Almost 40 years ago, in 1982, the Whitfield-Murray Historical Society published a cookbook to raise money from sales. The Town Crier found a copy and decided to examine it to find out what was being cooked at the time. Last week, we read through the opening pages, learned about common spices, and even made a gelatin salad for a church gathering. This week we’ll continue exploring, introducing you to some main dishes and learning some useful kitchen knowledge like measuring. So, put the saddle on the stove and get on the range tonight, Mom!
The book has a page dedicated to helpful tips for budding chefs. These useful information are found at the beginning of each chapter, one of the most complete of which is about measurements.
As you may know, there are English measurements and metric measurements that we use. I don’t know if they line up, except for the boiling and freezing points of water.
The English word Fahrenheit is a) not even an English name, b) difficult to spell, c) sounds more like a sneeze than a temperature measurement, and water becomes hard at 32 degrees Celsius, which is equal to zero. (Also referred to as Celsius to avoid confusion).
For boiling water, that is 212 degrees Fahrenheit. This is not very difficult to remember, nor is it necessary. You believe that you are a good cook because you can tell when you see boiling water. whereas in the metric system it is 100 degrees. Since a cent (such as 100 cents to a dollar) means 100, Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius, the inventor of Celsius, devised his scale to represent everything from solids to gases to the nearest 10 seconds. It’s useful for calculations, but knowing the size of 27 millimeters makes it difficult to dry.
You can learn a lot by looking at the measurements page of the cookbook “Crown Gardens Cuisine”. Mainly, it’s something we don’t know much about. Fortunately, all contributors used English in their recipes. But let’s say you pick up a cookbook in an exotic, faraway country, like Canada. This cookbook may contain much better recipes than ours (OK, probably not from Canada), but they are listed in metric units. With this handy chart, your problem will be solved. of seeds. For example, 1 tablespoon is equal to 3 teaspoons. Easy enough. However, when converted to metric, it becomes 14.8 milliliters. You can understand it from a tablespoon to a teaspoon because you can just imagine it. But what about metric conversion? Flummoxed isn’t a word I drop often, but it seems appropriate here. It’s also a word I don’t drop often, so you get a 2-for-1 deal thanks to the metric confusion.
A jigger is 1.5 ounces (hic!) and, of course, as everyone knows (not everyone I’ve ever met before) 44.4 milliliters. 1 cup is equivalent to 16 tablespoons. This is also easy to remember, but if you convert it to milliliters, he will be 236.8. Which seems more fattening, adding just 2 cups of sugar to a pie recipe or using 473.6 milliliters?
Suppose your French neighbors come over to cook and you want to make them feel at home by measuring things in metric units. Let’s convert 1 pound of ground beef for hamburgers to milliliters. Oh wait, you can’t do that! You need to switch to grams. OK, so 1 pound is equal to 16 ounces, which is equal to 453.59 grams. Heaven help you if you can only come up with 453.5 grams and drop 0.09 grams entirely? The French will probably want to put brie on their cheeseburgers. Forget everything and make spaghetti for them.
Let’s go back to the Canadian cookbook and say we’re gluttons who get punished. It’s as if Canadian food just isn’t enough (mousse bacon?) and they want to transform. Here’s a handy conversion table with easy-to-remember numbers, such as teaspoons to milliliters multiplied by 5. Well, it wasn’t that difficult.
Let’s try one more thing. Pints to liters are multiplied by 0.47. Hmm. You need to repeat it several times to remember it.
Let’s convert gallons to liters. Multiply by 3.8. Convert liters back to gallons? Multiply by 0.26. Okay, get out the blackboard and calculator, it’s going to be a long night. By the time you convert the measurements, the meatloaf (made from beaver, Canada’s national symbol) is already dry or burnt. Anyone have leftover spaghetti?
