1940+

Mystery Chef’s biscuits with butter

by Rena

We hear the Mystery Chef’s 1938 biscuit recipe is great. Does anyone have it? Comment here. Then we can put the following Mystery Chef’s butter on it! The Mystery Chef’s butter recipe is contained within this script of one of his radio cooking shows between 1932 to 1945: You have to register to hear the audio version. Meanwhile, here is a partial script:

[Intro music]
“Good Day! This is the Mystery Chef. Thank you for honoring me by inviting me into your home. And what’s more let me thank you for your very delightful and very helpful letter. As promised, I shall start my little chat on the art of…cooking by giving you the “Butter Stretcher” recipe for the benefit of those who have missed it.

“With butter recently raised to 10 red points, I believe this butter recipe should be in every home in America, and Canada. Letters include the actual praising the recipe are still arriving by every mail. Here are actualy quotations: “The best butter I ever tasted.” “I wouldn’t take a hundred dollars for your Butter Stretcher recipe.” Another: “Now I can give the children all the bread and butter they want without saying, ‘Go easy on the butter.’” Still another: “Your Butter Stretcher recipe has solved my greatest breaking problem, as my family will not use anything but butter at the table. Now they can have it, and they all like it better than the ordinary butter. Thanks a million to you!”

“A thousand of enthusiastic letters have been received. But still there are many who have missed the recipe and have asked that I give it again. There’s countless radio friends who can not find any substitute for butter that they care to use; would rather eat their bread without butter than spread it with any butter substitute. Now, by using the recipe I shall give you now, you can continue to give the children all the enriched bread and butter they should have, to give them the energy they all need, used up in their strenuous play. As a matter of fact we should all eat plenty of enriched bread and butter for needed energy.

“Here’s the recipe. Please listen carefully. It’s a very easy recipe. You’ll have absolutely no difficulty in remembering it, even if you do not have writing materials handy.

“Listen:

“Take half a pound of butter and cream it. Now that means to stir it and stir it with a large spoon until the butter is soft and quite creamy. Then you break a whole egg into the creamed butter and you beat it with a rotary egg beater. Now you can use an electric beater if it has a slow speed. And when the whole egg is beaten into the butter, you warm a half pint of cream to body temperature. Now that is a half pint of light cream. One cup and you heat it only to body temperature. Then you add one tablespoon full of the warm cream to the butter and beat it in. And then add another tablespoon of warm cream and beat it in. Continue to add the warm cream one tablespoon at a time; and you must beat each tablespoon in before you add the next. When all is added the whole mixture will be very soft. Place it in your refrigerator and it will be hard and ready to serve in less than an hour. Okay, so if light cream can not be obtained, then use evaporated milk in place of the cream.

“Butter contains Vitamen A and D. And fresh butter vitamen A, B, C, D and G. Also contains calcium phosphate and iron, The last treatment will be contained in the egg.

“And if you have been using one of the other butter stretcher recipes, such as mixing butter and margarine, or by using gelatine, then compare the butter made by the recipe I’ve just given you, which dairy products only are used. You’ll find it so much better. There really is no comparison!

“Now before I give you my recipe for the day, I think I better say, now a word to all who have asked me to give my “Easy Fruit Canning” recipe….”

c. 1940 Slice of Life photos

by Rena

You’re going to love these photos from 1939-1943–from poignant New Mexican homesteader’s table to Rosie the Riveter with a lunch box. Like

1970s: Moving out of the kitchen

by Rena

Even though the 1970s kitchens were open-concept, women were geared for professional careers outside the home and often rejected working in the home kitchen. Cooking was a traditional role and it was time to branch out. Branching out commonly meant rejecting the old roles in obvious, or in subtle ways, such as this expressive and almost surreal video of Martha Rosler.

She recites the kitchen items are in alphabetical order. Like

Design Sponge

by Rena

Design Sponge showcases lovely home designs along with the owner’s quick biography. Here is a vintage kitchen re-creation in West Fulton, New York.

Vintage Drinks, 1940s

by Rena

Huckle-My-Butt is an old-timer New England drink recipe from the 1920s book, Here’s How: Mixed Drinks from the 1941 edition. CNN article brought to our attention by Cindy Traynor.

Mid-century modern kitchen in Lansing

by Rena

Visit the 1950s kitchen at Lansing Michigan’s Historical Museum (PDF). A youtuber posted a casual view of the exhibit:

1940s rural kitchen

by Rena

1940s kitchen.

Sisters cooking together made the work more fun…particularly with their loved-ones waiting for the results of their cooking! Note: Linoleum floor, packaged flour, low kitchen table being used as a work table. Like

Country kitchen in the back woods

by Rena

old country kitchen.

Old country kitchens still exist in the rural areas throughout the United States. Notice the wood-burning Atlantic stove, made in Portland, Maine circa 1920 with the attached hot-water heater.

Flickr Kitchen Scene

by Rena

Flickr has some great kitchen pictures…I’ve sorted through to find the best kitchen scenes. To help navigate, each picture opens in a new window.

Vintage Reinactments – Fun to ham it up!

Good Old Days

Tradition Lives On…

Flickr Groups

Like

1950s Acadian kitchen

by Rena

Acadian 1950s kitchen from the Pelletier-Marquis House Museum in St. Agatha, near Canada in upstate Maine
Like


1950s Pre-Fab Diners

by Rena

Valentine Diners were made of metal and manufactured in Kansas. On their website you’ll discover the history of these pre-fabricated metal lunchrooms and diners — even including the White Castle buildings.

For a closer look at the early fast-food industry visit the Kansas Museum of History in Topeka.
Like

40 Natural Foods Cook Books

by Rena

Sold

I read in an industry book that the cosmetic industry had a ten year plan in the 1960s to lessen expensive pigments contained in face make-up. To sell the consumer to want more water in cosmetics instead of the more expensive “pancake” pigments took companies 10 years of promoting “the natural look” — but it worked. It worked so well that some women in the 1970s completely stopped purchasing make-up…what to do? It probably took another 10 years of marketing to bring the numbers up in cosmetic sales. Remember how strange it looked in the 1980s when magazines were bringing back bright reds to faces?

My point? I’m wondering about the Natural Foods Movement beginnings. Was it another industry’s “10-year plan?” We now consume more than just soybean oil, as we did before the health food wave. We now eat soybeans (tofu, etc.) Meat consumption is down. Plants are genetically modified and plant life can be patented.

The Food and Drug Administration [FDA] began looking into problems of chemical preservatives in foods as early as 1862. In 1874 the adulteration of milk with water and chemicals was discussed by the FDA, along with experiments on the effects of arsenic and copper pesticides on plants and the possibility of harm to humans. So the insistance on what is now called Natural Foods didn’t originate with the 1960s counter-culture.

Here is the list of the 40 Natural Foods Cookbooks offered for sale, shown in the above video. All the books cost $104.00 plus shipping, but we will sell you the lot of them for $ 90.00 with FREE shipping within the USA to your PayPal-verified address.