remaining ingredients in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to medium and cook until syrup is thick. Mrs. Walter Newberry, Woman's Club of Fort Worth Cook Book, 1928

Woman's Club of Fort Worth Cook Book, 1928

I was recently asked to make a pumpkin pie. Naturally, I served a carrot pie instead. (No one knew the difference.) Unfortunately, this left me with the remainder of a two-pound bag of carrots. Fortunately, the Fort Worth Woman's Club has an easy way to get rid of them: slice them and boil them in syrup. In theory, they will become little discs of orange candy. 

This cookbook comes from 1928, which puts it barely before the rise of bizarre 1950s salads. Nevertheless, we can see the early whisperings of future recipes that end with notes like "serve as a salad or dessert."

At first, I was going to microwave the carrots instead of boiling them as specified, figuring that Mrs. Walter Newberry would have done the same had microwaves been invented at the time. But the recipe directs us to save some of the cooking water for the upcoming syrup-making. I thought that perhaps we need to extract some of the carrot flavor in order to ensure the correct final result. As you can see from the barely-tinted color of the water we so carefully saved, that was pointless.

Having cooked the carrots, we are next directed to dump more sugar onto them than I used to put on my cornflakes when I was too carefree to worry about things like "nutrition" and "empty calories."

At first I wondered if the puny allotment of water we saved would suffice. It barely made a puddle in the bottom of the pot. But as soon as I stirred in the sugar, our syrup began to grow. Water seemed to come out of nowhere. This pot of carrots was nearly dry before I stirred in the sugar. After only thirty seconds (and before I had turned on the burner), it looked like this:

By the time the first simmering bubbles appeared, we had so much syrup that you'd think I never drained the carrots in the first place. It turns out that sugar is so hygroscopic (a word we learned while making a previous cake) that it sucks the juice right out of carrots.

Our simmering caramel carrots smelled like dessert and looked like the beginning of a vegetable soup.

I served the caramel carrots with a very heavy meat and sauerkraut stew, and they were an oddly perfect side dish. Maybe those people who serve desserts as a "salad" are on to something.

I'm not surprised that the caramel carrots tasted good. We've already learned that you can use carrots instead of pumpkin for all your pie needs, and this recipe is basically one blender and a couple of eggs away from becoming pie filling. But I didn't expect it to go so well with the rest of supper.

I must also note that the caramel carrots left us with a lot of leftover caramel syrup. I won't need to worry about what to put on toast for quite some time.

In closing, I am going to file the caramel carrots under "a lot better than I expected." Who would have thought that half-candied carrots would be good? I would say I'll make them again since they're fast, easy, and taste good. But I have reservations about putting so much sugar into the vegetables. However, the holiday season is mercilessly approaching, along with it a massive disregard for things like "nutrition" and "draining away the excess fat." With that in mind, caramel carrots would be perfect next to everything else that is good and buttery.

Second-Stab Saturday: Apple Cookies with invisible apples!

When last we saw the apple cookies, the recipe was a runny, half-burnt failure. I noted that we already have a fruit cookie recipe ready to receive apples. The recipe is even called fruit cookies, so it's perfect for making, well, fruit cookies.

Apple Cookies 1 cup butter, margarine,* or shortening 2 cups dark brown sugar 2 tsp cinnamon 1 tsp cloves 1 tsp nutmeg ¼ tsp salt† 1 tsp baking soda 3 eggs 2 tbsp cream 1 tsp vanilla 4 cups flour 1 cup raisins 1 cup finely chopped apples (no need to peel) White frosting Heat oven to 375°. Have greased cookie sheets ready. Cream the butter, and sugar, spices, salt, and baking soda, beating until light and fluffy. Then beat each egg in thoroughly, one at a time. Add the cream and vanilla, beat well. Next, mix in the flour, stirring just until blended. The dough should be firm enough to shape in your hands. If it's sticky, add more flour. Then add the raisins, nuts, and dates. Roll into 1 to 1½-inch balls. Place 3 inches apart on the pan. Gently pat each one to make it flat and about a half-inch thick. Bake 10-12 minutes. When cool, top with white frosting. These are better the next day. The spices get stronger. *Use the margarine that comes in sticks, not the spreadable kind that comes in tubs. †The original recipe calls for ⅓ teaspoon of salt. But I don't know anyone whose measuring spoons come with a one-third teaspoon. Rounding down to a quarter teaspoon won't hurt a thing. Omit the salt if using margarine or salted butter. Adapted from a handwritten note, The Woman's Club of Fort Worth Cook Book, 1928 (original recipe here)

