This is from my trusty 1940 edition of The American Woman’s Cook Book. I’m always trying to find new side dishes to add to our meals. Corn is one of my family’s favorite vegetables, and I’ve never tried deviled corn before, so this seemed like a good choice.
Corn Pudding or Deviled Corn
2 tbsp fat
2 tbsp flour
1 1/2 c milk
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp mustard
Paprika
2 c corn pulp
1 egg
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
Buttered crumbs
Make a sauce of fat, flour, milk, and seasonings. Add the corn, egg slightly beaten, and Worcestershire sauce. Pour into a baking dish, cover with buttered crumbs, and bake in a moderate oven at 350° to 400°F for fifteen to thirty minutes.
Results
This had the potential to be really good. I’m going to have to play around with it a little. I think it’s supposed to be a breaded pudding-type dish, but it was so runny. The flavor was nice, though. You could taste the paprika and I think if the breaded part was cooked more this would have been delicious. I’ll play with the cooking time and the ingredients a little and I’ll report back to you.
Earlier this week I was looking for something to make as a dessert. I wanted it to be sweet, easy, and a little different. I think these broiled peaches fit the bill nicely. We liked them so much we’ve made them twice already.
Broiled Peaches
This recipe is from Your Gas Range Cook Book. It was published in January 1940 and was distributed by the Wyandotte County Gas Company in Kansas.
corn flakes or cereal crumbs
lemon sauce (see below)
6 peach halves
melted butter
Dip the peaches in melted butter, roll in cereal crumbs, and place in broiler. Broil to a golden brown. Serve with lemon sauce.
I chose a lemon sauce from another cook book because I couldn’t find a lemon sauce in the same one. I looked in the index and didn’t see one, but after we made the peaches, I looked again and found it under Magic Lemon Cream Sauce. I’m assuming that is the lemon sauce they referred to in the recipe, but they didn’t include a page number or exactly what it was called. I’ll list the ingredients for that sauce here in case you want to try it, too.
2/3 c sweetened condensed milk
1 tsp grated lemon rind
1/4 c lemon juice
Blend and stir all ingredients. Add water to create desired consistency if needed.
Lemon Sauce
1/2 c sugar
1 tbsp corn starch
2 tbsp lemon juice
nutmeg (no quantity listed)
salt
2 tbsp butter
1 c boiling water
Mix the sugar and corn starch. Add the boiling water and a pinch of salt and boil until thick and clear. Continue cooking over hot water for 20 minutes. Beat in the butter, lemon juice, and nutmeg. A grating of lemon rind may be added.
This recipe is from the 1940 edition of The American Woman’s Cook Book.
Results
These peaches were so yummy! They were sweet with just the right amount of crunch from the corn flakes. The lemon sauce was good, but when we added it we couldn’t taste the lemon over the flavor of the peaches. I don’t think it added much, so definitely don’t be afraid to make these without the sauce. They were delicious either way. We used canned peaches and they worked well. Our local store doesn’t have good peaches right now, but I’m excited to try this during peach season with fresh peaches, too. We warmed up the leftover peaches and found them to be just as tasty.
This would have been the perfect recipe for the home front housewife. Most, if not all, ingredients would have been easily obtainable. My newly 6-year-old daughter and I have been reading the American Girl books about Kit Kittridge. They are set during the Great Depression, so we’ve been talking about how people changed their eating habits during these years, too. I wonder if that is when this recipe was created or if its history reaches back even further than that. It’s a great dessert that uses affordable, easy to get ingredients.
Is this a dessert that you’ve had before? Let me know if you’ve tried it or if you decide to make some for yourselves.
I enjoy looking at lunch box menus from the early 1940s. They were economical and creative, helping provide a variety of nutritious options to homemakers whose families craved food that was both tasty and less monotonous than the meals many families were eating during rationing. Women were having to find new ways to use old foods and were trying to use new, often less desirable foods to appeal to their families tastes. It was easy to get in a rut when things were so difficult and new. Using magazines and cookbooks to find new ideas was the home front housewife’s version of Pinterest and internet searches.
Here are several sets of menus to show you a wide variety of what lunch boxes might contain during WWII. It’s difficult to get some of these pages to line up straight in photographs, but I want to include them anyway. Note how the lists are broken into categories. School children were expected to eat different things than a “hard worker” was, and even women were divided up into working women and housewives. The creators of these menus were trying to make the menus filling and nutritious while still allowing for things like using rationing points and the availability of food items. Many menus I have seen use dinner leftovers from the night before, another way to avoid food waste in a time where people were trying to use up every last bit of food they had.
Enjoy these menus and let me know if you try any of them.
War–time Lunches, Philadelphia Electric Company, 1940s.
This is an example of a set of menus that includes a dinner menu for the night before. I like to compare the menu contents to see what part of the dinner is used for the lunch box, and also to compare the food in the workman, child, and homemaker lists. The homemaker often gets much less food.
Good Housekeeping Cook Book, 1944 edition.
American Woman’s CookBook, 1940 edition.
