Cheese Cookies
March 31st is the anniversary of this blog – and in honour of my first recipe, Cayenne Cheese from Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, which is the first written recipe for Cheese Straws, I’ve been making recipes that feature flour, butter, cheese, salt and cayenne pepper each year to mark the occasion. This Cheese Cookie recipe is from the 1940s edition of the Joy of Cooking.
You’ll find this recipe in:
The Joy of Cooking
by Irma S. Rombauer
Toronto, 1945 - (my copy is a Canadian reprint of the 1943 edition)
CHEESE COOKIES
Good to serve with a soup or salad course.
Sift:
2 cups bread flour
Resift with:
1 ¼ teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
And cut in with a pastry blender:
½ cup butter
Grate and work in:
½ pound American Cheese (2 cups)
Chill the dough for several hours. Roll it until it is very thin. Cut it into rounds Sprinkle the tops with:
Caraway seeds (optional)
Bake the cookies in a hot oven 400° for about 10 minutes.
March 31st is the anniversary of this blog – and in honour of my first recipe, Cayenne Cheese from Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, which is the first written recipe for Cheese Straws, I’ve been making recipes that feature flour, butter, cheese, salt and cayenne pepper each year to mark the occasion. This Cheese Cookie recipe is from the 1940s edition of the Joy of Cooking.
The only modifications that I made to this recipe is to add about a cup of water to create a dough, and since I’m not a huge fan of carraway, I only sprinkled the top of some. This recipe made 75 cookies.
My review is that the Velveeta didn’t pack enough cheesy flavour. Here’s my ranking on my Cheese Straws recipes so far:
Cayenne Cheeses from 2018
Cheese Straws from 2021
Cheese Hooies from 2019
Cheese Cookies from 2026
Rhubarb Cups
Rhubarb Cups are a simple, three-ingredient, make-ahead dessert from the 1847 cookbook The Lady’s Receipt Book by Eliza Leslie. Rhubarb Cups would be a perfect dish to add to your recipe rotation if you’ve got a freezer full of stewed rhubarb! I have to admit, they don’t end up being the most visually appealing dessert, but what they lack in aesthetics, they make up for in taste. The cups themselves are very mild, but this recipe also includes a zippy and flavourful butter, sugar and lemon hard sauce. As an added bonus, in this blog post you’ll find out where you can find rhubarb growing wild in Banff National Park.
You’ll find this recipe in:
The Lady’s Receipt Book
By: Eliza Leslie
Philadelphia, 1847
Historic Recipe
* Scroll down for an easy-to-follow version of Rhubarb Cups historic recipe
RHUBARB CUPS. - Take twenty stalks of green rhubarb; cut them, and boil them in a quart of water. When it comes to a hard boil, take it from the fire; strain off the water; drain the rhubarb as dry as possible, and then mash it, and make it very sweet with brown sugar. Have ready a half a pint of rice, that has been boiled in a quart of water, till soft and dry. Mix the rhubarb and the rice well together; beating them hard. Then mould it in cups slightly buttered, and set them on ice, or in a very cold place. Just before dinner, turn them out on a large dish. Serve up with them, in a bowl, cream and sugar, into which a nutmeg has been grated; or else a sauce made of equal portions of fresh butter and powdered white sugar, beaten together until very light, and flavoured with powdered cinnamon, or nutmeg, or oil of lemon or lemon-juice.
My Recipe
Stew the Rhubarb
20 stalks green rhubarb, chopped
4 cups water – 1 L
1 cup brown sugar – 227 g
Boil the chopped rhubarb in the water until soft. Drain, dry as much as possible and transfer to a bowl. Mash, then stir in the brown sugar.
The 20 stalks produced 3 ½ cups (354 g) of stewed rhubarb.
Assembling the Rhubarb Cups
1 cup uncooked white rice - 227 g
4 cups water – 1 L
3 ½ cups stewed rhubarb - 354 g
Butter for greasing the tea cups or moulds
Combine the rice and water together in a pot over high heat. Once it has reached a boil, remove the pot lid and reduce to a simmer. Add a bit more water if the rice is still uncooked but most of the water has evaporated. Cook until rice is almost soft and water is almost gone. At this point, remove the pot from the heat, cover with the lid and wait 5 minutes.
In a large bowl, mix together the cooked rice and stewed rhubarb. Mash the rice and rhubarb together or beat with a hand mixer.
Grease tea cups or the mould of your choice, then completely fill with the rice and rhubarb mixture, pushing down to make sure there are no air pockets. Put the tea cups in the refrigerator to set overnight or at least a few hours.
When they have set, use a knife to carefully turn the Rhubarb Cups out of the tea cups onto a serving dish or individual dessert dishes. Serve with a sauce.
The Sauce
1 cup cold butter – 227 g
1 cup white sugar – 227 g
4 drops Lemon essential oil*** or 1-2 tsp lemon extract (to taste)
Juice of 1 small lemon (about 2 tbsp)
Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl until fluffy, then stir in the lemon juice. Add your lemon flavouring and mix well. Spread on top of the Rhubarb Cups right before serving. If you use a wet knife, you are able to sculpt this sauce into decorative shapes.
Please don’t use any random bottle of Lemon essential oil (see my note below***), unless you know that brand’s essential oils are safe for food. If you aren’t sure, use lemon extract instead of essential oil. Using only lemon juice creates a sauce with a more subtle lemon flavour.
Other suggestions for the Rhubarb Cups sauce in the historic recipe are to flavour the butter and sugar with grated cinnamon or nutmeg instead of lemon, or serve the Rhubarb Cups in a bowl with cream, sugar and grated nutmeg.
***It’s important to stress that most essential oils on the market today are not safe to put in food because of the adulteration and contamination that are prevalent in this industry. For this reason, I’ll always suggest a food-safe substitute ingredient for an essential oil, like extract or juice. Please look out for your safety and don’t use any old bottle of essential oil in the recipes on this blog! I use doTERRA essential oils, which is a company that has extremely high standards for testing and purity, meaning that doTERRA essential oils can be safely used to flavour food.
Pop over here for more information about doTERRA & adulteration in the essential oil industry and if in doubt, use lemon juice or extract in this recipe.
This story may sound familiar to some of you: best intentions paired with grappling with a difficult few pandemic years. I actually made this Rhubarb Cups recipe about a year ago in my kitchen in Hamilton, Ontario and then I did nothing with it. Putting Rhubarb Cups up on my blog was on my to-do list for a good long time before I admitted that I had entirely missed rhubarb season and I gave up for 2021. And so the photographs and notes sat...
...until this summer. I needed a change of pace after those difficult pandemic years, so I’m spending the summer away from Ontario working a seasonal job with Parks Canada at Banff National Park in Alberta. On one of my days off, I hiked the Lower Bankhead Trail, which is a dream hike for history buffs! It’s also a short loop (1.1 km or 2/3 mile) and a relatively level hike, after you descend the stairs that lead you down into the valley.
Bankhead was a coal mining town that was active from 1903 – 1922. Lower Bankhead in the valley was where all the industrial buildings were kept, but there was also a settlement where all the Chinese workers lived next to all the slack heaps. The hike features the ruins of many of the industrial buildings, massive slack heaps, a compressed air locomotive and rhubarb as far as the eye can see.
Yep, rhubarb grows wild in Lower Bankhead, a remnant of the gardens that fed the Chinese miners and their families. I’ve found an excellent blog post that delves into the lives of the Chinese workers, so be sure to give it a read if you’d like to find out more. It’s definitely not recommended that you harvest and eat this rhubarb, since there is coal everywhere in this area, but see if you can spot the rhubarb in the first two photos that I snapped during my hike.
The robust rhubarb plants bolting majestically towards the mountains reminded me of my unresolved rhubarb recipe, and being amongst the mountains away from many facets of my regular life has honestly been just what I needed. So here it is, better late than never, and I hope you’ll hear from me again sooner than 14 months from now.
If you’re not in the Banff area, but would still like to check out the hike, this blog post about Lower Bankhead Trail is a wonderful synopsis of what you’d see if you were there in person.
A few ruins and remnants of Upper Bankhead, where everyone else lived, are visible along the C-Level Cirque Trail in Banff , which is a more challenging hike than the Lower Bankhead Trail.
Read The Lady’s Receipt Book:
Short or Flaky Pastry
Every year in March for my blogging anniversary, I make a different Cheese Straw recipe and this year’s Cheese Straws called for a pre-prepared batch of pastry. I searched for a pastry recipe from the same time period and found Short or Flaky Pastry in the 1901 classic The Settlement Cook Book.
