Food History

When I was a child, we did a bunch of driving. Mostly we traveled to look at rocks (my mother was a geology teacher) or other things of scientific interest. We found wild orchids on the Brisbane Ranges, and also graptolites. We found rock pools swarming with interesting creatures when we headed beachwards, and also discovered ammonites in the local limestone. It was a curious childhood.

Our travels took us as far west as Adelaide and just a bit above Queensland to the north. This was about the limit a station wagon could travel in 2 weeks with four young children in the back. Once I woke up after a nap to find Mum trying to navigate southern Queensland using a geological map.

“Turn left at the next fault, dear.”

After fifteen miles (this was about the time Australia turned metric). “There is no visible fault.”

“It’s very clear on the map.”

“Maybe there’s no cutting?”

“OK. If it’s still underground I can’t examine it. We’d better find a town and ask for directions and find the right road.”

“And maybe buy another map?”

“Nothing wrong with this one. Geological maps work fine.”

We identified what sort of use we had for a town by how big it was. We didn’t look at boards with numbers, because that was not how one evaluated a town in Australia back then: we counted the number of pubs.

One pub was enough to ask for directions. Three pubs were enough to check out groceries. Five pubs or more and there was probably a caravan park.

The social significance of the pub in Australian history fits in with all of this. They were the centre of the community until recently here, even though women could only drink in special lounges until the 1970s.

Rounds of drinks and communing with workmates over a drink are still quintessential parts of Aussie food culture. Drinks have expanded to cover a lot more than beer, and a latte with soy is almost legal tender, but the using of drinks as bonding for a community is still deepset in the Australia psyche.

It was an incredibly strong community that spoke out against drinking and pubs. There was an incredibly strong word used to describe that tendency. If someone calls you a ‘wowser’ you should not say “Thank you. I’ve always wanted to be one of those.”

Australia never had a real Prohibition (which is why the US version fascinates us so) and has usually inclined favourably towards drink. Yet I grew up in a dry area. You could tell the exact street the suburb changed from Hawthorn to Camberwell in Melbourne, because the pubs all started on the far side of the road.

Now that the pub is losing its hold, there’s a nostalgia industry appearing. I’ll introduce you to a piece of it tomorrow.

Today is not really a food day for me. This is unusual. I bought food and ate food and even researched food (and have a brand new book to introduce to you) but I just don’t feel like talking about it. My mind is dwelling on different matters. If I could work out what these matters were, then I could discuss them elegantly.

Instead, I’m going to remind you (because it has recently come to my attention that this is still an issue in the wider world) about forks.

There were forks in the Middle Ages. They were big long things used alongside cooking pots to make food edible. They were not elegant mincy things used at table. So, when someone tells me that there were no forks in the Middle Ages, and assume that this is a universal, I feel an instant urge to correct them. Now I don’t have to, because you can do it for me.

I nearly bought a pair of 1950s garden shears today (nice ones, albeit a bit rusty, made in Sheffield) because of their resemblance to Medieval scissors. Medieval scissors also did not make an appearance at the dinner table, but no-one ever tries to tell me they did.

What puzzles me is why people get into a tiff about it and why there is confusion in the first place. Knives and spoons, used cleverly, take the place of forks at many a modern dinner party I’ve attended. Why shouldn’t they have been used like that in the Middle Ages?

The other thing that puzzles me is how many people assume that table linen came into play along with forks. There are so many beautiful pictures of white Medieval linen out there, both napkins and cloths.

I begin to think it’s the zombie ancestor thing again. My ancestors in the Middle Ages were immensely civilised and used table linen and possibly even finger bowls. I am a falling-off from their great height. Those with zombie ancestors ate rotten meat, didn’t cook with forks, despised their table linen and had really bad eating manners. It’s not for me to say whether they have fallen off from the dignity of their ancestors or not.

If I wake up in a less sarcastic mood tomorrow, I might write about Aussie pubs and the rise of civilisation. If I wake up in an even more sarcastic mood, then maybe you should all ignore me. Or just laugh at me.

So much US election going on and here am I having forgotten to give you any election cakes!

