Tag: vintage recipes

The Kindest Bread Recipe: A Homemade Yeasted Sandwich Bread from the Tassajara Bread Book circa 1970

Published on by In The Vintage Kitchen3 Comments

When it comes to describing great bread recipes, they tend to take on a variety of accolades based on specific attributes. Best flavor. Best texture. Best no-knead. Best whole wheat. Best no wheat. Best gluten-free. Easiest to make. Fastest to bake. Biggest loaf. Smallest effort. Best. Fastest. Easiest. Again and again, over and around, brilliant bakers everywhere boast.

No one that I’ve encountered yet, though, has ever described their favorite bread recipe as the kindest. There’s no Google search for the best kindest bread. Kind isn’t really the type of word that generally pairs well with food descriptions and a you-have-to-make-it recipe. Baking or otherwise. But the recipe I’m sharing here in this post today can really only be, first and foremost, described that way. It is, of course, delicious and healthy and not complicated to make and contains simple ingredients, but above all, the best part of this recipe is its core, standout attribute… its kindness.

Without fully embracing that trait, you won’t be able to make this recipe as intended. And in not being able to make this recipe as intended, you’ll miss out on a truly delightful experience. One that is calming, relaxing, and joyful. You don’t need to be an expert baker or a seasoned bread maker to enjoy the fruits of this labor. You don’t even need to be a well-versed cook. In order to achieve the desired outcome of this recipe, you just need to be kind to it. To treat the ingredients and the process gently from start to finish.

Yeast is a living, breathing, growing life. Therefore, in order to make a marvelous loaf of bread, you need to treat the yeast gently and handle the dough tenderly, in the same way you would handle a newborn baby. This recipe is not about rushing or shortcuts or pre-made, pre-packaged substitutes. You don’t want to begin this culinary adventure with a scattered mind, an irritable mood, or perfection-induced pressure and motivation. This recipe is about showing kindness to yourself, the baker. It’s about showing respect for the ingredients involved, and about showing genuine care and consideration for the process of turning piles of fine and powdery specks into two golden loaves of substantial, nourishing bread.

Simply called Yeasted Bread, the recipe comes from The Tassajara Bread Book, first published in 1970 by Edward Espe Brown. At the time of publication, Edward was in his mid-20s, newly married and running the kitchen at Tassajara, a Zen spiritual center located in the remote Ventana Valley in Central California.

Edward Espe Brown

Opened in the 1960s, Tassajara was the first Zen spiritual center in the United States, and also the only Zen monastery outside of Asia. There in the Los Padres National Forest, students and guests from all over the world came to practice Zen philosophies and Buddhist principles in order to gain a more gentle approach to life. One that focused heavily on kindness, compassion, and thoughtfulness.

Los Padres National Forest. Photo credit: National Fish & Wildlife Foundation.

Due to its remote location, food for the guests, students, and staff was grown on-site at Green Gulch Farm, part of the Zen Mountain Center campus. Edward saw firsthand the time and care it took to grow the vegetables and fruits that eventually wound up in Tassajara’s kitchen for him and his helpers to prepare. With every chop and slice, simmer and slow roast, he continued that same level of care and attention in his cooking. He looked at every single ingredient as if it were a gift that he in turn would make into another gift of a satisfying meal for his friends, family, and guests at Tassajara to enjoy.

The kitchen at Tassajara. Photo credit: Bradley Allen.

“When I cook, I feel nurtured, sustained, like there’s energizing going on. It makes me feel the preciousness of life,” Edward shared in a 1985 Peninsula Times Tribune interview.

It’s that level of care and appreciation for the act of cooking and baking that established Edward’s reputation as a helpful coach in The Tassajara Bread Book. In this cookbook, as well as the other Tassajara books that followed, Edward wasn’t interested in telling home cooks how to make perfect food. He knew the act of cooking itself was too frenetic and ever-changing to prescribe a set of strict rules and guidelines that would be automatically applicable each and every time you came to the kitchen. Instead, he was interested in offering an understanding on how to approach cooking. He was interested in placing focus on intention and gratitude. Appreciating the life of the vegetable, the sharpness of the knife. Appreciating the aromatic steam from a bubbling broth, the flavors created when one ingredient combined with another, and the presence of the people sitting around the table. Good food would follow via the care put into its preparation.

Apart from being the first kind bread recipe that I’ve ever encountered, Edward’s bread book was also the first cookbook I’d ever run across that opens with a two-page poem of sorts that he wrote himself about working in the kitchen. It reads more like a spoken word piece than a traditional poem, but it has lovely sentiment and turns of phrase and sets the whole tone for the Tassajara cooking and breadmaking experience. Here’s an excerpt about mid-way through…

Each thing, asking to be seen, heard,

known, loved, a companion in the dark.

“Take care of the food, it is said,

“as though it was your own eyesight,”

not saying oh that’s alright, we

have plenty, we can throw that away.

Table, teapot, measuring cups, spoons:

the body within the body,

the place where everything connects.

The place where everything connects. That’s how Tassajara’s Yeasted Bread can best be described. A combination of person, plant, preparation, and product. Rest assured, you are following a recipe with step-by-step instructions and a definitive end result, but you are also following your heart, your intuition, and your awareness of the process in equal measure.

Coming from the earth, coming from the air,

a cool breeze, a spark, a flame, a go ahead:

Cook, offer yourself, hold nothing back.

Cooking is not like you expected, not like

you anticipated. What is happening is unheard

of, never before experienced. You cook. No mistakes.

You might do it differently next time, but

you did it this way, this time.

The end result is what it is.

– Edward Espe Brown

Breadmaking can be tricky. There are a lot of factors that can intervene and mess with the process – humidity, air conditioning, hard water, soft water, oven temperatures, inactive ingredients, bacteria, a hot atmosphere, a cool environment. All components that may or may not be within your control. I found it to be very calming to read about a breadmaking process that begins by telling you, first and foremost, to relax.

An excerpt from The Tassajara Bread Book.

This was the first sandwich bread recipe I have tried to make since moving to New England. I didn’t know how my oven was going to act, or if our coastal air would make a difference, or if the summer heatwave temperatures on the day I first made it would help or hinder the process. Was it luck that made the bread turn out so well on the first try? Or was it the recipe and Edward’s call to action to treat every step along the way with care and kindness?

Edward called this recipe the basis from which all other bread recipes in the book are created. A springboard for later adding in additional flavorings or flours, as well as a solid resource for further experimentation and exploration of your own making. I’m not an expert breadmaker in any sense of the word and have had many failed experiments using other recipes from other places over many years, but none of those recipes ever mentioned baking with kindness and appreciation, nor stated anything close to Edward’s it-is-what-it-is philosophies. That might just be the winning equation to a good loaf of bread.

In case you have ever struggled, like me, with making homemade bread that winds up turning out flat, flavorless, or weighing twenty pounds, then this recipe will show you how to avoid all three. There’s a small amount of brown sugar that adds a hint of sweetness to the dough and also helps feed the yeast, but other than salt and butter, there are no other flavor enhancers. It produces two simple loaves that are ideal for sandwiches or toast with butter and jam. And it makes the type of bread meant to work in collaboration with other toppings, not compete with them. The loaves are of medium density with a light but substantial weight that makes you feel like you’ve eaten something nutritious, packed with good-for-you carbs and protein on a level that will sustain you for hours instead of just a few minutes. It’s not light and fluffy like a croissant nor is it hard and heavy like a peasant loaf. It’s somewhere in between. Spongey but firm with a texture that holds it shape and won’t fall apart when you cut it. I found it to be such a great, delicious, simple all-around bread. A best bread. Baked with kindness.

By 1973, three years after The Tassajara Bread Book was published, Edward had gained quite a following. The book at that point had sold over 150,000 copies, and racked up accolades from food critics, professional chefs and home cooks around the country. Edward went on to write Tassajara Cooking and then The Complete Tassajara Cooking, each featuring vegetarian recipes along with favorites from the bread book. In 1995, The Tassajara Bread Book celebrated its 25th anniversary with a reprinting and emphatic praise from the Washington Post, deeming it “the bible of breadmaking.” As it turns out, there is something about baking with kindness and gratitude, after all. Edward was right. The good food follows.

I can see why breadmaking is such a fulfilling form of baking. It’s a calming act. An encouraging endeavor. A delicious result. In our busy modern-day world that is grappling with so much unrest, noise, and difficult situations, it’s the serenity of this baking endeavor that I found to be most appealing. Baking in this Tassajara way is an act of love on all accounts…. thoughtfulness, acknowledgment, gratefulness, gratitude, and not just for the food but for yourself in the present moment too.

Tassajara Yeasted Bread

(makes 2 loaves)

3 cups lukewarm water (Note: lukewarm registers between 85 degrees F – 105 degrees F and does not feel warm or cold when splashed on the inside of your wrist).

1 1/2 tablespoons dry yeast (2 packets)

1/4 cup sweetening (honey, molasses or brown sugar) (I used brown sugar, loosely packed.)

1 cup dry milk (optional) ( I did not use it)

4 cups whole wheat flour or substitute unbleached white flour

4 teaspoons salt

1/3 cup oil or butter

3 cups additional whole wheat flour or unbleached white flour

1 cup additional flour for the kneading process

Dissolve the yeast in the water. Stir in sweetening and dry milk, if using. Stir in four cups of flour, one cup at a time, stirring briskly after each addition to form a thick batter. Scrape down the sides of the bowl occasionally as you mix. After the fourth cup of flour is incorporated, mix well with a wooden spoon for 100 strokes until the batter is very smooth.

Cover bowl with a damp cloth and let rise for 45 minutes in a spot that is between 85-100 degrees in temperature. If the spot is cooler than this temperature the dough will take longer to rise.

After 45 minutes, fold in the salt and oil or butter. Fold in the additional three cups of flour, mixing until the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl.

Using the final fourth cup of flour spread out on a board, knead the dough for about 10 minutes or until it no longer sticks to the board. Knead the dough by flattening it with your hands and then folding it in half by pulling the top half down to meet the bottom. Use the heels of your hands to push the dough down and forward, rocking your whole body forward with each push, not just your hands and arms. Rotate the dough a quarter of the way around and repeat each previous motion, flattening, folding down, and pushing the dough forward. Keep rotating and repeating these steps for the entire 10 minutes until the dough is smooth.

Put the dough back in the bowl, cover it with a damp cloth, and let it rise 50-60 minutes until doubled in size.

Punch down the dough by placing your fist into the center of the dough and then all over it about 15-20 times.

Let it rise in the same bowl for 40-50 minutes again until doubled in size.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. If using an electric oven, preheat it to 325 degrees.

Shape the dough into a round ball and cut into two equal pieces. Shape each piece into a ball and let them rest for 5 minutes.

Knead each ball in your hand five or six times. Shape the dough into logs. Oil two bread pans and then place a dough log in each pan.

Let the dough rise 20-25 minutes in the pans.

Cut the top of each loaf with a 1/2″ inch slit to allow steam to escape. For a golden brown, shiny top, brush the surface of each loaf with an egg wash made of 1 egg beaten with 2 tablespoons water or milk. (I used milk.)

Bake for 50-60 minutes or until golden brown.

Remove from the pans and let the loaves cool on a rack.

Although it took about 6 hours to make from start to finish, the time passed quickly and was peppered with little moments of surprise and delight as the dough bubbled and popped, rose to magical heights, and filled the house with the warm, inviting scent of a bakery. It’s pretty lofty to say that a slice of homemade bread can cure the world of all its harms, but cooking with kindness, appreciation, and an open heart is a good start.

Delicious enjoyed still warm from the oven, at room temperature the next day, or toasted slice by slice, I didn’t encounter any situation in which this bread did not taste wonderful. The only thing I haven’t tried yet is freezing it. As fast as I can make the loaves, they seem to disappear pretty quickly. I’m making a new batch this weekend though, so I’ll freeze a loaf and update the post with details on how that turned out.

In the meantime, if you find yourself stressed out or overloaded this summer, take a break, bake this bread and think about all the wonderful things there are to be greatful for in this world starting with your own two hands, the mixing bowl you’ll use, and the yeast and the sugar that will you get you started. By activity’s end, you’ll feel like you have embarked on a mini-vacation.

Cheers to Edward for helping us focus our intentions on kindness and gratitude in our cooking, instead of fast-made food and pressure-filled perfection. Cheers to the yeast, flour, butter, sugar, water, and salt. To the antique bread board, the 1930s mixing bowl, and the modern-day oven that made this post possible. And cheers to the beautiful, delicious loaves they produced. I hope you love this best kindest bread recipe just as much.

—

Learn more about Tassajara here.

Find vintage Tassajara cookbooks in the shop here.

Celebrating Mom: Homemade Chocolate Sauce & The Power of Passed Down Recipes

Published on by In The Vintage Kitchen4 Comments

There it is. In all the swoops and swirls, the dips, the flourishes, the misspellings, the slanted letters, the shaky hand. There’s the story and the memory. There’s the cook. There’s the guy, the gal, the friend, the aunt, the spouse, the sister, the dad, the mom. There’s the he, the her, the who, the what, the when. There’s the life.

Handwritten recipe cards and cooking scrapbooks are the heartbeat of the kitchen. They are the record keepers of culinary explorations. The physical testaments of good times and good food. The guardians of memories that ensure that loved ones long gone remain present and that favorites stay afloat.

On a handwritten recipe card, no one ever dies or moves away or leaves the friendship or the family. With every dot of an i, cross of a t, loop of an o, handwritten measurements, ingredient lists, and instruction guidelines pass over illnesses and arguments, ignore long distances and intermittent communications, rise above world events and traumatic upsets. They defy decades and borders, cities and languages, personality clashes and cultures. Hands down, there is no better way, and definitely no more delicious way, to get closer to a memory or a person than through food made from a recipe that has been passed down from one cook to another.

Whip up Aunt Louisa’s banana bread, Grandpa Gordon’s hot fudge cake or Cousin Camilla’s corn chowder soup. Put on a pot of Paula’s poblano chili or Theresa’s heirloom tomato sauce. Mix up a casserole of Betty’s baked brown rice or Sarah’s cheesy egg souffle, and these cooks suddenly appear in exactly the way you remember them. It doesn’t matter if the recipe is two years old, 28 years old, or 200 years old; magic still surrounds the very foods that once made the making of them so memorable.

In the late 1990s, my mom made a slim binder for each of her kids filled with all of our favorite family recipes. At the time, she was just learning how to use a computer, so instead of handwriting each one, which she normally would have done if there wasn’t so many recipes and four sets of copies to be made, she typed them out page by page, category by category, and printed them out. One copy for each binder.