Short or Flaky Pastry is a puff pastry recipe that’s easy to pull off and it does live up to its name by producing a pastry that’s both flaky and light. It calls for half butter and half lard, but it is also delicious when made with only butter. This is definitely a recipe that I’m going to look up on my own website when I need to make some puff pastry fast.
You'll find this recipe in:
The Settlement Cook Book
Milwaukee, 1901
By: Mrs. Simon Kander
Historic Recipe:
SHORT OR FLAKY PASTRY
1 heaping cup flour,
¼ teaspoon salt,
¼ cup lard,
¼ cup butter,
Ice water.
Have all the material ice cold. Chop the shortening in the flour till the size of peas and beans. Toss lightly with a knife, adding enough ice water to about half wet the flour. Turn out on a smooth, cold board. Gather with the knife into a square pile. Then pound lightly with rolling pin till well flattened. Roll in an oblong piece ½ in. thick; fold in thirds and roll again; repeat, and after the third rolling it will usually be sufficiently compact to roll thin enough to line a plate. This paste improves by standing a half hour or more on the ice. Sufficient for 1 pie.
My adaptation of the recipe:
½ cup butter – 115 g (or ¼ cup butter and ¼ cup lard)
1 1/3 cup flour – 200 g
¼ tsp salt
½ cup ice water – 120 mL
*** I used Short or Flaky Pastry to make Cheese Straws and I wanted a lot of them! I made a double batch of pastry, so those are the amounts you see in the photographs. I also opted to only use butter in my recipe instead of half butter and half lard.
Assembling the pastry dough
Cut the cold butter and lard into small pieces. An easy way cut your butter down is to grate it as soon as you remove it from the fridge. Add the butter and lard pieces to your flour in a large bowl and use a pastry cutter or two knives to cut the size of the butter chunks until they are pea-sized.
Stir in the salt, then gradually add ice water while stirring until the pastry is half wet. A fair portion of your dough will still be floury. I ended up adding ½ cup of cold water instead of the ¼ cup in the 1901 recipe. The next step is to beat, roll and fold your pastry to finish incorporating your ingredients (keep reading for those instructions).
Rolling out the pastry
1) Scoop the pastry out of the bowl onto your rolling surface and mound it into a square pile. Hit the pastry with your rolling pin in different directions, then roll it until it is about 1 cm (½”) thick.
2) Carefully fold your dough into thirds. It probably won’t be sticking together very well at all, but try your best to pile and fold it in 3 layers.
3) Beat the pastry with your rolling pin in different directions again and roll it out until it is about 1 cm (½”) thick.
4) Fold your pastry dough into thirds again. It should mostly be sticking together at this point.
5) For the third and final time, tap the pastry down with your rolling pin and roll it until it’s about 1 cm (½”) thick.
6) Fold it in thirds again and put in the fridge to cool for at least an hour. Your pastry is now ready to use in your recipe.
This recipe makes enough pastry to line a pie plate. Double the recipe if you’d like a top crust. Bake at 400 F (200 C) or as directed in your pie recipe.
Every year in March for my blogging anniversary, I make a different Cheese Straw recipe and this year’s Cheese Straws called for an pre-prepared batch of pastry. I searched for a pastry recipe from the same time period and found Short or Flaky Pastry in the 1901 classic The Settlement Cook Book.
Short or Flaky Pastry is a puff pastry recipe that’s easy to pull off and it does live up to its name by producing a pastry that’s both flaky and light. It calls for half butter and half lard, but it is also delicious when made with only butter. This is definitely a recipe that I’m going to look up on my own website when I need to make some puff pastry fast!
Read The Settlement Cook Book :
Cheese Straws
It’s my anniversary today! Three years ago today, I was furiously completing my first blog post, Cayenne Cheeses, which still is one of my favourite historic recipes. Each year ever since, I’ve made another baked cheesy recipe with cheese, butter, flour, salt and cayenne pepper in the ingredient list.
This Cheese Straw recipe is from the 1903 Good Housekeeping Everyday Cook Book and it’s very simple to put together. Grate cheese and season with salt and cayenne pepper. Sprinkle on top of thin strips of pastry and bake. It’s an excellent recipe for making a delicious snack from the extra pastry when you’re making a pie. You could also make or buy pastry if you want a larger batch. They taste quite more-ish, so you might very well want to make pastry specifically for this recipe!
You'll find this recipe in:
Good Housekeeping Everyday Cook Book
New York, 1903
By: Isabel Gordon Curtis, Associate Editor of Good Housekeeping
Historic Recipe:
Cheese Straws
Roll piecrust dough the same thickness as for pies. Cut in strips from six to ten inches wide and cut the strips into straws or sticks a quarter of an inch in width. Lay upon baking sheets, leaving a space between the straws a third of a width of the straws. Grate rich cheese, season to taste with salt and red pepper and scatter thickly over the straws and the spaces between them. Put in the oven where the greatest heat will be at the top and bake ten or fifteen minutes. Cut the cheese in the center of the spaces between the straws, remove from the baking sheet with a limber knife and pile tastily on a plate. -Emma P. Ewing.
Cheese Straws is an excellent recipe for making a delicious snack from the extra pastry when you’re making a pie. You could also make or buy pastry if you want a larger batch.
I made Short or Flaky Pastry (recipe coming soon to this blog). The recipe name doesn’t lie: it’s a very flaky pastry and is quite tasty when it’s baked with grated cheese on top. I love Cheese Straws, so I made a double batch of Short or Flaky Pastry. I ended up with 85 Cheese Straws and used 2 ¼ cups (260 g) grated cheese.
My recipe:
1) Grate cheese and season with salt and cayenne pepper. For every 1 cup (115 g) of grated cheese, I used ½ tsp salt and 1 tsp cayenne pepper, but you can adjust the amounts to taste.
2) Roll the pastry thin, about the same thickness as when you’re making a pie. Try to roll it into an oblong shape and cut the pastry into a large rectangle. The historic recipe instructs making the Cheese Straws anywhere from 6” - 10” (15-22 cm) long. I went with about 15 cm (6”) and the pastry was easy to work with.
3) Slice the pastry very thinly. The original recipe suggests cutting into strips that are ¼” or ½ cm thick. Line the strips up very closely on a baking sheet.
4) Sprinkle an even layer of the seasoned grated cheese all over the straws. Bake in a 400 F (220 C) oven for 10 – 15 minutes, until golden.
5) Allow to cool on the pan. Scrape the cheese straws off the pan with a lifter and slice the cheese between the straws with a knife to separate.
It’s my anniversary today! Three years ago today, I was furiously completing my first blog post, Cayenne Cheeses, which still is one of my favourite historic recipes. Each year ever since, I’ve made another baked cheesy recipe with cheese, butter, flour, salt and cayenne pepper in the ingredient list.
Have a look below for all the recipes I’ve made in this annual series so far. The recipes have spanned from the 1860s – 1960s and they all have different takes on combining the same ingredients. This year’s Cheese Straw recipe is very delicious and I can see myself making this recipe regularly to use up extra pastry.
If I was giving out prizes for scrumptiousness, Cayenne Cheeses from 2018 is still the clear winner. 2021’s Cheese Straws didn’t quite dethrone my beloved Cayenne Cheeses, but it’s not far behind in second place. 2020’s Cheese Straws sit in the bronze medal position, with Cheese Hooies dead last (although Cheese Hooies wins the prize for best name!).
Read Good Housekeeping Everyday Cook Book:
Cup Cookies
Cup Cookies are a mild lemon sugar cookie with an almond, sugar & cinnamon topping sprinkled on top. This recipe is from Aunt Babette’s Cook Book from 1889, and its leavening agent is Ammonium Bicarbonate or Baker’s Ammonia.
I’ve chosen this recipe because for the last 2 years, my Ammonia Cakes recipe has been my most popular blog post by far. That shows me that there’s an appetite for information about and recipes using Baker’s Ammonia, but I’m torn, because Ammonia Cakes is not a delicious recipe at all! I had to make a second recipe, Icing for Cake to save the Ammonia Cakes so they were edible and they didn’t end up in the compost.
Cup Cookies are a much more delicious ammonium bicarbonate cookie. Stick with this recipe for the deliciousness, but head over to Ammonia Cakes for background and history about Baker’s Ammonia.
You’ll find this recipe in:
“Aunt Babette’s” Cook Book
By “Aunt Babette” (Bertha F. Kramer)
1889, Cincinnati & Chicago
Historic Recipe:
CUP COOKIES.