There is one very useful table here. This is how to know the temperature of your cooking oil/grease without using a thermometer. To measure temperature, drop a 1-inch square piece of white bread into the oil and time it until it turns golden brown. For example, if it takes 1 minute to brown, the temperature will be between 355 and 365 degrees. If it takes just 20 seconds, it will be 385-395 degrees. I don’t know what to do with the square bread when I’m done. Maybe fried croutons?
The main characters of this book
Enough with the convenient measurements, let’s move on to the food.
We are the main dish, the main character of this book. Mrs. James L. Clark and Geneva Pittman start with two quiches, perfect for breakfast or any other time. Her third entree after giving up on the French recipe for someone serving her French neighbors, or perhaps Canada, is “Italian Delight.” This is, of course, spaghetti.
In addition to the usual ingredients such as ground beef, sausage, and onions, corn niblets, mushrooms, “ripe olives” and a pound of grated cheese are added. Since this is one of those dishes where you make the spaghetti and then bake it, author and beloved teacher Sally Gold says it’s best to make it a day in advance. A lot of things get better the next day after you sit for a while.
Needless to say, there are a lot of chicken recipes here, but strangely, there are no recipes for “Southern fried” chicken. There are international dishes such as “Chinese Chicken”, “Chicken Kiev”, “Chicken Ratatouille”, “Chicken Rice Pilaf”, and “Chicken Divan” (I thought it was a chair?).
My favorite is, of course, the foolproof chicken recipe. Looking at the ingredients, I think “absolute certainty” is included in “proof” because it requires a “soup can” of white wine. I don’t know about you, but I’m sure someone can find a fairly large soup can. If the secret ingredient is wine, it may not matter how good the chicken tastes after a few seconds. There’s a “chipped beef casserole” recipe for veterans that will soothe you, so to speak. GI’s know what I’m talking about.
My favorite named recipe here is “Shrimp Who Young” by Mary Connor. I add soy sauce and pepper to the pineapple and brown sugar to make it a little sweeter and it looks delicious, but I just like to call it “fu young”.
And in honor of our first president, there’s Margaret Newman’s “Washington Salmon Roll.” This is literally a bread-and-salmon dish, similar to Little Debbie’s Swiss rolls, where the salmon filling is wrapped and rolled in bread. If that doesn’t work, tell people this is a salute to Washington, D.C., not the president.
In the “Bread” section, Jane Harrell and Judy Alderman team up to offer two cornbreads with the name “Prater’s Mill.” Each recipe is different, so it’s fun to make each one and compare them.
The first is “Praters Mill Yankee Cornbread” and the other is “Praters Mill Country Cornbread.” You can also do a cook-off and a blind taste test to see which one wins: “Yankee” or “Country”. Since it’s cornbread, I’m going to go with the dead heat tie and eat both.
One of the “desserts” provides honest information from Jewel R. Albertson. She pitched us the “Old Kentucky Home Jam Cake”. In it, she says she got it from the Lexington (Kentucky) Herald in 1933, when she lived in Lexington (Kentucky) almost 50 years ago. And she honestly answers, “I use store-bought caramel icing, but I can’t make it.” Let me tell you, that little sincerity is the secret ingredient to this dish.
As a side note, there are four pound cake recipes here, all of which cost less than a pound to make. Does this mean that a pound cake weighs 1 pound when finished?
I’m trying to lose weight, so I’ll skip the “Candy, Jelly, and Preservatives” section. Let’s move on to the “Beverages and more” section.
I’m interested in a variety of things. One of his turned out to be the ultimate peanut butter sandwich recipe. The recipe calls for 2 slices of bread, 1 grain of peanut butter, and 1 grain of jelly. I don’t know how to convert globs to metrics, but I’ll work on it and let you know.
Spread peanut butter on bread and spread over jelly. Place another piece of bread on top. 1 serving. This recipe was submitted by 7 year old Heather Locke.
I hope you enjoy your journey through Recipe Land and get some useful information. I don’t know about you, but I’m so hungry right now that I can have shrimp foo yong with my peanut butter sandwich!
Mark Hanna, a Dalton native, works in video and film production.