This is from just before the United States joined the war, but it still is a nice example of what school children were carrying in their lunch boxes.
I haven’t forgotten you! I will continue with my lunch box series soon. Coronavirus has hit my family and I’ve been taking care of a very sick loved one. As soon as he is better, I’ll be posting more frequently. The past 10 days have been rough ones.
Today I thought I’d show you my very favorite Christmas gift from this past Christmas. It’s a 1940s breakfront china cabinet/bookcase. I love it. I’ve filled it with vintage and antique treasures.
I’m looking forward to getting back to cooking and posting. Stay safe and I wish you good health.
Today’s post will be a quick one. I wanted to make sure it went up while it was still officially Monday where I live. I chose a simple menu of stuffed hamburgers and cooked carrots. The hamburgers are from What Do We Eat Now?, a 1942 cookbook aimed at helping homemakers win the battle on the home front.
Results
These took longer to make than I thought they would. They had an interesting taste and texture. The centers were soft. You could taste the dressing—the flavor was distinct from the hamburger meat. It was nice and tasted slightly of onions. I had mine served without a bun, but other people in my family ate the burger on a sesame seed bun and said it was good. I don’t think I’ll make these again even though it was an interesting way to make hamburger patties. I preferred the cheeseburgers with carrots we had not long ago. The carrot cheeseburgers were also easier and quicker to make.
The only thing I had on the menu suggestion was carrots. We eat a lot of carrots at my house and we have several carrot dishes that we throw together without a recipe. This is one of them. If you are interested in the recipe, let me know and I’ll post it later this month.
I enlisted my 18 year old daughter to help me on this one. I wanted to find something I had never made before, and I found this Pumpkin Alaska recipe in the 1941 Pies and Pastries. It’s another cookbook in the Culinary Arts Institute series.
We started this pie this morning and just tasted it a while ago. It’s about 9pm. It’s been a day full of pie, but more on that later. Here’s the recipe.
Results
Pumpkin Filling
I’ll start off by saying that this was pretty good. We popped the left over pumpkin filling into the freezer, then ate it spooned into bowls with whipped cream earlier in the day. I think I liked this better than the pie, actually. I liked the whipped cream and pie filling combo better than the meringue and filling, and I think I’d replace the meringue with whipped cream if I made this in the future.
The problem with this pie is that it never set enough to cut into slices. We had it in the freezer most of the day. The first time we tried to eat it was right after the broiler step in the recipe—exactly when it says to serve it. It was super runny and we decided to put it back in the freezer to see if we could get it to the point where it was solid enough to slice. It froze for hours and hours and still only set to the point it is in the final pictures. The slice in the photo below is the best one we were able to get out of the pie pan.
Final Result
I had so much fun doing this challenge. I want to thank my fellow hosts for including me. I enjoyed seeing what everyone made. It’s not too late to start! Head over to Instagram and use #ww2rationcookin so we can see what you make.
Please stay safe and I’ll see you Monday for April’s First Monday Menu!
I took today’s Victory Lunch Box menu from The Good Housekeeping Cook Book. They have a section with lunch box menus, and today’s menu was created specifically for a business girl. Almost all of the cookbooks and other materials I have separate lunch box menus into categories. There are usually sections for hard workers, working girls, housewives, and school children. I’ll be writing about some of those differences when I finish up my lunch box series later this month.
I don’t have a lunch box to show how all the items would be packed, so I put them on a regular plate. This is the exact lunch box menu, though, and would have been packed in a thermos, paper cups, and waxed paper.
Menu
Corn Chowder
Cream Cheese and Olive Sandwiches
Fruit Salad
Saltines
I’m amazed at how much food is included in the menus. Almost all that I’ve seen have called for more than one sandwich. Sometimes the menu includes several sandwiches with different fillings on different breads. Sandwich fillings range from complex mixtures to plain butter.
Corn Chowder
1 2”sq fat salt pork (we used bacon)
1 lg onion, sliced
2 lbs pared white potatoes (4 c diced)
2 c boiling water
1 12oz can whole grain corn
4 c bottled milk, scalded OR 2 evaporated milk and 2 c water, scalded
2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp paprika
Cut salt pork into 1/2” cubes and brown well in large sauce pan. Add onion and cook tender. Add diced potatoes and water, cover and cook until potatoes are tender. Add corn, milk, and seasonings. Heat and serve. Serves 6 as a main dish.
Due to shortages at our small local grocery store, we had to use red potatoes instead of white, and we used the evaporated milk and water option listed above.
Results
This was a wonderful, filling meal. The corn chowder was warm and flavorful. I think it would be perfect in a thermos tucked into a fall or winter lunch box. It was very hearty with ingredients that complimented each other. With the addition of one or two sandwiches, this probably would have been too much for me to eat. The fruit salad I have shown in the photos is a favorite family concoction made with fruit and whipped cream.
There’s one themed day left in the WW2 Ration Cook-in challenge. It’s not too late to join us! Check out your other hosts over on Instagram. Use #ww2rationcookin so we can see what you make!