Rub to a cream three-quarters of a cup of butter and one cup of sugar; add four eggs, one at a time, and the grated peel of a lemon. Then dissolve a lump of ammonia, about the size of a bean, in a quarter of a pound of lukewarm milk; add this and just enough sifted flour to enable you to roll out on the baking-board. Roll quite thin. Beat up an egg and brush over the cookies, sprinkle with sugar, cinnamon and pounded almonds. These are very nice. Be careful not to add too much flour. Omit the almonds if you are not fond of them.
My Recipe:
The cookies:
¾ cup softened butter – 170 g
1 cup sugar – 225 g
4 eggs
grated peel of a lemon
1 tsp baker’s ammonia (ammonium bicarbonate)
½ cup lukewarm milk – 120 mL
3 ½ cups flour - 700 g
The toppings:
1 egg, beaten
¼ cup sugar – 55 g
1 tsp cinnamon
20 ground almonds - ¼ cup or 30 g when chopped
1. Cream together the butter and sugar and grate the zest of one lemon. Mix in the 4 eggs, one at a time, and the lemon zest. Warm the milk, then add the baker’s ammonia to the lukewarm milk. Add to the mixing bowl, then stir in the flour.
2. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grind the almonds in a mortar and pestle, or use a nut grinder or blender to chop the nuts. Mix the almonds in a bowl with the ¼ cup sugar and cinnamon. Beat one egg in a separate small bowl.
3. Roll the dough out thinly on a well-floured board. The dough will “bounce back” so roll it thinner than you desire. Cut out the cookies and lay out on baking sheets. Brush the top of each cookie with egg, then sprinkle with the almond, sugar & cinnamon topping.
4. Bake for about 15 minutes. Ammonium bicarbonate or baker’s ammonia will make the oven smell horrible like ammonia while the baking process is incomplete. I’m not exaggerating, your oven will smell like cat urine! But once you open the oven around the 15 minute mark and you smell the sweet aroma of cookies baking, that’s how you’ll know that your cookies are finished.
This recipe made 84 round cookies, 6 cm (2 1/4”) in diameter. The flavour is quite mild, so if you’re looking for a tastier cookie, try using 2 grated lemons and 2 tsp cinnamon.
Cup Cookies are a mild lemon sugar cookie with an almond, sugar & cinnamon topping sprinkled on top. This recipe is from Aunt Babette’s Cook Book from 1889, and its leavening agent is Ammonium Bicarbonate or Baker’s Ammonia.
I’ve chosen this recipe because for the last 2 years, my Ammonia Cakes recipe has been my most popular blog post by far. That shows me that there’s an appetite for information about and recipes using Baker’s Ammonia, but I’m torn, because Ammonia Cakes is not a delicious recipe at all! I had to make a second recipe, Icing for Cake to save the Ammonia Cakes so they were edible and they didn’t end up in the compost.
Cup Cookies are a much more delicious ammonium bicarbonate cookie. Stick with this recipe for the deliciousness, but head over to Ammonia Cakes for a bit of history about Baker’s Ammonia.
Baking with Ammonium Carbonate is really not the comforting, scrumptious and aromatic experience that we’re used with most baking. Your baking will actually smell horrible and repulsive most of the time when they’re in the oven! It’s not until your cookies are fully baked that you’ll smell the delicious aromas of homemade cookies. To find out why, head over to my blog post about Ammonia Cakes.
I filmed myself when I was baking Cup Cookies, so enjoy this short video and my revolted reaction when I was checking if the cookies were done after being in the oven for 10 minutes.
Read “Aunt Babette’s” Cook Book:
Fillets of Chickens, with Bechamel-ſauce and Bread-crumbs
It’s been a while since I made Fillets of Chickens, with Bechamel-ſauce and Bread-crumbs at Nelles Manor Museum. I made it twice in the summer of 2019, which was the last time that I was able to teach an open hearth cooking class there. The recipe’s from the 1781 cookbook The Practice of Modern Cookery by George Dalrymple and at this class, we made recipes that would have been popular when the house was newly constructed using fresh garden produce and some newly purchased open hearth cooking implements.
Keep reading after the recipe to learn about some open hearth cookery techniques using a salamander and a couple of different styles of reflector ovens. I also share some ideas for creating DIY reflector ovens using common items that you can use in front of a fireplace or campfire.
You’ll find this recipe in:
The Practice of Modern Cookery
By: George Dalrymple
Edinburgh, 1781
Historic Recipes:
Filets des Poulettes á la Bechamel pannée.
Fillets of Chickens, with Bechamel-ſauce and Bread-crumbs.
CUT the hind part of two or three chickens off, meaning the legs and the rumps, they will ſerve for another diſh; roaſt the breaſts; when done and cold, cut the meat in fillets, mix them with a bechamel ſauce, and put it in the diſh that you intend for table; ſtrew bread-crumbs over it; baſte with a little melted butter, and give it a colour in a oven or with a ſalamander. You will find the ſauce in Sauce-articles. The breaſts of cold roaſted chickens, fowls, capons, or turkies, will anſwer the ſame.
Sauce à la Bechamel. Begamel Sauce.
PUT in a ſtew-pan a few ſlices of veal, ham, a few muſhrooms and ſhallots, two cloves, a laurel-leaf, a little good butter; ſoak all together without letting it take colour; add a little good broth and cream, according to the quantity of ſauce you want; ſimmer it half an hour, and ſift it through a ſieve; you may add ſcalded parſley chopped very fine.
If you’re wondering about the letter that looks a bit like an ‘f’, but appears sometimes where an ‘s’ would go, head over to my To boil green Peas recipe, where I wrote a short history of the Long S.
My version of the recipe:
Chicken Fillets with Bechamel Sauce and Breadcrumbs
5 chicken breasts (or leftover chicken or turkey)
2 or 3 slices of ham and/or veal
4 or 5 mushrooms
1 or 2 shallots
2 whole clove buds
1 bay leaf
1/3 cup butter – 75 g
3 cups cream – 710 mL
3 cups broth – 710 mL
1 cup breadcrumbs – 125 g
A handful of fresh parsley
1) Roast the chicken breast or use leftover chicken or turkey in this recipe. Slice into fillets, place in your serving dish and set aside until you’ve made the sauce.
2) While roasting the chicken, slice the veal, ham, mushrooms and shallots. Melt 2 tablespoons of the butter in a large sauce pan and add the veal, ham, mushrooms, shallots, cloves and bay leaf. Simmer gently over low heat until the shallots and mushrooms are soft.
3) Add the cream and broth to the sauce pan and turn the heat up to medium. Allow it to bubble away for about 30 minutes to reduce and allow the flavours to mix. Chop a handful of fresh parsley and melt the remainder of the butter.
4) Strain the sauce through a sieve into the serving dish with the meat, then add the chopped parsley. Mix the melted butter with the breadcrumbs and layer on top of the sauce and chicken.
5) If your chicken is still warm from roasting, you may broil in the oven until the breadcrumbs are brown (or if you have a salamander, you can use that to brown the top). If your meat is cold, bake uncovered at 350F or 175C for 20-30 minutes. Switch to broil at the end to brown the breadcrumbs if needed.
Optional, but delicious: Slice the ham or veal into small pieces and remove the cloves and bay leaf. The ham, veal, mushrooms and shallots are tasty as a side dish or as a garnish with this dish.
It’s been a while since I made Fillets of Chickens, with Bechamel-ſauce and Bread-crumbs at Nelles Manor Museum. I made it twice in the summer of 2019, which was the last time that I was able to teach an open hearth cooking class there. The recipe’s from the 1781 cookbook The Practice of Modern Cookery by George Dalrymple and at this class, we made recipes that would have been popular when the house was newly constructed using fresh garden produce and some newly purchased open hearth cooking implements.
Above, the plate of Fillets of Chickens, with Bechamel-ſauce and Bread-crumbs on the left was cooked on recipe testing day, when I forgot both string and parsley. The picture of the plate on the right was snapped by a class attendee. You’ll also see To ragoo French Beans on the plate and you can just make out a glass of Freſh Raſpberry Water at the top. We finished off with some Strawberry-fritters for dessert.
If you’re curious about cooking with fire, keep reading to learn about some open hearth cookery techniques: using a salamander and a couple of different styles of reflector ovens. I also share some ideas for creating DIY reflector ovens using common items that you can use in front of a fireplace or campfire.
Salamanders
One of the final steps in our recipe is to “give it a colour in a oven or with a ſalamander”. Keep reading to find out how to brown a breadcrumb top in an oven in open hearth cookery, but our other option is to use a salamander. This recipe isn’t instructing us to brown the breadcrumbs by using a small lizard, though. A salamander is a metal tool used used to brown or caramelize the tops of dishes before being served. Today, a salamander is a small broiling oven that’s used for the same purpose.
