Retro Recipe Roundup
The kitchen is a place that I adore. Well, actually, anywhere that you can craft food is a place that brings me joy. From sowing seeds in a well tended garden, to banking hot coals on a peach cobbler filled dutch oven, to whipping up a fluffy buttercream in my trusty ol' lime green Kitchen Aid stand mixer, I am definitely food focused.
Let's face it though, few things are more uniting than food. Now matter where we go or who we are with, food is a requirement at some point, and nothing breaks the ice better than some well-crafted comestibles!
That said, my food roots are kinda interesting. My great grandma Bertha was already quite elderly when I came along. She was such a massive yet stern presence in my life, I still remember the scent of her house, a combination of talc powder and hard candies that is hard to describe and even harder to forget. Many an afternoon I would sit on Grandma Bertha's couch in her spectacularly tidy home while she and my mom would chat. Some memories tend to stick with you.
Grandma Bertha was a ranch cook in Wyoming. Somewhere in one of my relative's homes is a recipe box with her ranch cooking recipes. Things like how to make a batch of biscuits for a crew in a washtub. Stuff like that. It was well known that I loved recipes and all things retro, so when Grandma Bertha left this life I inherited a box full of newspaper clippings, recipe boxes, and old cookbooks that were both hers and my great Aunt Olive's.
As anyone with a relative who lived during the Great Depression knows, they used, saved, reused, and made do. That box full of history that I was given is one of my favorite treasures, for not only does it contain the most fantastic culinary look at one of the most turbulent points in our country's history, but it also gives me a first hand gaze into the not too distant past culture that my ancestors dwelt in.
My Aunt Olive kept everything so I've been told. I can't remember meeting Aunt Olive, I think I did when I was a baby, but I've ate off of or cooked things in kitchenware of Aunt Olive's for years. In my box of culinary treasures are little boxes like this one:
They are like looking into a culinary time capsule from the 1940's-1960's! For example, here's a little pamphlet from the Northwest Power Pool about electric cookery. It was published in 1943, which of course was right in the middle of World War II. Let me tell you, I know that there was rationing and such, but my form gave a bit of a shudder when I beheld the bean loaf recipe. Could such a concoction be tasty?
Curiosity is probably going to get the best of me and I will at some point construct a bean loaf, you know, for science. Have any of you ever ate such a thing?
That said, it's time to bring up the point of my post. I know food trends change and our tastes evolve, but I think it is important to preserve history for our future generations. Not that I want to re-embrace the fascination with jello molds and pressed loaves that gripped the fifties and sixties, rather that it's important to try out things that have been forgotten and pass on what is awesome to those coming down the existential pipe. There's also the cultural change factor. Every time I unfold a newspaper clipping that contains a recipe I'll flip it over and read what's on the other side. Things have changed so, so much, especially for women. Apparently I am the only one who is supposed to utilize the electric dishwasher. Who knew?
So starting with this post, I am going to showcase one of my great grandma's or aunt Olive's recipes along with highlighting some really cool finds that I discovered in my culinary information treasure trove. I'm even going to test a bunch of them out and offer my opinions on them. I think it will be fun, and it'll be like cooking with and learning from my elders in a whole new way even if they are no longer with us.
To begin this adventure, I have a lot of this growing around the farm:
We've already harvested well over twenty pounds of rhubarb. My husband is experimenting with a rhubarb wine making goal, and six months from now I think I will make a post or vlog about that adventure when the wine is done, but today we are going to talk about Rhubarb Custard Pie.
Now to be honest, I am not a huge fan of custard. Well, let me explain that a bit. I think a lot of my non fan status has to do with the fact that most of the custards I have had in my life were not concocted correctly. Last winter in New Mexico I had some frozen custard that changed my life. Really. It was just so creamy and marvelous, and I think it was because it was crafted in the right way.
That said, I remember eating custard pies on occasion at many of my grandma's houses. Our family had kids young, so when I was young I had grandmas, great-grandmas, and even some great, great-grandmas. They all seemed to have an affinity for custard pies.
So, with rhubarb on the brain, when I ran into this recipe card in Grandma's recipe card box, I was intrigued:
Let's break this baby down:
Rhubarb Custard Pie
2 1/2 cups rhubarb cooked in 2 TBSP water
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup flour -stir in rhubarb
Separate 2 eggs-mix in the yolks slowly
1 Tablespoon butter
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon red food coloring
top with egg white and brown
So, a bit of cookery detective work is in order. Rhubarb usually is cooked down a bit, so I would simmer the chopped rhubarb, yes chopped, for at least fifteen minutes.
Next I would whisk the sugar and and flour together before stirring in the cooked rhubarb. The egg yolks would be stirred in next, slowly, slowly...
Then I would add the butter, salt, and food coloring and plunk the filling in a pie crust.
Now, I am reasonably sure the eggs whites are supposed to be whipped like a meringue, and since the card says brown the whites, I am thinking that the crust might already be baked before adding the filling, but honestly this recipe is a bit of a mystery. Usually a meringue would be baked about fifteen minutes or so. Does this mean the crust should be pre-baked, or should one bake it, apply meringue part of the way through for browning. Or perhaps you should just throw the egg whites on the top? So many options for failure here....
Honestly, I feel like so much is missing and maybe my Grandma Bertha did a thing I do a lot of the time, which is jot down the measurements of a recipe she liked just for reference. Most of her recipes are not this way, they are precisely copied instructions of how to do something, exact to the letter. This recipe reached out and snagged my attention because of it's lack of explanation. I love a good mystery!
So, in the name of rediscovery, I am going to give this pie recipe a try. And I am going to keep trying until I get it right. It's not like I have a lack of rhubarb or anything. Stay tuned for an update on my progress!!