Vintage Cookbooks

[lydamorehouse]

 
Image: 500 RECIPES BY REQUEST: From Mother Anderson's Famous Dutch Kitchens by Jeanne M. Hall from 1948.

Every once and a while I get it into my head that I should try to make something from every single one of the zillion and a half vintage cookbooks that I have around the house. Currently, I am giving that project another go.  Normally, I run out of steam on this idea because no one really likes it when dinner is a flop. Or, let's say, the best recipe from a 1978 cookbook is the dreaded tuna bake. So, what I've decided to try this time around is to make my lunches from one of these books. That way, if it's a flop, it's a light meal and dinner can erase the horror of some 1930s oleo and lard meal. 

Today, I decided to try a split-pea soup from this 1948 cookbook. This cookbook is notable for its Minnesota connection as well, as it is recipes that were often requested at the Anderson Hotel in Wabasha, Minnesota. This is a hotel that I THINK Shawn and I may have stayed at. We did a staycation one year where we decided it would be fun to go to one of those hotels where you get a cat in your room. Keep in mind, that we left behind our three cats for a strange cat in a strange hotel. We were young and foolish. It looks like I am thinking of the VERY SAME hotel: http://www.purr-n-fur.org.uk/featuring/wk-hotel05.html  It looks like the hotel closed in 2009, but so we were there some time right before it shut down. 

At any rate, the split-pea soup recipe was fairly bland as written:

Image: Split Pea and Sausage Soup

There aren't any spices in this besides... salt. I mean, I guess there are whatever spices might eke off of the sausages, but they want you to pre-cook them, so... 

I will admit that if the idea of this exercise is to precisely replicate the recipes, I failed. I just couldn't imagine this soup without some onions, so I sautéed chopped onions in about two tablespoons of butter, added the celery to that until they were both soft, and then I added the uncooked sausages and let the grease from that mingle with the "veggies," and then I also added chicken stock instead of water. I cooked the split peas separately and then added them once they were soft. 

As for sausages, I was not sure what kind I should add. Given that this is a Dutch cookbook, I suspect I was supposed to add something like a braadworst or ossenworst, which.... I mean, if I could find them, they might make all the difference. But, instead, I used Johnsonville breakfast sausages? I considered kielbasa, which I often have around, but the breakfast sausages ended up to be pretty tasty honestly.


Image: finished soup. Not bad!

I mean, would I make this again? Probably not as written. I am fond of split peas, but I would add a lot more veggies to this, like some carrots and potatoes. The sausage (as opposed to ham) wasn't as weird a choice as I expected it to be, but, if I were to make this again, I might try to hunt down some of the Dutch sausage options and see if that made the soup more interesting. 

I ended up eating two full bowls of it, so I definitely liked it. 

I am looking at a Betty Crocker from 1954 for tomorrow's lunch. But, that's going to be a Saturday, so I will have to consider something that Shawn might also actually eat. (One of the other nice things about trying these for lunch is that Shawn is away at work, in-person on Mondays and Fridays so I can try out some of the weirder recipes on offer on those days.)

If I keep this up, I will post my experiments here.

Comments

[oracne]

I spent some time experimenting with a Shaker cookbook during lockdown, with mixed results - I only did baking things.

[lydamorehouse]

Yeah, I feel like baking things is a much, much safer bet. Lunches will be interesting. I am taking a long look at the next cookbook, as it comes with a full menu for lunches.

[pameladean]

It's so weird that people ate like that. I'd have altered the soup similarly, allowing for different eating requirements. But yes, pea soup without onions is just ridiculous.

I have an amazing and terrifying cookbook that Carol Kennedy found at a yard sale. It is Betty Goes Vegan, and it contains five hundred Betty Crocker recipes from some massive book I don't have, all veganized.

I've mostly just read it and marvelled. I did try one recipe, a vegetable side dish of green beans and spinach, that had grotesquely wrong amounts -- a cup of green beans, a cup of spinach, and a cup of lemon juice. (There were a few other ingredients too, but their proportions weren't so wildly off.) I increased the vegetables and decreased the lemon juice, but it was still unbearably sour.

I've been deterred from making many of the other recipes because they tend to call for something like a teaspoon of silken tofu, which comes in ten- or twelve- or occasionally fourteen-ounce blobs. The contortions I'd have to go to to use up the rest of the block just stopped me cold. I won't even use half an onion in a recipe: I either just put in twice as much or else double the recipe. I know the rest of the onion will just rot, unless I happen to want some on a sandwich; and the rest of the tofu would similarly slink to the back of the fridge and go slimy.

Anyway, I hope you find an acceptable lunch for Saturday!

P.

[lydamorehouse]

Yeah, I noticed one recipe that I was considering for tomorrow that wanted a tablespoon of chopped onions, and I thought, "What about the rest of the onion??" I mean, to be fair, I sometimes freeze onions for things like this, but there's often the dreaded "2 teaspoons of tomato paste," which you have to open the whole can for.

[pameladean]

I threw out so much moldy tomato paste since I first was on my own that I eventually gave up and started buying it in tubes. It's much more expensive that way, but at least you USE all of it. I still have cans around for sensible recipes that call for a can.

P.

[sabotabby]

I got some 1930s and 40s recipes around my 40th birthday. Weirdly great for vegan food, thank you rationing system.

[lydamorehouse]

Ah, FASCINATING. I hadn't considered the upside of rationing!

[dreamshark]

The oddest thing to me about that recipe (besides the evaporated milk) is the "1 cup of split peas." I thought the only measurement that split peas came in was "bags." Other than that, I'd add onions and garlic and carrots and spices. It goes without saying that you need to add stuff to classic Minnesota recipes. There's a reason that the rest of the world makes fun of "Minnesota bland." Besides the lack of spices, this looks like the kind of recipe that you would make in the middle of winter out of things that you found in the cupboards. Except for the celery, which is definitely a "one of these things is not like the others" ingredient. Maybe it's just an example of the fresh vegetables that you could add if you had them?

We make a lot of pea soup and have found that any kind of pork-rindy thing goes great in it: ham hocks, bacon, any kind of sausage, even hot dogs.

[lydamorehouse]

Yeah, this is definitely a recipe that most of us would improve on, for sure.

[offcntr]

Huh, I made split pea soup today too! Didn't follow a recipe, per se, except to check on the ratio of water to peas (4:1, like in yours). Two cups peas, eight water, salt, pepper, 3 diced carrots, four small potatoes likewise diced, half an onion, chopped. Oh, and the meaty bone from our Easter ham. Plus a big bowl of ham drippings at the end. Very yum.

Can't imagine breakfast sausage in pea soup; I'da gone with the kielbasa...

[lydamorehouse]

Well, it was an experiment, and the breakfast sausages weren't as bad as you'd imagine. I found them fairly tasty.

Pretty much everyone seems to have their own version of this. I would have liked to taste the original. I wonder what kind of sausage was used by the Anderson hotel.

[carbonel]

I make split pea soup occasionally, but I do it in the simplest possible way, by buying a couple of those Manischewitz tubes, adding water, and simmering it several hours. At the end I put in some cut-up ham (very not kosher, of course), and that's it. I can't remember if there's a separate "flavor packet" in those (mostly salt and MSG, I'm guessing), but if there is, I only add half of it.