I added enough apples to get the same (ish) fruit-to-dough ratio as the previous cookies, and made no other change to the recipe.

As with the original apple cookies, we chopped the apples very finely. Even though the recipe was a failure, cutting the apples into extremely small pieces got them completely cooked in the cookies' short baking time.

Our cookies came out perfect, which I already knew would happen since I've made this recipe before. However, the apple pieces, which had taken on a dull color in the oven, made the cookies look subtly yet unfortunately corn-fed.

I have to give credit to Mrs. John Stevens, the creator of the apple cookie recipe. She realized that her cookies (such as they were) looked like specimens that some enterprising ornithologists would analyze to determine a species' diet. Her solution: Hide the cookies with icing. They look really cute with a cover-up, don't they?

I didn't expect to say this, but the apples really didn't change these cookies. You might think the apples softened them, or that they added a lovely tart flavor. They didn't. The cookies were neither better nor worse for having apples in them. I guess if you can convince yourself that blueberry muffins count as a serving of fruit, you can pretend that the apples make these cookies a great source of vitamins. 

So if you have some iffy-looking apples on the counter, chopping them into cookies is not a bad way to keep them out of the trash can. But I can't think of any other reason to make cookies with them.

Cranberry Gelatin: or, Surprisingly good places to put celery

Cranberries are in season, which means we at A Book of Cookrye can bring out a recipe that I've sometimes stared at for years.

Cranberry Gelatin 2 cups cranberries 1½ cup water, divided into ½ and 1 cup 1 c sugar 1 tbsp (or one envelope) powdered gelatin* 1/2 c finely diced celery 1/2 c chopped nuts, if desired 1/2 tsp salt Sprinkle gelatin into ½ cup of water, set aside.† Wash berries and coarsely grind them. If you don't have a meat grinder, put the cranberries in a food processor and run it until they are lightly pulverized. Process only about half a cup of cranberries at a time so that they all get evenly chopped.‡ Put the berries and 1 cup of water in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, put a lid on, and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the salt and sugar, then raise the heat to high until it boils again. Reduce the heat back to low, put the lid back on, and cook 3 minutes more. Add the gelatin and stir until dissolved. Then remove from heat. Refrigerate until partially set. It should be thick enough that the berries don't sink or float after you stir it, but instead stay in place. Then add celery and nuts. (If not adding celery or nuts, give it a quick stir when it's half-set to redistribute the berries.) Pour into molds. Refrigerate until firm. Then unmold and serve. Or, you can skip the unmolding business and pour the mixture into a cute serving bowl. A clear glass (or plastic) bowl will show the cranberries' lovely color better than a ceramic one. *One standard-size (¼-ounce) envelope of powdered gelatin contains a little less than the full tablespoon the recipe calls for. But if you're going to serve this out of a bowl, one envelope of gelatin is fine. You only need a full tablespoon of gelatin if you want this to be firm enough to stand up on its own. †If desired, squeeze the juice from one or two oranges, and add enough water to make ½ cup. Then let the gelatin sit in that. By adding the orange juice after you remove the pot from heat, you avoid boiling away its flavor. ‡You can leave the berries whole if you want. The recipe will come out a little different, but it's good either way. Source: Handwritten note, The Woman's Club of Fort Worth Cook Book, 1928

Like so many of the recipes I've been meaning to get around to, I simply never had an excuse to make it. Well, the grocery store was desperately trying to unload the last of the cranberries that remained from the holidays. That was as good an excuse as any to purchase them and make a lovely.... salad? Cranberry sauce? I'm not sure what this is, and our handwritten recipe giver didn't record a title above the directions.

