Yesterday, we challenged you, as part of our month-long series of challenges, to invent a four-ingredient recipe.
Need some inspiration? Here’s a few we found from the Creston & District Women’s Institute cook book, published in 1930:
Transcription: 1 slice ham, sliced raw potatoes, 1/2 pint milk, salt and pepper. Soak ham place in a casserole, cover with potatoes, season with salt and pepper to taste, add milk. Bake in oven. (Mrs. Nichols)
Transcription: Pare and slice thinly a sufficient quantity of raw potatoes to fill a pudding dish. Place in it a layer of sliced poratoes, season with salt and bits of butter, sprinkle lightly with flour. Repeat until dish is full, putting butter on last later and pouring over the whole, hot milk until you can see it through the last layer. Cover and bake until they are well done. Remove cover and let brown. Onion juice may be added if desired. (Mrs. J. Maxwell)
Transcription: 1 dessert spoon of mustard, 2 tablespoons of sugar, 1 heaping tablespoon of flour, 1/4 teaspoon of salt and a little pepper. Mix well together and add 1 small can of cream (10c size), 1/2 cup of malt vinegar, 1 egg. Bring to boiling point. (Mrs. Maxwell, Creston, B.C.)
Okay, that last one is a little more than four ingredients, even if we don’t count the salt and pepper – but I included it because it is so very entertainingly typical of old recipes! How big were Mrs. Maxwell’s “dessert spoons”? How many millilitres are in a ten-cent can of cream – since we obviously are not going to get any size can of cream for ten cents anymore? Just how hot an oven do we need for Mrs. Nichols’ ham and potatoes? And what exactly is a “pudding dish”?
So, if you want to up the ante in this week’s challenge –
Try out these recipes, or similar four (or five, maybe) ingredient recipes that you find in old cookbooks you (or your grandparents) may have. Are you able to “translate” them into modern measurements?
Four-ingredient recipes really suggest something that is simple and straightforward – but these ones clearly require some cooking experience; how else can you know how many potatoes are “sufficient to fill a pudding dish”? if you were rewriting these recipes for, say, a young person just heading out on their own, what details would you add to the instructions?
Here’s one more. It’s also got one or two extra ingredients – but the idea of mac’n’cheese on toast is just too fun.
Transcription: 1 cup macaroni boiled and cooled, 1 pint milk. When milk comes to a boil thicken with a little flour, 1 cup of grated cheese, salt and piece of butter. Add macaroni and cook for a few minutes longer. Serve on toast. (Mrs. J.W. Dow)