These election cake recipes are from Favorite Dishes. A Columbian Autograph Souvenir Cookery Book. 1893 You’ve met the book before, but you certainly haven’t met these recipes, and particularly you haven’t met the one from Mrs Helen C Brayton (deceased) that was 100 years old when she donated it.

Election Cake
From Mrs. Helen c. Brayton, of South Carolina, Vice−President State Board and Lady Manager.
Four pounds flour; two pounds butter; two and one-half pounds sugar; two and one-half pounds raisins; one-half pound citron; one-half ounce mace; tumbler of brandy; one pint yeast; one and one-half pint milk; eight eggs. Add to the yeast one pint of milk; then beat in smoothly three pints of flour. Take all the flour and half the sugar and butter (when beaten to a cream); add the milk and yeast and make a dough a little softer than bread. When raised very light, add remainder of ingredients and let it rise again. When very light put into pans. Bake in moderate oven one hour.

Connecticut election cake.
From Mrs. Virginia t. Smith, of Connecticut, Alternate Lady Manager.
Two pounds best pastry flour; one pound shortening (half butter and half lard); one pound and two ounces
sugar; whites of two eggs; one nutmeg; half a pound of raisins (loose Muscatels); quarter teaspoon of mace; one tablespoon of lemon juice; one tablespoon extract of orange; half teaspoon salt; half a compressed yeast cake, and two ounces of citron. Work the shortening and sugar to a cream; then rub half of it into the flour;
dissolve the yeast cake in a little warm water; mix the flour and yeast with sufficient milk (about one and a half pints that has been scalded and cooled) to make a batter about like graham bread; work with the hands for at least twenty minutes; make at night and set in a moderately warm room to rise; in the morning add the remainder of the shortening and sugar; work again with the hands, as when first made, for fifteen or twenty minutes, and set to rise again. Seed and cut the raisins, grate the nutmeg and sprinkle that and the mace over the raisins. When the cake is light, add first the lemon juice, then extract of orange and whites of eggs, well beaten; stir in fruit well floured: dip into three pans, buttered and lined with paper. Let it stand until it begins to rise−it will come up very quickly in the oven if it has been twice well raised. Have oven hot enough to check the rising after it has reached the top of the pans; after it begins to brown, check the fire and let it bake rather slowly the remainder of the time. Whole time, one hour and a quarter.

When I got sick, a couple of very close friends turned up on my doorstep and demanded to do housework for me. This is not something that usually happens to me – usually I muddle on somehow and just get through. It made the biggest difference to my temper and demeanour and, yes, it made life somehow completely worthwhile, even while I was fragmenting.

They brought with them a book. We read excerpts over tea and it was one of those books that you just can’t stop reading extracts to someone else. I was going to do you an analysis of it, as it’s something very interesting from the point of view of Australian food history, but instead, I think I shall give you extracts. It fits with my personal food history as regards the book.

What is this mysterious and entertaining oversized paperback? It’s When Mabel Laid the Table: The Folklore of Eating and Drinking in Australia, by Warren Fahey. It’s full of old ads and photos and anecdotes and cockers with the sort of memories that will lure almost anyone into food history.

Opening at random, I came across a erudite rhyme. Obviously you need it. I will happily blog any food-related children’s rhymes you know, by the way – just email me them with maybe a note of where you got them from. And I won’t put the book away yet. One rhyme is hardly sufficient, not when there are lists of sweets children ate and the exact texts of old advertisements. I’m going to have fun with this book from time to time, I can see that. I might also hunt out a couple of other books I have and find you some food history there. Not quite as exotic as this – nothing is ever quite as exotic as this little poem.

Great, green gobs of greasy gopher guts
Mutilated monkey meat
Dirty little birdies’ feet
Great green gobs of greasy, grimy gopher guts
And I forgot my spoon!
But I got a straw!

Today you get two posts because I need to assuage my guilt. Would you believe that I fully intended to post yesterday but that I forgot? A friend sent me a book I had been longing to read and I had a big day and I thought “I’ll just read a few pages and then get online again.” The book is finished and was tremendous fun, but I didn’t get online again at all last night.

