Recently in Cookbooks Category

More than one friend has alerted me to weird banana recipes lately. This of course led me to dig out all of the banana cookbooks I could find in the Kirschner Collection. Actually, these are promotional pamphlets more than actual books, and they are chock full of just these sorts of recipes (Ham Banana Rolls With Cheese Sauce!). This got me wondering about why these sorts of pamphlets proliferated when they did, which led to more research on the history of bananas in the U.S., which led to finding Peter Chapman's Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World. I recommend it if you want to know more about the seedy underbelly of the banana industry. And just who is this United Fruit Company? Well, now we know them as Chiquita. Most (but not all) of these pamphlets were published by United Fruit/Chiquita. With that in mind, I'd like to take you on a visual tour of some of my favorite moments in banana propaganda. [Full disclosure: I am a banana fiend.]

As a final bonus for a friend on Twitter, I leave you with a recipe. You must take a photo and report back if you ever make and eat this.

Banana Sardine Boats
From This Way to the Banana Salad Bazaar (1940)

Ingredients
1 ripe banana
2 sardines
1/4 lemon
Salad greens

Peel and cut banana crosswise into halves and place on salad plate. Cut a groove lengthwise along the top of each half. Fit a whole sardine into each groove so it will stand upright. Garnish with lemon and crisp greens.
Serve with mayonnaise.

If you haven't seen it already, I wanted to give a shout-out to Andy Sturdevant's piece on Virginia Safford's Friends and their Food over at the Heavy Table. We have this book here in the Kirschner Collection and it is a wonderful piece of Minnesota food history. I appreciate that Sturdevant situates the canned-soupy, gelatin-based recipes in this book in some historical context rather than playing them for laughs. It's worth a read.

It is the end of February -- the time of year when Minnesotans' thoughts turn longingly to seeds, gardens, and produce. I was in just this sort of funk coupled with an itch to bake something when I came across Janet Ballantyne's Desserts from the Garden in the Kirschner Collection. This book has recipes from the expected (strawberry tart), to the very unique and intriguing (green tomato chocolate cake). I decided to try out the carrot chocolate chip bars since I had nearly everything on hand. They're a very dense, not-too-sweet bar and the carrot gives just a hint of what lies ahead.

Carrot Chocolate Chip Bars
From Desserts from the Garden by Janet Ballantyne, 1983

Ingredients
1/2 cup crunchy peanut butter
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 cups grated raw carrots
1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350°
Cream together the peanut butter, sugars, eggs, and vanilla. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Mix well with the peanut butter mixture. Stir in the carrots and the chocolate chips. Butter a 9" x 13" pan. Spread the batter evenly in the pan. Bake for 40 minutes, cool completely, and cut in squares.

This week in the Kirschner Collection, I had one of my best finds to date: No Time For Cooking by Arlene Francis. I love this book not for the recipes, most of which I regard with a mixture of equal parts awe and revulsion (see: curried pickle and pimiento loaf), but for the photographs. Prior to picking this up, I did not who Arlene Francis was, but after reading her charming introduction and commentary throughout, I found myself poring through every video I could find on YouTube that she starred in. Here's a favorite clip in which Arlene plays the trombone on the game show I've Got a Secret:

And the photos! The photos of both Francis and the food in this book reminded me of one of my favorite entertainers, Amy Sedaris. I think this book is exactly what Sedaris was trying to re-create in her book I Like You. So, rather than just share a recipe, I would like to take you on a visual tour of some of my favorite images in this book, along with Arlene's commentary on each one.

We're a week from Thanksgiving, so here I am with Turkey Tips from the Kirschner Collection! This year, since we also just finished up a presidential election, I'm giving you tips from the Presidential Cook Book (1910) which was adapted from The White House Cook Book. As you can see, the cover of this cookbook features a picture of a turkey ... and a hatchet-wielding chef (no pardon for you, Turkey!) Now, on to the tips:

On Carving:

When carving use a chair slightly higher than the ordinary size, as it gives a better purchase on the meat, and appears more graceful than when standing, as is often quite necessary when carving a turkey... More depends on skill than strength. The platter should be placed opposite, and sufficiently near to give perfect command of the article to be carved, the knife of medium size, sharp with a keen edge. Commence by cutting the slices thin, laying them carefully to one side of the platter, then afterwards placing the desired amount on each guest's plate, to be served in turn by the servant.

When serving fowls, or meat, accompanied with stuffing, the guests should be asked if they would have a portion, as it is not every one to whom the flavor of stuffing is agreeable; in filling their plates, avoid heaping one thing upon another, as it makes a bad appearance.