I don’t recall how long it took her to type these recipes into the computer, nor exactly how many she included, but I do remember the excitement that I felt when the binder arrived. My mom grew up in a small town in the Pacific Northwest during the 1940s and was raised on food she often describes as wholesome and nutritional. Her parents valued hard work, resourcefulness, outdoor activities, and homemade food always made from scratch.

My mom and grandmother.

My grandmother would be the first to say that she did not think of herself as a great cook, but everything she ever made that I remember was delicious. Pot roast, twice-baked potatoes, homemade bread… those were some of her specialties. My mom learned the basics of cooking not so much from her mom but from her home ec class in school. When my mom became a mom herself and moved to California, my oldest sister remembers simple recipes and a lot of health food coming from the kitchen while she was growing up in that same from-scratch manner that my grandmother championed too. Fifteen years later, when I came along and the whole family was living in New York, my mom was traveling the world with my dad, courtesy of his airline executive career. Her culinary palate and pursuits expanded to include more international cuisine from the places she was often visiting. France, Italy, Germany, Egypt, Greece, Africa, Asia, the Mediterranean all influenced what she was making at home in one way or another.

My mom in Monte Carlo in the 1980s, shortly before we enjoyed a spectacular dinner of homemade risotto aboard our friend’s boat. Sadly, much to my whole family’s disappointment, we never collected that recipe to share.

Like my grandmother, my mom wouldn’t openly boast that she herself is a great cook. Even though the food she prepares has always been, and still is, undoubtedly delicious, and she’s well known among her friends and family for making lovely meals. But what she lacks in confidence or personal recognition, she more than makes up for in wholeheartedly promoting a good recipe when she sees one.

While I was growing up she was a devout reader of magazines like Sunset, Food & Wine, Bon Appetit, and Gourmet. My parents entertained quite a bit, often treating their NYC restaurant-regular-eating friends to a home-cooked meal at our family house located in a sleepy suburb along the Hudson River. And because my dad did a lot of dinnertime/cocktail party networking, my mom was always trying out new recipes on us kids that would be suitable for party fare or hosting my dad’s European colleagues.

So when her slim binder arrived in the mail just after I finished with college and was ready to start throwing my own dinner parties, it felt like the best, most dependable gift in the world. Thanks to her binder, I had all the good recipes in hand. The ones that always brought comfort, the ones that always received rave reviews, the ones that traveled well for potlucks and picnics, and the ones that looked especially pretty on a plate. The ones that came from her sister’s kitchen (also a wonderful cook) and the ones that came from her mom and dad and their parents. And the ones that my mom had perfected over years of revisions. In the binder were all my favorites… Thanksgiving stuffing, Grandma’s casserole, all the fruit pie recipes, the Israeli chicken, Aunt Patti’s chocolate layer cake, the tortellini summer salad, the three bean casserole, the German-style chicken with the creamy noodle sauce, the much-loved potato salad.

Not long after the binder arrived, my grandmother passed away at the age of 97. One of the things I asked my mom if I could have was some of my grandmother’s handwritten recipes from her recipe box. Back home, I taped each one, a little over two dozen in total, into the blank areas that separated one typed recipe from another in the binder. Those early additions of Grandma’s recipes led to further cutting and pasting inclusions as I, too, discovered and collected recipes from various sources. Friends, food magazines, newspapers, on-loan cookbooks, my brother and sisters, their spouses, their families, my husband, his family and a whole host of people I’ve had the joy of sharing a meal with along the way over these past decades all have a presence via a recipe or two or twenty in the binder.

With each new recipe addition, my enthusiasm for cooking grew and grew. The binder grew and grew too. Eventually, it outgrew the slim size that my mom initially packaged the favorites in, and I transferred everything to an extra-large 3-inch binder. Quickly enough, that one filled up and overflowed, too. So a second extra-large 3-inch binder was acquired, and I divided half of my mom’s original categories into one binder and the other half into the second binder, thinking that I had arrived at the ultimate storage solution. But my enthusiasm for cooking and recipe collecting has yet to calm down, and the two binders are now stuffed full to bursting once again.

Despite their stuffed sausage appearance, now when I flip through these two binders, I see nothing but joy in years and years of memories. I see my mom’s handwriting in the original recipe category tabs.

I see my husband’s handwritten recipes for his pork pie inventions.

I see my sister-in-law’s slightly charred recipe card for baking powder biscuits that accidentally got stuck to the bottom of the baking sheet and cooked right along with the biscuits. I see the handwriting of my dearest friend, whom I’ve known since kindergarten, on a recipe for oven-roasted leeks that marks the first Thanksgiving that we cooked together.

There’s a recipe from my dad’s ex-wife written on his airline office stationery taped into the casserole section. There’s my grandmother’s delicate and lacy penmanship, my aunt’s large and loopy handwriting, midcentury recipe cards, tanned newspaper clippings from up-and-coming chefs featured in the New York Times, and hundreds of hand-cut recipes from all the great cooking magazines before they went online, before they created paywalls to access them, or before they folded for good. Recipes from Saveur, Bon Appetit, Gourmet, Southern Living, Cooking Light, Martha Stewart Living, Food & Wine all fill these binder pages, making them like my own homemade version of epicurious.com

The gift that my mom gave me years ago is the gift that has literally and figuratively kept on giving day in and day out. And it just keeps on encouraging more cooking and more collecting. That’s the power of a good passed-down recipe. I have my mom to thank for all this collecting and curiosity. For my love of old recipes and the memories they represent. My mom and I don’t always see eye to eye on everything, but when it comes to cooking, we have a shared interest and a mutual understanding surrounding food and meal-making that can always bring us together.

A lot of people inspire me when it comes to cooking, but it’s my mom’s slender binder of a book that was the original muse that started all this recipe collecting to begin with. I don’t think she could have known the depths to which I would eventually come to love her gift while she was typing away at those recipes on the computer all those years ago. How much her act of recording them would come to mean so much to my culinary journey. But now those recipes are among my most prized treasures. So it’s with a sincere heart on this Mother’s Day, that I wanted to say thank you to my mom for the joy she created in passing down our family favorites.

To celebrate the day and the occasion, I’m so happy to share one of the recipes from my mom’s family favorites collection. The recipe is for homemade chocolate sauce. A sweet treat companion that both inspires and complements so many other desserts.

Quick to make (less than 15 minutes) and lovely for all sorts of foods, it is thicker than syrup, yet thinner than frosting in consistency. It can be poured over ice cream like a hot fudge sundae, drizzled over a simple sheet cake like frosting, layered in clear glass stemware for parfaits, or served like a dipping sauce for fresh fruit.

Always a winner in my book, I have made this recipe so many times for so many different holidays from Valentine’s Day to Christmas and every season in between. I’m not sure where my mom got the recipe from – if it was truly a family recipe that was passed down to her or if it was just a favorite that she picked up somewhere along her culinary adventures. I could Google these ingredients and probably find the source pretty quickly, but for once, the provenance doesn’t interest me. I’ll always think of it as my mom’s homemade chocolate sauce. And in turn, whenever I make it, I always think of my mom and her gift of good food. Tried and true.

Chocolate Sauce

Makes 2 cups

1 cup sugar
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tablespoons flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup boiling water
1 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix together the sugar, cocoa powder, flour, and salt in a medium saucepan.

Add in 1 cup of boiling water and stir constantly over medium-high heat while the mixture comes to a slow boil.

When the consistency thickens enough to coat a spoon but still drips off the spoon in a slow, steady stream, drop by drop, it’s ready to be removed from the heat. This consistency level usually takes about five minutes to achieve. Stir in the butter and vanilla. Serve hot or let cool to room temperature. If you have any leftovers, it stores well in the fridge in an air-tight glass jar for up to five days.

If you serve this as a dipping sauce with fruit, in a parfait, or over ice cream, let it cool to room temperature. If you are serving it over cake, serve it hot. There’s also room to add your own additional accompaniments too in the form of chopped nuts, coconut flakes, or a dollop of whipped cream as my mom suggested in her original recipe. However you choose to enjoy it, I hope it becomes a new favorite family recipe in your kitchen too.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there who inspire kitchen adventures in more ways than one. And cheers to my mom, for every single home-cooked meal, every single shared recipe, and every single family favorite that was recorded in the marvelous, magical gift that has now become my most treasured memory-keeper in the kitchen.

Jamaican Rice and Beans and a 1940s Trip to the Caribbean

Published on by In The Vintage Kitchen2 Comments

Welcome back to the International Vintage Recipe Tour. When we last left off on our around-the-world culinary adventures, we were in Italy cooking up Chicken Canzanese and spotlighting the artistic and culinary career of Edward Giobbi and his talented family.

Chicken Canzanese

A painting by Edward Giobbi

This time, our international itinerary takes us to Jamaica, where we are cooking a traditional heritage food, Jamaican Rice and Beans, making milk from a fresh coconut, and exploring the island 1940s-style via a 1948 Pan Am travel film and a selection of first-hand observations experienced by visitors to the island post-World War II.

A vintage recipe for Jamaican Rice & Beans

1940s Kingston Jamaica postcard

It’s easy enough nowadays to see what a modern-day Jamaican holiday could look like thanks to the internet, but can you imagine what it looked like 80 years ago? This throwback travel post draws attention to the excitement of a tropical holiday experience in the 1930s and 1940s during the golden age of travel, back when Jamaica was a newcomer to the tourism industry.

Jamaican Tourism Guide circa 1937. Image courtesy of jamaicahotelhistory.com

Back when hats, heels, suits, and dresses were staples of vacation wardrobes…

1940s Resortwear Fashion Trends

and when airplane travel looked like this…

Pan American Airways Caribbean Clipper postcard circa 1931

Back when flight attendants provided an array of services akin to that of a luxury hotel concierge…

The role of a flight attendant in the 1940s

and when a trip to an exotic Caribbean island was considered a dreamy, decadent, once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Vintage 1930s Jamaica travel guide to Montego Bay. Image courtesy of jamaicahotelhistory.com

It’s an escapist getaway for certain, to a time and a place so steeped in hospitality that its national tourism slogan is “Jamaica: The Heartbeat of the World.” Heartbeat indeed. This post is a swoonworthy one for all of our vintage travel aficionados complete with a delicious heritage recipe to match. Welcome to country number 26 on the International Vintage Recipe Tour. Welcome to Jamaica.

Prior to the 1930s, Jamaica’s tourism population was a small, subdued bunch made up mostly of elderly retirees, the medically infirm, and the ultra-wealthy. Travel to the island during the first part of the 20th century was difficult, expensive, and lacked a suitable infrastructure that could readily accommodate a large influx of guests. But by the mid-1930s, Jamaica was tourist-ready.

The hospitality industry as it started to bloom and blossom in the 1920s and 1930s in Jamaica

The hotels were built, the staffing was in place, and a slew of leisure activities awaited guests. Vacationers were ready too. They were more mobile, there were more flights to New York and Miami (the gateway cities to the Caribbean) and airlines were expanding service to the islands offering faster transportation than ship-to-shore travel.

Unfortunately, the excitement was short-lived. World War II put a pause on all travel to Jamaica. But following the end of the war, an exuberant sense of adventure and wanderlust, especially from the American market, caused Jamaica’s tourism numbers to rise from less than 5,000 per year in the 1920s to close to 100,000 visitors per year by the late 1940s. Today, Jamaica welcomes over 1.4 million visitors annually.

One of the most well-known hotels on the island was The Myrtle Bank Hotel in Kingston which operated from 1870-1964. It’s featured here in a 1940s brochure courtesy of jamaicahotelhistory.com

Credited with being the first country to actively promote tourism in the Caribbean, the post-WWII introduction of Jamaica was exciting on all fronts. Media campaigns began rolling out in creative ways that highlighted the island’s beautiful beaches, turquoise-colored water, engaging cities, tropical climate, jungle-rich flora and fauna, and friendly faces. Aside from those show-stoppers, the other attractive and important component to Jamaica’s successful promotion was its convenient location in the Caribbean Sea. Just a short 90 minute flight Miami, it offered almost instant gratification. Paradise was close.

I thought discussing Jamaica’s early rise in tourism would be a fun cultural touchpoint to pair with this international vintage recipe because it’s emergence as a true destination vacation occurred over 90 years ago and travel on all fronts today is so different than what it was then. Today, we slog through airports and plane travel to get our destinations as quickly as possible in the most comfortable clothes possible. We consult the internet for practically every detail of our vacation from lodging to sightseeing to restaurants. We read reviews online, we look at ratings. We take into account a stranger’s bad experience as well as their good ones. We juggle safety concerns, security threats, disease outbreaks and world events. And for most travelers today, it’s a comfort to be able to see and know exactly what we are getting into when we take a trip abroad.

In the 1940s, travel was different. It was more carefree, less planned. Travelers knew where they were going, but they didn’t necessarily always know what they were going to see. Curiosity and discovery led the adventure. To get a sense of what traveling to Jamaica was like in the 1940s, I’ve included this fun and insightful 24-minute travel short that was produced by Pan American Airlines in 1948. It whisks viewers along on the adventures of Ms. Dale, an American traveler who is exploring the Caribbean on a two-week vacation aboard Pan Am’s propellered clipper ship, courtesy of a custom itinerary prepared for her by a whimsical, animated character named Clip, the Spirit of Travel.

Meet Clip!

Meet Ms. Dale!

Presented as an enticing tourism piece to highlight Pan Am’s newly expanded routes to the West Indies, Central and South America, and Mexico, this travel film made its rounds, often accompanied by a representative from Pan Am, at libraries, museums, civic organizations, schools, and travel agencies around the United States beginning in January 1948. Showcasing the warm and sunny climate Jamaica offered during a time of year when almost all of America was wrapped up in a cold blanket of winter weather was alluring marketing at its best. The film received rave reviews around the country for its beauty, interest, and excitement in depicting the history and culture of this exotic string of islands floating in the Caribbean Sea.

To give you an example of the type of reception the film received… on October 11th, 1948 at the Lincoln School Auditorium in Kalamazoo, MI, nine hundred tickets were available for a nighttime showing of Wings to Cuba and the Caribbean. 900 tickets! This illustrates not only the level of interest in the subject matter but also the attraction of movies in the 1940s.

In the film, Ms. Dale island hops around the Caribbean beginning in Cuba. She arrives in Jamaica at the 13-minute mark. If you wanted to skip ahead, you’ll find her en route to the island at 13:27.

I found this travel short to be captivating in so many ways. Not only was it fun to see vintage film footage of the tropics but I loved how it combined flight, fashion, fun facts, music and history into a compact story that gave you an immediate sense not only of what life was like in the Caribbean but also what life was like in the 1940s too.

