I wish to link to my blog entry from
December 15, 2015. In this entry I
discussed my mother's Aunt Marie, who worked in the test kitchen at the Sperry
Flour Mill and their Martha Meade Recipe Book,
my cousin has a copy. The copy I have was placed on the free table at
the apartment building where I live. I
discuss specifically their peanut butter cookie recipe, the recipe my mother
preferred.
So many years ago a friend gave me the
Betty Crocker New Picture Cook Book, published in 1961. I noted in its peanut butter cookie recipe
different ingredients and measurements that make the Betty Crocker recipe the
Margaret Meade recipe. My mother's
recipe books that I had packed in a box are not with me. I am not an only child. With cook books where I live I have a
cardboard box with loose recipes my mother collected. We could have a slice of
the white bread she always made for my father, who had allergies. Every year she succeeded with a large number
of recipes for Christmas Cookies. Among
the cards, some in plastic covers, are two other cook book booklets which must,
like the Martha Meade Recipe Book, have come from her aunt, or from her
mother.
Betty Crocker leaflets and booklets must be set away in many kitchens, I waited some time on the holds list before I picked Betty Crocker's Lost Recipes up yesterday at the Pierce County Library. Some of the recipes do not seem so lost – I have sometimes made the Molasses Crinkles, for example. I noticed a double-page spread near the back that recreates an older illustration of six cakes with floral names: Pink Azalea, Daffodil, Brown-Eyed Susan, Chocolate Joy, Bouquet of Flowers, and Old Kentucky...something (which does not show in the photograph), and a booklet my mother had does indeed contain the recipe for the Brown-Eyed Susan Cake. True! My sense of an approach to the 100th anniversary of the Betty Crocker Kitchens, which began in 1921, is augmented by my booklet from 1933 that solves one missing element from the 2017 Betty Crocker's Lost Recipes cookbook.
1 comment:
The old Betty Crocker cookbooks (mid- to late-fifties and early sixties) are treasures. My own mother's cookbook is a 1955, I think. It is interesting to me that there is quite often a little less sugar -- and a little more fat -- in the old cookie, cake, and pie recipes than in their later editions. Changing tastes in our country? The banana cake with whipped cream filling is stupendous!
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