Old cookbooks
So in my never ending quest for baking recipes, a co-worker of mine lend me "The Lily Allen New American Cookbook" published 1944. Very impressed with the selection of cake/dessert recipes, personally I hate cake mix and refuse to use it, so am always looking for alternatives as I bake at least 1 cake a week.
So as I'm flipping through the pages , absorbing all of these wonderful recipes, I notice some of them are calling for yeast cakes. What the hell is that? Have you ever encountered something in an old cookbook that just makes you think what is it?
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11 Comments:
A yeast cake is fresh yeast. It's widely used by professional bread bakeries and is very perishable. You can probably find it at a health food place or somewhere like Whole Foods.
chiff0nade at 4:16PM on 05/13/08
Usually see at large mainstream grocers at "Baking holidays" (think Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving) and sometimes year 'round. It's refrigerated, so usually in the dairy/butter/egg vicinity. Nice to work with, but check dates, especially during "off" seasons. (Little foil wrapped blocks about the size of an ice cube)
Cary at 4:30PM on 05/13/08
will do!! Thanks :)
stickychewygooeyjen at 4:33PM on 05/13/08
I love old cookbooks, and yes, sometimes I run across something that baffles me just a bit. But that's half of the fun.
dbcurrie at 9:49PM on 05/13/08
If you're a fan of old cookbooks, Google Book Search is an excellent resource. I was struggling to find a specific recipe to feature on a blog posting (Waldorf Pudding, served on the fateful night in the first class dining room aboard the RMS Titanic), and I found two contemporary recipes through this great online resource.
DaveFaris at 2:29PM on 05/14/08
I find it interesting that in my cookbooks from the 50s and 60s there are recipies that you don't see in modern cookbooks, such as a wide variety of jello molds. Also, I notice they don't mention the use of appliances such as food processors.
SavtaShayna at 5:35PM on 05/14/08
Old cookbooks RULE. They always have the best recipes, though the recipes assume you know how to put everything together and are usually without more than a list of ingredients.
A yeast cake is nothing to be afraid of. It just had yeast instead of baking powder or baking soda as the leavening agent, like a brioche or kugelhopf. If you want to make it work in a modern kitchen, you can post it and see what the serious eaters think the ingredients and instructions mean.
I was recently given two old Mexican cookbooks, and I'm slowly reading and translating them so I can cook authentic dinner forevermore.
butterface at 11:16PM on 05/14/08
I hvave a pile of American Cookery Magazines, which are subtitiled - The Boston Cooking School Magazine from the 1930's
The recipes are "casual" and, for the most part uncomplicated. The real hoot are the advertisements. The Kitchen Aid Mixer looks almost the same as it does today.
suegsf at 2:25AM on 05/15/08
They don't mention food processors because they hadn't been invented. My copy of "From Julia child's Kitchen", which is circa 1977 or so talks about them as originating in France, and I had certainly heard about them by then. RoboCoupe I believe was the brand. The gelatin molds are a good example of how food fashions change. I vaguely recall the tomato aspic period of food history, but my mother never made them, thanks to picky-eater me.
lemons at 10:29AM on 05/15/08
I've noticed the abundance of jello moulds and there is a section on frogs legs as well. Fits well with the time as you say.
But I love how everything is so simplyfied. There's no 100 item list of ingredients to make something delicious.
stickychewygooeyjen at 11:05AM on 05/15/08
I am a huge collector of vintage cookbooks. It amazes me how families can have estate sales and dump Grandma's old cookbooks. Why don't they want them? I love the ones where you can tell the most loved recipes by the gunk stuck to the pages; the ones which have hand-written notes and those which contain clipped recipes stashed between the pages. These are true cultural documents and I really treasure them. Yes, there are some humorous and mysterious references in some of them as well.
For some fun with vinatage cookbooks, visit http://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/
robincat at 11:46AM on 05/15/08