It’s Spring here already – only three days away in the calendar, but the street are lined with bright golden wattle. You can tell it’s Spring in south-easterly Australia when everyone is sneezing, and that’s happening too.

My amazing powers of deduction tell me that this makes it autumnal up north, where most of you live. Autumn normally makes me think of Japanese food, and maybe I will do a post one day about Japanese autumn food traditions, but today my thoughts are with the Chinese diaspora still.

My own culinary traditions make me creative about cooking food in opposite seasons, and every year I remember that Chinese festive food also has that –out-of-hemisphere problem. I ate mooncake for morning tea (white lotus, in case anyone is interested). I adore mooncake. It’s a once-a-year treat normally, but this year I might have to make it a twice-a-year treat because my local provider has some varieties I’ve never seen before. Which is not the point. The point is that mooncake has a history as rich and interesting as the cake and that the Chinese Diaspora has carried that history with it, every Spring/Autumn, for a very long time. It’s a memory of political rebellion and independence and freedom, just like Chanukah is for me.

Here are some recipes. Buy some mooncake or make some mooncake. Use it to fuel your intellectual energies and find out a bit more about Chinese history. That’s what I’m going to do.

Tonight I felt very much like artichokes with dinner, so I’m giving you a serve as well as myself. I also felt like spending time with Hannah Woolley, and of reminding myself that just because people tell me our ancestors didn’t eat meat, doesn’t make those people right.

Artichoaks Fried

Boil your Artichoaks, and sever them from the bottom, then slice and quarter them; having so done, dip them in Butter, and fry them in Butter. For the sauce, take Verjuice, Butter, and Sugar, with the juice of an Orange, lay Marrow on them, and having garnisht them with Marrow, serve them up.

Artichoaks being boil’d, take out the core, and take off the leaves, cut the Bottoms into quarters, splitting them in the middle, then put them into your flat stewing-pan, with Manchet toasts therein, laying the Artichoaks on them, with an indifferent quantity of Marrow, five or six large Maces, half a pound of preferred Plumbs with the Sirrup, Verjuice, and Sugar; let them thus stew two hours, if you stew them in a Dish, stir them not thence, but serve them up in it, laying on some Barberies preserv’d, and suchlike, so sippet it and serve it up; Instead of preserved Plumbs, you may stew those which are ordinary, and wil do near as well, and are much cheaper.

Take a dozen Pippins, or more, pare, slice, or quarter them, put them into a Skillet, with some Claret-wine, and a race of Ginger sliced thin, a little Lemmon-peel cut small, and some Sugar; let all these stew together till they be soft, then take them off the fire, and put them into a Dish, and when they be cold, take a quart of boil’d Cream, with a little Nutmeg, and put in of the Apple as much as will thicken it; and so serve it up.

My sister has just given me a gorgeous piece of food ephemera.

I’m in Melbourne (until an unholy hour tomorrow morning) to celebrate Betty’s life. You heard about Betty and her chocolate cake last week. You have to admit, I’m having an exceptionally strange August.

When I arrived here, my sister said “These are for you,” and gave me a bunch of leaflets and cookbooks, all of which I’ll get to in due course. Mum plonked her computer in front of me and said “You should blog now” and so I am. I was an obedient child and still have those responses embedded deep within me.

The leaflet looks rather patriotic. 1950s, from the recipes (early sixties at the latest). The cover simply says “For valour” and the picture of a military medal superimposed over shadows of soldiers in the clouds and unending acres of fields below.

Inside, the leaflet has a different name “Heroes of peace.” From there on, its 28 pages are dedicated to the purity and beauty of tinned pineapple. Queensland tinned pineapple. It’s the brand that -these days - is Golden Circle. In the fifties, it was called Victoria Cross. And so the odd military overtones of the leaflet are explained. A whole heap of cultural changes in Australia have taken place over the last fifty years, and one thing that has shifted is the nature of patriotism. VC pineapple has been replaced by Golden Circle pineapple and we no longer feel quite as amazingly military every time we open a tin.