Watching Wings to Cuba and the Caribbean in 1948 provided many viewers with a first-time glimpse of the islands from a cinematic perspective. At the same time, equally enticing tourism promotion for the Caribbean began appearing more and more frequently in newspapers, and magazines too. I pulled some snippets from vintage archives and combined them with vintage postcards of the era to showcase exactly how, in mid-century America, you would have been introduced to this exotic island.

A vintage travel postcard circa 1930-1945, Greetings from Jamaica, B.W.I. A beautiful Jamaican peasant girl. Jamaica, B. W. I.: Photo by Cleary & Elliott

Vintage travel postcard of Kingston, the capital of Jamaica circa 1930-1945

Vintage Jamaica travel postcard… The Banana Tree and Fruit circa 1930-1945

Vintage Jamaican travel postcard, Market Scene at Constant Spring circa 1930-1945

Since its emergence on the tourism scene in the 1930s and 40s, Jamaica has become a treasured and popular resort destination, winter getaway, and honeymoon haven for travelers around the world. Even if you have never visited yourself, you are still familiar with it. You’ve seen photos, watched a video, read a book, heard stories from someone else who has been there. We are all familiar with the beautiful, bright smiling faces of local residents. We know the palm studded beaches, the gorgeous blue water, the relaxed vibes, the music, the pretty hotels. But in the 1940s it must have been magical to experience the island for the first time as a brand-new destination. To experience the talcum-powder soft beaches, the two mule carts, the afternoon tea hour, the mountain of cotton trees, the gay and leisurely atmosphere. It must have been awe inspiring to see it in its pristine form overflowing with a proud, fresh-faced enthusiasm. Jubilant with a happy-you-are-here hospitality. It must have been magical to see the island barely touched by the trappings of tourism. Unaffected yet by repetitive foot traffic caused by the millions of travelers that would eventually come to it, mold it, define it, shape it into something influenced a little bit here and there by something else from somewhere else. In the 1940s, Jamaica felt new to the world to a new set of travelers unlike any other place in the world.

We are all spoiled these days with an overconsumption of information and an in-the depth understanding of the world on just about every topic under the sun. Sometimes, when everything is at our finger tips that leaves little room to ever discover something truly new. But imagine, for a moment that it’s the 1940s. You don’t own a television, but you do read the newspaper. There’s a movie theater in your town, a globe on your desk, and a stack of travel magazines on your bookshelf. You long for far-flung adventures and travel to exotic places but you’ve yet to ever leave your home city. A showing of Wings To Cuba and the Caribbean comes to your town. You fall in love with the islands. You begin to read more and more stories about Jamaica in the newspaper. You see tourism ads start to appear in the travel section. Your favorite magazine features it in a multi-page spread. You take Ms. Dale’s lead and you book a trip through a local travel agent. Finally, the day arrives and you board the propellered plane with the the Pam Am logo. It’s your first international adventure. Your first tropical vacation. Your first real-life glimpse of the world beyond anything you have ever known.

While it’s impossible to return to the excitement of Jamaica’s early tourism days of the 1930s and 1940s, we can at least return again and again to a vintage recipe from this beautiful country via the kitchen any time we want. It may not physically plunk you down on a sandy beach, but it will carry you away to a Caribbean state of mind. Nothing transports you to the tropics quite like a coconut.

This vintage recipe for Jamaican Rice and Beans calls for coconut milk made from a whole, fresh coconut. You could possibly substitute it for canned coconut milk as a shortcut, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Especially if you are longing for an escape of mind these days. I wholeheartedly recommend making this recipe as is, fresh coconut and all. It’s not only a fun meal to prepare but you’ll have a little bit of extra coconut water left over to make a rum cocktail while you cook, further embracing a vacation vibe.

If you have never cracked open a coconut before, rest assured, it is easier than you think. Look for a whole coconut in your local grocery store or market that is heavy in weight, pre-scoured, and sloshes with the sound of liquid inside when you shake it. This ensures that the coconut is fresh and easy to crack.

The West Indian Atlas circa 1775. Image courtesy of The New York Public Library Digital Collections.

The history of this rice and beans recipe is rooted in the slave trade which began in Jamaica in the 1500s by way of Africa and Spain. Over the course of the island’s history, the dish’s unique blend of grains and legumes morphed into different variations using different spices and came to be known by different names. The most traditional and widely accepted name is Jamaican Rice and Peas. But not peas of the round, green sort that we often think of as vegetables. It was originally made with small round red peas, also known as pigeon peas, also known as gungo peas.

Cajanus cajan aka pigeon peas aka gungo peas.

At some point, gungo peas became more expensive and harder to find in Jamaican markets and kidney beans were substituted in their place, which is how this dish also became known as Jamaican Rice and Beans. Technically a pea is a bean as they are both members of the legume family so both names are correct, but we all know green peas are not kidney beans, and kidney beans are not red peas. Each has its own unique flavor profile, color, consistency, and shape. Nonetheless, today in Jamaica when it comes to this recipe, gungo peas and kidney beans are both accepted ingredients and it’s left up to personal preference as to which is the better bean/pea.

Aside from the extra bit of attention given to the coconut preparation, this recipe is easy to make and very economical. It serves 10-12 as a side dish and costs less than $15.00 to make. Equally enjoyable as a full meal on its own, this dish also freezes well, reheats beautifully, and acts as both a comfort food and a vegan meal. Since it contains both carbs and protein, it’s especially lovely for this time of year as we start spending more hours and energy outdoors. But most importantly, this is a dish that will transport you to another era, a mental mini-break from the malaise and the momentous events of the modern world.

Jamaican Rice and Beans

(from the New York Times International Cook Book circa 1971)

Serves 10-12 as a side dish

1 cup dried red kidney beans

1 rib celery, cut in half

1 small wedge of green pepper (about 1/4 of a whole bell pepper)

1 large coconut

6 cups water

Salt to taste (I used 3 teaspoons)

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

2 1/2 cups uncooked rice

Place the beans in a large kettle and add water to cover to a depth of one inch. Add the celery and green pepper, cover and bring to a boil.

As the beans cook, prepare the coconut. There are three eyes on the coconut. One of them is soft enough to pierce. I like to use a corkscrew for this job but you can also use a shape paring knife or a Phillips-head screwdriver. Pierce that one eye and drain the coconut water from the interior into a large glass or mason jar. Once drained, with a heavy mallet, hammer, or the back of a butcher knife crack the coconut shell in several places, and using a paring knife, remove the meat from the shell in large pieces.

Once broken into pieces, do not bother to cut away the thin brown skin from the coconut flesh. Grate each piece of coconut using a fine grater.

Line a mixing bowl with cheesecloth and add the grated coconut. Add two cups of cold water and squeeze to extract the white liquid. This is coconut milk. Add two more cups of water and squeeze, then add the last two cups of water and squeeze again. This should yield roughly six cups of coconut milk.

Add all six cups of coconut milk to the simmering beans. Cover and cook until the beans are tender, about 1 and 1/2 hours in all. Stir frequently to prevent the beans from burning.

Add salt to taste, thyme, and the rice. Stir once and cover. Continue to cook until the liquid is absorbed by the rice, about 20 – 30 minutes.

When done the rice should be tender and all the liquid absorbed. Remove the cooked celery and green pepper. Fluff the rice. Serve as a side dish or as a vegetarian meal.

I garnished the beans and rice with finely chopped fresh green pepper just before serving. The contrast between the crisp green pepper and the soft rice and beans was lovely, almost like serving a chopped salad on top. I thought the coconut flavor might be more pronounced than it was but to my surprise no one ingredient overpowered the other. Instead, they all blended together to create a warm, comforting combination of flavors that is easily compatible and very complimentary with so many other types of food.

If you were serving this as a side dish, other traditional Jamaican accompaniments would include Jerk Chicken, Salted Fish or Curried Goat. I wouldn’t hesitate putting it in a taco or topping it with grilled shrimp or steak either. Or simply enjoy this one as is – a simple meal of rice and beans with a hint of tropical flavor to warm your spirit on these chilly days of early Spring. I hope by the time you sit down to the table to enjoy this meal, you’ll feel like you’ve had a little adventure.

Cheers to Jamaica for extending so much hospitality out into the world in the form of a beautiful place and a beautiful recipe. Join us next time on the International Vintage Recipe Tour as we head to Japan, our 27th country via the kitchen. See you there!

To catch up on previous International Vintage Recipe Tour posts visit here.

Celebrating International Women’s Day: Ten Vintage Cooks & Their Books That Impacted Global Cuisine

Published on by In The Vintage Kitchen4 Comments

Every year in the shop, while researching vintage and antique cookbooks, I discover an array of fascinating stories about 19th and 20th-century women who made an impact on the global culinary landscape. Sometimes these cookbooks are fueled by immigration stories. Women relocating to a new land only to realize a visceral homesickness for foods left behind in their old country. Other times they are written from travel adventures. Escapades to far-flung places that inspire a life-long interest in an exotic culture and a cuisine. And sometimes they are the scholarly pursuits of teachers, scientists, or home economists educated in food and nutrition intent on improving the overall health of men, women and children.

Today is International Women’s Day. To celebrate, I thought it would be fun to share a glimpse into the personal lives of some of the international cookbooks and their authors discovered within the past year that highlight a unique perspective on global food history and culture.

Some of these women are famous, long-lauded for their culinary achievements throughout the 20th century. But others in this list have almost all but been forgotten despite the impact they once made on the international food landscape. In an effort to collect unique food stories from around the globe and a cookbook from every country, it’s always inspiring to learn how the love of cooking experienced by one person can unite cultures, cross borders, and bring together many people all in the pursuit of a good meal.

2024’s International Women’s Day Instagram post featured Monica Sheridan, Wadeeha Atiyehh, Perla Meyers, Madeleine Kamman, Mrs. Balbir Singh, Amy Vanderbilt, Claudia Roden, Ada Boni, Paula Wolfert, and Countess Corry Van Limburg Stirum

Each year on International Women’s Day over on Instagram, I compile the list of the international vintage cookbook authors that were newly discovered in the previous year via books curated for the shop. It’s one of my most favorite posts of the year since it highlights not only heritage recipes but also draws attention to the achievements of women that may have slipped from the spotlight.

For whatever reason, I’ve never thought about incorporating the International Women’s Day Instagram post into a blog post too, but this year, I’m starting a new tradition and celebrating the ladies here as well. These ten women represent a range of life stories that extend beyond recipes, beyond food. They come from India, Ireland, and the Ukraine. They write of France, the US, and the UK. They tell stories of entrepreneurship, of immigration, of cultural preservation, of censorship. They are not only writers and cooks but social activists, suffragists, school teachers, and television personalities. But most importantly, they are reporters and recorders of life lived via the kitchen. Let’s look…

1. Maura Laverty – Feasting Galore (1961)

The first American edition of Feasting Galore: Recipes and Food Lore from Ireland was published in 1961. It was written by celebrated Irish novelist, playwright, journalist, and cooking authority, Maura Laverty (1907-1966) and debuted at a time in American culture when travel to Ireland and interest in Irish culture was newly on the rise.

Packed full of recipes, anecdotes, and folklore from the Emerald Isle, Maura’s cookbook featured 200 recipes interspersed between colorful stories about Irish culture and food. With an enchanting way of weaving storytelling into recipes that then transitioned back into stories again, Maura’s cookbook was unique in that it read like both a recipe book and a storybook all in one.

Growing up in County Kildare, Maura’s love of cooking began in childhood and was both encouraged and influenced by her maternal grandmother with whom she spent a lot of time. That relationship eventually formed the plot of a fiction book titled Never No More, published in 1942, which became a bestseller in Ireland and put Maura on the path to becoming a popular Irish writer. Despite the fact that her next three novels were banned by Ireland’s Censorship of Publication Board for obscenity (a stigma that has since been lifted) Maura pressed on writing plays, television shows, books on cooking, and children’s stories.

In and out of marriage to a fellow journalist, Maura supported herself and her children via her writing throughout her life. Known for her humor, captivating storytelling, and tenacity to continue working at her craft, despite falling victim to Ireland’s repressive book-banning policies, Maura’s perseverance, talent, and cooking expertise deemed her a national treasure. Introduced to America via several short stories she wrote for Women’s Day magazine in the 1950s, when Feasting Galore was published in New York by Holt, Rhinehart & Winston in 1961, it was to the delight of American book critics. “Looking into Maura Laverty’s book is like opening an old brown box and finding a real emerald,” noted food columnist Sylia Windle Humphrey of the Lexington Harold in 1961.

Interesting recipes from Feasting Galore include Fairy Rings, Potato Scones, Carrot Marmalade, Boxty on the Griddle, Elderflower Lemonade, Puddeny-Pie,  Emerald Sauce, Baked Limerick Ham, Wexford Sole in Cider Sauce, Bread and Cheese Panada, Dunmurray Rice, Crab Apple and Bramble Jelly, Pickled Gooseberries, Friday Manglam, Golden Vale Pudding, Nested Eggs, Whiskey Pie, Oat Cakes and Columcille Cookies. 

Photo of Maura Laverty courtesy of The Evening Star, March 16, 1947

2. Savella Stechishin – Traditional Ukrainian Cookery (1957)

When Ukrainian-Canadian home economist Savella Stechishin (1903-2002) first published her book, Traditional Ukrainian Cookery in 1957, there were about 450,000 Ukrainian immigrants living in Canada. That was a large increase from the 10,000 that initially immigrated to the Great White North in the early 1900s. Savella’s mission was to keep Ukrainian heritage alive by celebrating the traditional foods of her homeland and by teaching second and third-generation Ukrainian-Canadians the unique customs and culture of their Eastern European heritage. 

Ukrainian Immigrants in Canada circa early-mid 20th century. Images courtesy of the City of Vancouver Archives

An educational force, Savella’s pride in her heritage fueled her entire life in Canada. After immigrating from West Ukraine with her family as a young girl, Savella received a teaching degree in home economics from the University of Saskatchewan in the 1930s, went on to help establish the Ukrainian Women’s Association of Canada, taught cultural classes to students at the St. Petro Mohyla Institute, wrote a cultural column for the Ukrainian Voice for over two decades and was involved in work for the Ukrainian Museum of Canada. Perhaps most notable were her contributions on the culinary front with the publication of her cookbook in 1957. 

Published when Savella was 55 years old, it took her half a dozen years to complete the cookbook, which highlighted over 650 traditional recipes mostly gathered from pre-WWII Ukrainian recipe books. The challenge was not in finding wonderful Ukrainian recipes but in adapting them to modern-midcentury Canadian kitchens with proper measurements and ingredients equal in taste and flavor to that found naturally in the Ukraine. As Savella learned, foreign recipes don’t always translate easily in foreign lands and much testing had to be done. Luckily, chapters of the Ukrainian Women’s Association across Canada helped test and retest all the recipes to ensure they were true representatives of traditional Ukrainian cuisine. 

