In 1982, just over 40 years ago, the Whitfield-Murray Historical Society put out a recipe cook book to raise money from the sales. Having found a copy, the Town Crier decided to look through it to see what was cookin’ back then. Last week we got through the opening pages, learned about common spices and even whipped up some gelatin salads for the church social. As we keep looking this week, we’ll get to some main dishes as well as learn more useful kitchen knowledge like measurements. So put the saddle on the stove, we’re riding the range tonight, mother!
The book has a page set aside for useful tips for the budding chef. These tidbits of helpful info are at the beginning of each chapter, and one of the most complete is the one on measurements.
As you may know, there are the English measurements we use and then there are the metric measurements. At no point I’m aware of do they line up except at the boiling point and freezing point of water.
Freezing at the English Fahrenheit, which a) isn’t even an English name, b) is hard to spell, and c) sounds more like a sneeze than a way to measure temperature, has water turn hard at 32 degrees, which equals 0 degrees centigrade (or Celsius, just to keep things confusing for metric as well).
For boiling water, it’s 212 Fahrenheit, which isn’t too hard to remember, not that you need to — I trust you’re a good enough cook to know boiling water when you see it — while for metric it’s 100 degrees. Cent (as in 100 cents to the dollar) means 100 so from solid to gas the inventor of centigrade, a Swedish astronomer named Anders Celsius, came up with a scale that does everything by 10s. Handy in calculations, but I’ll be hung out to dry if I know how big 27 millimeters is.
Looking at the measurements page in our cookbook “Crown Gardens Cuisine,” we’re going to learn a lot — chiefly that we don’t know much. Luckily, the contributors all used English for the recipes. But let’s say you picked up a cookbook in some exotic, far-off country like, I don’t know, Canada for example. This cookbook might have recipes far superior to ours (OK, probably not from Canada), but they’re in metric. Using this handy chart, problem solved. Kind of. For example, one tablespoon equals three teaspoons. Easy enough. But to convert to metric you get 14.8 milliliters. Tablespoon to teaspoon I get as I can kind of visualize it. but for the metric conversion? Flummoxed isn’t a word I drop often but seems apropos here, apropos being a word I also don’t drop often so thanks to metric confusion I get a two-for-one deal.
A jigger is one-and-a-half ounces (hic!), which is of course as everybody knows (everybody being no one I have ever come across) 44.4 milliliters. One cup equals 16 tablespoons, again, something easy to remember, but in milliliters it’s 236.8. Which sounds more fattening, a mere two cups of sugar for a pie recipe or 473.6 milliliters?
Let’s say your French neighbors come over for a cookout and you want to make them feel at home by measuring things out in metric. We’ll convert one pound of ground beef for burgers into milliliters. Oh wait, we can’t! We have to switch to grams. OK, so one pound equals 16 ounces equals 453.59 grams. Heaven help you if you only come up with 453.5 grams and completely drop the .09 grams, right? Those French are probably going to want brie on their cheeseburgers. Let’s just forget the whole thing and we’ll make spaghetti for them.
Back to our Canadian cook book, let’s say we’re a glutton for punishment, as if Canadian cuisine isn’t punishment enough (moose bacon anyone?) and you want to do the conversions. There’s a handy conversion chart here with easy to remember numbers such as teaspoons to milliliters multiply by 5. Hey, that wasn’t so hard.
Let’s do another one. Pints to liters multiply by 0.47. Hmmm. We’ll have to repeat that one several times to memorize it.
Let’s try gallons to liters: multiply by 3.8. Liters back to gallons? Multiply by 0.26. OK, get out the blackboard and a calculator, this is going to be a long night. By the time you convert the measurements, your meatloaf (made from the Canadian national symbol, the beaver) is already dried out or burned. Leftover spaghetti, anyone?
There is one really handy chart on here and that is how to tell how hot the cooking oil/grease is without a thermometer. You measure the temp by dropping a one-inch square of white bread into the oil and time it until it gets to a golden brown. For example, if it takes a minute to golden brown, the temperature is 355 to 365 degrees. If it takes only 20 seconds it’s 385 to 395 degrees. Not sure what we’re supposed to do with the bread squares once we’re done. Fried croutons perhaps?