Traditional salamanders have a round metal piece at the end of a long handle. Sometimes salamanders also have little feet to help keep it in place when it’s being heated. If you didn’t have a salamander, you’d also have the option to use a small metal shovel.
Salamanders (or shovels) would be heated until they’re red hot by either burying the round end in hot coals or sticking its end in the fire. The salamander would be waved overtop or pressed on the area to brown, blacken and caramelize. To see these principals in action, have a look at the videos below from the Townsends youtube channel. Close to the end, he utilizes a salamander to caramelize the top of a bread pudding and in the other video, he uses a hot shovel to blacken the tops of baked apples.
Reflector Ovens
Reflector ovens are sometimes also called hastening ovens or tin kitchens and they are metal containers, traditionally made out of tin, meant for roasting and baking. Tin kitchens amplify, focus and reflect the heat from the fire. I used two types of reflectors to prepare Fillets of Chickens.
To roast my chicken breasts, I trussed them up to a reflector oven with a spit and at the end of the recipe, I used the more box-like hastening oven to brown the breadcrumb topping. If I didn’t have a rotisserie reflector oven, I would have still been able to roast my chicken breast in a dish or pan in the box reflector oven.
The key to trussing up your meat, vegetable or whatever you’re roasting is to securely attach it to the spit with string. It’s important that when you’re turning the spit, the meat turns with the spit. For even roasting, it’s not great if the spit turns inside the meat and the meat stays in the same position. It’s helpful to have an extra set of hands, tight knots and some good sturdy string to get the job done.
I’ve already mentioned that I forgot string on my recipe testing day, which wasn’t ideal. We found some white embroidery floss in the museum office and some skewers in the prep kitchen and I gave it a go. You’ll see my results on the left. What I ended up with worked, but it definitely wasn’t perfect and tidy.
The picture on the right of me holding the reflector oven was taken on the day of our open hearth cooking class. I wanted to show off what a wonderful job the class participants did of tying those chicken breasts to the spit! If you ever try this out for yourself, aim for what you see in the picture on the right.
Scroll through the pictures above and see if you can pick out the features of the rotisserie reflector oven. There are handles on top to help you to move it around, which is one of the ways to control the temperature. You’re able to adjust the temperature of a reflector oven by either making adjustments to the fire (adding wood, redistributing the wood in the fire) and by changing how close it is to the fire.
The meat will actually brown the fastest on the side away from the fire because the metal is reflecting the heat, so you’ll see that there often is a little door on the back of the reflector. This allows you to check your food’s progress and helps you to decide when you’d like to change the position of the spit.
You don’t need to continuously turn the spit. On the side, there’s many holes in a clock-like formation where you can slip in a little notch on the end of the rotisserie. Depending on the temperature, you may choose to leave the meat in one position for 5 to 10 minutes before rotating the notch to the next slot.
These rotisserie reflector ovens are roughly half cylinders in shape, which helps to collect the juices that drip from the meat. If you look closely, you’ll see that there is a little hole that lines up perfectly with the bottom of the cylinder. That hole leads to a little spout that can be used to pour the juices out of the reflector oven so they can be used to make gravies and sauces.
Instead of using a salamander, I used the other reflector oven to brown the breadcrumbs on top of Fillets of Chickens. This reflector is box-like in shape and can be used more like a traditional oven. You may use baking dishes or place food directly on the tin surface (but grease the surface first). I’ve also included a picture that I took when I baked some coconut macaroons on another recipe testing day at Nelles Manor Museum.
This reflector oven also features handles on the top and the side so you can move it closer to or further from the fire to adjust the temperature. Be careful about using the handle on the top, though! As you can see from the picture, the entire top of this oven flips back so that you can easily monitor, rearrange and flip your food.
Don’t worry, you don’t need to buy a reflector oven to try out these techniques. Have a look at these videos to glean some ideas about how you could build a DIY reflector oven using common items that you can use in front of a fireplace or campfire.
If you’d like to learn more about open hearth cooking techniques, check out what I wrote about Carrot Fritters. I recommend these fritters for breakfast or brunch and I also explain two different options for frying food over and around an open hearth.
Read The Practice of Modern Cookery :
Peppermint Whipped Cream
Along with Marshmallow Mint Sauce, Peppermint Whipped Cream is one of the suggested toppings for the Chocolate Mousse recipe from the 1927 cookbook Electric Refrigerator Recipes and Menus. With only two ingredients, Peppermint Whipped Cream is tasty and easy to make and is a delightful topping for the frozen mousse.
Written by Alice Bradley of the Boston Cooking School, Electric Refrigerator Recipes and Menus was a helpful resource for housewives who welcomed a General Electric Monitor Top Refrigerator into their kitchen. The Monitor Top was the first household electric refrigerator that was affordable for the middle class and it was advertised as a healthier, time-saving and money-saving option over ice refrigerators.
You’ll find this recipe in:
Electric Refrigerator Recipes and Menus:
Recipes prepared especially for the General Electric Refrigerator
By: Miss Alice Bradley
Cleveland, 1927
Peppermint Whipped Cream is delicious served on top of Chocolate Mousse
Historic Recipe:
Chocolate Mousse – No. 40
Put in top of double boiler
¼ cup milk and
1 teaspoon gelatine. When milk is hot and gelatine is dissolved, add
½ cup cold milk, strain into refrigerator pan and put in freezing chamber of refrigerator. When cool beat until light. Meanwhile, melt over hot water
1 square chocolate, add
½ cup sugar
Few grains salt and
1 teaspoon vanilla and very slowly add
¼ cup milk. Stir until mixture boils. Strain and cool. Beat
½ pint cream until thick. Add beaten milk slowly and fold into chocolate mixture. Pour into refrigerator pan and freeze like Desserts and Salads That Need No Stirring, page 45. Serve if desired with
Whipped cream beaten stiff and flavored with vanilla or with oil of peppermint, or serve with Chocolate Sauce – No. 60.
My Peppermint Whipped Cream recipe:
1 cup 35% whipping cream – 237 mL
Start with 1 drop Peppermint essential oil or ½ tsp peppermint or vanilla extract and add more to taste
(I used 3 drops doTERRA Peppermint essential oil)
Beat the whipping cream until it is stiff and will remain peaked when you pull out the beaters. Customize your peppermint flavour (or vanilla flavour if that’s what you prefer) by adding your flavouring gradually to taste.
Peppermint Whipped Cream is very delicious served on Chocolate Mousse
***It’s important to stress that most essential oils on the market today are not safe to put in food because of the adulteration and contamination that are prevalent in this industry. For this reason, I’ll always suggest a food-safe substitute ingredient for the essential oil, like extract. Please look out for your safety and don’t use any old bottle of essential oil in the recipes on this blog! The brand that I use is doTERRA essential oils, which has extremely high standards for testing and purity, meaning that doTERRA essential oils can be safely used to flavour food.
Pop over here for more information about doTERRA & adulteration in the essential oil industry and if in doubt, use Peppermint extract in this recipe.
Along with Marshmallow Mint Sauce, Peppermint Whipped Cream is one of the suggested toppings for the Chocolate Mousse recipe from the 1927 cookbook Electric Refrigerator Recipes and Menus. With only two ingredients, Peppermint Whipped Cream is tasty and easy to make and is a delightful topping for the frozen mousse.
Written by Alice Bradley of the Boston Cooking School, Electric Refrigerator Recipes and Menus was a helpful resource for housewives who welcomed a General Electric Monitor Top Refrigerator into their kitchen. The Monitor Top was the first household electric refrigerator that was affordable for the middle class and it was advertised as a healthier, time-saving and money-saving option over ice refrigerators.
Early in the days of household refrigeration, companies supplied cookbooks to help women figure out how to effectively use their new appliance. Electric Refrigerator Recipes and Menus; Recipes prepared especially for the General Electric Refrigerator is part owner’s manual, part propaganda and part cookbook. Most of the book’s recipes focus on how to use the chilling unit (we’d call this compartment the freezer today), with chapters on Methods of Freezing; Ice Blocks – Plain and Fancy; Fruit Cocktails and Frozen Salads; Ices, Sherberts and Frozen Fruits; and Mousses, Parfaits and Ice Cream.
Early Days of Electric Refrigeration
The story goes back to 1748, when William Cullen demonstrated at the University of Glasgow that rapid heating of a liquid to a gas can result in cooling. The potential for developing technology with real-world applications from this idea ended up sitting on ice (hardy har) for almost a century.
