Cooking Up Memories

Recently the Historical Preservation Commission received a cookbook from the World War II era. 

Called the Victory Cookbook, the cover design shows a very large V made up of blue stars and stripes. The cover is white and the pages are held together with red chicken bands. Each page is one side, five and a half inches by eight inches. There may have once been a page listing the date, and who compiled the book, but this copy has no such page. 

The unique thing about this book is the lack of baking temperatures. When this book was written, stoves did not have temperature controls. The cook had to learn by trial and error how to regulate the heat. Each stove was different.

One simple test was to hold your hand in the open door to judge the heat. After the first 15 minutes, the cook could open the door without causing a cake to fall, but if a cake collapsed, there was nothing to do but finish baking it and cut it in pieces. Folded into pudding, this made a delicious dish called cottage pudding.

The names of the cooks bring back pleasant memories of the many potluck dinners served in the grade school gym. And it’s fun to find recipes for the treats, such as popcorn balls and fudge, that were trademarks of the houses that trick-or-treaters hit first every Halloween.

Children who lived in Montgomery memorized which houses gave out the best treats – and who pulled their shades and ignored the calls. The latter usually found their windows soaped in the morning.  

There are few mixing instructions in this book. In most homes regular measuring cups and spoons were unheard of. A teacup was the standard 1-cup measure and a teaspoon and tablespoon from the silverware drawer was a standard measure. There was a lot of guesswork and eyeballing of ingredients used. 

Little girls, and sometimes boys, learned to cook by imitating their mothers, who often cooked using a pinch of this and a handful of that. Lessons were caught not taught, as women and girls worked together in the kitchen. That’s what makes these old books such fun to read. They assume a certain level of basic skills.

As children we were allowed to experiment with a minimum of supervision, and one of us, who shall remain nameless, was notorious for her flops. She may well have been the inventor of Cottage Pudding.  

We were taught that fudge required two cups of sugar for one cup of milk, and the other ingredients were approximations. So the cocoa, vanilla and butter would vary. Platters of sticky taffy that refused to cooperate were scooped up and devoured by spoon. Maybe too much butter. Fudge that hardened in the pan, before it could be poured, was scraped out and eaten. Could have been not enough butter! Maybe we were out of milk and tried water?

Remember that sugar was rationed during the war, and even the mistakes were a treat!

That might explain the attitude of one of my little sisters. Her motto has always been, "Food is fuel for the body.  If it tastes good, that’s a bonus.” No, she is not the same one who is famous for her flops!

It is thrilling to find a treasured family recipe that was sent in by one of your friends or neighbors – or even more, your mother or grandmother. I was thrilled to find my mother’s biscuit recipe, the plain drop biscuits with tasty browned points that held the puddles of melting butter and jelly. My grandmother’s relish recipe is less memorable. I probably didn’t like it.  A friend, Mrs. Eugene Briggs, sent the beloved recipe for molasses popcorn balls that I still use.  

My aunt Eleanor sent her recipe for Divinity fudge, which she made for us at the drop of a hat. My mother refused to make it because it was so tricky, but Aunt Eleanor had the technique perfected and was quite proud of that.

With so many shortages, recipes like the "Eggless, Butterless, Milkless Cake," submitted by a neighbor, Mrs. P. O. Douglas, was a favorite recipe at our house, too. It was simplicity itself, and surprisingly delicious with it’s raisins, nuts, and spices. Mrs. Douglas wrote:  "(Serve with) sauce – any kind." We would probably use Cool Whip today.

A later cookbook, published by the Montgomery VFW Ladies Auxiliary, is quite different. In this book, time and temperatures are spelled out. Another interesting fact is that the ladies who submitted these recipes used their own given names when they listed the names of the members, but the recipes are credited to their husbands' names: Mrs. Charles VanMeter, for example, not Mrs. Lorraine VanMeter, as in the roster. 

By 1957, when the Montgomery School PTA published their cookbook, the women often used their given names. One of the most enjoyable things about reading these old cookbooks is reading the names and picturing the faces of these women who we knew as Grandma so and so, or Aunt somebody. Because remember, we all had aunts and uncles and grandparents here, too. Who knew that Grandma Beyer was Clara?

Now there is a new cookbook available. The 175th Anniversary Committee produced it last year. It contains favorite recipes of current residents, with a special section of old recipes reprinted from the 1954 VFW cookbook. If you are looking for a nice keepsake or a thoughtful gift for someone, it is available for only $8 at the , or at the Settler’s Cottage Museum.