Calumet Baking Powder

Our latest trip to the Brimfield Antique Show netted me not one, but two cooking pamphlets from the Calumet Baking Powder Company – my first ones from that company.

First up, from 1931, “The Calumet Baking Book.”  With an attractive cover and 24 pages of recipes, it’s a great addition to my collection.  It also helpfully points out that it uses a standard of 1 teaspoon of baking powder to one cup of flour – which as I discussed here means that one should double the modern baking powder amounts for its recipes.

I’m also entertained by the experiment it suggests for seeing how the “double acting” part works:

Put two level teaspoons of Calumet Baking Powder into a glass, add two teaspoons of water, stir rapidly five times, and remove the spoon.  You will see the tiny, fine bubbles rise slowly, half filling the glass.  This is Calumet’s first action – the action that takes place in your mixing bowl when you add liquid to the dry ingredients.

After the mixture has entirely stopped rising, stand the glass in a pan of hot water on the stove.  In a moment, a second rising will start and continue until the mixture reaches the top of the glass.  This is Calumet’s second action – the action that takes place in the heat of your oven.

Just in case you, too, ever wondered about that “double action” part.  Plus this is a simple thing you can do in your own kitchen today!  (Assuming it works with modern double-acting baking powder.  Do let me know if it doesn’t!)

For a recipe I’m going with “Palermo Lemon Cake” – the picture looks tasty, doesn’t it?  The cake recipes in this booklet have the interesting feature of specifying how many eggs are needed, in bold type right under the recipe name; I’m not sure why.

PALERMO LEMON CAKE {1 egg}
2 cups sifted Swans Down Cake Flour
2 teaspoons Calumet Baking Powder [4 with modern powder]
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons butter or other shortening
1 cup sugar
1 egg, unbeaten
1 teaspoon grated lemon rind
3/4 cup milk

Sift flour once, measure, add baking powder and salt, and sift together three times.  Cream butter thoroughly, add sugar gradually, and cream together until light and fluffy.  Add egg and lemon rind and beat well.  Add flour, alternately with milk, a small amount at a time.  Beat after each addition until smooth.  Bake in two greased 9-inch layer pans in moderate oven (375F) 25 minutes.  Put layers together with Lemon Filling and cover top and sides of cake with Palermo Lemon Frosting).

LEMON FILLING
1 cup sugar
2-1/2 tablespoons flour
Grated rind 2 lemons
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 egg, slightly beaten
1 teaspoon butter

Combine sugar and flour.  Add lemon rind, lemon juice, and egg.  Cook until thick, stirring constantly.  Add butter.  Enough for two 9-inch layers.

PALERMO LEMON FROSTING
2 egg whites, unbeaten
1-1/2 cups sugar
3 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon grated lemon rind

Put egg whites, sugar, water, lemon juice, and lemon rind in upper part of double boiler.  Beat with rotary egg beater until thoroughly mixed.  Place over rapidly boiling water, beat constantly with rotary egg beater, and cook 7 minutes, or until frosting will stand in peaks.  Remove from fire and beat until thick enough to spread.  Makes enough frosting to cover tops and sides of two 9-inch layers.

I’m thinking of making this next week – so I’ll need to buy some lemons.

The other Calumet booklet is called “Selected Recipes and Menus for Parties Holidays and Special Occasions” and has an author, Marian Jane Parker, but no definite publication date.  I think it’s from the 1920s; it refers to a 1918 USDA standard, and the foreword is signed by company president Warren Wright, who (according to Internet research) sold the company to General Foods in 1929.  The cover is split from the bottom up to the center staple and it has a number of “used in the kitchen” stains, but it’s also another snapshot of cultural and social ideas of the 1920s (or later?):

A man would say that good food, properly prepared, is all that is necessary.  But a woman longs for new culinary worlds to conquer.  She wearies of the same kind of biscuits, the cake she learned to make for her first grown-up party, the old way of serving chicken.  And she welcomes new ideas that combine simplicity and originality.  If she can pleasantly surprise her evening bridge club without spending the whole afternoon in the effort – so much the better!

The booklet offers suggested menus for various generic occasions: one o’clock luncheon, children’s birthday party, afternoon tea, buffet luncheon, evening refreshments, and afternoon refreshments.  The holidays and special occasions are an interesting assortment: Refreshments for Valentine Parties, the June Wedding, St. Patrick’s Party Luncheon, Menus for the Fourth of July, Lincoln’s Birthday Party, For the Hallowe’en Frolic (including a line drawing of an adult bobbing for apples), Thanksgiving Dinner (of course), A George Washington Party (lots of cherry recipes), and of course Christmas Dinner Plans.