The recipes are equally dated. Let me give you one that caused us fewest shudders:

Bread and Butter Pineapple Pudding

1 1/2 cups VC Crushed Pineapple
3 tbs sugar
1 tbs creamed butter
3 slices stale bread
lemon juice

Place the pineapple and juice in a dish. Spread the thin slices of bread with creamed butter. Cut them in various shapes and fit closely over the pineapple. Put in a few drops of lemon juice and sprinkle with sugar. Bake in a moderate oven until brown about 45 minutes. Serve hot with cream.

It’s impossible to do a useful post on any country’s food in a few hundred words, but of all the countries in the world, Chinese food is the most impossible to summarise in this way. Because of the Chinese diaspora and Chinese restaurants in other counties and a certain understanding of certain dishes in certain countries, we tend to go about our lives happily thinking that we know Chinese food. We don’t. Well, some people do. I don’t. I know some of the regional flavours and a few of the cooking styles and some of the historical influences and that’s enough to teach me that I really don’t know anything.

So, what do I give you here to celebrate the Chinese hosting the Olympics? A version of the Chinese Diaspora, of course. That has its own complex food history and it’s the one most of us know best.

Because the theme has mostly been students abroad, here are some recipes from Hong Kong that a Hong Kong student taught me twenty years ago, when homesick. I’ve gone for the easy dishes, because I’ve come to the end of my energies (how did I get posts to you this week? I crept out of bed and typed until my fingers were too tired, posted what I had done, then crept back into bed again – I made great use of WordPress, which allowed me to post ahead of time – I know they weren’t the best posts in the world, but the recipes are fabulous and it meant I can now creep into bed for the next 2 days, knowing, on Thursday, that you’re all OK for food till Sunday. All my friends have already scolded me, so you can just shake your head sorrowfully and enjoy the posts.)

Curry Triangles

Mix minced beef with curry powder and seasonings. Cut rice pastry into triangles and fill. Fold into small triangles, using beaten egg to seal the corners. Fry in hot oil.

Steamed Chicken

Bring chicken to room temperature. Shred fresh ginger and spring onion. Stuff chicken with it. If you want, you can also sprinkle salt in the stuffing, on the chicken and oil the skin of the chicken lightly. Steam the chicken for fifteen minutes (my friend used a wok as a double boiler – it reached a high heat quickly – you may need a bit longer cooking time if you’re not using a wok). Immediately after steaming, drain and rinse with cold water. Cut and serve with a sauce made by mixing the stuffing with oil and soy sauce.

Beef fillet

Slice beef very thin. Marinate for one hour in hoisin sauce, seasoning, sesame oil. Stir fry very thin slices of onion till brown. Add beef. Serve with lightly steamed Chinese cabbage with oyster sauce.

Thailand is doing so very well at the Olympics and has such a fascinating culinary history, that I can’t resist doing a Thai post. A few years ago Western knowledge of Thailand was of the “Anna and the King of Siam” nature. This makes it almost impossible to describe Thai food in terms of its history without getting very complex. I might return to it when I have time and energy. Energy is still lacking because yes, I’m still ill.

The sort of Thai food I’m giving you here, though, is totally perfect for the sickbed. It’s easy to make and slightly adapted (I suspect, though my fiends were nice and claimed otherwise) for Australian tastes. Again, it is students-in-Australia-food and fish sauce is inevitably replaced by other ingredients to fit my particular allergies.

For anyone who hasn’t encountered the amazing flavours and textures of Thai food, this isn’t such a bad place to start. It’s an inspiring cuisine, and one of the things I find particularly inspiring about it is that you can trace those complex flavours and depth of palate through trade routes and political negotiations. Thai food rests very firmly on Thai history.

Kanum pan na gai (snack food)

1. Dry slices of bread in air (don’t let them become crisp_. Cut off crusts and cut into quarters.

2. Mix topping. (Crush coriander root, garlic, pepper and salt. Pound until mushy. Add minced chicken. Knead until smooth and paste-like.)

