In my quest, I have also bought several other wood boxes and among them were a few recipe boxes. I have always looked for and bought recipe boxes when I could and have for years bought them and often shared them with important people in my life. I love them--recipe boxes can be the history and soul of a family, and certainly can tell a great deal about what the family thinks is important. I have found whole recipe boxes filled with nothing but dessert recipes, and ones that are dominated by soup or casserole recipes. What does that say about the family that contributed all those recipes? Which family would I like to live with? Hmmm...
I recently found two recipe boxes that have intrigued me and made think about life and family, and how these boxes of artifacts share a great deal about what life is like for all of us. The one before me tonight is from the heartland, Minnesota, and it reminds me so much of where and how I grew up. The box is mostly filled with recipes that were hand-0uts from companies and newspapers. Provided monthly in gas bills by Minnegasco, they tell a great deal about the times. According to the little tiny date they spanned the 1960s and it was the era of the internationalism of our dinners. The Minnegasco recipes encourage Minnesota Norwegians to try more than Lutefisk and lefse. Tetrazzini and lasagne and tuna Mediterranean casserole and even pizza burger recipes spiced up these Minnesotans' lives.
This was also when Asian food was introduced to much of the Midwest and the box references to this, albeit with a twist. It includes recipes for turkey chop suey, Oriental port chops, sukiyaki, and beachcomber Cantonese spareribs. What is so interesting is the scope of the world that is covered in this box. There is a recipe for Hungarian sauerkraut, and beef Bourguignon, which promises to make a delicacy of beef stew. If that doesn't work for you and you are hankering for French cooking, there are directions for beef en casserole Parisienne style. In case the former owners forgot their heritage, there is even a recipe for Swedish Meat Balls! For those more adventuresome, there is Svickiva Pecene--don't ask, unless you like beets and a cut of beef that I have never heard of before.
Some simply defy explanation. Why would a box like this include recipes for ham loaf, veal loaf, liver loaf, two different meat loafs, tamale pie made with corn flakes, and corned beaf and cabbage? There are three recipes for stuffed things, turnips, onions AND peppers. And two recipes that include tongues of some sort as the main ingredient. Who knew that there was a difference between ox and beef tongue, and that you could buy smoked and un-smoked ones? There were five recipes that include hot-dogs, included a tasty barbecue feast and the inevitable pig (s?) in a blanket recipe. Lastly, if any one is possibly looking for one, I do have a recipe for broiled sweetbreads and mushrooms. Just let me know, and I will send it out right away.
But the recipes can teach you more than how many cans of Cambell's mushroom soup are involved in the "busy day oven bake." (there are two, but the recipe does note that it is easily doubled for a large family What I found most interesting could be found in the authorship of the recipes. For example, can you imagine today saving recipes sent out in our utility bill, or the ones you get from Exxon Mobil when you bought gas? Something else really popped out, a contradiction that I don't fully know how to explain. In amongst the commercial recipes, Mrs. Edwin Johnson hand-wrote her " Famous Lemon Bars" recipe and in the same moment creates and then denies her identity. They are her creation, but it is not her name but rather her husband's name which gets the credit. Who was this woman who loved lemon bars enough to make them famous? A small point, perhaps, and one certainly influenced by presentism but why didn't she write HER name?
I suppose that in Mrs Edwin Johnson's world, it wasn't herself that was most important. More important were the consumers of her bars, her family, and her friends who she trusted enough to share her famous recipe. My mom, in her life, signed her life with Mrs. Kenneth R. Tetzloff, and I can somewhat see why women who were married in the 1950s did that, though presentism makes me cringe to see the sublimation of a person in someone else's identiy. Can you imagine that today?
But you can't help but to see the love that it takes to construct and then save a box full of recipes, especially one that contains and then shares the knowledge of how to make Mrs. Edwin Johnson's famous lemon bars.
I certainly would like to take that from this recipe box, and skip the sweet bread recipe.
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