Since the Fourth of July is the next featured holiday on the calendar (never mind Memorial Day, then Decoration Day, apparently), here are the proposed menus:

PICNIC SUPPER
Cold Fried Chicken
Bread and Butter Sandwiches
Pecan Rolls
Potato Chips – Pickles – Olives
Fresh Fruit – Cup Cakes
Iced Lemonade

LIGHT REFRESHMENTS
Cold Veal Loaf-Sandwiches
Pineapple and Orange Salad
Rolled Cheese Sandwiches
Buttered Rolls
Iced Punch

LUNCHEON
Melon Cocktail
Chicken Mousse
Shoe String Potatoes
Olives – Pickles
Nut Muffins – Butter
Red, White and Blue Brick Ice Cream
Patriotic Cake
Coffee

Only four of these items are actually in the booklet (Pecan Rolls, Patriotic Cake, Rolled Cheese Sandwiches, and Veal Loaf, to be precise).  Based just on the name, I’m going with

Patriotic Cake
1/4 c. shortening
1/2 c. sugar
1-2/3 c. sifted flour
1/2 c. milk
2 level tsp. Calumet Baking Powder [3.5 or 4 for modern product]
2 egg whites
1/2 tsp. vanilla
Pink coloring

Cream shortening, add sugar gradually.  Then add sifted dry ingredients with milk and flavoring.  Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites.  Color one half mixture with pink coloring and fill into a loaf pan alternating the two batters, in order to have a marble appearance.  Bake in a moderate oven (325-350 degrees F.) 35 to 40 minutes.  Cover with white frosting and decorate with flags.

This may be the cake depicted in the picture, with the pink turned into red.  If I was making this, I’d press blueberries into the white frosting to get that red-white-and-blue look for a proper “patriotic cake.”

And actually, the Rolled Cheese Sandwiches are interesting enough to quickly repeat: “Cut soft white bread in thin slices and spread with butter.  Mix cream cheese and a few chopped maraschino cherries until soft enough to spread on the bread.  Roll and tie with red, white and blue ribbons.”

There.  Patriotic enough, right?

Happy Spring!

Chocolate Cake (ca. 1937)

I’ve been sick, so there’s been a minimum of work around here. But two weeks ago I went on to the next recipe in the Sands, Taylor / King Arthur booklet – Chocolate Cake “With Chocolate” (that’s what it says).

1-3/4 cups King Arthur Flour
1-1/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup shortening
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon soda
1 cup sour milk
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 or 3 squares melted chocolate

Cream shortening; add sugar and continue creaming. Add eggs, vanilla, and melted chocolate and beat well. Add sifted dry ingredients alternately with milk. Pour into oiled pan and bake [at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes].

I used 3 squares of chocolate and went with the old trick of adding 1 tablespoon of vinegar to a cup of whole lactose-free milk. Did anybody keep sour milk around just for recipes, I wonder, or did they all do that?

There was one major snag in this whole operation: the recipe specified a 7″ x 11″ loaf pan – a fact that I did not pick up on until I went to fetch a pan.

I do not own an 7 x 11 inch pan. It is not one of the basic standard sizes. (I have, however, found out where to get one should I decide to do so.)

As a result, after the batter was ready, there was a period of ransacking cabinets and remembering how to calculate the area of a circle.  I finally went with using one of my 8 x 8 square cake pans, as being closest in probable volume.  It more or less fit – rising up to the edge – but my uncertainty about the correct baking time meant that the edges were noticeably drier than the center (I kept it in for about 50 minutes).

After all that trouble I wasn’t in the mood for more experimenting and went with a familiar Portsmouth Frosting recipe from a modern Fannie Farmer book.  That worked with the cake – which was really quite good!  Of course, the other problem was a lack of items to store a square frosted cake in … but once we cut off part of it, the cover for my round cake plate more or less fit over it.

Looking ahead in the booklet, I also do not own a 9 x 11 inch loaf pan.  Or a 9 x 9 square pan.  Or an 8 x 13 inch loaf pan.  Or a 9 x 12 inch loaf pan.  And I’m not sure what a “1 1/2 pound loaf bread pan” might be.  However, in searching for information for this post, I’ve found several resources about pan sizes and baking times that I have bookmarked and will definitely refer to next time these odd sizes come up.

Dictionary 18??: Agate to Agrace

Today I worked at cleaning up, sorting, and putting things in boxes for a tag sale – and I found our battered and really old dictionary (as opposed to the 1881 one we also own – see the “language” category.

