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Here at the Food on Fridays carnival, any post remotely related to food is welcome—though we love to try new dishes, your post doesn’t have to be a recipe. If all you want to do is link to the article in the Wall Street Journal about the guy who eats bugs, do it. Anyway, my point is that posts like that are as welcome as menus and recipes.When your Food on Fridays contribution is ready, just grab the broccoli button (the big one above or smaller option at the bottom) to paste at the top of your post. It ties us together visually.Then plug your name and link into Linky Tools.
Food on Fridays with Ann
Years ago, my mom collected old cookbooks that she could reference when writing a weekly food column for a small town paper.Mom no longer writes that column and, like all of us, has access to online recipe collections like Epicurious, allrecipes.com and Cooks.com. As a result, she no longer needs a cookbook collection, so a few years ago, she gave me a lot of those vintage resources. One of them in particular was so charming, I would flip through it just for fun: Prairie Farmer – WLS Centennial Cook Book (Family-Tested), published in 1941.
The editor included photos of WLS celebrity contributors, like Grace Wilson, “the girl with a million friends,” who offered her recipe for Liver Dumplings.
I love that picture. Was she as sweet as she looks?One time I flipped to a “recipe,” if you can call it that, for Arthur C. Page‘s Apple Pie (he admits in the text that it’s actually Mrs. Arthur C. Page’s apple pie).It’s more like a set of instructions, but you know, I made it one time and it turned out so good, it became my standard method for making apple pie.
In case you’re as curious as I was, here is a photo of the talented Mrs. Arthur C. Page, maker of apple pies and fruit cakes:
I haven’t tried Grace’s Liver Dumplings or Mrs. Page’s Fruit Cake, but I highly recommend the apple pie.
Apple Pie (Arthur C. Page)
Line a good big deep pie-tin with rich pie crust. Fill with sliced tart apples. Greenings, McIntosh or Winesaps are good, but don’t let it stop you if you haven’t got them. Pour over them 1/2 cup white sugar, 1/2 cup brown sugar. Sprinkle with 1 teaspoon powdered cinnamon, and dot with 2 tablespoons butter. Cover with top crust, bake for 10 minutes in hot oven, then in slow oven for 45 minutes, until apples are tender. You might as well make two while you’re about it.Confidentially: I never made a pie in my life, but I know what I like. Borrowed the recipe from my wife, who grew up on a fruit farm in Arkansas. She can make a pie with her eyes shut and both hands tied behind her. –A. C. P.
Wanted to laugh out loud when I read his comments at the end. Thanks! ~Jessica
Aren’t they charming? And I could imagine Mrs. Page coming to the door to greet guests wiping flour off her hands onto an apron, couldn’t you? Because she looks like she’d always be whipping up something tasty in the kitchen!
I love old cookbooks. I have my great grandmother’s cookbook from when she attended finishing school. Most of the recipes are outdated, but what I love about it is my G.G.’s writing in the margin, noting how she modified the recipes.
Ohhh….that’s priceless.
I absolutely love vintage cookbooks! Thanks so much for sharing one of yours. I love the photographs of the contributors. And as always, thanks for hosting Food on Fridays!
Those photos! Oh, I loved the recipes so old-fashioned that we simply don’t eat like that anymore, but the photos are what thrilled me most.
If you love cookbooks, I’ve got a good one for you. Our High School Band created one for a fundraiser – $5 (plus $2 shipping) gets you 150 of the best recipes ever! We have included all of our favorites as well as the soups and goodies we make when we travel with the band. Want one?
Email me at ladybugxing at gmail dot com.
Thanks for the invitation to check out your cookbook!
Old cookbooks rock! I still have a few go to recipes from my old Betty Crocker cookbook I learned to cook from when I was seventeen. It’s not quite as old as the one you use for apple pie…but close. LOL. Thanks for hosting. 🙂
Oh, I think I might have the Betty Crocker one, too! Is it a three-ring binder style?
I have a really old Good Housekeeping one (bound like a book) that I like, too, because it does such a good job explaining the basics.
I love the nostalgia in those books. I loved that Arthur was called conductor of the dinner hour!
Isn’t that perfect? Of *course* he had to contribute to the cookbook if he was director of the dinner hour (actually, I think it was the “Dinnerbell Hour,” which is so cute and so old-fashioned. I wonder if Mrs. Page rang a dinnerbell? “Arthur! The pie’s ready!”)
I love old cookbooks as well. My mom gave several to me that she received from her mom. I go through them all the time, especially for bread and pie recipes.
Bread and pie. I could nothing but that and be a very happy woman.
And probably a few pounds overweight. But happy.
I got a bunch of old cookbooks from my grandma a few years ago. I always laugh when a recipe calls for MSG or Lard!! My, how times have changed!
MSG, lard, or olio. Or is it oleo?
I LOVE old cookbooks… it makes me think of my family who owned them before me and makes me nostalgic. The recipies have changed so much (what Andrea said)… so it is fun to see how folks used to cook 🙂
I have one that is really sketchy, assuming that the cook would know how to fill in the gaps. It just provides the ingredients and ballparks on the amounts. Love that. I’m inspired to dig a little deeper into the collection….
I just found your and am happy to be joining your party!
– The Tablescaper
Hey! I made an apple pie the other day and posted about it too! That’s kind of a big deal for me. It was good, mmm-mmm. this one sounds good too, Ann. All this talk of pie. We’re going to have to do something about it.
I put my pie post up…there is a link to the recipe. I was a little worried about revealing THE SECRET INGREDIENT, but no one has commented on it so far ;).
Oh, wow! I just clicked on the recipe link for the apple pie–hilarious! No WONDER it turned out great! 🙂
My very straight-laced mother-in-law lives in Belgium. Belgium is famous for “frites,” which are fries. Belgians don’t like our tomato ketchup all that much; instead, they have many wonderful dipping sauces they use instead to dip their frites into. One of the sauces–my favorite, actually–is “cocktail.” It’s not like our cocktail sauce. It’s more like mayonnaise with some tomato ketchup mixed in. But….it has the same “secret ingredient”!
She pointed it out to me one time in the list of ingredients printed on the back of the bottle. “When Americans come to visit and ask me what’s in it,” she confessed, “I can’t bring myself to tell them.”
Like any good husband, he knew to give credit where it was due. Sounds like a great apple pie. I am so glad it’s getting to be fall and apples will be coming into season.
Me, too. I’m going to the apple orchard nearby in the next week to stock up on some apples. If they’re tart, well, you know what I’m going to be mixing up! (Although I did see some nice instructions for making fake “Stouffer’s” baked apples in the linkage today.)
These are really neat.