3. Put topping on bread, running it over the edge of the bread a little.

4. Heat oil. Fry meat side down first, then flip over and fry other side until crisp.

Mi Krop (noodles)

8 oz dried vermicelli
2 cups vegetable oil
¾ cup chopped tofu
1 tbs brown bean sauce
c 1 tbs salt
2 tbs sugar
1 beaten egg
1 tbs chopped spring onion
1 tbs chopped coriander leaves (cilantro for those in the US)
½ cup bean sprouts
½ tsp grated lemon rind
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp shredded red chilli
salt and pepper

Heat oil in deep saucepan. Deep fry vermicelli in very hot oil until crisp and golden. Drain on paper towel and set aside.

In frying pan heat 3 tbs oil. Fry garlic. Stir in beancurd and fry for a few minutes. Season with salt and sugar. Stir in beaten egg. When egg almost cooked, add vermicelli. Mix well. Remove from heat.

Sprinkle with lemon ring, spring onion, coriander leaf and red chilli. Garnish with beansprouts. Can squeeze lemon on before eating.

Obviously I have a thing about large islands. It might be because I live on one. Today’s country is not only a large island, it’s as sporting-mad as Australia, which makes it entirely appropriate for a brief visit during the Olympics. If only there were cricket at the Olympics, Sri Lanka would be impossible to miss.

These recipes are family food brought to Australia by Sri Lankans. I don’t know if they have been adjusted for life in the new country. I do know that they’re different from their Indian near-equivalent. The curries are less complex and the underlying flavours of the vegetables are more pronounced.

These are very much home cooking. The quantities are all to taste and my friend adjusted them for the number of people and tastebuds automatically.

The method is likewise based on experience and not on recipe books. The meat curry recipe is typical of the ones I collected from a very particular group of good cooks. . From experience you are supposed to know what spices are fried first and which ones are added at the end. You’re also supposed to realise that the meat is implied.

I’ve developed my own practises in this regard, changing the way I was taught to cook Sri Lankan recipes to suit the way I cook and the way I eat. I can’t emphasise enough that we all do this, usually instinctively. That every recipe we receive from historical sources is changed before we so much as put a forkful in our mouth.

How would I interpret the meat curry below? I would fry the garlic and ginger (in a little oil then add the mustard, then add the tomato paste and soy sauce. If I use chilli I might add it straight after the ginger, or if paprika, add it right at the end. All the other ingredients go in together, then I would braise cubes of meat in it and then let it all cook, slowly. That’s my method, though, not THE method. We’re so used to formal cookbooks that we forget that most food in history has been cooked by combining ingredients in a comfortable and familiar way, not from following recipes.

Kadju Curry

Soak cashew nuts for 4-5 hours. Heat oil in a pan. Add chopped onion, garlic, raw curry powder, turmeric, lime and salt to taste. Cover and let it marinate. Add soy or other milk to make the curry moist (not wet).

Sri Lankan Beef Curry Powder

1 part cumin: 2 parts fennel: 4 parts coriander

Roast spices until toasted and fragrant. Grind.

Sri Lankan Meat Curry

Tomato paste
Garlic
Ginger
Soy sauce
Paprika or chili powder
Powdered mustard
Beef curry powder (see above)
Vinegar
Curry powder

I’m dreaming of the Pacific Islands today. All my Pacific Islander friends have enjoyed such robust health, and this week I’m so fragile that it was inevitable.

What’s interesting is that these Samoan recipes come from a Cook Island friend. The cultural boundaries of the islands are not the same as the cultural boundaries of other islands. When Th. gave me recipes, they were often from cookbooks and they might equally be Tongan or New Zealander as Cook Islander or Samoan. I don’t know if this was just her, though, or a way of getting rid of me quickly, or whether it reflects those cultural boundaries I’d like it to reflect.

So many of us have recipes and traditions from a single source. It’s so easy to extrapolate and make assumptions about a culture and its foodways from this single source. So easy, but it’s wrong. All you have here (until I add more evidence of those porous boundaries – and in fact I do have some more evidence) are two recipes from a lovely cook.

Mango Chicken

2 kg chicken
5 tbs butter
2 large onions (chopped)
2 mangoes (peeled and sliced)
½ tsp nutmeg
rind of ½ lemon (cut into strips)
1 ½ cups chicken stock
1 tssp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
juice of ½ lemon
½ cup fresh coconut cream
paprika

Cut chicken into serving pieces, filleting the breast. Brown in half of the butter. Remove from fat and keep warm. Fry onion until clear (in rest of butter), add mango and cook for five minutes.