It’s an odd size – nearly square – battered, leather-bound, and missing a bunch of pages at the beginning and end.  The pages are seriously discolored, and I think there used to be lettering on the spine.  It’s quite thick – I have a little under 500 of the pages.  It seems to have belonged to at least two schoolchildren: The inside cover is inscribed “Amy Kirbys Book New Y….k” and page 27 (now the first page) has “C. H. Manning M. Y. D.” written along the bottom.  The back cover has “Thomas” written with an elaborately curlicued “T.”

And what words did the dictionary editor (anonymous to me, since the title page is missing) think were useful to know?  Let’s see:

Agen, ad. again, in return

Aggeneration, s. state of growing to another body

Aggerate, v. a., to heap up

Agglutinants, s. medicines

Agglutinate, v. n. to unite

Aggress, v. n. to commit the first act of violence

Aggroup, v. a. to bring together into one figure

Agitable, a. moveable

Aglet, s. pendants at the ends of the chives of flowers

Agminal, a. belonging to a troop

Agnail, s. a whitlow

And what’s a whitlow?  According to the 1881 dictionary, “a disease of the nails.” (This damaged dictionary stops at “Transpose.”)

Agnation, s. descent from the same father.

Agnition, s. acknowledgment

Agnize, v. a. to acknowledge

Agnomination, s. allusion of one word to another

Agnus Casus, s. the chaste tree

Google says this is an actual Mediterranean tree.

Agoing, ad. in action

Agone, ad. ago, past

Agonism, s. contention

Agonistes, s. a prize-fighter

Agood, ad. in earnest

Agrace, v. a. to grant favour

Some of these are in the later dictionary, but others are not, and those present sometimes have different definitions. Also notice the British spelling of “favor” as “favour” – that also suggests it’s a notably old dictionary.

I’m so happy that I finally found this book again!

Small Basic Cake (ca. 1937)

Alas, it’s been a while since I ran across anything from general history that’s interesting enough to report on here!  But I am still using my vintage pamphlet collection.  Last week I baked a cake from the Sands, Taylor & Wood Co., aka King Arthur Flour (previously mentioned here), and it was excellent.  The first recipe in the booklet, it’s appropriately billed as “For the Small Family” – it’s only one 9-inch layer, baked 30-35 minutes in a 350-degree oven.  Here’s the whole recipe:

1-1/3 cups King Arthur Flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup shortening
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 eggs
3/4 teaspoon vanilla
2/3 cup milk

Cream shortening.  Add sugar and continue creaming.  Add eggs and vanilla; beat well.  Sift dry ingredients and add alternately with milk.  Pour into oiled pan and bake.

It was delicious – in fact, even better the second day than the first.  I prep my cake pans with shortening and flour and a layer of waxed paper in the bottom, not with oil, and used only about a half-teaspoon of salt.  And in my oven it did need to bake for almost exactly 30 minutes.

The I frosted it with

Butter Icing (Chocolate Variation)
2 cups confectioners’ sugar
4 tablespoons melted butter
1 square of melted chocolate
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 tablespoons cream (or top milk)
1/8 teaspoon salt

1.  Add sugar, salt, and cream to the melted butter and chocolate.

2.  Place over hot water and let stand for five minutes.

3.  Remove from heat, add vanilla, and beat until cool and of spreading consistency.

I used lactose-free whole milk instead of cream, and it worked just fine.  I melted the butter and chocolate in a double-boiler, then mixed in the other ingredients and let it all stand for the five minutes over the hot water.  It took quite a while to beat and cool down to spreading consistency – in fact I beat it at bit too long, because I have a lengthy record of making frosting that drips off the side of the cake.  It was just barely spreadable and didn’t look all nice and smooth, but it did stay put on the cake where it belonged.  Next time, I’ll try stopping a bit sooner.

I’ve decided to work through most of the rest of the cake recipes in this booklet.  There are a surprising (to modern eyes) number of loaf cakes.  I’m not sure I’ll try all the fruit cakes (and I’ll definitely be skipping the Fresh Pork Fruit Cake – which actually calls for a pound of pork fat, not actual meat, so I guess I could substitute shortening, but I don’t know where I’d get any sorghum or a quarter-pound of citron).

And I ought to try some of these fillings, too.  Mmm.  Plus, yard work.  Lots and lots of yard work.  And jogging, probably.

Article in Connecticut Explored

And here’s something new: my spouse and I have an article in the current issue of Connecticut Explored!  “Exploring Early Connecticut Mapmaking” is – okay, a bit obviously – about historic maps of Connecticut, an area we know quite a bit about.

The magazine is a well-put-together popular history publication focusing on our home state.  We’re very pleased to be published in it.