I've never bought fresh cranberries before. They are unexpectedly white in the middle. When you cut one open, it kind of looks like half of a tiny apple. Also, I've heard people claim that fresh cranberries are unbearably bitter without sugar, but I thought they were just fine. Fresh cranberries might stomp out the flavors of everything else in your fruit salad, though. 

Anyway, this recipe begins with our meat grinder! We haven't used it in far too long, and it was nice to get it out and pulverize some produce. Since I'm grinding fruit instead of beef, I don't have to worry about cleaning raw-meat germs off the grinder afterward. 

Setting aside the cranberries, we had to attend to the gelatin. Our recipe calls for one tablespoon of the stuff. I thought that one tablespoon of it would be the same as one envelope, but I poured our happy hoof powder into a measuring spoon just to be sure. It turns out that one standard-size packet of gelatin is almost one tablespoon, but not quite. Because I didn't want to mess up a recipe with a measurement error, I opened a second packet of gelatin to make up for the deficiency. 

Pictured: one standard-sized envelope of gelatin. It is less than one tablespoon.

Whoever wrote this recipe down used the spelling "jelatine." They also spelled it "jelatine" every other time a recipe uses it. I wondered if "Jelatine" was a long-discontinued brand of gelatin. If it was, it's thoroughly forgotten. 

However, a quick search through newspaper archives (thank you to the local library for the free Newspapers.com access) found various recipe pages spelling it "jelatine" until at least 1986. This is the most recent "jelatine" I found, though I only looked for a few minutes. You should know that this diet dessert was printed between recipes for chocolate macadamia muffins and a "chocolate hazelnut truffle log."

"Southern Living Cooking School," Wichita Falls (Texas) Times, September 14 1986, page 10G

Never let it be said that I don't bloom my gelatin. Our writer didn't tell us to, but people made a lot more gelatin in those days. I think she didn't tell us to soften the gelatin for the same reason no recipe ever tells you "crack open the eggs, save the inner contents, and discard the shells."

While our gelatin sat and softened in water, we could get our main attraction onto the stove.

This is what we came here for.

After stirring the pot for a minute or so, the cranberries dyed our spoon a rather fetching shade of pink.

As the timer ticked down the berries' ten minutes of simmering, we wiped up the various errant juice splats and chopped the celery. A lovely cranberry smell came from under the pot lid before the cooking time was halfway elapsed.

This may sound daft, but I was not prepared for my cranberry sauce to smell like cranberries. For me, cranberries have always existed in those plastic made-from-concentrate juice bottles or cans of gelatinized sauce. I have never smelled cranberry odor from anything that looked like it was derived from nature.

After ten minutes, we opened the lid to add a lot of sugar. Our simmering cranberries had turned a stunning shade of red. I didn't know you could produce such a vivid color without artificial food coloring. It looked like a pot of Kool-Aid with fruit pieces floating in it.

As directed, we let the cranberries cook another three minutes with the sugar, and then it was time to let the gelatin slither into the pot.

While we were waiting for our creation to semi-congeal in the refrigerator, I realized that I didn't know what I was making. While this would probably be a "salad" by gelatin-era standards, cranberry sauce is basically a gelatin mold. As far as I know, it is the only sauce in the world that can be served free-standing. So, were we making sauce or salad? I sent the recipe to a friend in Wisconsin with an uncalled-for question. 

There you have it. We're making cranberry salad. Though perhaps the cranberry sauce/salad divide is about as muddy as the boundary between cupcakes and muffins. 

Anyway, after a bit of leisurely reading with a nice cup of tea, our salad had half-congealed and was ready to receive the completing ingredients. In full disclosure, I wasn't sure about adding nuts to this so I divided our cranberry mixture in half. One portion got the full nuts and celery, the other got celery only.