Upon debut, Traditional Ukrainian Cookery became the first Ukrainian cookbook ever published and was an instant bestseller. In addition to recipes, it featured notes on Ukrainian history, culture, holiday customs, and food presentation. In print through the 1990s, Savella’s cookbook sold over 80,000 copies worldwide making it not only a classic, go-to resource in both Canadian and Ukrainian kitchens but around the globe as well.

Interesting recipes include Stuffed Pork Tenderloin, Savory Roast Beef, Smetana Sauce with Green Onions, Lokshyna, Linyvi Holubtsi, Stuffed Onions, Potato and Cheese Casserole, Puffy Pampushky, Layered Sweet Nalysnyky, Sour Rye Bread, Babka with Pumpkin, Economical Perekladanets, Pyrih with Cabbage Filling, Uncooked Cheese Paska, Horikhivnyk, Caraway Krendi Pretzels, Crunchy Nut Rurky, Crackling Korzhyky Biscuits, Apple Pastila, and Dried fruit Candy plus so many more!

A hard-to-find cookbook these days, the sixth edition published in 1973 is available in the shop here.

3. Anne Wilan – La Varenne’s Paris Kitchen (1981)

Founded by Anne Wilan in 1975 in an old Parisian building that once housed a neighborhood cafe, L’Ecole de Cuisine La Varenne quickly became a preeminent culinary school for anyone wanting to learn traditional French cooking. For the next 15 years, culinary students from around the world would flock to this Paris school to learn all the foundational techniques that made French cooking so esteemed. With instruction in both English and French, students graduated with professional culinary degrees, and many went on to pursue careers in the food industry in all its facets from catering to restaurant ownership, line cooks to food writers and everything in between.

The popularity of the school saw branch programs open in rural France; Venice, Italy; Santa Monica, California; and at the Greenbrier Hotel in White Sulpher Springs, West Virginia. Due to high food costs, the Paris location closed in 1990 and the last of the satellite programs closed in 2017 in California.

The experience of running such an acclaimed enterprise led Anne, a decorated and beloved cook herself, to publish several books about her La Varenne experiences that not only shared details about the operation of the school but also included recipes too.

Published in 1981, La Varenne’s Paris Kitchen offered a course of study for home cooks in America who didn’t have the opportunity to attend class in France. Laid out in syllabus fashion, each of the seven instructors at the school, including Anne, provided sample menus and recipes of varying difficulty which home cooks could tackle chapter by chapter. By the end of the book, the goal was to be skilled in the foundational principles of French cooking.

Interesting recipes from La Varenne’s Paris Kitchen include Asparagus in Puff Pastry, Bearnaise Sauce, Chicken Breasts with Port, Tangerine Tart, Volcano Salad, Coffee Bavarian Cream, Veal Paupiettes with Lemon Stuffing, Light Apple Tart, Orange Chanteclaire, Stuffed Tomatoes and Eggs Maintenon.

Find a 1981 First Edition Copy of this book in the shop here.

4. Fu Pei-Mei – Pei Mei’s Chinese Cook Book (1969)

Fu Pei-Mei (1931-2004), undoubtedly the most beloved and famous Chinese/Taiwanese cook of the 20th century, came to her culinary pursuits like many women of the 1950s. As a young wife who wanted to impress her husband with her cooking prowess and tempting dishes, Fu began married life in Taiwan with her heart set on being a wonderful cook for her family and friends. But desire alone doesn’t make an excellent chef and Fu struggled in that newlywed period through the preparation of each and every dish that she set on the table for her discerning husband.

Frustrated with her own lack of ability, Fu paid local professional chefs to teach her the skills of good Chinese cooking. Over a two-year period, she mastered all the classics of her Chinese homeland and its distinct regions. She dazzled her husband and children with delicious food, becoming so confident in her abilities that she started teaching Chinese cooking lessons to women living in Taiwan. Those lessons led to cooking classes offered to US military personnel stationed in Taiwan along with their spouses. From there, her teaching courses climbed from in-person to on-camera as she hosted her own cooking show for Taiwan television. The cooking show would become a staple program and continue for forty years turning Fu Pei-Mei into a household name and a trusted authority on Chinese and Tawainese cooking well beyond her Taipai community.  

The trajectory of Fu Pei-Mei’s career is often compared to that of Julia Child’s in that she came to cooking following marriage, lived in a country different than her homeland where she learned from experts how to cook, and then became an expert herself. Just like Julia, Fu had a charming personality that won the hearts of women who found her accessible and relatable – an un-intimidating and encouraging presence in the kitchen. 

In 1969, Fu published her first cookbook, Pei Mei’s Chinese Cook Book, a 265-page collection of traditional recipes written in both Chinese and English. Two other volumes would follow along with numerous reprintings. Eventually, Fu would publish over 30 cookbooks throughout her career. 

To say that her influence on Chinese cooking was immense is an understatement. In Chinese culture, her recipes are iconic and her cookbooks are proudly passed down between generations. Still to this day, she remains the most trusted authority on Chinese cooking and her books are considered classics in the kitchen. 

Interesting recipes from Pei-Mei’s Chinese Cook Book include Dry Cooked String Beans, Chicken and Cucumber Salad, Shark’s Fin in Brown Sauce, Mongolian B-B-Q, Meat Balls with Sour Sauce, Flowered Chicken Soup, Sweet and Sour Cabbage, Ma-Po’s Bean Curd, Camphor and Tea Smoked Duck, Egg Fu Yung, Sweet and Sour Pork, Steamed Chicken with Green Onion, Shrimp with Cashew Nuts, and Stewed Chicken with Pineapple Sauce.

Find a rare 1969 bi-lingual edition of her cookbook in the shop here.

5. Jane Grigson – Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book (1978)

Just like all the famous greats in the kitchen… Julia Child, Elizabeth David, Madhur Jaffrey, Claudia Rodin…  British cookbook author and food writer Jane Grigson (1928-1990) holds high court in the kitchens of the 20th and 21st centuries. 

An epicurean powerhouse who first found her way to cooking from art gallery and editorial translation work, when it came to writing about and preparing food Jane’s influence on the culinary landscape rounded the globe in her efforts to bring forth interesting recipes and interesting stories. Combining world history, farming practices, cultural identity, gardening, home cooking, and travel stories, Jane’s food writing has the ability to sweep you up on a culinary adventure and push you into the kitchen for an engaging, colorful, and delicious experience.

The author of ten much-lauded cookbooks throughout her career, Jane published Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book in England in 1978. Covering 75 vegetables in alphabetical order across 600+ pages, Jane gathered recipes from history, from kitchens around the world, from other cooks and their books, and from her own kitchen to create this large-scale compendium chockful of veggies of all varieties.

When Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book debuted, it won several awards including the Glenfiddich Food and Drink Writer of the Year and the Andre Simon Memorial Book Fund Award. It still remains one of the most favorite of all Jane’s cookbooks, inspiring professional chefs and home cooks of all ages and skill levels. 

Interesting recipes from Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book include Gratin Savoyard, Chicken Gumbo, Palestine Soup, Pancakes with Carrot Filling, Sauerkraut Salad, Aubergine Slippers, Baked Avocado with Crab, Asparagus Fricassee, Letil and Pork Stew, and Sicilian Stuffed Peppers.

Find a 1979 First American edition in the shop here.

Photo of Jane Grigson courtesy of Tarrytown Daily News, Nov. 28 1992

6. Sarah Field Splint – The Art of Cooking & Serving (1926)

First published in 1926, The Art of Cooking and Serving was a modern take on meal planning, nutrition, and cooking techniques for the modern 1920s woman who didn’t want to spend the entire day cooking in the kitchen.

Containing just under 200 recipes, it was written by American Sarah Field Splint (1883-1959), a popular women’s magazine editor, suffragette, and domestic science expert, and produced in partnership with Crisco – a vegetable shortening product that Sarah endorsed as an alternative to butter. 

First introduced in 1911, most home cooks relied on Crisco for cooking and frying but by the 1920s, it started to be marketed for baking as well. Sarah’s cookbook helped highlight the wide variety of recipes that could be achieved using Crisco. Everything from cakes to muffins, breads to breakfast foods, sauces to souffles could all be perfected with the help of this reliable vegetable shortening. By the time the 1931 edition of The Art of Cooking and Serving was published, over 540 recipes were included, which suggests not only the popularity of the book but the enthusiasm for Crisco as well.

Crisco aside, what’s especially interesting about this Depression-era cookbook, is the focus on getting the most value both physically and emotionally from each meal as possible.  Highlighting nourishing foods, the reuse of frying oil, and the repurposing of leftovers for additional meals signaled the sign of trying economic times. A chapter on servantless households details the changing roles of women when it came to food preparation. And emphasis was placed on good taste, both in food and presentation, with the mission to make both as hospitable and alluring as possible. As Sarah advised… a pretty china pattern added just as much fortitude for the spirit as did a steak dinner for the body. 

Interesting recipes include Orange Biscuits, Wedding Cake, Molasses Mint Taffy, Mexican Kisses, Hot Chocolate Sauce, Steamed Chocolate Pudding, Deep Dish Huckleberry Pie, Danish Pastry, Butterscotch Tarts, Ginger Cake, Mother’s Tea Cakes, Cheese Straws, Coffee Cake, Whole Wheat Griddle Cakes, Gree Corn Fritters, Potato Souffle, Sausage Turnovers, Jelly Omelet, Baked Spaghetti, Fried Hominey, Sweet Potato Croquettes, French Crullers, Raised Doughnuts, and Saratoga Chips 

7. The Women of St. Paul’s Church – The Art of Greek Cookery (1963)

The recipes in The Art of Greek Cookery were compiled in 1958, by 16 first-generation Greek women who were part of the congregation of St. Paul’s Greek Orthodox Church in Hempstead, New York.

First formed in 1944, St Paul’s Church by the late 1950s was thriving. Needing to expand as its membership grew, the ladies of the congregation started a recipe committee as part of the Church’s social organization known as the Mr. & Mrs. Club. The goal of the committee was to gather traditional Greek heritage recipes and compile them into a book for American cooks as a fundraiser to help pay for construction on a new building. With true grit and determination, these ladies got to work gathering, testing and adapting hundreds of recipes representative of their Greek culture.  

After two and half years of laboring, they published a simple spiral-bound cookbook entitled, The Grecian Gourmet. Both The New York Times and the New York Tribune published articles about the women and their book project, which caught the attention of home cooks all across the country.  Book orders poured in. The recipe committee was humbled and amazed that their little cookbook had become such a sensation.

The cookbook also caught the attention of New York publishing giant Doubleday and Company, who wanted to republish it under their “Art of ” cookbook series. And so The Art of Greek Cookery was born in 1963.

Containing a wealth of recipes ranging from appetizers to desserts, this cookbook also contained information on Greek wines, traditional feast days, customs, suggested menus, and a lovely forward by the then pastor, Father George Papadeas. To say that he was not only proud but impressed by the hard work and determination of these women was an understatement.  Just by reading the forward, the preface, and the introduction of this cookbook, you can tell that so much love and good cheer was behind this project. 100% of the proceeds from the book sales went into the church construction fund, which provided the congregation with more than enough money to undertake the expansion project.  Both the Church and the recipe club are still going strong today. 

Interesting recipes include Stuffed Grapevine Leaves, Cocktail Meatballs, Yogurt Dip, Stuffed Mussels, Buttermilk Soup, Chicken with Dill Sauce, Codfish Stew, Chicken Stefado, Roast Lamb with Artichokes, Fresh Ham Macaronada, Moussaka ( 3 versions!), Pastichio (also 3 versions!), Stuffed Cabbage Leaves, Zucchini Souffle, Squash Fritters, Rum Cake a la Grecque, Ravani, Butter Cookies, Halvah, Caramel Custard, Eggplant Preserves and Quince Puree.

8. Madhur Jaffrey – A Taste of India (1986)

Long before Madhur Jaffrey (b. 1933) became a culinary icon, she was a wife, and a mom, and an actress living in New York City. A strong sense of nostalgia and a desire to share some of her heritage foods with her American friends led Madhur to communicate with her mother via letters about the recipes she missed most from her homeland of India. For 15 years, the two women corresponded back and forth. That communication via mail led to Madhur’s first cookbook, An Invitation to Indian Cooking published in 1973.

Next, Madhur was off on a seven-year East Asian culinary adventure visiting Japan. Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Korea, and her own homeland of India to collect and record authentic vegetarian recipes from those cultures. The result of all that travel was a second cookbook published in 1981, Madhur Jaffrey’s World of the East Vegetarian Cooking.

By the time A Taste of India, her fifth cookbook was published in 1986, Madhur’s culinary reputation for outstanding authentic Indian cuisine was firmly established.  Exploring India’s diverse food customs and heritage, complete with a plethora of travel photographs, A Taste of India reads as much like a visitor’s guide as it does a recipe book, giving home cooks the chance to fully immerse themselves in the history and culture of fourteen distinct regions throughout India. 

Madhur was not a new face to the shop this year but A Taste Of India was, and it was so insightful regarding both the visual and practical art of food in India, that it’s included this year as a true heritage companion to Indian cooking.

A photo from A Taste of India

Interwoven with family stories, atmospheric memories from Madhur’s childhood and historical context surrounding each recipe, this cookbook was packed with fascinating information about what, how and why Indians eat the way they do and how home cooks could capture the essence of authentic Indian cuisine in their own American kitchens. 

Exploring a vast array of different culinary foods, each prepared according to the customs and traditions found in a myriad of diverse topographical locations around the country from mountains to deserts to tropical lowlands and coastal areas, A Taste of India highlighted recipes from Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Kashmir, Bengal, Hyderabad, Tamil, Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala. 

Interesting recipes included Potatoes Cooked with Ginger, Chickpea Flour Stew with Dumplings, Steamed Savoury Cakes, Walnut Chutney, Kashmiri Spinach, Chicken with Fresh Green Coriander, Fish in Bengali Sauce, Shrimp Cooked with Coconut Milk, Vegetables Cooked with Split Peas, Eggplants with Apple, Rice with Tomatoes and Spinach, Punjabi Black-Eyed Peas and Rice Cooked in Aromatic Broth.

9. Elizabeth Kander – The Settlement Cook Book (1901)

First published in 1901, The Settlement Cook Book was created by Mrs. Simon Kander, aka Elizabeth Black Kander (1858-1940) to help give immigrant families, mostly of Jewish descent, a proper start in America as they relocated from Eastern Europe to Wisconsin. Lizzie, a college graduate and lifelong community activist taught cooking classes at a social service agency called The Settlement. Helping Milwaukee’s economically challenged immigrant communities, gain valuable skills in the kitchen, The Settlement helped acclimate its new residents to a more modern American way of life. 

