Orange Sherbet

This week it's orange sherbet, y'all! I had my doubts about that this would come together, but was pleasantly surprised. It's a recipe from a 1928 Frigidaire cookbook You'll be glad to know that it froze properly even though I used a Whirlpool freezer. What a relief!

The orange flavor is on point. I think the orange zest infused into the syrup was the key to getting it so orange-y. In the interest of full disclosure, I got mine a bit more orange in color by using mostly bottled orange juice (for aesthetic reasons). Part of it WAS freshly squeezed, so the photos aren't a total scam. Try it out and let me know how you like it! Full recipe at the end!

Orange Sherbet

1 1/2 cups orange juice
1 tablespoon lemon juice
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup water
Rind of one orange
1/2 cup single cream
2 egg whites

Cook sugar and water for ten minutes. Grate rind. Add rind to syrup and cook for approximately five minutes. Remove from fire and strain. Cool, add lemon juice to orange juice. Add syrupto fruit juices. Pour into tray and allow to freeze firm.

...the recipe stops here because you are supposed to reference previous information on freezing sherbets of any flavor. So in a nutshell, here's what you'd do next:

When fruit mixture is nearly frozen, whip cream and return to freezer. Beat egg whites with a pinch of salt and return to freezer. Basically you want the cream and egg whites to be already whipped and very cold when you combine them with the fruit mixture.

A few minutes later, I added all the ingredients to a stand mixer and used the whisk attachment to combine thoroughly. Then I poured it into a loaf pan, covered it with foil and froze it completely.
 

Skillet Slaw

This week I prepared a little number out of the Jesse James Cookbook. Slaw is one of my favorites! I usually use both green and red cabbage (mostly for aesthetic reasons). I also prefer a dressing with both mayonnaise and vinegar. But what this particular slaw recipe lacks in mayonnaise, it makes up for in bacon. It ended up with a nicely balanced flavor, and wasn't as vinegar-y as some vinegar slaws I've had.

I'm not exactly sure what the recipes in this book have to do with the real Jesse James, so I just consider this a book of real down-home recipes from Missouri. Full recipe below!

Skillet Slaw

4 slices bacon
1/4 cup vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons chopped onion
salt to taste
4 cups shredded cabbage
1/2 cup chopped parsley

Fry bacon crisp; remove from pan and crumble. Add vinegar, sugar, chopped onion and salt to drippings in pan; cook until onions are clear. Remove from fire and add crumbled bacon, cabbage and parsley. Toss to mix. Serves 6.

UPDATE!

When I went back for more the next day, the slaw had congealed a bit because of the bacon drippings. That means it's best to eat it all right after you make it. No problem! But since I had fridged it for a day, my solution was to saute the slaw and eat it as a hot side dish instead. Worked for me!

Cornmeal Griddlecakes

I'm thrilled to have power in my house this weekend! This is the recipe I had planned for last week, Cornmeal Griddlecakes from the 1948 Metropolitan Cook Book. There are a few griddlecake (i.e. pancake) recipes in this book, and these turned out quite nice. I don't make pancakes often enough to have a good handle on them. I'd say this is my best attempt to date. And it's all thanks to the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company of New York. Full recipe at the end!

Cornmeal Griddlecakes

1 cup cornmeal
1 cup sifted flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg, well beaten
2 cups milk
2 tablespoons shortening, melted

Sift the four, baking powder, and salt together. Add the cornmeal and mix well. Combine the beaten egg and milk and add to the dry ingredients. Stir in the shortening. Bake the same way as other griddlecakes.

Note: I ended up adding a good bit of flour, the batter was too thin for my liking. I cooked them medium-high heat in a cast-iron skillet, adding a bit of oil after every 2 pancakes. I ended up with 14 pancakes. 
 

Swiss Green Bean Salad

This week I made a salad from a cookbook called In a Copper Kettle. It's a 1960s collection of recipes from all over the world. I let the salad marinate for a full day before tasting it. The final product was crisp and so refreshing. It would be a perfect summertime side dish. And it looks pretty on a table!

The original recipe was taken from the menu at Zimmerleuten, a Zurich restaurant inside a 14th century house on the Limmat River. From what I can tell, the building is a guild house for carpenters and the restaurant still operates today. The recipe has an introduction that describes the place:

"The Limmat, fresh from its ice bath in great blue Zurich lake, serenely flows down its street-lined course. Swans, lovely and bad tempered, move puppet-like, begging their bread from children in the river-balconied hotels. Couples, arm in arm, meander along the flowered paths, or stand gazing at the summer scene. Bells from the great towered churches ring, and ring again. Then, to the ancient Gothic guildhouses along quay, and up a wide stone stairway to one overlooking the whole peaceful scene, the Restaurant Zimmerleuten."

Green Bean Salad, Zimmerleuten, Switzerland

Ingredients
green beans                         clove garlic
chicken broth                      rosemary
white wine                            sage
onion                                     pepper
olive oil                                  parsley
white wine vinegar               sweet paprika
sugar                                     

Steam 1 1/2 pounds whole green beans in a chicken broth lightly flavored with white wine, until barely tender. Drain well.

Thinly slice 2 large onions and separate the rings. Toss together beans and onions (gently, so as not to break or mash the beans). Marinate, covered in refrigerator, in the following blend, for at least 1/2 a day, tossing occasionally.

1 cup olive oil
3/4 cup white wine vinegar
1 1/2 tablespoon sugar
2 cloves crushed garlic
1/4 teaspoon rosemary
1/8 teaspoon sage
salt and pepper to taste

Serve, ice-cold, sprinkled with fresh minced parsley and a light dusting of sweet paprika.
 

