Cooking in the good old days
Internet media now/Flickr
Last week, we looked at the most-searched recipes on the Internet so far in 2012, and some folks were surprised by how simple they were. Could this mean people truly do not know how to make spaghetti, mashed potatoes or baked chicken?
I don’t want to tire you out on the Miller & Rhoads luncheon theme, but it did seem appropriate in light of last week’s discussion to share with you a portion of Mary Rapoport’s speech at the luncheon on Friday. Mary, a member of the Peacock-Harper Culinary History Friends (the committee that put on the luncheon) is also the Roanoke spokesperson for the Virginia Egg Council. You may have seen her on various local cooking segments.
I found Mary’s talk interesting, particularly the part where she discussed how people fed their families around the 1950s or 60s. So here is a portion of her talk. At the end, you’ll find the recipe for M&R chocolate silk pie. And remember, if you would like a copy of the Miller & Rhoads Tearoom recipe booklet, send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to the address listed here.
A portion of a speech given by Mary Rapoport in Roanoke on Oct. 12, 2012: “Today we enjoyed, not only a slice of luscious Lemon Buttercup Pie, we’re also enjoying a slice of history… a history we had a part in. Dot Herndon just spoke about our Peacock-Harper group, and why we think culinary history is so important. By remembering the way we dined and ate in a certain era, it helps us understand what life was like back then.
Let’s go back in time … During the tearoom years, most families had one car and dad took it to work. Fewer women worked outside the home fulltime; we had fewer convenience foods; and fewer gadgets to help with food preparation. For example, if you wanted a great loaf of bread, you baked it. You proofed the yeast, kneaded it, let it rise for hours, then baked it.
Today, we have dough hooks on mixers eliminating hand kneading, we have quick rise yeast; you have bread machines that practically makes the bread for you; and every grocery store deli sells fabulous bread and they’ll even slice it! Every home today, has a microwave, a self cleaning oven, a self defrosting freezer and a dish washer, making life easier and allowing women the freedom to get out and work. Today, if you want soup or stew, you can plop everything in a crock pot and walk out the door, where forty years ago, you needed to be near pot while it cooked. We were fastidious about saving every morsel of food, and we turned leftovers (or called them planned-overs) into another meal – mostly with sauces.
Bits of leftover meat went into a white sauce and poured over mashed potatoes. Welsh Rarebit was a cheese sauce on toast; Scalloped potatoes was a cheese sauce on sliced potatoes and onions; and what we call Mac and Cheese today and make out of a box, was a creamy cheese sauce made from a roux and stirred into elbow macaroni (not pasta) with either crushed corn flakes, potato chips or bread crumbs on top and baked. Gelatins and Aspics were the sides as were green beans cooked to death in bacon fat. We cooked with butter and Crisco with reckless abandon, and we fried, we didn’t saute, and we weren’t aware of any possible health issues associated with that. But curiously, back then, the percentage of obesity in our society was far less than it is now!
Most foods were made from scratch, and we canned and ‘put up’ food. Every pantry had a basket of Mason jars, and cupboards stocked with Gulf Wax, unflavored gelatin and some tapioca (just in case). A Better Homes and Garden’s food editor once told me “The canning, the jellies - That’s how women got their ya-ya’s”, meaning that made them feel good about themselves. And jelly cabinets were the shrine for all their work.
These forty – fifty year old recipes tell us that cooking back then, took a lot of effort….Cooking took a lot of time. We made things from scratch to save money, but we made them from scratch because we had had no alternatives.”
Miller & Rhoads Chocolate Silk Pie
This original recipe was made using raw eggs. If you use this recipe, you must use pasteurized eggs in the shell in order to protect yourself from salmonella.
1/2 cup unsalted butter or margarine, room temperature
3/4 cup superfine sugar
2 squares (1 oz. each) unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled
1 tsp. vanilla extract
Pinch of salt
3 eggs
Cream butter; gradually add sugar, beating until light and fluffy. Stir in chocolate, vanilla and salt. Add eggs, one at a time, beating 7 minutes after each addition (pasteurized eggs in the shell may take additional beating time). Pour into a pastry or graham cracker pie crust. Chill 24 hours.