Containing traditional foods from their homeland (included for comfort) as well as foods popular in America during the turn of the 20th century (included for practicality and social acceptance), Lizzie’s desire was to give all families a successful start in America from the inside out via good food, nutrition, information and sanitary kitchen care.

Part of Wisconsin’s assimilation movement in the early 1900s, Lizzie first published The Settlement Cook Book in 1901, prompted by a fund-raising effort for the Settlement House. A runaway success, it was in continuous print for the next 90 years and became one of the few cookbook brands that accurately tells the story of Jewish American food evolution, eating habits, and appetite preferences over the course of the entire 20th century. Even after Lizzie passed away in 1940, this cookbook continued to make a valuable mark on the culinary landscape.

Interesting recipes from The Settlement Cookbook include Sour Cream Kolatchen, Almond Pretzels, Iced Coffolate, Homemade Vinegar, Matzos Charlotte with Apples, Red Cabbage with Wine, Koenigsberger Klops, White Wine Soup, Eggs a la Tarcat, Apricot Nut Bread, Matzos Sponge Roll, Banana Cake, Potato Chocolate Torte, Cardamon Cookies and a host of fun cocktails.

10. Ann Seranne – The Complete Book of Home Preserving (1955)

A former food editor at Gourmet magazine, a food columnist at the New York Post, and a prolific author, Ann Seranne was the pen name of American cook and writer Margaret Ruth Smith (1913-1988). 

On an educational trajectory to become a medical doctor, Margaret instead turned to food science after she was expelled for setting lab cats free during her college years. Writing about food was more in line with her beliefs than animal testing, so when she started developing a keen interest in kitchen science and food chemistry in the 1930s, she adopted the name Ann Seranne as her nom de plume.  Twenty-five books later, Ann was a leading expert and trusted resource in the culinary industry. 

In 1955, she published The Complete Book of Home Preserving. Leaving no food preservation method untouched, from canning fruits and vegetables to freezing meat to drying herbs and smoking fish, this cookbook was a treasure trove of history, food prep, and recipes ideal for kitchen gardeners, off-grid lifestylers or anyone interested in a self-sustainable food system.

Incredibly thorough as far as information, with recipes included to guide home cooks along the way, Ann offered all sorts of helpful assistance when it came to preparing food now to eat later. From equipment to dos and don’ts to selecting the right packaging and the right containers, no stone was left unturned. Techniques for drying herbs, preserving fish (ie rackling – an ancient Nordic style of fish preservation) and smoking meats included tried and true methods that were utilized in other countries too.

Lauded by food critics, home cooks, and columnists alike, many cookbooks throughout the 20th century focused lightly on canning but Ann’s book became a kitchen bible for self-sustainability.

Interesting recipes from The Complete Book of Home Preserving include Green Tomato Pickles, Cherry Marmalade, Strawberry Rhubarb Jelly, Watermelon Plum Conserve, Carrot Butter, Cantaloupe Orange Jam, Preserved Coconut, French Brandied Fruits,  Ginger Root Preserve, White Grapes in Cognac, Canned Baked Beans, Pate, Meat0Vegetable Stew, Crab Soup and Gumbo,. Canned Spiced Salmon, Artichoke Relish, Hot Dog Relish, Apple Chutney, Pickled Blueberries, Apple Ketchup, Smoked Country Sausage, Corned Beef, Dried Apples, and Velva Fruit.

Photo of Ann Seranne (left) in her kitchen courtesy of The Hamilton Spectator Dec. 11, 1968

I hope you found this list of cooks and their books just as interesting as I did. And that it not only piques your interest in learning more about the women included here but also inspires your own cooking journey and all the possibilities that await. You never know where a good recipe might lead.

Cheers to Maura, Savella, Fu, Jane, Elizabeth, Sarah, the ladies of St. Paul’s Church, Madhur, Anne, and Ann for sharing their kitchen journeys via books and recipes. Our modern-day meals would not be as delicious without your contributions. And cheers to all the millions of women around the globe who continue to cook, feed, create, dream, innovate, and inspire the culinary landscape of history, day in and day out, year after year. Because of your too often under-appreciated and overlooked cooking endeavors, we thrive.

Two Stories, One Recipe and What’s on the Calendar in the Vintage Kitchen for 2025

Published on by In The Vintage Kitchen7 Comments

Thousands of lives spend time in our kitchens. Every day, every week, every year. Even if your living situation is made up of just one or two people, dozens more move about your cooking space, unseen, whispering stories of history and heritage, of comfort and cooking secrets, of design and innovation, of hopes and dreams. I’m not talking about ghosts here, although maybe if you are an old home dweller you have a few of those too, but I am talking about the neverending inspiration brought forth by generations of cooks, inventors, gardeners, and artisans from years past that have made your kitchen and your cooking experience what it is today.

Hello and Happy New Year! There are so many exciting stories to share this year here on the blog, spanning centuries of history gathered from around the globe, that I can’t wait to get started. As the old adage goes, we have to look back in order to go forward, so despite challenging events occurring in the world on what feels like an overwhelming scale, this year, here in the Vintage Kitchen we are doubling down on sharing good stories about good cooks, making vintage recipes that provide comfort, connection and community, and highlighting moments from history that embrace the joyful celebration of food, friends, family and flowers. This inspiration to pack the year full of joy is thanks to an unlikely source who set the tone for the year on Day 1 of 2025.

Just as the sun was rising over our cold and frosty New England landscape on New Year’s Day, Liz, our seven-year-old potted lemon tree, presented her first, fully formed, sunshine-yellow Meyer lemon in four years. A major feat considering the many trials Liz has faced during much of her life, this gift of a sizeable, perfectly formed, perfectly ripe lemon was just the kind of joyful symbolism needed to set the Vintage Kitchen on the path to positivity and optimism heading into the new year.

Since she first became part of our plant family, I’ve written quite a bit about the life of Liz and the problems she’s encountered, but if you are new to the blog, here’s a quick recap. In 2018, Liz was a young sprout new to the world…

Fast forward a year later and Liz was happily growing bigger and more beautiful by the month, living the metropolitan city life in a sunny window down South. Her first harvest produced not one lemon, but three.

A year later in the spring of 2020, Liz suffered major wind damage from a tornado that blew through town not only breaking apart dozens of buildings in our neighborhood but also breaking a portion of Liz’s main branch and ripping apart 2/3rds of her underground root structure. She survived the ordeal, but just barely…

Not long after, she had a scale outbreak and just after that, she embarked on a South to North move that introduced her to an entirely new climate. By the time she landed in New England in 2022, Liz was looking pretty beleaguered.

Once the greenhouse was constructed in April of that same year, Liz was the first resident to call it home. Even though she was just a mere whisper of a tree at that point, my fingers were crossed that the warmth and the sun and the bright light, plus additional food and fertilizer, would be just the combination of care that she needed.

It took two full years and staying put in the same spot in the same pot, but Liz finally found her footing again thanks to the security of the greenhouse. Now measuring in at over 32″ inches in height, she’s made a substantial comeback.

She might not be back up to 2019 shrub-like status yet, but as you can see, she’s on her way to a full recovery. Over the course of last year, she flowered and formed baby lemons but none stayed on the vine long enough to grow weight and promise. Except two. A raccoon grabbed one of the lemons for a late-night snack but the other we watched grow bigger all summer as Liz herself grew bigger with larger leaves and longer branches. When the winter frost warnings came in late October, I brought Liz inside for the extra warmth and over the Christmas holidays, she rewarded us with clusters of citrus-scented flowers and the slowly ripening lemon.

After watching it turn from lime green to chartreuse to citron and then yellow, last Sunday, in a moment of long-anticipated celebration, I clipped this lovely little fruit from its branch and said a big thank you to Liz.

It takes a long time for a lemon to ripen on the vine. Liz in her entire seven-year life span so far has only brought five lemons to maturity. But the fruit isn’t really the joy of her, nor the point of this story. In the beginning, when she was a young sprout, I may have imagined future lemons by the boxful, but over the course of Liz’s life so far, the thing that I have come to love most about her is her resilience. Her continual attempt to reach towards the light. To keep going, keep growing despite difficulties and disasters. Emily Dickinson wrote the lines… hope is the thing with feathers… but in our case, here in the Vintage Kitchen hope is the tree with lemons.

2025 has started off on a global scale with dramatic, traumatic events – more than we can comprehend these days given the quick succession in which they’ve been happening. While we witness and recognize all these upsetting situations and process them right alongside you, here in the Vintage Kitchen in this new year, we are determined to look beyond the day-to-day news cycles and stresses, and focus our attention on cultivating and creating a space that brings joy, insight and interest to cooks around the globe via culinary storytelling. Following Liz’s lead, I hope the blog this year provides comfort, encouragement and positivity for anyone who needs an extra boost of cheer in the face of challenging times.

Throughout 2025, you’ll find more frequent posts surrounding topics our kitchen community likes most – cooking, collecting, history and gardening. We’ll share recipes and links, highlight favorites of all kinds, recommend good books and new techniques and dive into stories about people and artifacts from the past that have influenced how we approach life in the present. Here are some of the regular subjects we’ll be sharing more of on the blog this year…

The Greenhouse Diaries

The Greenhouse Diaries return with a new vintage gardening book serving as inspiration and instruction for the next 12 months. Poor Leonie and Helen didn’t get as much attention last year in the Fragrant Year series as Katharine Sergeant Angell White did in the first year. I ran into all sorts of troubles with the practicalities of building a scented garden month-by-month, mostly on the ordering and acquisition sides. In the festivity of the series, we were working out a collaboration with a national grower, which in the end didn’t wind up working out at all. As we learned, most growers won’t ship any plants to our neck of the woods before late spring or after early autumn in order to ensure a successful growing experience. That left a very slim window of attempting to add in a year’s worth of plantings in just a few months. This year, we’ve changed direction, revised the garden map, and are working with more achievable goals. I can’t wait to share the new plans and the vintage book that helped inspire it.

Vintage Recipes

It’s setting up to be a delicious year here on the blog with a big batch of vintage recipes that will be rolling out in more seasonable fashion. Throughout the year, we’ll also continue with new posts in the ongoing International Vintage Recipe Tour (year six!) and the Quick Cooking Chronicles.

To ease into 2025, after the hustle and bustle of holiday cooking, we are kicking off the first culinary adventure today with an easy uncomplicated classic – a vintage British recipe for a simple banana bread. The recipe comes from the 1987 edition of The Afternoon Tea Book by Michael Smith. In addition to being one of England’s most well-known food historians and an experienced cook himself, Michael was referred to as “the doyen of English cookery” by the New York Times.

Michael Smith

The recipe, simply titled Banana Bread, is soft and sweet and manages to achieve that perfect balance between banana and spice. Ready within an hour, it comes out of the oven the color of chestnuts with a consistency that is smooth and springy in the cutting thanks to the addition of both cream and butter. Enjoyable any time of day, it makes a great breakfast treat or an afternoon snack. And of course, Michael recommends pairing it with a warm cup of tea.

Heirloom Kitchen Stories

Since the blog and the shop work in tandem, you’ll find heirloom kitchen stories in both spots. But the shop tells shorter stories on a more frequent basis (daily) and the blog tells more long-form stories on an intermittent basis (weekly or bi-weekly) so whichever appeals to you, you’ll have one or both to enjoy. Some of our most favorite, most memorable stories turn out to be the humble, relatable ones about everyday home cooks and the recipes, books, and heirlooms that have been a part of their personal culinary journey. Thanks to information shared by a few families around the US in 2024, we have several new personal cooking stories to highlight this winter. One is an exotic love story wrapped around this book…

Another surrounds this 1940s Hamilton Beach milkshake machine…

1930s-woman-mixing-flour-in-bowl

and another introduces us to this mid-20th-century cook whose culinary journey took her from Kansas to California with a collection of recipes in tow…

Other bits of fun culinary history floating around the shop this winter include stories about a beloved 1970s Greenwich Village restauranteur…

the ancestry of a 1950s West Indian cookbook…

and the life of a famous New York City celebrity hotspot that first opened in 1927…

That of course is just the start. There will literally be hundreds more stories to share in the shop and dozens more to share on the blog throughout the year all highlighting little-known or forgotten people, places, and foods from the past.

1750 House & Garden Updates

This year 1750 House turns 275 years old. We are doing our best to get all the renovations completed before the end of the year so that we can throw a big party to celebrate this big birthday. As projects get finalized over the year, I’ll share updates on the progress we’ve been making since we first arrived in 2022, including new information on the genealogy of the house dating all the way back to the 18th century.

It’s a big year with a lot on the agenda and most likely a few surprises tucked in between the topics listed above. We can’t predict how the world will change in 2025, but we can say that at least here in the Vintage Kitchen, these next twelve months will keep you well-fed and blissfully in touch with stories that focus on kindness, joy and positivity by way of the kitchen. Before, I sign off, I just wanted to note one more thing…

A Note on AI and Our Promise To You

In light of all the current discussion surrounding AI, while it might be influential and important in some areas of modern life, there is no room for it in our storytelling in the Vintage Kitchen shop or on the blog. Last year we had some personal experience with the darker sides of it. I hesitated sharing this information then simply because it was a disheartening situation and definitely did not do anything to improve our creative endeavors, but it ties into my promise to you now, so I’ll share a brief version of what happened for context and clarity going forward.

In April 2021, two big boxes arrived by mail from Europe carrying our first order of French market bags for the shop. I was so excited to include these bags in the shop, not only because I had personally used and adored the same exact bag for many years and could well attest for its competency, but also because I couldn’t wait for other people to experience the bag’s effortless ease and style. Once the bags were all unpacked, in preparation for the photoshoot, I shopped at the farmers market, selecting items that I typically purchased and carried in my own market bag during personal shopping trips in order to illustrate the capabilities of the tote.