In 1802, American Thomas Moore received a patent for the “refrigerator”, which was close to what we’d call an ice box. It was an oval wooden chamber with a hinged lid surrounding a tin box, with ice blocks in the space between the wood & tin and wool & rabbit fur insulation on the outside. Moore used his refrigerator to transport butter and the same year, he made an appointment to show his invention to Thomas Jefferson, who later purchased a refrigerator from Moore. Below, you’ll see Moore’s original letter to Jefferson, where Thomas Jefferson drew a sketch of the refrigerator in the margins. The use of ice boxes for household food storage didn’t become widespread until technological innovations in the ice harvesting industry happened in the 1820s and 1830s.
In 1835, a patent for “Apparatus and means for producing ice, and in cooling fluids” was granted to Jacob Perkins. It was the first functional vapour-compression refrigeration system, but it wasn’t a commercial success. Perkins built upon the designs of Oliver Evans, who was the first to conceive of the idea and propose a design for vapour-compression refrigeration in 1805, but never constructed a working example. From here, refrigeration gradually became perfected through inventors improving upon the patents of their predecessors and refrigeration transformed the commercial world in the last half of the nineteenth-century. Head over to my Rhubarb and Banana Fool recipe post to find out the part that refrigeration played in bringing bananas to the tables of the world.
Letter from Thomas Moore to Thomas Jefferson, with Jefferson’s sketch of the refrigerator in the margins, courtesy of the Library of Congress; potentially the only surviving DOMELRE refrigerator on display at the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers; DOMLERE ice cube tray
Bringing Electric Refrigerators Home
The first refrigerator designed for household use was invented by Fred W. Wolf Jr. in 1913. The DOMELRE (DOMestic ELectric REfrigerator) didn’t feature a cabinet, but was a cooling unit that could convert the ice box you already own into a refrigerator. Besides bringing refrigeration into household kitchens, another innovation of the DOMELRE was that it was the first to include an ice cube tray. It wasn’t affordable for most people, since purchasing a DOMELRE was about $900, which was the average annual income at the time. In 1916, Wolf sold his rights to Packard Motor Car Company, which created refrigerators under the name of ISKO, which was purchased by Frigidaire in 1922.
Other early domestic refrigerators would include a cabinet made of wood similar to an ice box and the compressors were mainly driven by belt motors, some of which needed to be installed in the basement under the refrigerator. They were often loud and financially unattainable for most families. Purchasing a refrigerator could cost up to twice as much as buying a car.
Photograph of a Monitor Top Refrigerator from the collection at the Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences; advertisements courtesy of random people selling things on the internet
Enter the Monitor Top
Starting in 1927, General Electric unveiled the Monitor Top Refrigerator onto the domestic market, building upon technology from the GE 1910 refrigerator called the Dumbbell, which was mainly used by the dairy industry. The Monitor Top was constructed of stainless steel and featured a hermetically sealed cylindrical condenser on its top next to a temperature control. What really set the Monitor Top apart was the price. It hit the market with a price tag of $525, but was available after a few years for the ballpark of $200 to $225, with the option of an installment payment plan. When General Electric stopped making the Monitor Top in 1936, a family could purchase a Monitor Top Refrigerator for as little as $77.50.
This refrigerator got its name from the compressor’s distinct shape and it was named after a ship that had a similarly shaped gun turret. The USS Monitor was an ironclad battleship during the American Civil War that was built in 1861 and sank in 1862 during a storm. Have a look at these images to compare the refrigerator and its namesake ship.
The Victorious Union Gunboat “Monitor” (Naval History and Heritage Command); Monitor Top Refrigerator Advertisement; USS Monitor crew cooking on deck, July 9, 1862, by James F. Gibson (USS Monitor Center)
In Electric Refrigerator Recipes and Menus, Alice Bradley promotes the General Electric Monitor Top Refrigerator as essential to the family’s health, efficiency, frugality and even happiness: “The owning of such a refrigerator is a form of health and happiness insurance which every homemaker in American should have the privilege of enjoying.”
The Monitor Top was entirely made of stainless steel, so it was easy to keep clean on top of reducing instances of food poisoning. Fear of bacteria and a mother’s desire to keep her children healthy were definitely exploited to sell the Monitor Top Refrigerator. One advertisement states: “It’s always summer-time in your kitchen. And the dangers of food contamination are always present.”
Time was saved by eliminating the need for organizing ice deliveries, replenishing the ice and emptying the drip pan in ice boxes. “In using an ice-cooled chest very careful daily watch must be kept of the chest and all contents. This worry disappears with the General Electric Refrigerator.” Time was also purported to be saved because perishable food needed to be purchased less frequently and money was saved over time because “not only fresh food supplies but left-overs are kept from spoiling.”
It was also noted that a Monitor Top Refrigerator didn’t require frequent oiling or maintenance and didn’t create radio interference. “Since it is kept cold electrically, it need not be near an outside door, nor placed for the convenience of the ice man. All that is necessary is a convenience outlet into which its long cord can be plugged. The most convenient place in the pantry or kitchen is the place for the General Electric Refrigerator.”
Illustration from Electric Refrigerator Recipes and Menus showing refrigerator dishes, refrigerator pans and chiller tray; Chiller Tray; GE Covered Refrigerator Dishes courtesy of the collection at the National Museum of American History
The Monitor Top was also accompanied by accessories. Skip over to Chocolate Mousse to find out all about the Refrigerator Pans that were used when freezing recipes or ice. Each refrigerator would also come with a Chiller Tray (which has ‘CHILLER’ written on the side) that would slide underneath the chilling unit or freezer. The Chiller Tray would catch drips, but since that location under the chilling unit was the coldest area of the refrigerator, it was the perfect spot to stash ice cubes or other perishables that needed to be the coldest.
As well, a variety of Refrigerator Dishes with the General Electric logo on the lid were available. These dishes were safe to put in the oven as well as the fridge and were likely the precursor to kitchen dishes made later on by brands like Pyrex and Fire King.
Read Electric Refrigerator Recipes and Menus online:
Marshmallow Mint Sauce
Marshmallow Mint Sauce is found in the Ice Cream Sauces chapter of the 1927 cookbook Electric Refrigerator Recipes and Menus, which contained “Recipes prepared especially for the General Electric Refrigerator”. It’s a gooey, refreshing and flavourful dessert sauce that pairs wonderfully with the Chocolate Mousse recipe from the same cookbook. It has a very sweet and candy-like flavour that I really enjoyed despite not having much of a sweet tooth.
Keep scrolling after the recipe to read a brief history of the marshmallow and find out the roots of some popular marshmallow recipes.
You’ll find this recipe in:
Electric Refrigerator Recipes and Menus:
Recipes prepared especially for the General Electric Refrigerator
By: Miss Alice Bradley
Cleveland, 1927
Marshmallow Mint Sauce is delicious served on top of Chocolate Mousse
Historic Recipe:
Marshmallow Mint Sauce – No. 63
Put
½ cup sugar and
¼ cup water in saucepan and boil 5 minutes. Add
8 marshmallows cut in pieces. Let stand 2 minutes
away from the fire and pour slowly over
1 egg white beaten stiff, continuing the beating. Flavor
with
1 drop oil of peppermint or with
½ teaspoon peppermint extract. Serve with
Chocolate Mousse – No. 40.
My thoughts on the recipe:
First of all, here’s some alternative measurements:
½ cup sugar = 100 g
¼ cup water = 60 mL
If you only have mini marshmallows like me, 8 large marshmallows is equal to 1 cup or 60 g of mini marshmallows
***It’s important to stress that most essential oils on the market today are not safe to put in food because of the adulteration and contamination that are prevalent in this industry. For this reason, I’ll always suggest a food-safe substitute ingredient for the essential oil, like extract. Please look out for your safety and don’t use any old bottle of essential oil in the recipes on this blog! The brand that I use is doTERRA essential oils, which has extremely high standards for testing and purity, meaning that doTERRA essential oils can be safely used to flavour food.
Pop over here for more information about doTERRA & adulteration in the essential oil industry and if in doubt, use Peppermint extract in this recipe.
Images above: Peppermint essential oil & Peppermint extract; an illustration from the Ice Cream Sauces chapter of Electric Refrigerator Recipes and Menus
Marshmallow Mint Sauce is found in the Ice Cream Sauces chapter of the 1929 cookbook Electric Refrigerator Recipes and Menus, which contained “Recipes prepared especially for the General Electric Refrigerator”. It’s a gooey, refreshing and flavourful dessert sauce that pairs wonderfully with the Chocolate Mousse recipe from the same cookbook. It has a very sweet and candy-like flavour that I really enjoyed despite not having much of a sweet tooth.
I’m making three recipes from Electric Refrigerator Recipes and Menus in quick succession: Chocolate Mousse and two minty options for toppings, Peppermint Whipped Cream and the Marshmallow Mint Sauce recipe featured in this post.