Whip 1 cup of whipping cream, gradually adding 2 Tbsp. powdered sugar. When stiff peaks form, fold in 1 tsp. vanilla. Pile on top of cooled pie and garnish with chocolate shavings or jimmies.
New Version of Chocolate Silk Pie
This new version created by Mary Rapoport does not call for raw eggs.
1 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
6 eggs
1 Tbsp. water
4 squares (1 oz. each) unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature
Mix sugar and cream of tartar in medium saucepan. Add eggs and water; beat until well-blended. Add chocolate; cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until chocolate is melted and temperature reaches 160 degrees. Do not boil. Remove from heat and cool by setting pan in a larger pan of ice water. Stir vigorously until mixture temperature falls to 80 to 90 degrees. Take off ice and stir in vanilla. Beat butter in mixer bowl until light and fluffy, 3 to 4 minutes. Add cooked egg mixture; beat on high speed 5 to 10 minutes or until you see the color become lighter. Pour into pastry or graham cracker pie shell and refrigerate at least 6 hours before serving.
Whip 1 cup of whipping cream, gradually adding 2 Tbsp. powdered sugar. When stiff peaks form, fold in 1 tsp. vanilla. Pile on top of cooled pie and garnish with chocolate shavings or jimmies.
October 15, 2012 - 10:53 AM
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I enjoyed reading that but it’s quite a romanticized picture of cooking 40-50-60 years ago. My lack of skill in the kitchen isn’t due to the microwave, it’s a natural result of my mother’s lack of skill in the kitchen, which followed her mother’s lack of skill in the kitchen. I’m the first in my family to grow my own vegetables, and nobody has ever known how to “put up” anything, at least once they got to the U.S. (not sure how they got through the rainy winters in Ireland before that). Boiling the very life out of a can of green beans though … now that is a very clear memory!
My hope is that we eventually turn Mary Rapoport’s last line – ‘We made things from scratch to save money, but we made them from scratch because we had had no alternatives.’ – into something more like this – ‘We make things from scratch to save money, but we really make things from scratch because we understand the alternatives.’
The health benefits of canned goods (as in contained in glass, not metal) still are not touted enough for today’s grocery shoppers. Hopefully, that will change soon…
My grandmother cooked on a coal stove, which was also the only source of heat in the house. Yet, she knew how to manage the heat perfectly. Nothing ever burned, nothing was ever undercooked. Her gravies were always perfect.
I’ve been told my maternal grandmother was the type to open a can and dump it in a pot; as a working widow, she took full advantage of all the convenience-food discoveries of the 50s.
My paternal grandmother, on the other hand, knew how to garden, can food and make just about everything from scratch. She’s the one who taught my mother a lot of the cooking skills she passed on to me. My mother also taught herself a lot.
Just because I use a crock pot doesn’t mean I don’t do any work. I slice all the vegetables by hand, I make my own chicken stock, I slice all the meat by hand… There’s a middle ground between throwing a box in the microwave and spending the entire day in front of the stove.
I think having parents/grandparents who cook from scratch does make a difference. My maternal grandmother was a wonderful cook and my mom is a good cook. Being a housewife starting in the late 50′s, my mom did use a lot of canned vegetables. That, I think was because my dad was in the Army and they didn’t have their own land to garden.
When he retired and they bought their own home my dad had a garden every year. Veggies and fruit were canned or frozen then. My paternal grandmother died before I was born, but my mom and I always figured that she must not have been a very good cook, because my dad liked his meat and vegetables cooked to death.
Basically, I’m a self taught cook. We always had a garden when I was growing up, but few things made it past the fresh stage, other than green beans and apples. My mother worked outside the home and didn’t seem to enjoy cooking, even when she had the time. The kids were the ones who did most of the cooking. If Mom did it, she simply opened cans, dumped the contents into pots and heated, no additional seasonings, no draining, nothing. Meats were cooked until they were flavorless and fresh vegetables cooked until they were mush. My family was different from most in the neighborhood because Mom worked and didn’t do “scratch cooking.” Now, I enjoy cooking and “get my ya-ya’s” by making things from scratch. Thanks to Mrs. Rapoport for the recipes!