Aunt Sammy’s radio recipes
Regina Murphy
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Way back when we were trying to find that chocolate sour cream cake recipe, Judy Patton brought in several cookbooks for me to go through, including an old paperback called “Aunt Sammy’s Radio Recipes Revised.”
I was intrigued! I began looking for information. Judy’s copy was printed in 1931 by the USDA Bureau of Home Economics. The authors are Ruth Van Deman and Fanny Walker Yeatman.
Aunt Sammy’s Radio Recipes was a 15-minute radio show broadcast five days a week and devoted to up-to-date information for the nation’s homemakers. As you may recall, at this time radio stations had a crew of actors to read texts live on the air, rather than receiving a nationwide broadcast from a single source. So Aunt Sammy in Atlanta would not sound anything like Aunt Sammy in Minneapolis!
According to Ronald Kline (“Consumers in the Country: Technological and Social Change in Rural America”) Aunt Sammy was a character created by the USDA Bureau of Home Economics and the Radio Service to be the “wife” of Uncle Sam. By 1932 the radio show was on 194 stations, but Aunt Sammy faded out during the Great Depression. After 1934 the radio show was renamed “Homemaker Chat” and ran until 1946.
Judy’s book is stamped on the cover “Edward H. Rees, Congressman, 4th District.” It turns out that he was born on a farm near Emporia in 1886; received a degree from the Kansas State Teachers’ College and became a lawyer here in town.
He was elected to the State House of Representatives in 1927, then the State Senate in 1933. In 1937 he made it to Washington, where he served until 1961. He returned to Emporia and passed away in 1969.
This book opens with several seasonal menus. Two from May caught my eye: One is stuffed flank steak with browned potatoes and string beans. Yum! The other is liver and rice loaf with carrots and dandelion greens. Hmmm.
Looking through the book, you can tell there are many recipes for the frugal-minded. There are recipes for parts of the animal we don’t normally consider edible these days. There’s even one for “scrapple.” It involves making a kind of congealed loaf out of the bits and pieces leftover from butchering a hog. Essentially, you boil up the bones until the meat comes off and the marrow comes out and go from there. You fry up slices of it as needed, and the recipe states “If the scrapple is rich with fat, no more fat is needed for frying.” Well, that’s good to know.
The chapter on salads is interesting, with little reference to lettuce other than a leaf or two to hold the main part of the dish. There’s cabbage and carrot salad, cabbage and onion salad and cabbage and whipped cream salad. Then there are the various fruits stuffed with cheese or mayonnaise — or both! I think perhaps the salad has come a long way in the last century.
CIDER GELATIN SALAD
2 1/2 cups clear cider
2 Tbsp. gelatin
1/2 cup finely chopped celery
1/4 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. finely chopped parsley or green pepper
2 Tbsp. finely chopped pimiento
Soak the gelatin in one-half cup of the cold cider. Heat the remainder of the cider to the boiling point, pour into the gelatin, stir until dissolved, strain and chill.
When the gelatin mixture begins to set, stir in the vegetables and salt, and pour into individual molds which have been rinsed in cold water. When set, turn out on lettuce leaves and serve with French or mayonnaise dressing.
There are quite a few vegetable dishes, even a vegetable loaf. I have my doubts about the fried cucumbers and I was horrified at the deep fat fried onions until I realized it was actually a recipe for onion rings. I thought this one sounded pretty good.
SWEET POTATOES
WITH APPLES
3 medium-sized sweet potatoes
4 medium apples, pared and cored
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
3 Tbsp. butter
Cook the sweet potatoes in boiling water until tender; cool and skin. Cut the sweet potatoes and apples into slices, place in alternate layers in a greased baking dish, sprinkle each layer with sugar and salt, dot with butter, add a little water, and bake for 30 to 45 minutes or until the apples are soft and the top layer is brown. Serve in a baking dish.
The meat dishes in this cookbook represent a lot of variety, from kidneys to oxtails, in addition to the typical beef, pork, fish and chicken. A timbale is a good way to use up some bits and pieces that aren’t very impressive on their own. Since it’s a molded dish, those leftover morsels take on an elegant look.
VEAL TIMBALES
2 Tbsp. butter or other fat
2 Tbsp. flour
1 cup meat broth, milk or thin gravy
2 eggs
Salt and pepper to taste
Lemon juice to taste
2 cups ground cooked veal
1 Tbsp. chopped parsley
Make a sauce of the fat, flour, and liquid. Add the well-beaten eggs, seasoning and meat, and mix thoroughly. Pour into greased timbale molds or custard cups. Place the cups in a pan of water. Bake in a moderate oven (350º F) about one-half hour, or until set in the center. Turn the timbales out and serve hot.
Chicken, lamb, or any leftover meat may be used instead of veal in making this recipe.
Way back when just about any major town on a railway could have oysters in season, so there are many oyster dishes in the seafood chapter.
OYSTERS SCALLOPED WITH RICE
3 cups cooked rice
1 quart oysters
1 cup chopped celery
2 Tbsp. melted butter
2 Tbsp. flour
1 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper
1 cup milk
1 cup buttered bread crumbs
Place alternate layers of rice, oysters and celery in a baking dish. Pour over them a sauce made from fat, flour, salt, pepper and milk, cover the top with the buttered crumbs and bake for 20 minutes in a moderate (350º F.) oven.
There you go! (Thanks, Judy!) In a couple of weeks we’ll have some of Aunt Sammy’s desserts, just in time for the 4th of July!
Next week we’ll have some ideas for a summer picnic. The first Murphy’s Menu Cook-Off is coming June 23 at the Emporia Farmer’s Market, so mark your calendar.
I challenge you, cooks of the Flint Hills, to come up with some really tasty SUMMER SIPPERS for our next column. What is a great summer beverage (with or without alcohol) that you love to serve? Send that recipe to Murphy’s Menu, The Emporia Gazette, PO Drawer C, Emporia or e-mail to murphysmenu@yahoo.com. Let’s get cooking!