Handwriting of John Mix, 1813

I’m back in the War of 1812 correspondence files of Connecticut Governor John Cotton Smith, and Quartermaster General John Mix had the most adorable handwriting.  No, really, look:

Beautifully legible, if definitely unusual in shape, and it looks almost like he was writing along a ruled line.  (That’s a Connecticut Historical Society document, by the way.)

What he had to tell the Governor on July 19, though, was rather serious:

I went to New London the day before the Militia there in service were dismissed; immediately after their dismission I made arrangements to collect the arms, ammunition, and other property of the State which had been in use, and get it to a place of greater safety; accordingly it was put on board a Sloop and ordered up the river to Stoddard’s landing a little above Decatures station, there to remain on board untill circumstances might render a different disposition necessary, leaving nothing of much consequence behing behind excepting Capt French’s two field pieces, about 70 muskets, and a supply of ammunition for both.  This I considered the most prudent measure that could be adopted for the security of our valuable property, as the town was left defenceless, not more than 200 national troops of every description, the inhabitants flying in all directions, and an attack hourly expected.

Immediately after Gen’l Isham ordered in two Regiments of his Brigade, of which your Excellency, doubtless has had information, the Sloop with our munitions was directed to return to N. London, from which the necessary supplys will be drawn, and the residue, if any, remain on board; our situation is yet in my apprehension so critical, that I am very unwilling to leave any thing on shore except what is indispensably necessary.

Your Excellencys letter of 10^th instant by Capt Whittlesey was received at N. London the 13^th; I have been to Stonington point and selected a long nine pounder, had it transported to Saybrook fort where I saw it safely on shore the 17^th in the morning, and have made the necessary arrangements for mounting; the inhabitants appear well satisfied with it; have also forwarded flints to Col’o Sill, powder and shot for the field piece at Lyme, and the same to Captains Bray and Jewett, a small supply for each.

 [page break]

 I came along the coast from Saybrook to N. Haven on saturday, (17^th) the inhabitants that whole distance had been in a high state of alarm for two or three of the preceeding days from various causes, but had then got tolerably quiet.

I have appointed M’r Hezekiah Goddard my Deputy or Assistant at the port of N. London and its dependencies; should this appointment meet your Excellencys approbation, be pleased to communicate it to me in writing.

Clearly, he was organized in other ways than his handwriting.  This letter, though, is further evidence of the dysfunctional relationship between the State and Federal governments during this war.  I haven’t looked up the specifics of what was going on, however.

This summer, the 200th anniversary of the start of the War of 1812 will occur.  It doesn’t look like I’ll have time to get anything really interesting (like a day by day blog of it) all prepped in time, unfortunately.  But I’ll still keep poking at all this correspondence!

Soft Molasses Cookies (1932)

Nothing interesting enough to post about has happened lately in my history work, I’m afraid.  But I did feel like baking something this afternoon, and picked a molasses cookie recipe out of this 1932 Royal Baking Powder company booklet.

They came out very well.  The amount of baking powder in the original recipe is correct.  But it might not have been in earlier editions: every page has a note at the bottom, All measurements are level.  Four level teaspoons of baking powder about equal one heaping teaspoon as heretofore used.

Look at that!  They used the word “heretofore”!

Soft Molasses Cookies

1/2 cup lard or other shortening, melted [I use shortening]
1 cup molasses
2 tablespoons warm water
1 egg, beaten
3 cups flour
2 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon soda
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

Mix together shortening, molasses, and warm water; add beaten egg.  Sift together dry ingredients and add to the first mixture; mix thoroughly and let stand about 10 minutes.  Roll out on floured board to 1/3 inch thick; cut with round cookie cutter.  Bake in moderate oven at 400 F. about 15 minutes.  Makes 4 dozen.

Actually it makes 26 cookies when you use a 2-3/4 inch cookie cutter like I did.  I suspected that 15 minutes would be too long in a modern oven, and I was right – I think 13 minutes would be perfect.  With smaller cookies, though, 10 minutes would probably be the right time.

Finally, here are a few more words from the company:

Since 1878 the Royal Cook Book has been the popular handbook of good cooking among housewives.  In this latest edition the baking recipes have all been retested – and written in the simplest form.  The most popular of the older recipes and dozens of attractive new ones are here, making the book more helpful and satisfactory than ever.  Millions of women have found the Royal Cook Book to be what we intended it to be – a practical and trustworthy guide to good cooking.

The young housewife or experienced cook will find complete simple directions for making many delicious foods, including a wide field of cookery – soups, meats, eggs, vegetables, salads, puddings and desserts.

Wow, if I could get one of those 1878 booklets for my collection, that would be something.