The heroes of the book
Enough handy measurements, let’s get to the eats.
We’re at the main dishes and so the heroes of the book. Mrs. James L. Clark and Geneva Pittman start off with a pair of quiches suitable for breakfast or any other time of the day. The third main dish for those serving French neighbors or perhaps after giving up on Canadian recipes is “Italian Delight” which is of course spaghetti.
Added to the usual suspects of ground beef, sausage, onions, etc., are corn niblets, mushrooms and “ripe olives,” and a pound of grated cheese. This is one of those spaghetti dishes you bake after you make, and so the author, beloved teacher Sally Gold, says it’s better to make it a day ahead. A lot of things are better the next day after they’ve sat awhile.
Needless to say, there are a lot of chicken recipes in here, but oddly enough, no “Southern fried” chicken recipes. There are international-type dishes such as “Chinese Chicken,” “Chicken Kiev,” “Chicken Ratatouille,” “Chicken-rice Pilaf” and “Chicken Divan” (I thought that was a chair?).
For me, the one to go for is of course the recipe for “Foolproof Chicken.” Looking at the ingredients I think the “foolproof” is in the “proof” as it calls for a “soup can” of white wine. I don’t know about you, but I think there’s folks out there that can find a pretty big soup can. If the secret ingredient is the wine, then after seconds, it may not matter how good the chicken was. To sober you up, so to speak, for the veterans out there there is a recipe for “Chipped Beef Casserole.” You G.I.s know what I’m talking about.
My favorite named recipe in here is the “Shrimp Foo Young” by Mary Conner. The dish looks delicious, just a little on the sweet side with pineapple and brown sugar in with the soy sauce and pepper, but I just like saying “foo young.”
And as a salute to our first president there’s a “Washington Salmon Roll” from Margaret Newman. It’s literally a bread and salmon dish that is like one of those Little Debbie Swiss Rolls, with bread wrapped and rolled around the salmon filling. If it doesn’t turn out well, tell folks it’s a salute to Washington, D.C., instead of the president.
In the “Breads” section Jane Harrell and Judy Alderman team up to bring us two cornbreads, both with the moniker “Prater’s Mill” attached. They are different recipes so it would be fun to make one of each and compare.
The first is “Prater’s Mill Yankee Corn Bread” and the other is “Prater’s Mill Country Corn Bread.” We could do a cookoff and a blind taste test to see if the “Yankee” or the “country” wins out. It being cornbread, I’m going to go with a dead heat tie and just eat both.
One of the “Desserts” gives us some honest info from Jewell R. Alverson. She pitches us “Old Kentucky Home Jam Cake.” In it she relates that she got it from the Lexington (Kentucky) Herald in 1933 when she was living there almost 50 years before. And, she’s honest enough to include “I use commercial caramel icing: can’t make it.” I’m telling you, that bit of honesty is the secret ingredient of this dish.
On a side note, there are four recipes for pound cakes here and none of them take a pound of anything to make. Is it that a pound cake weighs a pound when it’s all done?
I’m going to skip the “Candy, Jelly, Preserves” section because I’m trying to lose weight. Let’s go on to the “Beverages and Miscellaneous” section.
I’m interested in trying a “miscellaneous.” Turns out one of them is the final recipe, for peanut butter sandwiches. The recipe calls for two pieces of bread, one glob of peanut butter and one glob of jelly. I’m not sure how to convert a glob into metric but I’ll work on it and let you know.
You spread the peanut butter on the bread, then spread on the jelly. Put the other piece of bread on top. Serves one. This recipe has been presented to you by Heather Locke, age 7.
Hope you’ve enjoyed our trip through recipe land and picked up some handy info. I don’t know about you but I’m so hungry now I could eat some Shrimp Foo Young with a side of peanut butter sandwich!
Mark Hannah, a Dalton native, works in video and film production.