The Cookbook Project: Betty Crocker, 1950
The next cookbook up is also Betty Crocker.
The one on the right is a first-edition original printing, which has obviously been well-loved. The spine is about to fall off, the pages are ratty, and everything is a bit...foody. The one on the left is a facsimile edition. It's exactly the same as the original, except for one paragraph at the beginning. I cook from the new one, because the 60-year old one is a bit fragile and I feel bad about using it in the way I use cookbooks generally.
Here is the only point of divergence:
Here are both cookbooks opened to the recipe I may make most often from this cookbook:
It's that or the "Fort Atkins Gingerbread". I am amused by so many cultural artifacts in this thing. So many of the recipes were "Contributed by Miss Ruth Nelson, now Mrs. Virgil Kruppke of Chicago." Chatty cookbooks rule. There's a recipe that's like polenta, now with cream of mushroom soup poured on top. There's a decorated cake "Made for visitors to the St. Paul Winter Carnival" (coconut, tiny marzipan skier).
Baz, who is not a huge chocolate dessert fan, decided he wanted to make a cake. He and I read the cake recipes together, and I talked about how a person sort of learns to guess how a recipe will taste from reading it. It's a very advanced skill! He elected to make a yellow cake, which is mostly vanilla flavored. Here he is measuring ingredients:
I taught him to grease and flour a pan. It's one of the early things I remember learning from my mom. The cake is ready for the oven.
He elected to make a filling, rather than a frosting. It's pretty tasty looking in the pan. Butter and lemon and sugar and water and cornstarch. We talked about cornstarch, and how it works, and why oobleck works.
Squeezing lemons is hard when your hands are small:
Ok, so it looks like a hot mess, but I'm pretty sure it will be very tasty, and that's what matters, right?
I think this filling would actually be dreamy in a jelly roll. I think I have a jelly roll pan....
The next cookbook up is probably the crown jewel of my Collection, over 100 years old. The White House Cookbook. I think I will pick and make that recipe myself, because a) old recipes are hard to read b) the chaos field of the kids is hard on cookbooks.
The one on the right is a first-edition original printing, which has obviously been well-loved. The spine is about to fall off, the pages are ratty, and everything is a bit...foody. The one on the left is a facsimile edition. It's exactly the same as the original, except for one paragraph at the beginning. I cook from the new one, because the 60-year old one is a bit fragile and I feel bad about using it in the way I use cookbooks generally.
Here is the only point of divergence:
Here are both cookbooks opened to the recipe I may make most often from this cookbook:
It's that or the "Fort Atkins Gingerbread". I am amused by so many cultural artifacts in this thing. So many of the recipes were "Contributed by Miss Ruth Nelson, now Mrs. Virgil Kruppke of Chicago." Chatty cookbooks rule. There's a recipe that's like polenta, now with cream of mushroom soup poured on top. There's a decorated cake "Made for visitors to the St. Paul Winter Carnival" (coconut, tiny marzipan skier).
Baz, who is not a huge chocolate dessert fan, decided he wanted to make a cake. He and I read the cake recipes together, and I talked about how a person sort of learns to guess how a recipe will taste from reading it. It's a very advanced skill! He elected to make a yellow cake, which is mostly vanilla flavored. Here he is measuring ingredients:
I taught him to grease and flour a pan. It's one of the early things I remember learning from my mom. The cake is ready for the oven.
He elected to make a filling, rather than a frosting. It's pretty tasty looking in the pan. Butter and lemon and sugar and water and cornstarch. We talked about cornstarch, and how it works, and why oobleck works.
Squeezing lemons is hard when your hands are small:
Ok, so it looks like a hot mess, but I'm pretty sure it will be very tasty, and that's what matters, right?
I think this filling would actually be dreamy in a jelly roll. I think I have a jelly roll pan....
The next cookbook up is probably the crown jewel of my Collection, over 100 years old. The White House Cookbook. I think I will pick and make that recipe myself, because a) old recipes are hard to read b) the chaos field of the kids is hard on cookbooks.