Return Chicken to pan. Add nutmeg, lemon rind, chicken stock, salt and pepper. Cover and cook until chicken is tender (c 45 mins). Remove chicken – keep warm.

Discard lemon rind. Add lemon juice. Stir in coconut cream carefully. Adjust seasoning. Bring to simmer then pour the sauce over the chicken and sprinkle with paprika.

Faapapa (bread)

3 cups sifted flour
1 cup coconut milk
1 ripe banana or 1 tbs sugar
c ½ tsp salt

Mix flour and coconut milk to a stiff paste. Beat in banana and salt. Put mixture on pieces of oiled tin foil, then bring foil up into a ball and twist the top. Do not overfull or press down hard. Bake 30 minutes (till brown and crunchy) at 230 degrees C.

Something cool to read, thanks to Llyn. Vincent Price and gourmet food = my sort of food history! (is there any sort of food history that isn’t my sort?)

I did my doctorate in Sydney in the 1980s. All these Japanese recipes are therefore from students in their twenties, who, in the 1980s, were studying in Sydney. Why does that sound dull? It wasn’t dull at all. One of my Japanese friends taught me to love Billy Joel, another taught me a very strange dance (which I shall not be demonstrating for anyone soon) and they all got together to give me one of the best birthdays of my life.

There were some good things about Sydney for Japanese food back then. Magnificent seafood, for instance. There were some bad things. Lack of specialist ingredients. And then there was me. I was disastrous for traditional Japanese cooking. My culinary skills were sufficient for Japanese home cooking, but my immense allergy to fish meant that so many of the dishes I recorded were versions made especially for me.

This is not so unusual. The extreme allergy is unusual, but we all make adaptations to dishes when we adopt them into our own foodways. This is a good example of a more extreme adaptation than most, but adaptations always happen. Food history is never static – it’s always about change.

Cucumber Pickles

Slice cucumbers as thinly as possible. Pickle them in vinegar, sugar and a little bit of salt. After 10-30 minutes, squeeze and serve.

Fried chicken

Marinate chicken pieces in sake, soy sauce, grated ginger and Chinese Five Spice Powder. Dry. Dip in flour. Deep fry.

Red Bean Soup

Boil red beans and sugar and water until very soft. Mash or blend. Put a grilled rice cake in the bottom of the soup bowl and serve with pickles and green tea.

I just had a clever thought. I can celebrate the Olympics and go back to a project I started ages ago and ran out of steam on. I hate running out of steam. I especially hate the little energy I have this week, but this project doesn’t take so much energy and it has recipes that are laden with deliciousness and memories.

What am I talking about?

When we study overseas, we choose what bits of our culture we can’t do without. It’s a special time and place in the lives of traveling foodies, where big decisions are made about what is important in personal food history.

In a particular notebook of mine, I have these choices made – not just by myself (which is what I started chronicling, a while back) but for students from all over the world. Some were studying in Australia, some in Canada, some in London and some in Paris. The recipes they chose to teach me were ones that helped from their foodways and cultural identity.

These decisions are so crucial to the creation of food history. Whenever we move or travel, whether it’s voluntarily or not, the foodstuffs and opportunities at the place we arrive, and the memories and cooking skills we bring with us, create, transform and can achieve amazing things.

I can’t give you the names and stories of my friends: those things are private. I can give you recipes from their countries and maybe some of the background surrounding why these recipes or notes were important.

It’s food history from a different direction – one which we all experience. Every time we make new friends or taste a good cake at a staff morning tea we are in danger of changing our foodways. This is one of the key ways it can happen from country to country.

Look for some delicious recipes ahead. When I’m well and when the Olympics are over, I’ll delve further into the past again.

I’m still sick as sick. I can’t leave you with nothing, though I don’t have any oomph in me to prepare you more posts on different countries. I hope biscuit recipes will do for tonight. Alice Bradley was a Fanny Farmer person, so these biscuits are probably really superior.

