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More home ec books...
At lunch, I went back to the home economics textbook section to see what else they had. There was one from the 1940s titled The Girl and Her Home, and one from the 1950s titled Young Living. To be fair, Young Living is a middle-school home ec textbook, or "pre-hi" as they called it.
A very quick skim through other textbooks too shows the influence of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth and their efficiency-study colleagues on households during the first half of the century - it moves from an emphasis on home making to home management. One of the books that I left on the shelf is indeed all about household management and is full of helpful advice on how to use one's time cooking and cleaning most efficiently - one tip I remember from it is that one should concentrate on one thing at a time before doing another thing, because it produces less fatigue, and one of the examples was that one should dry one type of dinnerware at a time: all the glasses first, then move to the tableware, etc.
Apparently I've been drying my dishes wrong all these years. Sigh.
But! How about some 1950s cuisine!
From Young Living, which has almost nothing on clothing and a large section on food, the opposite of The Mode in Dress and Home, from 1935, which spent 80% of its pages on clothing and sewing, and mentioned food only in passing:
I sort of like what this recipe is meant to be, if you used good sausage and tomato paste instead of hot dogs and ketchup, and if you didn't COOK IT INTO SUBMISSION
Glamour Dogs or Stuffed Franks
Serves 5
10 frankfurters
1/4 c. water
Stuffing:
2 c. coarsely crumbled crackers
4 strips crisp bacon, crumbled
2 T minced onion
1/3 c. minced green pepper
1/2 t salt
1/8 t pepper
3 T catsup
Preheat oven to 350. To make stuffing: Fry bacon and crumbled crackers. Lightly brown onion and green pepper in 2 T bacon fat. Combine ingredients.
Split franks lengthwise almost through. Fill with stuffing and place in a shallow pan. Pour water in pan around franks and bake, uncovered, for 15 minutes or until piping hot.
It doesn't tell you how to serve it, but two pictures lead me to assume you either need a long baking dish in which to line them up, or you should arrange them in a spoke-like position on a square or round serving tray.
As it is the late 1950s, we're at least getting away from the boil-into-mush method of preparing vegetables, although we're solidly in the age of cottage cheese. (I recommend Susan Lovegren's Fashionable Food: Seven Decades of Food Fads [Amazon
Powell's] if you want to now more about US eating habit from the 1920s through the 1980s)
Here's the recipe for Quicky Cake. I am so glad they included it, because I never would have known how to bake a really quick cake without it.
1 pkg cake mix.
1 recipe Quicky Fudge icing (the recipe is a basic buttercream)
1 t shortening
Turn oven to correct temperature. Mix cake as directed on the package. Pour into greased and floured cake pans. Bake in oblong pan about 9" x 13" x 2" as directed. Make icing while cake is baking.
After the food section is the personal grooming section, wherein we are informed that some boys think only girls need to use deodorant, but they are mistaken, and that one should shampoo weekly. (I know that it used to be a Thing among the older generation when I was a kid where you went to a beauty parlor once a week to get your shampoo and set, and my grandmother may still actually do that, but I still have trouble wrapping my brain around a once-weekly shampoo. And I don't even wash my hair every day, due to dry hair!)
A very quick skim through other textbooks too shows the influence of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth and their efficiency-study colleagues on households during the first half of the century - it moves from an emphasis on home making to home management. One of the books that I left on the shelf is indeed all about household management and is full of helpful advice on how to use one's time cooking and cleaning most efficiently - one tip I remember from it is that one should concentrate on one thing at a time before doing another thing, because it produces less fatigue, and one of the examples was that one should dry one type of dinnerware at a time: all the glasses first, then move to the tableware, etc.
Apparently I've been drying my dishes wrong all these years. Sigh.
But! How about some 1950s cuisine!
From Young Living, which has almost nothing on clothing and a large section on food, the opposite of The Mode in Dress and Home, from 1935, which spent 80% of its pages on clothing and sewing, and mentioned food only in passing:
I sort of like what this recipe is meant to be, if you used good sausage and tomato paste instead of hot dogs and ketchup, and if you didn't COOK IT INTO SUBMISSION
Glamour Dogs or Stuffed Franks
Serves 5
10 frankfurters
1/4 c. water
Stuffing:
2 c. coarsely crumbled crackers
4 strips crisp bacon, crumbled
2 T minced onion
1/3 c. minced green pepper
1/2 t salt
1/8 t pepper
3 T catsup
Preheat oven to 350. To make stuffing: Fry bacon and crumbled crackers. Lightly brown onion and green pepper in 2 T bacon fat. Combine ingredients.
Split franks lengthwise almost through. Fill with stuffing and place in a shallow pan. Pour water in pan around franks and bake, uncovered, for 15 minutes or until piping hot.
It doesn't tell you how to serve it, but two pictures lead me to assume you either need a long baking dish in which to line them up, or you should arrange them in a spoke-like position on a square or round serving tray.
As it is the late 1950s, we're at least getting away from the boil-into-mush method of preparing vegetables, although we're solidly in the age of cottage cheese. (I recommend Susan Lovegren's Fashionable Food: Seven Decades of Food Fads [Amazon
Powell's] if you want to now more about US eating habit from the 1920s through the 1980s)Here's the recipe for Quicky Cake. I am so glad they included it, because I never would have known how to bake a really quick cake without it.
1 pkg cake mix.
1 recipe Quicky Fudge icing (the recipe is a basic buttercream)
1 t shortening
Turn oven to correct temperature. Mix cake as directed on the package. Pour into greased and floured cake pans. Bake in oblong pan about 9" x 13" x 2" as directed. Make icing while cake is baking.
After the food section is the personal grooming section, wherein we are informed that some boys think only girls need to use deodorant, but they are mistaken, and that one should shampoo weekly. (I know that it used to be a Thing among the older generation when I was a kid where you went to a beauty parlor once a week to get your shampoo and set, and my grandmother may still actually do that, but I still have trouble wrapping my brain around a once-weekly shampoo. And I don't even wash my hair every day, due to dry hair!)
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