It was then time to put our cranberry salad into the various small bowls that today must pass for molds. I have to admit, our original writer's handwriting gets a bit hard to read as we reach the bottom of the page. I thought she had written "drive into moulds," which I figured must be a charmingly outdated phrase from the days when we spelled it jelatine. The phrase "drive into moulds" seems appropriate when forcing ingredients to assume all manner of freestanding shapes that they never wanted to be. I was even planning to reintroduce the phrase "drive your gelatin into molds" in future recipes. But someone pointed out that the last line simply says "pour into moulds" in particularly scrawly handwriting.

And here it is, all firmed up and ready to serve!

Unfortunately, we had some structural failures when we unmolded our jelatine. Half of it stuck to the bowl, and half of it fell out. Despite our almost-successful reassembly job, our salad was not likely to get a commendation in anyone's home economics class.

But before we taste it, we at A Book of Cookrye have a special and favorite way to eat cranberry sauce! (Or cranberry salad.)

You may think macaroni and cheese and cranberry sauce is a weird combination. But really, it's a lateral move from those cheese-cracker-and-expensive-jelly trays you see at unpleasantly boring business events. (One day I'll find out where they get those extra-bland crackers topped with flavor-free herb flecks.)

Setting aside my inept unmolding, this recipe is delicious. I would have never thought to add celery to cranberry sauce (or cranberry salad), but the two go together really well. I probably should have cut the celery smaller, but that's easy enough to do next time. However, I did not like the nuts in this. Unlike the celery, they were hard without being crunchy. And they barely added any flavor. Really, they just seemed like they landed in the gelatin by accident. And after a few days in the refrigerator, the nuts became soggy like vegetables that have boiled for too long. 

Since we had a lot of cranberry salad, we discovered it was really good on rye toast.

And of course, cranberry toast led to sandwiches like this.

If you think I am batty for dumping celery into cranberry sauce (or cranberry salad, depending on your perspective) and then putting it into a peanut butter sandwich, well, you may be right. In full disclosure, I like to take home those long pickles that come on the side of deli plates and do this:

 

 

Shudder if you want, but peanut butter and pickle sandwiches show up in several decades' worth of cookbooks. There is precedent.

Getting back to cranberries, I liked this salad (or sauce) enough to make it again. However, I couldn't help but to wonder if we really needed to chop the cranberries. And so, I left the berries intact to see what would happen. At first, I thought the recipe's given amount of water wasn't enough to cook the cranberries without chopping them- even though the pot looked charmingly like a cranberry bog in a TV commercial. But our cranberries cooked just fine, and we did not need to raise the waterline.

Speaking of cranberries floating in water, those cranberry commercials featuring people wading through picturesque berry-covered bogs don't show you the swarms of spiders. You know how farmers keep a few semi-feral cats around as pest control? Well, cranberry farmers do the same thing... with spiders. So when people put on their thigh-high galoshes and go into cranberry bogs that are not being filmed for those quaint-looking advertisements, they are covered with literally hundreds of spiders, all of them crawling to the nearest object (or human) to get out of the water.

Getting back to our spider-free stovetop, I used a single envelope of gelatin, which is a bit less than the tablespoon that the original directions demand. I was reasonably sure our salad would still set, but I wanted to confirm that before saying that it's possible. I also decided to forget about unmolding and just serve it from the container in which it congealed. As I poured it out of the pot, I couldn't get over what a beautiful color it was.

I realize that for some people, adding celery to cranberries is like that horrifying moment when you see someone dump a can of green beans into the spaghetti sauce. But I liked the combination a lot. The celery was a perfect crunchy flavor contrast to the sweet and tart cranberries. And it made the salad (or sauce) so substantial that you could put some of it in a small bowl and eat it on its own.

The second batch of cranberry sauce (or salad), with its slightly reduced allotment of gelatin, wasn't quite as firm as the first. I liked it better that way- it seemed agreeably soft instead of bulletproof. So if you want to skip unmolding and let your cranberry sauce firm up in the bowl you will serve it in, I think one envelope of gelatin is better than one tablespoon of it. But for those who want their cranberries to stand on their own, you'll a bit of extra jiggly reinforcement.

For those who don't like celery in their cranberries quite as much as I do, we're going to close today's recipe with the last moment before I greened up the sauce.