Keep reading to discover more about the history of the Marshmallow and the roots of some popular marshmallow recipes. Head over to Peppermint Whipped Cream to learn some more history about the General Electric Monitor Top Refrigerator and go to Chocolate Mousse to find out what a refrigerator pan is and read all about the 2013 baker’s chocolate square resizing fiasco.
Images Above: Marsh Mallow Plant illustration from the 1833 book Flore médicale, courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library; Angelus Marshmallow advertisement, circa 1917. The “free recipe book of delightful salads and desserts” mentioned in the ad contains the first recipe for Sweet Potato Casserole with a marshmallow topping.
The mushy history of marshmallows
A Marshmallow is a fluffy and gooey white candy tube, but a Marsh Mallow is a plant. Althaea officinalis is a tall plant with light pink flowers in the mallow family and it grows in...you guessed it...marshy areas. The roots and stem of the marsh mallow contain a thick, white & sticky substance that is high in starches, mucilage and pectin.
The Ancient Egyptians were the first to record eating marsh mallow. As early as 2000 BCE, they created a treat with marsh mallow root and honey that was served only to the high echelons of society. In many areas of the world, the root, stem, leaves and flowers of the marsh mallow plant have been used for medicinal benefits, from healing wounds, reducing swelling, calming digestive upset, curing tooth aches to soothing sore throats and coughs.
It wasn’t until the mid-1700s in France that confectioners started to make pâté de guimauve, which bears a resemblance to our marshmallows of today. Dried marsh mallow root was whipped with sugar, egg whites and flavouring to create a fluffy and sweet lozenge created to soothe sore throats. Between a long drying time and shaping each piece by hand, making pâté de guimauve wasn’t a speedy process. Gum arabic began to be commonly added to pâté de guimauve to provide additional stability to the recipe. After the advent of powdered gelatins in the 1845, it became common to use gelatin instead of the marsh mallow root, which cut down on the required drying time and was cheaper and easier to procure.
In 1895, Joseph B. Demerath began producing marshmallows on a commercial scale in Rochester, New York at the aptly named Rochester Marshmallow Works. Soon other companies began producing marshmallows as well, but these early mass-produced marshmallows were mainly square or rectangular like the marshmallows in the Angelus Marshmallows advertisement above.
In a quest to boost sales by promoting the marshmallow as an ingredient and not just a candy, Angelus Marshmallows put out a recipe booklet in 1917 that included an American Thanksgiving classic recipe for the first time: Sweet Potato Casserole featuring a marshmallow topping. In the advertisement up above, Angelus Marshmallows are touted as being as Pure as a Ray of Sunshine and consumers are encouraged to “Send for our free recipe book of delightful salads and desserts, edited by Janet McKenzie Hill”.
The Campfire brand of marshmallows was launched in 1917 and two years later, the company changed the shape of their product to the rounded short tube similar to what we’re used to today. Campfire Marshmallows also introduced a larger package size at the same time to further incentivize housewives to use marshmallows in their recipes. You can see both of these changes in the illustration down below. Campfire Marshmallows put out a variety of free cookbooks as well and Alice Bradley, the author of Electric Refrigerator Recipes and Menus, also worked on recipe booklets for Campfire Marshmallows at about the same time.
And last, probably the most ubiquitous marshmallow recipe has got to be S’mores. We’ve got the Girls Scouts to thank for this campfire treat. It first appeared as a recipe called Some More in the 1927 book Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts and it ends with the questionable advice of “Though it tastes like ‘some more’ one is really enough.”
Images above: Campfire Marshmallow illustration from A Book of 150 Recipes Prepared with Campfire the Original Food Marshmallows, courtesy of Hathi Trust; Promotional Card for the recipe booklet Dainty Desserts Made with Campfire the Original Food Marshmallows by Alice Bradley, found at the Boston Public Library
Images below: Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts, courtesy of Hathi Trust. This 1927 cookbook contained the first written recipe for Some More, later shortened to S’Mores
Read Electric Refrigerator Recipes and Menus online:
Chocolate Mousse
This Chocolate Mousse recipe comes from Electric Refrigerator Recipes and Menus, a 1927 cookbook written by Miss Alice Bradley that was put out by General Electric to help housewives learn how to use their newfangled kitchen appliance. It is mild and refreshing, but my batch ended up being more similar to an ice cream than a mousse (probably because my freezer is much more efficient than a 1927 “chilling unit”). Still delicious, anyhow. Top with Marshmallow Mint Sauce or Peppermint Whipped Cream from the same cookbook. Chocolate Mousse is frozen in a “refrigerator pan”, so you’ll find out what that is and I’ve also written a rant about the appalling baker’s chocolate square fiasco of 2013.
You’ll find this recipe in:
Electric Refrigerator Recipes and Menus:
Recipes prepared especially for the General Electric Refrigerator
By: Miss Alice Bradley
Cleveland, 1927
Historic Recipe:
Chocolate Mousse – No. 40
Put in top of double boiler
¼ cup milk and
1 teaspoon gelatine. When milk is hot and gelatine is dissolved, add
½ cup cold milk, strain into refrigerator pan and put in freezing chamber of refrigerator. When cool beat until light. Meanwhile, melt over hot water
1 square chocolate, add
½ cup sugar
Few grains salt and
1 teaspoon vanilla and very slowly add
¼ cup milk. Stir until mixture boils. Strain and cool. Beat
½ pint cream until thick. Add beaten milk slowly and fold into chocolate mixture. Pour into refrigerator pan and freeze like Desserts and Salads That Need No Stirring, page 45. Serve if desired with
Whipped cream beaten stiff and flavored with vanilla or with oil of peppermint, or serve with Chocolate Sauce – No. 60.
I’ve put “To Freeze Desserts and Salads That Need No Stirring” and some other helpful hints from this cookbook about removing & serving the mousse at the bottom of this post.
My Chocolate Mousse recipe:
1 cup milk – 237 mL
1 tsp unflavoured gelatin
1 ounce baker’s chocolate – 28 g
½ cup white sugar – 100 g
1 tsp vanilla
dash of salt
1 cup 35% whipping cream – 237 mL
Warm ¼ cup (60 mL) milk in a double boiler, then add 1 tsp unflavoured gelatin. Whisk until dissolved, then add ½ cup (120 mL) cold milk. Strain the mixture through a sieve into a metal pan and place in the freezer until cool. When cool, beat until light.
While milk and gelatin mixture cools, melt baker’s chocolate in the double boiler, then stir in the sugar, vanilla and salt. Whisk in ¼ cup (60 mL) milk. Stir until it bubbles and remove from heat.
Beat the whipping cream until stiff. In the metal container, stir together the milk/gelatin and the chocolate combinations. Fold in the whipped cream and freeze.
Serve with Marshmallow Mint Sauce or Peppermint Whipped Cream
This Chocolate Mousse recipe comes from Electric Refrigerator Recipes and Menus, a 1929 cookbook written by Miss Alice Bradley that was put out by General Electric to help housewives learn how to use their newfangled kitchen appliance. It is mild and refreshing, but my batch ended up being more similar to an ice cream than a mousse (probably because my freezer is much more efficient than a 1929 “chilling unit”). Still delicious, anyhow. Top with Marshmallow Mint Sauce or Peppermint Whipped Cream from the same cookbook.
Head over to my post about Peppermint Whipped Cream to find out more about the General Electric Monitor Top Refrigerator and keep reading to find out what a refrigerator pan is and the appalling baker’s chocolate square fiasco of 2013.
What is a refrigerator pan?
Electric Refrigerator Recipes and Menus mentions using a refrigerator pan in most of its recipes, so what is it? I’ve read through the cookbook and didn’t notice a written description of a refrigerator pan, but they did appear in a few of the illustrations in the cookbook.
Refrigerator pans are rectangular metal containers. When you make Chocolate Mousse, a good substitute for an official refrigerator pan would be any metal container, mold or baking pan of the correct size. You can see refrigerator pans during recipe preparation in the illustrations below.
Look at the illustrations above and you’ll see a refrigerator pan in the chilling unit of the refrigerator. These pans would make efficient use of the small space in your chilling unit, since you can stack more than one pan. In another illustration, you’ll see a fruit salad that was frozen in one of these pans and has been unmolded onto a bed of lettuce for serving.
I must say, the rectangular shape of the refrigerator pan fruit salad certainly isn’t as eye-catching as intricate and decorative gelatin and dessert molds, but perhaps serving dishes frozen in rectangle refrigerator pans was seen as a sign of progress and affluence at the time.