Gravies should be sent to the table very hot, and in helping one to gravy or melted butter, place it on a vacant side of the plate; no pour it over their meat, fish or fowl, that they may use only as much as they like.

Turkey Scallop
From the Presidential Cook Book (1910) by Fanny Lemira Fillette & Hugo Ziemann

Pick the meat from the bones of cold turkey and chop it fine. Put a layer of bread crumbs on the bottom of a buttered dish, moisten them with a little milk, then put in a layer of turkey with some of the filling, and cut small pieces of butter over the top; sprinkle with pepper and salt; then another layer of bread-crumbs, and so on until the dish is nearly full; add a little hot water to the gravy left from the turkey and pour over it; then take two eggs, two tablespoonfuls of milk, one of melted butter, a little salt and cracker-crumbs as much as will make it thick enough to spread on with a knife; put bits of butter over it, and cover with a plate. Bake three quarters of an hour. Ten minutes before serving, remove the plate and let it brown.

We have several editions of that venerable tome, The White House Cook Book here in the Kirschner Collection. With the election looming, I've had presidential recipes on the brain (well, along with a lot of other much more stressful issues -- let's just say I've had my own Abigael Evans moments this season.) This week I attended a potluck in which everyone was asked to bring a dish that was a favorite of a US president. Fortunately, there are multiple websites dedicated to this topic, so the hardest part was selecting a dish. I chose red flannel hash in honor of William McKinley because he lived in Canton, Ohio which is near to my home town. The 1900 edition of the White House Cook Book was published during McKinley's presidency and includes a picture of his wife, Ida Saxton McKinley, in the front. The McKinleys are said to have greatly enjoyed eggs and starchy foods (mmm), but on special occasions such as their anniversary, they ate hot lobster salad. There is not a recipe for hot lobster salad in the cookbook, but there are two lobster salad recipes. Here is one of them:

Lobster Salad No. 1
From The White House Cook Book by Hugo Ziemann and Fanny Lemira Gillette, 1900

Prepare a sauce with the coral of a fine, new lobster, boiled fresh for about half and hour. Pound and rub it smooth, and mix very gradually with a dressing made from the yolks of two hard-boiled eggs, a tablespoonful of made mustard, three of salad oil, two of vinegar, one of white powdered sugar, a small teaspoonful of salt, as much black pepper, a pinch of cayenne and yolks of two fresh eggs. Next fill your salad bowl with some shred lettuce, the better part of two leaving the small curled centre to garnish your dish with. Mingle with this the flesh of your lobster, torn, broken or cut into bits seasoned with salt and pepper and a small portion of the dressing. Pour over the whole the rest of the dressing; put your lettuce-hearts down the centre and arrange upon the sides slices of hard-boiled eggs.

Note: Our copies of The White House Cook Book are getting quite brittle. If you are interested in trying out more of the recipes, this entire book has been digitized and is full-text searchable at the Internet Archive. Hooray for the public domain!

When I was a kid, I was allowed to choose whether to bring a packed lunch or buy my lunch in the school cafeteria. I loved marking up my monthly menu, and developed a strange liking for our school's "parsley potatoes" which were not actually recognizable as potatoes in any way. By the time I was in junior high, though, I took to packing my own lunch every day because the school lunches (the same school lunches -- my school was K-12 in one building) were not at all appetizing, and there were no options for vegetarians. So my lunch was usually dry cereal, a granola bar, and yogurt. Some other usual lunches I remember at the table were a bag of microwave popcorn (that was my sister's favorite lunch); an ice cream bar (on its own); and green hot dogs (I have no idea why they were green, but a friend of mine wrote a song about them.) Sometimes I'm amazed that we all didn't get scurvy.
So, it is with particular interest that I have been reading the news about school lunches over the past few years. I am drawn to the personal stories like the 9 year old girl's blog about her less-than filling school lunches which has become an international lunch blogging phenomenon. Or this video and story about my former coworker Chef Nicole cooking fresh healthy food for students in Portland:

There are also national policy debates raging about school lunches. While thinking about all of this, I came across Marion Cronan's The School Lunch in the Kirschner Collection. Published in 1962, this book gives a historical perspective on how school lunches have changed (or stayed the same) over time. The book is extremely detailed, dealing with policies and nutrition requirements, sanitation and safety, and even personnel. There's a lot that goes into a school lunch! And, of course, there are recipes -- all scaled to make 50 servings. Here is an example of a main dish:

Macaroni Frankfurter Bake
From The School Lunch by Marion Cronan (1962)

Ingredients
3 lbs. elbow macaroni
2/3 c. shortening
6 lbs. frankfurters, sliced
2 c. onion, chopped
3-4 peppers, green, chopped
3 qts. cream of celery soup, condensed
3 qts. water
3 qts. cheese, American, shredded
3 T. mustard, prepared
3 c. bread crumbs, buttered

Cook macaroni in boiling salted water about seven minutes. Drain. Melt shortening in skillet. Add frankfurter, onion, green pepper and brown lightly. Combine celery soup, water, cheese, prepared mustard and blend well. Add to frankfurter mixture and beat thoroughly until cheese melts. Stir in macaroni. Pour into baking pans. Top with buttered crumbs. Bake at 350°F for thirty-five minutes.