Early spring herbs, vegetables, wine, and bread were all gathered from the market for the shoot. When it came to the flowers, initially, I had my heart set on grabbing a couple of bouquets from a vendor who sold locally grown ranunculus in this gorgeous color palette of pink, peach, and coral. But the ranunculus weren’t available at the market that day, so the next best choice was a bouquet of pale purple-pink peonies. With all the market foods and flowers set and styled in place, I photographed the bags from all angles, both empty and filled to the brim with the farmer’s market items so that shoppers could see it in all its various situations as market bag, beach tote, picnic basket and all around shoulder bag. Here’s a sampling from the shoot…

On May 2, 2021, the bags launched in the shop in an air of excitement and joie de vivre. I was so excited to see that our ITVK shoppers found the bags to be equally as useful and they became a lovely staple in the shop. Unfortunately, sometime in late 2023, I was alerted to the fact that my market bag photographs were showing up in other retail places online. The photos were copied from our website, without our permission, and used online to sell similar products by other retailers on other sites. Throughout 2024, my photos popped up on Etsy, Amazon, Faire, Pinterest and a slew of independent shops all selling the same style bag. These are some examples of where they are currently being used by other retailers as of January 2025…

We’ve tried our best to eradicate as many as possible, and many retailers did take them down from their sites at our request, but for all the ones that were removed more kept popping up. All this turned into a very time-consuming endeavor, which in and of itself is a whole other frustrating story for another day.

I wanted to share this information, not to highlight this disappointing act of copyright infringement but to highlight the Wild West atmosphere that AI generates in our current marketplace. This copying of our photographs was not the fault of AI, just lazy sellers and bad business practices, but someone recently mentioned to me that a food photograph I had taken just a few weeks ago was so nicely arranged that it looked fake. Like something AI would have generated.

In telling you all this I just wanted to let you know that we do not, nor will we ever in the future incorporate AI into the Vintage Kitchen when it comes to writing or photography. You can rest assured that everything from the photos we take, to the stories we tell, to the heirlooms we sell are all 100% authentic. They are real items, photographed and written about by real people, that reflect real history.

That’s our promise to you as a shop and my promise to you as a writer and a photographer. All of our heirloom origin stories and blog posts are highly researched – sometimes for days or weeks at a time, and we consult only trusted archives and institutions that have been collecting verified information for decades or even centuries. The kitchen is too full of unique stories, intimate details, and interesting perspectives to leave it up to bots to try to decipher personal human experiences in any meaningful way.

That means periodically you might see a typo, or a misused comma, or an impassioned thought that ran away with proper sentence structure. Even though those writing missteps might not be correct grammatically, we’ll sometimes leave them in the final edit. That’s how you’ll know these posts and our shop stories were written by humans for humans. Here in the Vintage Kitchen, we are not fearful of AI, we just love people and history too much to leave compelling real-life storytelling up to machines who have never fried an egg or baked a cake or curated a collection of favorite objects in the pursuit of personal passion and joy.

Now that that is out of the way, a whole new year of exciting discoveries await here in the Vintage Kitchen. I’m so glad you are here to join us in what I think is the best little community on the internet. Thank you so much for being a part of it.

Cheers to the new year, and to Liz Lemon for being the bright light that leads the way in 2025.

The Flavor of Catching Up and a Vintage Homemade Ketchup Recipe

Published on by In The Vintage Kitchen2 Comments

One minute it was mid-April. The witch hazel had just arrived in the mail. A newly planted pot of Nemesia was fluffing out on the front porch, ready for its photo shoot and its spotlight feature in the Fragrant Year series. The collard greens, beets, peas, and kale were growing up in the garden. The second-year foxglove was throwing out layer after layer of leaves, mounding up like bushes. The shop was a flurry of activity – filling and emptying, filling and emptying with stories, heirlooms, and recipes, from kitchens, cooks, and history past.

The next minute it’s the 4th of July. I’m making a vintage summer recipe for the blog. The humidity has set in and the slugs have returned. The witch hazel has grown 6″ inches. Tomatoes and corn have replaced the kale and collards in the garden. The Nemesia has outgrown its pot twice. The summer vegetable garden has been planted. The autumn pumpkin seedlings have started to flower. And the shop is filling and emptying, filling and emptying again with a season’s worth of new old stories.

How did three months pass so quickly? How did we go so fast from collards at the end of one season to corn at the beginning of another? How did all the trees leaf out, and the wildflowers bloom on the side of the road, and the strawberries appear and then disappear? How did Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, Father’s Day, and Fourth of July fireworks pass without a single reflective moment to stop and share here on the blog?

So many interesting stories, gardening adventures, and heirloom gatherings have filled up those past three months. So many things I wanted to share, slated to share, photographed to share. But somehow, the days whizzed by. One by one, ten by twenty, thirty by sixty. All to wind up here at ninety days with nothing new but last April’s post.

Long stretches of absence like this are rare here on the blog and it can be challenging to start back up again after such an extended time away. Fortunately, after much stewing about how to return and what to say, Eleanor Roosevelt breezed into the Vintage Kitchen last week and offered up a bit of wisdom.

“If life were predictable, it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

This quote is attributed to Eleanor’s 1937 autobiography, This is My Story, which is now included on my list of books to read. Somehow Eleanor’s wise words wound up describing the very circumstance that defined the last three months. It was unpredictable. It was full of flavor.

The greenhouse got a fence. The hollyhocks bloomed. The 1750 House cupola was rebuilt. The vegetable garden was harvested for spring. And then it was re-planted for summer. The holidays were celebrated. The tomatoes climbed. Tulip bulbs were ordered for fall. Vegetable seeds were exchanged. A wild pheasant stopped by to say hello. Friends and family came to visit. Recipes were cooked. Heirlooms were collected. And after a two year wait, the foxgloves flowered for the first time.

The activities were plentiful, and each day different in routine and rhythm. Just like Eleanor said… they were full. In that spirit of busy activity, I thought it would be fun to do a quick recap via photos of what’s been going on in the kitchen, the garden, and the shop over the past three months so that we could wind our way back towards the present to share a new vintage recipe so perfectly suited for the mood and the moment. This is a catch-up post of the past three months with a 1960s recipe for homemade ketchup attached at the end. Catching up with ketchup, if you will.

A Look Back…

Two of the most exciting 1750 House renovation projects were the rebuilding of the 1930s cupola which had been chewed to pieces by squirrels long before we moved in, and the addition of a long-awaited fence around the greenhouse. The cupola was rebuilt using old tools and old techniques and squirrel-proofed so that the weathervane horse could freely run with the wind once again…

The greenhouse fence adds some dimension to the side yard and forms the backdrop for a cottage garden that will eventually include shrubs, perennials, climbing flowers, and a permanent herb garden.

In early May, a wild pheasant came to visit…

In early June, a prehistoric-looking Dobson fly appeared one morning in the greenhouse…

And at the end of June, we saw our first butterfly of the season, a Red-Spotted Purple dipping and diving around the garden path and raised beds.

The witch hazel, from February’s Fragrant Year post, arrived in the mail in mid-April with not one bare root specimen but three, even though I just ordered one. All three trees were planted and named (Hazel, Harriet and Hilda – a nod to the original H-hinges inside 1750 House) so that I can track and record each one’s progress. All was well for a couple of months with each leafing out and growing taller, but sadly, Hazel got some sort of blight and lost all her leaves. I’ve left her in the ground in hopes that she recovers, so we’ll wait and see what happens over the next few months. In the meantime, Hilda and Harriet are doing great. In three months, they’ve each grown 6″ inches and have sprouted numerous sets of leaves. If they keep that growth rate up through the fall, by the end of 2024 they should be reaching about four feet in height.

Scenes From The Garden…

Hollyhocks (Variety: The Watchman)

Peas (Variety: Cascadia)

First garden harvest – early June.

Nasturtiums (Variety: Jewel Blend)

Cucamelons on the arch

Cherry Tomatoes (Variety: Sun Gold Pole)

The start of the wildflower bed

Foxglove seed pods

Summer Squash (Variety: Black Beauty)

Corn (Variety: Silver Queen White)

Stonecrop

Overwintered Pineapple Sage

Rose of Sharon

Stories From The Shop…

Every bit of kitchen history is always interesting, but every season there are a few stand-out stories that capture quite a bit of attention. These are some of the latest encountered over the past three months. Clicking on the photos will take you directly to the shop item that inspired further storytelling…

The lives and adventures of early 20th-century husband and wife explorer team – Zetta and Carveth Wells

Long Island’s Roosevelt Raceway, a horse racing mecca from the 1940s-1980

.

The prize-winning pattern of a 1943 amateur design contest held by the Vogue Mercantile Institute in collaboration with Homer Laughlin.

The story of Perdita and the Charleston restaurant she inspired.

The 1930s baking invention of Cale Schneider.

Just last week, we debuted our own custom-designed ITVK gift wrap. The floral pattern was inspired by a vintage print that I found in a South Carolina antique shop in 2003. That print, along with an antique platter also found that day, launched a passion for collecting vintage and antique heirlooms and laid the groundwork for what would eventually become In The Vintage Kitchen.

This was a packaging project I first started dreaming about during the 2020 COVID lockdown. I picked the colors in the bouquet to represent the brand colors of the Vintage Kitchen long before I ever knew that a red house built in 1750 and surrounded by garden beds of orange lilies awaited in my future. The floral bouquet was resized, recolored, and brightened up to give it a more modern feel by a wonderfully talented graphic designer based in Austria. I think it’s the perfect blend of history, sentiment and fate. All purchases from the shop are wrapped, and complimentary, so if you find an heirloom you love, it will arrive packaged up in this…

That Was Then, This Is Now…

Now that we are all caught up, let’s ketchup. This recipe comes from the 1961 New York Times Cookbook, edited by one of our favorite Vintage Kitchen cooks, Craig Claiborne. Since it’s condiment season I thought this would be a fun one to feature for a couple of reasons.

Just like mayonnaise, I have always heard that a homemade version is much tastier than any store-bought variety. And since there aren’t really that many different types of ketchup available at the market, this recipe will add a little something unique and unexpected to your summer cookouts. Also, at some point in the summer when harvests are abundant and overwhelming, I always find it helpful to have a collection of recipes at the ready that require big batches of tomatoes so that nothing goes to waste. This recipe definitely calls for that.

This week we are making Spicy Tomato Ketchup from scratch using garden ingredients and a handful of pantry staples. The spice in the title comes from a small amount of cayenne pepper which can be omitted completely if you don’t like a little extra zip. But just to clarify this is a true ketchup, not a hot sauce, so if you are not a lover of hot and spicy foods, don’t worry, it won’t set your mouth on fire. Milder than Tabasco sauce, I’d rate the spice factor of this ketchup at about a 3 on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the hot, hot, hot side.

The recipe calls for 12 pounds of tomatoes which yields about 6-8 pints of ketchup. When writing the cookbook, Craig Claiborne assumed that you would make a big batch, seal everything in sterile jars, and add it to your pantry collection for later consumption. Clearly, 8 pints is a lot of ketchup and not everyone is a home canner, myself included. I cut the recipe in half and then in half again and wound up with about 1 cup of ketchup after starting with 3 lbs of tomatoes. That size batch is shelf-stable in the fridge and is just the right amount for a few servings, and a few slatherings. Having said that, I’m posting the original recipe in case you are a ketchup lover and a canner too. This way, the measurements and portion sizes can be customized to your own needs. As for timing and difficulty, it takes a few hours to make this recipe, but it’s a very easy process. The bulk of the cooking time is hands-off while you wait for the tomato puree to reduce to a ketchup-like consistency.

Spicy Tomato Ketchup

Recipe from 1961 edition of The New York Times Cook Book. Makes 6-8 pints

12 pounds ripe tomatoes

1 cup chopped onion ( I used Vidalia onions)

1 tablespoon salt

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon black pepper

1/2 teaspoon celery seed

1 teaspoon mustard seed

1 tablespoon whole cloves

1 stick cinnamon, broken

1 1/2 cups vinegar

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Remove the seeds before you cook the tomatoes.

Core and chop the tomatoes. Cook the tomatoes and onions together until soft (about 20-30 minutes) and then press the mixture through a fine sieve.

The cooked tomato and onion mixture before it is pressed through the sieve.

The tomato and onion mixture after it has been pressed through the sieve (large bowl).

Return puree to heat and cook until reduced by one-half, stirring occasionally. Combine spices in cheesecloth or a tea strainer and set in the puree. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir.

Continue cooking uncovered to desired consistency (about 2-4 hours depending on the amount of tomatoes used). Remove the spice bag. Seal ketchup in hot sterilized jars or refrigerate in an air-tight container if making a smaller batch.

With a thick consistency, a sweet taste and a peppery bite this homemade ketchup was full of delicious, tangy flavor. A little bit darker in color than our usual brand of store-bought ketchup, the best way to describe the difference between these versions is to compare them side by side.

The store-bought ketchup was not as sweet and it tasted tinny like canned tomatoes with a mineral undertone. The homemade ketchup was sweeter, brighter, and more evenly balanced in flavor. The store-bought version was candy-apple red in color and smoother in consistency. The homemade version, although not thin, was more sauce-like in texture, similar to a steak sauce or a barbeque sauce, and slightly more opaque. The last defining difference between the two was the spice factor, which of course was the unique ingredient in the homemade version.

Interestingly, the store-bought ketchup contained very similar ingredients to the homemade version… organic tomato concentrate, organic sugar, organic vinegar, salt, organic spices, and organic onion powder – not too different from the ingredients we used. But like anything made from scratch in small batches, as opposed to something made en masse in a factory, you can’t beat fresh, homemade, whole-food flavor.

You might suspect that ketchup would have an origin story that begins in Italy, given the country’s love of homegrown tomatoes and homemade sauce. But actually, ketchup is steeped in centuries of Chinese food culture and dates all the way back to the 1700s when it was first used as a way to ferment and preserve fish. At that point in time, there were no tomatoes involved and it was not red in color. It was thin and watery and looked more like soy sauce. It wasn’t until the early 1800s in America that tomatoes in ketchup made their debut.

Henry John Heinz

Henry John Heinz (1844-1919) made ketchup a famous American condiment in the 1870s after years spent first experimenting with horseradish. By the 1960s, when this Spicy Tomato Ketchup recipe was published in The New York Times Cook Book, Heinz Ketchup was a worldwide favorite bringing in over $300 million dollars a year in global sales.

1960s advertisement for Heinz Ketchup

It’s interesting to think that in the dawn of convenience foods (aka the mid-20th century), when saving time in the kitchen was important to busy families, and the exciting novelty of pre-packaged foods was all the rage, that Craig Claiborne was still interested in adding a homemade ketchup recipe to his cookbook. When 1960s home cooks could have easily run out and purchased an already prepared bottle of trusted, reliable Heinz Ketchup and called the day done for a lot less time and expense, it’s interesting that the New York Times treated this ordinary, taken-for-granted, always-around condiment with a little more reverence.