FOR LUNCHEON AND SUPPER GUESTS
TEN MENUS
MORE THAN ONE HUNDRED RECIPES
SUITABLE FOR COMPANY LUNCHEONS
SUNDAY NIGHT SUPPERS, AFTERNOON PARTIES
AUTOMOBILE PICNICS, EVENING SPREADS
AND FOR TEA ROOMS, LUNCH ROOMS
COFFEE SHOPS, AND MOTOR INNS
BY
ALICE BRADLEY
PRINCIPAL OF MISS FARMER’S SCHOOL OF COOKERY
AUTHOR OF “THE CANDY COOK BOOK” AND “COOKING FOR PROFIT”
WHITCOMB & BARROWS
BOSTON, 1923

EGG BISCUITS

Sift together
2 cups bread flour, measured after sifting once
5 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt and
1 tablespoon sugar. Work in with fingers
2 tablespoons shortening. Add
1 egg yolk, slightly beaten, mixed with 2/3 cup milk, cutting it in with a knife. Toss on floured cloth or board and knead 5 minutes. Shape in any way suggested below. Bake 15 minutes at 400 degrees F. Brush with milk or melted butter just before removing from the oven.

SOUR CREAM DROP COOKIES

Cream
1/4 cup butter or margarine. Add gradually
1/2 cup sugar and
1 egg, well beaten. Dissolve
1/4 teaspoon soda in
1/4 cup rich sour cream. Add to first mixture alternately with
1 1/4 cups pastry flour sifted with
1/4 teaspoon salt and
2 teaspoons baking powder. Add
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup raisins cut in pieces and
1/4 cup nut meats cut in pieces. Drop by spoonfuls on greased tin sheet, and bake in a moderate oven.

Double the amount of flour may be used, nuts and raisins omitted,
and mixture chilled and rolled out and cut in any desired shape,
before baking.

ORANGE BISCUITS

Sift together
2 cups bread flour
5 teaspoons baking powder and
1 teaspoon salt. With tips of fingers rub in
2 tablespoons shortening. Twenty minutes before the meal is to be served add 7/8 cup milk, mixing with a knife. Roll out 3/4 inch thick and cut with round cutter 1 inch in diameter. Place close together on a greased tin sheet. Break 16 lumps demi-tasse loaf sugar in halves and squeeze the Juice of 1/2 orange. Dip pieces of sugar one at a time in the orange juice and push a piece down in the center of each biscuit. Grate Orange rind over the biscuits and bake 15 minutes in a hot oven or at 450 degrees F.

MARMALADE BISCUITS

Sift together
2 cups bread flour
5 teaspoons baking powder and
1 teaspoon salt. With tips of fingers work in
2 tablespoons shortening. Add
7/8 cup milk, stirring with a knife. Toss on a floured cloth or board and roll out 1/4 inch thick. Cut in oval shapes 6 inches long and 3 inches wide with round ends. Lay on tin sheet. Make 1/2-inch cuts 1 inch from and parallel with the ends. Put 1 teaspoon of orange marmalade in the center.
Bring one end of dough through hole in other end. Press edges together and bake in hot oven or at 450 degrees F. for 15 minutes. Pastry may be used instead of baking powder biscuit dough for these turnovers.

QUICK ORANGE MARMALADE

Remove skins in quarters from
2 oranges and
1 lemon, close to the pulp. Break up pulp and remove seeds. Add 1/2 cup water and simmer in covered saucepan for 45 minutes. Boil rind from oranges and lemons with 4 cups water in covered saucepan for 20 minutes. Drain and discard water. With sharp-edged spoon scrape out and discard white part of skins, leaving only yellow rind. With sharp knife shred yellow rinds just as thin as possible in pieces about 1 inch long. Simmer shredded rinds again in 2 1/2 cups water in covered saucepan for 15 minutes. Drain and discard water. Mix cooked pulp with rinds. Measure 2 cups of mixed rind and pulp, adding water if necessary to make up this amount. Add 3 1/2 cups sugar and mix well. Stir constantly and bring to vigorous boil over hot fire. Boil hard for 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from fire, add 1/4 cup commercial pectin. Stir well. Let stand 5 minutes only, stirring occasionally. Pour into glasses.