I live in an old house with no air conditioning in the kitchen, which means that for the months of July and August, I implement a strict moratorium on oven use. I get a lot of use out my appliances during this time, especially the toaster oven and the food processor, but the real star this summer has been the blender. Most of my repertoire consists of smoothies-as-meals, but last week I found a whole stash of blender cookbooks in the Kirschner Collection, and found that so much more is possible (heck, you can even make baby food out of blended calves' brains if you have some around.) So, I put together this menu of blender recipes to serve as inspiration for the rest of the hot months. Enjoy!

Herbal French Salad Dressing
From 340 Recipes for the new Waring Blendor (1947)

Ingredients
3/4 Cup Mineral or Salad Oil
1/4 Cup Wine Vinegar
1/2 Cup Tender Celery Leaves
1/2 Cup Water Cress Leaves
Few Sprays Parsley
1 t. Herb Flavored Salt
1/8 Clove Garlic

Place all ingredients in container in order indicated.
Put cover on Container.
Turn on WARING.
Run until contents are thoroughly blended, 15 seconds to 1 minute.

Curried Fresh Pea Soup
From Waring Cook Book for the 8 Push Button Blender (1968)

Ingredients
1 cup shelled fresh peas
1 medium onion, sliced
1 small carrot, sliced
1 clove garlic
1 stalk celery with leaves, sliced
1 medium potato, sliced
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon curry powder
2 cups chicken broth
1 cup cream or milk

In a saucepan combine peas, onion, carrot, garlic, celery, potato, salt, curry powder and 1 cup chicken broth. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer 15 minutes. Into container put contents of saucepan. Cover. Blend 30 seconds on Button 8 (LIQUEFY). After 10 seconds, remove cover and add remaining cup chicken broth and cream or milk. Heat over simmering water, or chill and serve cold with a topping of whipped cream.

Salami Spread
From Osterizer: the New Modern Meal Maker (1953)

Ingredients
1 cup diced salami
1/4 cup condensed celery soup
1 package cream cheese

Remove skin from salami. Place all ingredients in glass container and Osterize to a smooth paste. Stop and start motor as necessary to scrape mixture from sides of container with a rubber scraper.

Chicken Ring
From Your New Electric Blender (196-?)

Ingredients
1 envelope plain gelatin
2 tablespoons sherry
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 cup hot chicken stock or broth
1/4 cup mayonnaise
2 egg yolks
1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
Few drops Tabasco
6 sprays parsley
1 slice medium onion
2 cups diced cooked chicken
1/2 cup each finely chopped celery and green pepper
1 cup cooked peas

Into container put gelatin, sherry, lemon juice and chicken stock or broth. Cover. PRESS High Button 11. Blend 30 seconds. Add mayonnaise, egg yolks, seasonings, parsley, onion, and chicken. Cover. PRESS High Button 14. Blend 30 seconds, stopping to stir down if necessary. Empty into mixing bowl and fold in celery, green pepper, and peas. Pour into 4-cup ring mold and chill until set. Unmold and serve garnished with salad greens.

Frozen Fruit Sherbet
From Your Waring Cookbook: the Pleasure of Blending (1969)

Ingredients
1 small can (6 ounces) frozen fruit juice concentrate (orange, lemon, etc.)
4 tablespoons sugar
3 heaping cups crushed ice

1. Put all ingredients into container. Cover.
2. Press button 8. As mixture freezes around blades, remove cover and gently push mixture away from sides of container and into center with a rubber spatula. Be careful not to push down into ice. Blend for 60 seconds or until mixture looks like snow.
3. Spoon into dessert dishes and serve.

Coffee Cooler
From The Blender Way to Better Cooking (1965)

Ingredients
1 cup milk
2 cups cold water
4 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup nonfat dry milk solids
1 tablespoon instant cocoa
2 teaspoons instant coffee
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 banana, peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces

Put all ingredients in blender container in order listed; cover and run on speed 7 (or high) until smooth. To serve, pour over ice cubes in tall glasses.