In preparing this recipe, I now understand that ketchup is an elevated culinary sauce, perfected over centuries. It’s not just something you slather on your burger or your hot dog or dip your french fries into without thinking. It shouldn’t be something you buy in bulk at the grocery store with the same level of enthusiasm as buying a roll of paper towels. Homemade ketchup requires time and a unique blend of ingredients to bring out all the flavors. It’s a condiment worthy of attention and of appreciation. When it is homemade, it offers a gourmet flourish to your summer grill menu and adds a bit of zesty flavor to your palate and your plate. There is also something freeing about knowing that, should we ever run across The Great Tomato Ketchup Shortage of 2021 again, we could easily whip up a batch ourselves if we needed to. I guess this means that I need to learn how to can. So that I can go ahead and make those eight pints and have a reserve in my pantry. This homemade recipe will spoil you in that way. It will turn your attention away from all those other commercial ketchups. There is truth in the saying. Yes, homemade ketchup tastes better than a store-bought version.

I hope you love this ketchup recipe just as much. As always, if you make it please share your thoughts in the comment section below. And if you’d like to experiment with another homemade condiment, try this wonderful Danish mustard recipe here.

Cheers to Craig, Eleanor and tomato growers all over the globe for adding so much flavor to our summer days.

It’s Finally Here! Our Annual Shop Sale is Today

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Happy All Souls Day! Just wanted to pop in with a quick reminder for all our intrepid culinary adventurers and history-fueled home decorators… our annual one-day-only 40% off shop sale is today!

There are a bevy of new (old) heirlooms that have arrived in the shop recently, so if it’s been a bit of time since you last visited hop on over to the shop to see our latest collections. Some of our favorites include these charmers…

A collection of Poland’s authentic heritage recipes compiled by the Polanie Club of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Rare antique J.W. Pankhurst English ironstone dinner plates circa 1850.

A porcelain enamelware floral bowl set by Kobe circa 1980s

A 1930s-era packet of French postcards featuring the beautiful city of Marseilles

An antique crocheted tablecloth handmade at Ellis Island circa 1916. You might remember this one from our in-depth blog post about one woman’s Italian immigration story here.

A vintage Dutch cookie tin featuring maritime art.

A 1930s edition of a classic kitchen cookbook courtesy of Fannie Farmer, the woman responsible for creating our modern cooking measurement system.

A vintage botanical art book featuring gorgeous illustrations of fruits, vegetables, and flowers.

An antique handmade gathering basket from the early 1900s

A vintage pair of cheerful yellow dinner napkins with embroidered dots fit for every season.

Interested in meeting some of the makers and collectors behind our shop’s beautiful heirlooms? Poke around each section and you’ll encounter these faces and the stories they tell about history and their place in it.

Hope you find a treasure that calls to your heart and adds an extra bit of joy to your home.

As always, the sale runs through midnight tonight and discounts are automatically applied at checkout. Thank you so much for traveling with us down these adventurous pathways of culinary history. Cheers to new inspiration and a day of happy shopping!

On This Day in 1861: Brooklyn Want Ads, Hot Grog and A Sailor’s Time-Honored Tradition

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An unidentified sailor in Union Uniform circa 1861-1865. Photo: Library of Congress.

April 10th, 1861. On this day in history, if you were a sailor perusing the newspapers of Brooklyn, New York you’d find your next maritime adventure tucked in between advertisements for Shakespearean readings, housekeepers for hire, and rubber teeth dentistry services. There, in a want ad posted in the Brooklyn Evening Sun would be your future for the next several months or possibly years to come. The US Navy was looking for seamen. It would ensure a paycheck, food, medical attention, and a chance to see the world, or at least part of it, via ship. There would also be grog.

Brooklyn Evening Star – April 10th, 1861

Life aboard a 19th-century sailing vessel was not a gourmet affair. Unless you were the captain, sailors could expect to consume a diet heavy in hardtack (a tough, shelf-stable biscuit made of water, salt and flour) along with rations of salted meat, pork and fish, and possibly a vegetable or two like cabbage or turnips. Beverages available were typically three – water, beer and rum, consumed in that order as the length of time on the ship grew. Each stored in wooden barrels, water was a luxury that spoiled quickly and therefore was the first to go rancid due to inadequate refrigeration. Beer was next, oftentimes turning sludgy and sour, weeks into the journey. The only truly shelf-stable beverage was rum.

The USS Bienville, built in Brooklyn, NY served as a Union sail steamer from 1861-1867.

In today’s post, we are drinking like sailors and embracing a long-standing tradition that is still upheld by seamen around the world. The recipe is Hot Grog, a rum and water toddy of sorts that includes tea, fresh lemon juice and sugar. Back in the Navy during the 1800s, this drink in its simplest form of rum and water was commonplace – an expected part of everyday life aboard ship. Today it’s an ideal restorative for Spring. When temperatures can be cool at night and warm during the day it’s a comforting evening drink, a medicinal miracle worker for allergy season, and a celebratory cocktail served hot or cold depending on your weather and your whereabouts.

Rum and sailors have been companions for centuries. This recipe is definitely no new kid on the block. History states that the average sailor in the Navy during the 1700s -1800s consumed one-half to one pint of straight rum per day which could equal up to 27 gallons per year. A ration available to all men aboard, regardless of the type of sailing vessel, rum was both a highlight and a soothing salve for the spirit to get them through the hard work, the inclement weather, and the lonely atmosphere that surrounded life at sea. Food history also accounts for the fact that rancid water and spoiled beer left but one alternative for hydration. In that regard, rum was both a treat and a life-sustaining source of calories. But most importantly, it was a tradition.

Read more about this cookbook in the shop here.

Although there are a few different ways to make grog, today’s recipe featured here comes from The Mystic Seaport Cookbook. Published in 1970, this cookbook celebrates over 300 years of traditional New England fare offering a unique glimpse into maritime life. With a surprisingly extensive beverage section that includes several eggnog recipes, syllabubs, flavored brandy, punches and possets, Hot Grog is one the oldest of them all.

Portrait of Edward Vernon by Thomas Gainsborough

Dating to the 1730s, grog is attributed to British Navy Admiral, Edward Vernon (1684-1757). Nicknamed Old Grog, Edward celebrated a maritime victory over Spain with a round of rum for all the sailors on his ship. Although acknowledging that rum drinking was par for the course in the life of a sailor, Edward thought that more than two cups of rum a day was too much for any man, so he offered his seamen a drink of half water/half rum to toast their victory. This mixture became known as Grog, and as the decades and centuries progressed, the tradition of a daily drink of grog became a highlight of a sailor’s day aboard ship, marking an important place not only in maritime history but food history as well.

Our 1860s sailor up top at the beginning of the post, thumbing through the Brooklyn Evening Star, would have noted that the want ad included the mention of grog specifically. As that meant that this ship upheld tradition and would be more likely to follow through on its promises. In the 1700s and 1800s, many jobs for sailors aboard trading ships and cargo vessels were fraught with injustices that led to unfair working conditions. Partly because of unscrupulous captains, cramped quarters, disease, the danger of the work, and the uncertainty of long weeks or months spent out at sea, the life of a sailor was not an easy one. But certain dependable regularities could make the voyage more bearable – rum being one.

A delight in all ways that tea and rum can be on their own, this seafaring beverage is both visually enticing and physically appealing. Essentially like drinking a good, hot cup of tea, it’s a well-complemented combination of flavors, with no one ingredient overpowering the other. It’s preferable to select a strong type of black tea, but I suspect (although I haven’t tried it yet) that this drink might be equally interesting with an herbal tea like peppermint or ginger as well. I don’t think the sailors would mind if you experimented, just as long as you don’t forget the rum!

Hot Grog – Serves 6

3 large lemons

1/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup heavy rum

6 cups strong hot tea (lapsang souchong)

While water is boiling for tea, cut six long curls from the lemons using a vegetable peeler. Cut each lemon in half and juice them to make 1/2 cup.

Combine the sugar, lemon juice and rum in a mason jar or small bowl and stir. Divide the mixture among six warmed mugs. Prepare the tea and add it to each mug. Garnish each cup with a lemon rind swirl and serve immediately.

I’ve made this recipe a few times over the past couple of months. The first was at Christmastime when the polar vortex weather encouraged us to try all the ways to keep warm inside and out. I’ve also made it on a grey and rainy end-of-winter night when the air was so damp and heavy, it felt like Spring might never come. And then again just the other day, when the 60-degree day sun was setting and the temperatures started creeping back down into the low 50s. Each time, hot grog warmed the belly and refreshed the spirit.

A comfort in other ways too, grog made its way into sea shanty songs. Sung by sailors for hundreds of years, as they went about their life on the water, songs like Leave Her Johnny Leave Her , Drunken Sailor and the The Wellerman all touch on the challenges faced at sea and the important part that rum played. The Wellerman, in particular, features all three ingredients of hot grog – sugar and tea and rum. It was a popular song among the crews of New Zealand whaling boats in the early 1800s, and then again became a popular song on social media during the pandemic in 2020-2021. If you aren’t familiar with it, here’s the song in full… (with a little warning… it’s a bit of an earworm – you might be singing it for days!)…

It’s incredible to think what a far reach this magical combination of ingredients has had in the minds and hearts of sailors (and singers!) for centuries. From the New York waterfront all the way around the globe to the South Island of New Zealand and back again, for whatever occasion, at whatever temperature, and in whichever climate you chose to make a cup of grog, I hope you enjoy it just as much as we did here in the Vintage Kitchen.

Below are a few more want ads for sailors that add dimension and depth and color to this corner of nautical history. Cheers to all the sailors who’ve kept tradition alive via recipe and rum!

Bangor Daily Whig & Courier – November 5th, 1863

Bangor Daily Whig & Courier – November 11th, 1856

Bangor Daily Whig & Courier- Set. 8, 1864

On the Grill in Autumn: Julia Child’s Soup in a Pumpkin

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Rumor has it that one time when Julia Child made this recipe for dinner guests, she overcooked the pumpkin and the whole entire bottom of it fell out onto the floor on its way to the table. I mention this right off the bat, not to illicit alarm as to the perils that might befall cooks who attempt this recipe but to demonstrate the joy of Julia in all her humanness. Isn’t that what was so endearing about her to begin with? As experienced as she became, as attentive a cook as she was, as precise she always endeavored to be, Julia was still fallible just like the rest of us.

Julia in her kitchen in Cambridge, MA circa 1980s. Photo credit: Jim Scherer

Cooking mishaps and all, Julia’s golden rule in the kitchen was to have fun and enjoy the pleasures of preparing food and feeding people. Pour a glass of wine, engage in a little chit-chat, chop some vegetables, create a convivial environment. That was Julia’s way. Cooking is fun. Whatever situations happen along the path to culinary creation is part of the adventure.

That being said, this vintage recipe is one of the most interesting we have made on the blog to date. In part, because it is very fitting with the season which makes it very fun for fall, but also in part because we added a little twist, a bit of experimentation, based on our current kitchen renovation constraints. The recipe that we are making today, the one that hopefully will not end up on your kitchen floor, is Julia’s Soup in A Pumpkin from her 1989 The Way to Cook book…

Julia published this cookbook twenty-eight years after Mastering the Art of French Cooking debuted – the book which set her on the path to international acclaim. By the time The Way to Cook came out, Julia was in her late 70s and was most interested in producing a cookbook that showcased creativity in the kitchen for a younger generation. One that might not have experienced some of her older work. Based on her signature time-honored techniques, Julia featured a looser, more casual style of cooking instead of precise by-the-book formalities. More aware of health-conscious choices, she slimmed down butter usage and altered heavier recipes turning them into lighter, leaner, but still equally delicious offerings. She encouraged independent variety by suggesting alternative ways to serve dishes and was cognisant of budget and time-saving methods that would appeal to busy cooks who didn’t want to sacrifice quality meals for lack of adequate funds or hectic schedules. At the turn of every chapter, she championed experimentation and creativity.

In true spirit of the cookbook and Julia’s encouragement to amend, invent, and explore new ways of approaching meal preparation, we took her lead and added our own twist to her recipe by grilling the pumpkin outdoors instead of baking it in the oven indoors as Julia did.

While we have the ceiling in, the pantry framed out, and the exterior walls sealed up for the winter ahead, we are still hard at work on our kitchen renovations in the 1750 House. Photos of our work will be coming soon! In the meantime, currently, our fridge is in the living room, our sink is in the basement and we are without a stove, so the choice to grill the pumpkin came out of necessity but also curiosity. Can you even grill a pumpkin? We weren’t sure but we had Julia’s confidence and joie de vivre on our side, so we were ready to experiment with our trusty grill that has yet to disappoint us.

Rest assured, despite our change in cooking method and Julia’s tipple, this is not a difficult recipe to make and you don’t need to be nervous about executing it. It actually is quite a fun cooking adventure.

Soup in a Pumpkin made on the grill.

Full of autumn color and flavor from start to finish, the seasonal joy of this vintage meal starts with picking out your pumpkin. We are very lucky here in Connecticut to have this really gorgeous nursery just a few minutes from the house that has a dazzling display of just about every plant and homegrown pumpkin you could ever want in a New England garden. Right now there are mums for miles…

And rows of squash and gourds and pumpkins in all different shapes and shades…

So many beautiful pumpkins to choose from!

Since Julia didn’t specify what type of pumpkin to use, we had our choice of over a dozen varieties to pick from at the nursery. While all pumpkins are edible, even the little minis, for this recipe, we chose the sugar variety which is the preferred pumpkin for baking.

Sugar pumpkins!

Also known as pie pumpkins, they come in smaller sizes – an ideal factor for this recipe since we had to make sure it would fit on the grill. When you are selecting your pumpkins, look for ones that are of equal size and shape and that sit flat and balanced on the counter.

It is important to note that sugar pumpkins have thicker skin, and less stringy fibers, making them a good choice for roasting whole. A part of the American diet since the 1800s, they are ideally suited for baking and pie-making thanks to their slightly sweeter flesh. Larger carving pumpkins, on the other hand, have thinner skin, which makes them best for Halloween carvings but less stable in the oven or on the grill due to their more fragile composition. Instead of one 7-pound pumpkin that would serve 8-10 people as Julia recommended, we picked two 2 lb. sugar pumpkins that would serve two to four people and then cut Julia’s recipe in half.

When Julia was preparing The Way To Cook, she was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She noted that this recipe was a delightful start to any fall dinner but also that it held its weight as a main course. “A real rib sticker,” she called it. I couldn’t agree more. It’s a meal just calling out for cold, blustery days and hearty appetites. Filling and full of flavor, while it is cooked in a pumpkin, this is not a typical pumpkin soup that has been pureed in a pot and accented with aromatic seasonal spices. This soup is chunky and layered. More like onion meets squash, it’s a veritable hot pot that contains all the delicate, deconstructed elements of French Onion soup with bites of pumpkin that you scrape from the inner walls while you eat. Swiss cheese and heavy cream add a bit of rich flavor. Toasted bread crumbs, garden herbs, and chicken broth add depth, and the pumpkin itself adds color and dimension when presented at table.