Likely, refrigerator pans were accessories that came with the purchase of a General Electric refrigerator or perhaps they were an optional add-on. We can see one of these pans in action, thanks to Museums Victoria where there’s a larger GE Monitor Top Refrigerator in the Collection. Thankfully, some of this fridge’s accoutrements weren’t thrown out over the years. Below, you’ll see a photograph of a refrigerator pan and some of its accompanying accessories: a cover and a support that fits in the bottom of the round chilling unit.
It isn’t easy to make out the support piece in the illustrations in Electric Refrigerator Recipes and Menus, but seeing this accessory photographed helps to explain some instructions in the book: “Spill a little water in the chilling unit before putting the cast iron freezing tray support in place. This will make it freeze solidly to the chilling unit.” The refrigerator pan cover would make stacking two pans in the chilling unit easier and less messy. My educated guess is that the refrigerator pans also would have had removable frames for making ice cubes, simply because of this excerpt from the book: “Water can be frozen in the pans, with or without the frames.”
Photographs of General Electric Monitor Top Refrigerator accessories courtesy of Museums Victoria Collections
If you ever get your hands on a working Monitor Top Refrigerator (it’s possible – these fridges were made to last and are actually more energy efficient than our fridges today), here’s some more tips for using refrigerator trays from Electric Refrigerator Recipes and Menus:
“For rapid freezing it is absolutely necessary to have good contact between the tray and the chilling unit.”
“The bottom tray always freezes faster than the top one, and the shallow tray faster than the deep one.”
“A spatula or knife may be inserted between the lower tray and tray support to loosen the tray after it is frozen.”
“A tray of ice cubes may be placed on top of the mixture that is to be frozen. This will preserve the ice from melting, and will hasten the freezing in the lower container. Use cover on the lower pan.”
A rectangular metal pan that’s custom-made for the freezing chamber isn’t only common with General Electric refrigerators at that time. The 1933 booklet Your Frigidaire; Recipes and other Helpful Information explains how to use Frigidaire Freezing Trays. Two types of these stainless steel freezing trays were furnished with the purchase of a refrigerator: metal trays with removable metal grids and metal trays with removable rubber grids. The freezing compartment appears to have a shelf in it to facilitate stacking these freezing trays and each tray features a handle to assist with sliding the trays in and out, which was probably a user experience improvement over the hassle of having to wedge the General Electric refrigerator trays out of the chilling unit with a knife!
Illustrations from Your Frigidaire; Recipes and other Helpful Information showing Frigidaire Freezing Trays
A word to the wise about baker’s chocolate:
Be careful when making recipes that use the ingredient measurement of a “square” of baker’s chocolate! Our Chocolate Mousse recipe tells us to “melt over hot water 1 square chocolate”, which led me to look into how big chocolate squares were in 1929. All evidence that I found indicated that square of baker’s chocolate weighed 1 ounce (28 g) back then, which is what most people would consider the size of a chocolate square today.
While I was researching chocolate squares in 1929, I accidentally found out that many brands of baker’s chocolate changed the size of their squares in 2013 without making a big to-do about it! I remember a chocolate cake that I made a few years ago that was barely chocolate at all and I wonder if this size change was the culprit. The baker’s chocolate package that I bought to make Chocolate Mousse has the traditional 1 ounce per square, though. A square is split into ½ ounce rectangles for easy breakage, so be sure to remember your geometry and use a full 1 oz. square (2 rectangles).
This sneaky baker’s chocolate square reduction comes down to profits, of course. Food companies reduce what you get per package, while not reducing the price to the same amount. In many instances, at least in North America, when you buy a package of baker’s chocolate in 2021, the squares do not weight 1 ounce, they weigh ½ ounce. You get 50% the chocolate when you buy a package of baker’s chocolate now, but I’ve seen complaints online that a package costs 75% to 100% of what it used to.
I can’t get over how irresponsible this is. Sure, it isn’t great that you get less of many ingredients for more money these days, but with most ingredients, you don’t take the food straight out of the package and put it in the mixing bowl. You measure it with a scale or a measuring cup or spoon first.
A square of baker’s chocolate is a unit of measurement. A unit of measurement has been halved in the night and released into the world without a warning that the change has happened! Many people aren’t going to know and make horribly weak chocolate recipes as a result. These companies are messing with our joy.
You’d think when this reduction was being discussed in the company boardrooms, someone would have said, “We can’t half the size of a square! Do you know how many recipes use a square to measure out baking chocolate?” You’d also think that the response would have been, “You’re right! We can’t do that to the world! Let’s reduce the size of another product.”
Perhaps I’m being too dramatic. Be careful the next time you need to buy baker’s chocolate for a recipe, though. You might need to buy twice as many squares.
Read Electric Refrigerator Recipes and Menus online:
To Freeze Desserts and Salads That Need No Stirring
Freezing Method III – Many mixtures can be frozen without stirring. Put mixture in the refrigerator pan and leave in the chilling unit 3 hours or until mixture is firm.
A mousse or parfait frozen in this way in the General Electric Refrigerator is most delicious.
One hour makes 1 pint of mixture very cold and partially frozen.
After 2 hours it has a mushy consistency.
In 3 or 4 hours it should become hard enough to slice and hold its shape. It can be served the same as ice cream. Very fluffy mixtures may not freeze as solidly on top as on the bottom.
In 4 hours it seems to be especially good and somewhat ripened.
A larger amount of mixture takes a longer time to freeze.
It is usually practical to prepare a frozen mixture immediately after one meal and leave it in the refrigerator until the next. One to 2 quarts of mixture may require 7 hours. We have filled the large pan with mousse on Saturday morning, have gone away from home and returned to serve it Sunday night. It can be prepared after breakfast and served for evening dinner or after lunch to serve in the evening.
To Remove Desserts from Refrigerator Pan – Place refrigerator pan for an instant in a large pan of warm water, loosen from the edges with a knife and invert on the serving dish; or remove with a spoon or ice cream scoop and put in individual glasses; or cut in squares or slices, remove with a broad spatula and serve on ice cream plates. To facilitate removal, pans may be lined with heavy paraffin paper before packing frozen ice cream or mixtures that need no stirring.
Individual Frozen Desserts – Any mousse or parfait may be frozen, or a frozen ice cream can be packed in small molds in the chilling unit.
To Serve Individual Desserts – Dip molds for an instant in warm water, loosen around the edge and invert on serving plate.
Apple Sauce Cake
Apple Sauce Cake is a dairy-free apple & spice loaf, which has a dense but moist consistency. This recipe contains walnuts and raisins, but you could certainly swap in nuts, seeds and dried fruits of your choice. This recipe is from the 1946 cookbook A Modern Kitchen Guide, which was published in Chicago, but distributed by Farmer’s Advocate magazine based out of London, Ontario, Canada. Have a read to find out more about this free cookbook/promotional vehicle that ended up in kitchens all over Canada and the United States.
My original idea was that I’d use Boiled Cider Apple Sauce in this recipe, but that apple sauce was too delicious and it didn’t last until I made this cake! In my opinion, the best way to eat Apple Sauce Cake is to eat it with a fork (it is crumbly), topped with natural peanut butter and Apple Butter.
You’ll find this recipe in:
A Modern Kitchen Guide
North Chicago, 1946
APPLE SAUCE CAKE
1 cup sugar
½ cup shortening
1 ½ cups unsweetened apple sauce
2 cups bread flour or (2 ½ cups cake flour)
½ cup raisins
½ cup walnut meats
¾ teaspoon soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon cloves
¼ teaspoon salt
Cream shortening, add sugar and cream, add beaten egg and apple sauce. Sift together all dried ingredients and mix together. Bake in a loaf pan at 350 degrees for 50 minutes.
My notes on the recipe:
Let me begin with a list of alternate measurements and temperatures for those of you who don’t measure in cups and Fahrenheit:
115 g shortening
250 g white sugar
340 g apple sauce
350 g flour
50g raisins
50 g walnuts
Preheat oven to 180 C
My Apple Sauce Cake was fully baked after about 1 hour and 45 minutes at 350 F (180 C), not the 50 minutes in the recipe.
Apple Sauce Cake is a dairy-free apple & spice loaf, which has a dense but moist consistency. This recipe contains walnuts and raisins, but you could certainly swap in nuts, seeds and dried fruits of your choice.
My original idea was that I’d use Boiled Cider Apple Sauce in this recipe, but that apple sauce was too delicious. It didn’t last until I made this cake, so I ended up using another batch of apple sauce that I made from the apples in my backyard apple tree. In my opinion, the best way to eat Apple Sauce Cake is to eat it with a fork (it is crumbly), topped with natural peanut butter and Apple Butter.