This week's post comes from Liz Gunderson of Food for Fun. Liz, a University of Minnesota alum helped to move the Kirschner Collection from Doris Kirschner's home to campus. She came back to visit the collection at Magrath Library last week and wrote a post about it.

In 1995, my friend Ann and I loaded up carful after carful (and if memory serves me correctly, there was a truck involved, too) to transport Doris Kirschner's 3000 cookbooks to the Food Science Library at the University's St. Paul Campus. I took my time going through the books, stamping each with an inky black "Doris S. Kirschner's Kitchen" stamp, reveling in the history that these books contained.

Kirschner may have lived in a different era and she certainly had a different lifestyle (lupus kept her bedridden much of her adult life), but she wore the hats many women wear: mom, wife, person of faith, student, hostess, friend, woman. Her cookbooks reflected the times in which she lived. But these books also reflect what it means to wear all of these hats. And that part doesn't change.

When I look at my collection (at 300 cookbooks, it's much smaller than Kirschner's), I see similar themes:

Children - Kirschner had two copies of the 1965 version of Betty Crocker's New Girls and Boys Cook Book. Both have been carefully wrapped in cardboard binding by library staff as the books have come completely apart. I have the same book in my collection, along with a handful of other kid-friendly cookbooks.

Feeding a husband - Admittedly, my copies of Scentuous Cookery; or How to Make it in the Kitchen (1971) and How to Keep Him (After You've Caught Him) Cookbook (1968) aren't given too much read time. The titles crack me up, though, so I keep them around.

International - Kirschner was interested in foods of other places and cultures long before it was popular to be so. Leeann and Katie Chin's Everyday Chinese Cooking may sit on my shelves, but it was Kirschner who first befriended Leeann Chin, long before this entrepreneur launched her Chinese food and restaurant empire.

Single topic - Nuts anyone? I have a copy of a Jif Choosy Mothers' Peanut Butter Cookbook from 1979. Cheese. Always a hot topic--just this past June, I picked up a recipe booklet from the first-ever Minnesota Cheese Festival. Cocktail books and branded recipe pamphlets. My copies of The Kentucky Bourbon Cocktail Book, The PDT Cocktail Book, and Hollywood Cocktails may be more recent than what Kirschner had, but they're still about booze.

Kitchen equipment - Kirschner's era meant she had books on how to cook using the blender and microwave. While I do have 1952's Magic Recipes for the Electric Blender, the books I actually cook from include those written for grills, slow cookers, and pressure cookers.

Diet - What struck me about this section of Kirschner's collection is how little things change. Low-Carb diets were being touted then, just as they are today. (Hilarious find:1966's Martinis & Whipped Cream: The New Carbo-Cal Way to Lose Weight & Stay Slim). But alongside the low-carb/high-protein diet books sits The Rice Diet Report (1987). Also on her shelves: The Doctor's Wife's Thinking Thin Cookbook (1967), The Slenderella Cook Book (1957), The Bronx Diet (1979), The Last Chance Diet, When Everything Else Has Failed (1976). My "diet" books may be more along the lines of healthy eating (Weight Watchers, vegetarian, whole-grain, dairy-free), but they represent an interest in eating well.

Here's my read on the Kirschner's Cookbook Collection: Cookbooks for children mean motherhood was important to Kirschner. The cookbooks to "please her man" meant she wanted a strong marriage. International cookbooks provided armchair travel to other cultures. (And what mom and wife doesn't want to escape reality, at least from time to time?) Single topic? I'd say Kirschner was an inquisitive woman who was hungry for knowledge. The equipment books mean she wanted to stay on trend, maybe save some time in the kitchen. And the diet books emphasized her desire to be attractive, healthy, thin.

It's easy enough to laugh at the era from when Kirschner's books were collected (How to Keep Him (After You've Caught Him)? What were they thinking?), but in these books I recognize her desires as the same as all women's. What was true in Kirschner's time was also true in the 1990s when the books were catalogued into a University-owned collection. They're still true in 2012 and I don't see that changing anytime soon. Women have many roles to fill and the fact that Kirschner captured that so well in her collection of cookbooks should be honored.

If it's at all possible for you to visit these cookbooks, please take the time to do so. You'll learn a lot about Kirschner and her era, but you'll also find timeless and universal truths for all women.

I'm all out of writing energy this week, so instead of a regular post, I've compiled this photo journey through all of the nut cookbooks from the Kirschner Collection. My favorite title is definitely Around the Kitchen Clock With Walnuts.

Have a great weekend.