I love the fact that the pumpkin is an individual-sized serving bowl and that it really keeps the soup hot and insulated for quite a length of time. Since it cooks on the grill in a simmering bath of butter, broth, and the onion, cheese and herb mixture, the pumpkin soaks up all the savory flavor components making it taste bright and vibrant, instead of what sometimes can be a bland vegetable when eaten on its own. Grilling the soup outdoors made for a real sensory experience between the cool weather, the falling leaves, and the excitement of trying something new.

The recipe below is adapted for the grill but continue reading all the way to the end and you’ll also learn how to easily return the recipe to Julia’s original design.

Soup In A Pumpkin On A Grill

Serves 2-4

1 1/4 cups fresh country-style white bread, cubed for crouton-style bread crumbs

1 cup sweet Vidalia onion, minced

2 oz. butter (1/2 stick) plus 1 tbsp soft butter

2 two-pound sugar pumpkins

3/4 cup coarsely grated Swiss Cheese

2 cups chicken stock

Salt

Freshly ground pepper

8-10 fresh sage leaves, finely chopped

1/2 cup heavy cream (optional)

1/4 cup fresh parsley for garnish

Heat the grill to 400 degrees. Preheat a medium cast iron pan. Cut the bread into crouton-style cubes, about 1/2 inch in size. Spread crumbs in one single layer in the pan and toast for two minutes with the grill lid open. Remove from heat and set crumbs to cool in a single layer on a plate. Cover the grill to keep warm and maintain the 400-degree internal temperature.

Toasted bread crumbs.

In a pan on the stovetop (or in our case an electric hot plate!), melt the 1/2 stick of butter. Add the minced onion and cook over medium-low heat until the onions are translucent and tender (about 15 minutes). Add the toasted bread crumbs to the onion mixture, toss them completely, and cook for an additional three minutes. Remove from heat.

Rinse the outside of your pumpkins with warm water to remove dirt and dust and towel dry. Cut a lid out of the top of each pumpkin in the same way you would carve a hat for a jack-o-lantern. Remove all the seeds from the interior of each pumpkin and scrape the inner walls to remove the pumpkin strings. Rub the interior of each pumpkin with the remaining tablespoon of butter. Place the prepared pumpkins on a large flat cast iron pan or tray.

Add the onion/breadcrumb mixture to the inside of each pumpkin, making sure the mixture is evenly distributed between the pumpkins. Repeat with the grated cheese.

In a separate pan, bring the chicken broth to a boil. Once it is hot remove from heat and fill each pumpkin cavity with the broth. Make sure to leave at least two inches of space from the broth line to the top rim of the pumpkin so that the soup does not boil over onto the grill while cooking. Season each pumpkin with salt, pepper, and sage. I used about 1/2 teaspoon of freshly ground sea salt and about 1/4 teaspoon of freshly ground pepper per pumpkin. Depending on your taste and the saltiness of your broth you may want to add more or less according to your preference. Place the pumpkin top lids back on the pumpkins.

Making sure the grill is still holding an even 400-degree internal temperature, elevate the cooking pan or tray holding the pumpkins so that it is not sitting directly on the grill rack. We did this using a brick wrapped in tin foil and then placing the pumpkin pan on top of that, but whatever system you can manage to achieve indirect heat for the pumpkin pan is fine just as long as the pumpkin pan is not sitting directly on the grill rack.

Cover the grill and cook the pumpkins for 30 minutes. It is important not to overcook the pumpkins or you will wind up with weak bottoms and your soup might fall out like Julia’s did all over the floor. At the 30-minute mark, check the pumpkins to see if the outer skin has softened to the touch. Instinct will definitely guide you here. When you press the outer skin you want it to give but not collapse. You are looking for a similar firmness to a semi-deflated basketball or a just-about-ripe avocado. If the pumpkins are not quite soft enough, lower the grill lid and keep checking them every five minutes. As a reference guide, one of our pumpkins wound up taking 35 minutes to cook and the other 40 minutes.

If you are adding heavy cream, just before the pumpkins come off the grill, heat the cream in a smalll saucepan until it just begins to simmer. When the pumpkins are ready, remove them from the heat to small plates (bread and butter size), lift the lids, divide the cream equally amongst the pumpkins and give each a gentle stir to incorporate the cream. Serve immediately. If one of your pumpkins is ready before the other, you can remove it from the grill to a plate and cover it in tin foil until the other pumpkin is ready. But do not let the pumpkins sit on their own for an extended amount of time before serving. As they cool, the pumpkins will eventually start to sink into the plate. Rest assured though, there is plenty of time to enjoy your soup before the pumpkin begins slumping so if you are worried about table presentation, don’t fret, you should be able to get through all of your meal before the pumpkins start to droop.

Cheesy, warm, and brothy, all you need is a soup spoon in the flatware department for this meal. The inner walls of the pumpkins will be soft enough to scrape with just the edge of the spoon. No forks or knives required for this dish!

Since presentation is a big part of the fun of this recipe, it is best enjoyed on the day of, hot off the grill. If you have leftovers, the soup is still delicious the next day but the breadcrumbs will continue to soak up the broth, so you will need to add more broth and a dash of cream if you choose to reheat it. Also, the pumpkin bowl will not keep its shape well overnight, so it is recommended to scoop out any leftovers, discard the pumpkins and store the soup in a separate container in the fridge.

If you choose to make this recipe using Julia Child’s oven method. Follow the instructions exactly but set your oven to 350 degrees to toast the bread crumbs and then to 400 degrees to roast the pumpkins. And if you choose to use one big pumpkin like Julia’s below, then double the number of ingredients for a 6-7 lb pumpkin which will serve 8-10 people.

Julia Child’s Soup in a Pumpkin utilizing one 8lb pumpkin circa 1989. Photo courtesy of her book, The Way to Cook.

Either way you cook it… oven vs grill… big pumpkin vs. small pumpkins… I hope you love this recipe just as much as we did. As we enjoy the autumn weather, this pumpkin soup is lovely outdoor party food and also tailgate fare for all you sports enthusiasts who like to gather around a grill while cheering on your team. Celebrate beforehand with an autumn-themed cocktail or serve a glass of wine with your soup and you’ll be warm and full of autumn joy by meal’s end. This soup pairs especially well with red or white wine. I recommend Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay depending on your preference. Add some fall leaves to your table for decoration and you’ll have an easily put-together autumnal feast accented by Mother Nature. Come winter, this soup will fuel you through the holidays and snow shoveling season with aplomb. It might even inspire you to plant a few pumpkin seeds next spring, so that you can continue this creative cooking endeavor year-round and grow your own serving bowls for next fall.

Cheers to a happy Autumn and to loveable Julia who always paves the way to wonderfully delicious dining experiences.

Autumn has officially arrived in our neighborhood! Keep up with us on Instagram to see how the sugar maples are changing day by day in the yard of 1750 House.

Grilling with Friends: A 1955 Recipe for Savoy Potatoes

Published on by In The Vintage Kitchen2 Comments

I wish there was a way to tally friendship in the kitchen. How many recipes were inspired throughout history by friends or for friends? How many meals were shared in convivial collaboration between one cook and another? How many dishes were dissected? Techniques taught? Secrets traded? How many hours were spent by friends, with friends, for friends tasting, touching, and talking about food?

I bet the number is in the billions. A billion hours. A billion recipes. A billion friends. I bet it is a safe assumption to say that friendship in the kitchen has been a major influence on the culinary world since the caveman days when everybody cooked, and then subsequently ate, together, around an open fire. Aside from health, friendship must surely be the foundation of food. The building block of life.

This weekend we are featuring a recipe that is friend friendly. It was created by two best pals – James Beard and Helen Evans Brown in 1955 and highlights the diverse possibilities of the outdoor grill. On the menu today, it’s Savoy Potatoes, a tipple topple stack of thinly sliced potatoes tucked between layers of cheese and dotted with herbs and butter. The recipe was part of the Frills for the Grill chapter from Helen and James’ Complete Book of Outdoor Cookery.

Frills for the grill indeed. The fun of this recipe, aside from its delectable composition and fancy presentation, is that it can be made entirely out of doors from start to finish. All you need is a prep table, a cutting board, a cast iron pan, a cheese grater, a bowl and a sharp knife. Grab a friend or two to help prepare everything, and the joy begins.

Of all the vegetables to be cooked on the grill, the noble potato oftentimes gets left behind. Understandably so. They are dense and big and take a long time to cook if left whole. If they do make it to the wire racks, most recipes are not that imaginative. There’s the baked potato wrapped in tin foil, the quartered potato steamed in paper, and the mini oval-shaped potatoes par-boiled and skewered for kebabs. But this recipe presents a whole new way to look at serving potatoes hot off the grill with an elegant twist.

Presentation-wise Savoy Potatoes is lovely, with thin layers of stacked slices browned by butter and melted cheese. Caramelization leaves the potatoes on the bottom layer crispy and golden while the top layer is tender like a casserole. Most similar to Scalloped Potatoes (a.k.a. Potatoes Gratin) minus the cream, it has a hearty consistency and flavorful yet subtle depth thanks to the two cheeses and the herbs. This recipe can be made in one large round cast iron pan or many mini cast irons, depending on your preference and your available pan options. Either way, it will be delicious.

When James and Helen finally got together to create a cookbook, it was a long-time dream come true. Both were busy, well-respected cooks and authors in their own right. Helen on the West Coast, and James on the East Coast.

A sampling of Helen’s cookbooks published between the 1950s and 1960s.

Supportive and encouraging of each other’s work, they each had their own unique way with food and writing, which meant there was no room for competition between them, just a sense of mutual respect, camaraderie and curiosity regarding the culinary industry they both loved.

A sampling of James Beard’s cookbooks

Enamored with each other as most best friends are, their relationship was strictly platonic (Helen was married and James was gay) but they showered each other with affection and attention every chance they got. For years, they maintained an epistolary relationship where letters flew between coasts at a rapid-fire pace. In these letters, Helen and James exchanged recipes, cooking questions, industry gossip, travel adventures, menus, food samples, diets, and stories surrounding what they ate and with whom. A consistent topic of the letters were ideas bounced around about projects they could collaborate on together… a restaurant in the Hamptons, a snack shop in New York City, a kitchen store filled with books and antiques, a magazine for gourmands, a cooking school, a newspaper column. Time, distance, and scheduling made many of these ideas difficult to undertake when it came to reality, but of all the possibilities they dreamed up, a cookbook turned out to be the one idea that took shape. To their mutual excitement, in May of 1955, The Complete Book of Outdoor Cookery was published by Doubleday & Company.

Helen and James’ mission for the book was to cover recipes that included all methods of outdoor cooking equipment in one place. Grills, campfires, hibachis, spit-roasts, cooking on a boat, cooking from a trailer, cooking at the beach, along with defined roles for men and women in the art of creating a jovial outdoor dining experience. Helen and James suggested that women be in charge of menu planning, market shopping, and presentation, while the guys were in charge of the actual cooking. Helen called it a night off for the ladies (grab a cocktail and a lounge chair, she suggested) while James referred to the actual task of grilling as a man’s sport and the ultimate culinary proving ground. Both viewpoints may seem a bit boxed in today, but in the 1950s when almost every homecooked family meal in households across the country was made indoors by women, this idea of getting guys involved in the meal-making process was both novel and exciting. Cookbooks began springing up on shelves across the country about this adventurous way to prepare a meal.

1950s Barbeque books like this one – Better Homes and Gardens Barbeque Book – illustrated the sheer joy of outdoor cooking especially when it came to domestic family life.

Gender roles aside, Savoy Potatoes is best prepared by two people, if not more. There are herbs to gather from the garden, potatoes to chop, cheese to grate, and the grill to tend to, so multiple hands are encouraged not only for practicality but for fun too.

Note: We used a charcoal grill for this recipe. Cooking times and temps may vary if you are using a gas grill.

Savoy Potatoes

Serves 8

1/4 cup butter

6 medium potatoes

1 1/2 cups grated Gruyere cheese

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Salt & Pepper to taste

1 handful of fresh thyme, chopped (optional)

Butter cast iron skillet(s) generously to prevent the potatoes from sticking during the cooking process. Combine the two cheeses together into a medium-sized bowl. Leaving the skins on, thinly slice the potatoes into rounds. Arrange a layer of potatoes inside the bottom of the buttered pan, then add a layer of cheese. Season with salt and pepper and a dab of butter. Repeat the layers of potatoes, cheese, butter, and salt and pepper again. Top with a sprinkle of fresh thyme.

Cover skillet with foil and cook on the grill over medium heat (between 280-300 degrees) until the potatoes are tender when pierced with a fork and the cheese is thoroughly melted (about 25-30 minutes).

Remove from the grill, let cool for a few minutes and then flip the potatoes over onto a plate and serve.

At this point, the potatoes should come out of the pan in one solid piece. You don’t have to flip the potatoes over before serving them. They look appetizing on both ends, but the bottom has such a nice golden brown color and a crispy texture, it makes for a delicious first-bite introduction to this vintage recipe. The slightly smoky flavor from the grill mingles with the nuttiness of the cheese and the soft potatoes in the most tasty and aromatic of ways.

Helen and James recommended that Savoy Potatoes be served with roast beef, grilled fish, or poultry. During the hot days of summer, we liked it best as a vegetarian dinner served alongside a simple garden salad and a glass of chilled sauvignon blanc. In the cooler months when you crave something heartier, in addition to James and Helen’s suggestions we would recommend adding a fried egg on top and a sprinkle of chopped bacon, ham, or pancetta. A drizzle of maple syrup would add another level of interesting flavor.

Like good friends, this is a relaxed recipe. Not hard to make, it’s very accommodating when it comes to your own cooking creativity. Play around with different cheeses, and different toppings, or make it the foundation of a build-your-own-food bar and invite your friends to add their own custom toppings. Sour cream, chives, dill, smoked salmon, a variety of spices, sauteed spinach and onions, diced peppers and tomatoes, hot sauce… there are so many options that would pair equally as well with this dish.

When I asked my sister, who is one of James Beard’s biggest fans and one of my favorite people to exchange recipes with, what she liked most about his style of cooking, she shared that it was all about his universal love of food and friendship. “He felt that people could be unified through the experience of a meal no matter their country or culture.” In other words, he recognized food as the foundation of friendship. Cheers to that! Hope this recipe instigates an impromptu dinner party with your friends and family and that you love the whole experience of making it just as much as we did.

Cheers to James and Helen for this gorgeous recipe and the friendship that made it. I hope it inspires many more. If you’d like to learn more about these two culinary icons and their impact on American cooking, stop by the shop and peruse the cookbook shelf.