Our Apple Sauce Cake recipe is from the 1946 cookbook A Modern Kitchen Guide, which was published in Chicago, but distributed by Farmer’s Advocate magazine based out of London, Ontario, Canada. I’ve found copies of A Modern Kitchen Guide for sale online from the 1930s and 1940s, featuring a variety of names on the cover: Sears, Roebuck and Co., Edison Fuel and Material Co., Washington Farmer, Lawrenceburg Roller Mills Company (Lawrenceburg, Indiana) and Ray’s Photo Service (La Crosse, Wisconsin).
A run of A Modern Kitchen Guide was also distributed by a radio show, Helene of Herpolsheimer’s, which aired daily at 8:45 am on WOOD in Michigan. Herpolsheimer’s was a department store in Grand Rapids, Michigan that was in business from the late 19th to the late 20th centuries and it is featured in the movie The Polar Express. I haven’t been able to locate any information about what the radio show was like, so if you’re familiar with Helene of Herpolsheimer’s, please leave a comment.
I also haven’t been able to locate background information about this specific cookbook, but it makes sense that A Modern Kitchen Guide was a product printed by The Bunting Publications, Inc in North Chicago and was offered out to different businesses for promotion, much like a business might get calendars, pens and magnets printed with their business name. The book itself is cheaply printed on newsprint with a cardstock cover and is held together with staples, so it would have been an economical purchase for a business, but also something that would have been used often in the household. Some copies pictured online have a blank space where the business name would go on the bottom of the cover. Could those copies be sample books sent out to prospective businesses?
I was united with my copy of A Modern Kitchen Guide at Highland Grounds coffee shop in Flesherton, Ontario, where there was a small shelf of second hand books for sale in the back and this cookbook was mine for some pocket change. My copy has some favourite recipes cut out of it, which I presume were added to a recipe box or scrapbook, but now I am very curious about these selected recipes!
Unfortunately for me, this is a rare instance when I can’t find a scanned copy of a cookbook online. I did find scans of the Cakes and Frostings section on the Antique Alter Ego blog, so I’ve been able to solve the mystery of the recipes missing from pages 167 & 168 (Fudge Frosting and Apple Filling).
If you have your own copy of A Modern Kitchen Guide and are willing to do some sleuthing for me, please get in touch. I’d love to know which recipes have been cut out of this book. Leave a comment as well with who sponsored your copy of the cookbook. I’m sure there were more distributed than what I’ve been able to find.
You’d think that I had really lucked out, since Apple Sauce Cake is in the one chapter I’ve found scanned online from this cookbook, but we’re not that fortunate. For some reason, pages 156 and 157 are missing from this blog post, but you can read the rest of the Cakes and Frostings Chapter on Antique Alter Ego.
Below: (left) The cover of my Farmer’s Advocate A Modern Kitchen Guide and (right) one of the pages that has been clipped. I’d love to find out what favourite recipe is below Peanut Brittle Dessert.
Boiled Cider Apple Sauce
Welcome to the annual Apple Season here on my blog! From late July to the end of August, we are barraged with apples from the apple tree that hangs over into our back yard, so I usually do a couple of apple recipes this time of the year.
I’ll bet you can guess the ingredients in Boiled Cider Apple Sauce: apples and apple cider. This 1877 recipe from Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping creates a flavourful apple sauce with no added sugar or spices.
You’ll find this recipe in:
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping
By Estelle Woods Wilcox
Marysville, Ohio
1877
Historic Recipe:
BOILED CIDER APPLE SAUCE.
Pare, quarter and core apples sufficient to fill a gallon porcelain kettle, put in it a half gallon boiled cider, let it boil. Wash the apples and put in kettle, place a plate over them, and boil steadily but not rapidly until they are thoroughly cooked, testing by taking one from under the edge of the plate with a fork. Do not remove the plate until done, or the apples will sink to the bottom and burn. Apples may be cooked in sweet cider in the same way. - Mrs. W. W. W.
My Recipe
Boiled Cider Apple Sauce
Apples (sliced, peeled & cored)
Apple Cider (alcoholic or non-alcoholic)
Use about twice the apples than apple cider in volume
I used:
10 cups sliced Apples (1135 g)
5 cups non-alcoholic Apple Cider (1.2 L)
Simmer the apples and cider together over medium-low heat in a covered pot, stirring often, until the apples are soft and mushy (it took about an hour with these amounts).
To create your sauce, pulverize the apples with a potato masher if you enjoy chunky apple sauce. Other options are pushing the sauce through a sieve with a wooden spoon or a spatula, or using a blender, food processor or immersion blender.
I needed add about 2 cups (473 mL) of water for a more sauce-like consistency and I ended up with about 7 cups (1.6 L) of apple sauce.
Welcome to the annual Apple Season here on my blog! From late July to the end of August, we are barraged with apples from the apple tree that hangs over into our back yard, so I usually do a couple of apple recipes this time of the year.
We have no idea what variety these apples are, so please comment or email if you have a guess. It is the tallest apple tree I’ve ever seen in my life (it’s taller than our 2 story house) and the apples are yellow-green with a slight rosy blush on some apples. The apples are quite dry, but they are sweet. They are so dry that I initially mushed the apples with a potato masher when I made this recipe, but I decided to puree the sauce with a blender after tasting it. Let’s just say that the dry apple chunks left in the sauce before blenderizing were not delightful.
Apple Recipe Suggestions:
If you make a huge batch of Boiled Cider Apple Sauce, you could use some of your sauce to make Apple Sauce Cake or Apple Bread. If you want to try making something different with the same ingredients, Apple Butter is another recipe that uses apples and apple cider. I also highly recommend making Apple Leather if you have an abundance of apples.
Read Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping:
Fresh Raspberry Water
Freſh Raſpberry Water is a refreshing beverage with a zip. We made it at a historic cooking class that I taught last July at Nelles Manor Museum and I remember that it was very satisfying to drink after cooking over an open hearth on a hot summer day. It’s a simple recipe. Remove the raspberry seeds with a sieve, then add lemon juice, white sugar and water. I pulled this gem of a recipe from the 1790 cook book The Complete Confectioner by Frederick Nutt.
You’ll find this recipe in:
The Complete Confectioner
By: Frederick Nutt
London, 1790
Historic Recipe
Freſh Raſpberry Water.
TAKE a pint of freſh raſpberries; and paſs them through a ſieve with a wooden ſpoon; put two large ſpoonfuls of powdered ſugar in, ſqueeze one lemon in and let the reſt be water; make it palatable and put a little cochineal in it to colour it; paſs it through a ſieve and it is fit for use.
My recipe:
2 cups raspberries – 300 g
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tbsp white sugar
Water to taste – I used 6 cups (1420 mL)
Red food colouring (optional)
Push the raspberries through a sieve with a wooden spoon or spatula to remove the seeds. Juice a lemon and add to the raspberry pulp along with the sugar. Stir, and add water to taste. If desired, add red food colouring to amp up the colour.
Raspberry Water will settle over time, so give it a stir or shake before serving.
Freſh Raſpberry Water is a refreshing beverage with a zip. We made it at a historic cooking class that I taught last July at Nelles Manor Museum and I remember that it was very satisfying to drink after cooking over an open hearth on a hot summer day. It’s a simple recipe. Remove the raspberry seeds with a sieve, then add lemon juice, white sugar and water.
At the same class, we also made Strawberry-fritters , which I also highly recommend! Nelles Manor has reopened for tours this month, so check out their website (http://nellesmanor.ca/) for the latest news about their hours & procedures if you’re looking for something to do in Grimsby, Ontario.
You may have wondered 2 things when reading the historic recipe:
1) What is that unusual letter that appears where an ‘S’ should be? It is the Long S or Descending S, a letter of the Latin alphabet that fell out of use around the turn of the 19th-century. If you’d like to read more about the Long S, you’ll find a brief history in my To Boil Green Peas post.
2) What is cochineal? Frederick Nutt instructs us to “put a little cochineal in it to colour it”. Cochineal is a red dye that can be used to colour food and textiles. It’s a red powder made from ground up and dried small round insects that live on prickly pear cacti.
To find out more about cochineal, head over to my Rhubarb and Banana Fool recipe, which also lists cochineal as an ingredient. If you keep reading until the end, you’ll also learn about the history of banana recipes in Canadian & American cook books and the early years of the banana industry.
I’ve heard that cochineal is making a comeback because of health concerns about synthetic red dyes. Quite by coincidence, I happened to buy this bottle of Cranberry Raspberry Juice Blend the day before making Fresh Raspberry Water and the last ingredient is cochineal, probably because it’s mostly made up of apple and grape juice!