Life of Georgia Pot Roast

I went with a simple pot roast this week, a recipe found in this undated Life of Georgia Cookbook (made possible by the Life Insurance Company of Georgia). Here's the excerpt from the first page:

A WORD TO THE WIVES
In this book you will find proven recipes which will aid you in providing a wide variety of wholesome, health-building meals. It is our hope that they will bring satisfaction to your family, just as Life Insurance Company of Georgia has provided security and protection to more than a million families in the South since 1891.

Nice segue! Life insurance is so delicious.

This turned out rather well, and more flavorful than I expected since it doesn't call for much seasoning. I went with an eye of round roast, but I should I have chosen something fattier in order to get a bit more tenderness. But this will get eaten in it's entirety, no doubt. Here's the recipe, verbatim:

Pot Roast of Beef with Vegetables

4 pounds beef (heel of round, chuck, rump, clod, etc.)
1/4 cup flour
1 teaspoons salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1/4 cup fat or drippings
1/2 cup hot water
Carrots, onions, potatoes, celery or turnips

Wipe meat with a damp cloth, dredge with flour to which salt and pepper has been added. Heat fat in heavy kettle and slowly brown the meat on all sides. When meat is browned, add 1/2 cup hot water, turn heat very low and cook meat about 3 hours, adding a small amount of water at a time if needed. Though there should never be more than half a cup of water at any time. Thirty minutes before serving time place carrots, small whole onions, potatoes, 4-inch pieces of celery or other vegetables desired around the meat. Turn vegetables once to cover with juice. Lift meat to a hot platter, arrange vegetables around it and serve with gravy left in kettle. If desired, thicken gravy with a little flour.

100-Year Old Clove Cake

Over the weekend I prepared Mrs. Teddy Roosevelt's Clove Cake recipe, or a variation of it that I found in Best of the Best from Tennessee, 1987. The recipe is called 100-Year Old Clove Cake, but I suppose we can call it 130-Year Old Clove Cake since this version of the recipe was drawn from a 1984 cookbook called Our Favorite Recipes. This will likely be the newest cookbook I dive into for this project. I made an exception for this particular recipe, since it's much older than the book.

I used real unsalted butter unsalted instead of the margarine. It also calls for a cup of sour milk. I squeezed 1 tablespoon of lemon juice to a measuring cup (vinegar works too). Fill with whole milk until mixture measures 1 cup. And just let that sit for at least 5 minutes.

I put my electric mixer to work without hesitation. Halfway through mixing I realized that if I were true to the original recipe, I would do all of it by hand. Maybe in the future, I will keep the technology to a minimum! I expected the cake to be deeper in color, but the finished result was a gorgeous golden brown. The flavor was great too, especially when it was still warm. I may make this again around Christmastime, it seemed so festive. Full recipe below, typed up exactly as it is in the book.

100-Year Old Clove Cake
1 cup margarine (2 sticks)
2 1/4 cups sugar
5 eggs
3 cups sifted flour
1 tablespoon cloves
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup sour milk

Soften margarine. Gradually add sugar and cream well. Beat eggs thoroughly in a separate bowl. Add to sugar mixture and beat until light. Sift dry ingredients together and add 1/3 at a time to batter. Add 1/2 cup sour milk and another 1/3 of dry ingredients; mix well. Stir soda into remaining milk and mix into batter with remaining flour. Bake in well-greased and floured 10-ince tube pan at 350° for 45-55 minutes or until cake pulls away from side of pan. Cool 10 minutes. Remove to cake rack and cool thoroughly.
This cake is the one used by Mrs. Teddy Roosevelt. Does not need frosting, it's so good.
Our Favorite Recipes
 

Beaten Biscuits

I wrote a little bit about my concept in my introductory post. So here it goes! First up? A cookbook from Virginia with quite a title, two titles as a matter of fact: The Williamsburg Art of Cookery Or Accomblish'd Gentlewoman's Companion: Being a Collection of upwards of Five Hundred of the most Ancient & Approv'd Recipes in Virgina Cookery.

May I one day be referred to as an Accomplish'd Gentlewoman.

I picked up this little number from a local used book store. It's a collection of recipes from the 18th and 19th centuries. The Beaten Biscuit recipes caught my eye right away. I've been wanting to beat biscuits for a long time! As a Southerner who was raised right, I am spending my adult years attempting to perfect a biscuit recipe. And yet, I've never tried my hand at a beaten dough.

This dough was tough to mix. In hindsight, it would have been wise to add a bit more "sweet milk" (a term used for just regular ole whole milk, it was used to more clearly distinguish it from buttermilk). I beat the dough until it was about 1/2 an inch flat. Then I folded over and got right back to beating. All in all, it was about 7-8 folds in twenty minutes. I will certainly make some adjustments for any future beaten biscuits. It must be noted that these biscuits were in fact, edible. Just extremely dense and crumbly (but not crumbly in a good way). If you enjoy biscuits in the style of hockey pucks, this is the recipe for you!

Here's the recipe, in it's entirety:

ONE Quart of Flour, one Teacup of Lard (if you prefer it use Lard and Butter mixed), one Teaspoon of Salt, one Cup of Sweet Milk. Make a stiff Dough, then beat it fifteen or twenty Minutes until it blisters. Roll and cut in small round Biscuits. Bake in a moderately hot Oven. (Read Family Recipe)

An Introduction

Food photographer seeks vintage recipes: classic, obscure, oldfangled.

I am finding some of the oldest cookbooks around, giving them a real shot. I'll be photographing and taking notes along the way. I plan to share them with you on a weekly basis.

I believe that time spent in the kitchen is never wasted. I try to cook without boxes and cans, so I'd like to find cookbooks that were printed before our food became so processed. I want to be challenged to cook most of my own food while expanding my food portfolio. I hope you enjoy this little kitchen project.