World War I Cranberry Conserve Recipe

I wanted to to find a cranberry recipe for Thanksgiving that was slight twist on the traditional cranberry sauce. I found this recipe for Cranberry Conserve from the book Conservation Recipes (1917) by the Mobilized Women of Berkeley.

During World War I, food rationing in the United States was largely voluntary, spearheaded by the U.S. Food Administration under Herbert Hoover. Americans were encouraged to conserve food to support troops and allies overseas. Campaigns promoted "Meatless Mondays" and "Wheatless Wednesdays," urging citizens to reduce consumption of staples like meat, wheat, sugar, and fats. The government emphasized personal responsibility through slogans like "Food Will Win the War" and encouraged growing "victory gardens" to supplement household food supplies. While rationing wasn't mandatory, the widespread participation showcased a spirit of patriotism and unity on the home front.

The "Mobilized Women of Berkeley" formed during the war to coordinate the efforts of local women in supporting the war. They organized food drives, produced clothing and supplies for soldiers, and ran community initiatives like war bond campaigns and conservation education. This group became a powerful example of grassroots activism, demonstrating how women could unify to address the needs of both the war effort and their local community.

Conservation Recipes, 1917

World War I Cranberry Conserve

Ingredients:

- 4 Cups Cranberries
- 1 Cup of Walnuts
- 1 1/2 Cups Water
- 3 Cups Sugar or Brown Sugar
- 2 1/4 Cups of Raisins

- The Juice of 1 Orange

Instructions:

1. Rinse the cranberries and place in a saucepan on medium heat with the water until the cranberries burst (about 5 minutes.

2. Add the walnuts, sugar, raisins, and orange juice.

1. Rinse the cranberries and place in a large pan on medium heat with the water until the cranberries burst (about 5 minutes). You may want to cover your pot loosely to prevent splashes. 

2. If you picked your own cranberries, now is the time to carefully strain out any leaves, and twigs that might be present. If your cranberries are pre-cleaned move on to step 3.

3. Reduce the heat to a simmer. Add the walnuts, sugar, raisins, and orange juice. Stir occasionally. 

4. Cook for 25 minutes, uncovered or until thick.

5. Pour into sterilized canning jars. 

Conservation Recipes, 1917

You might think that 3 cups of sugar is decadent for a conservation recipe but this recipe makes about 64 ounces of conserve.  Jellies, jams, and conserves stretched far and were used to help make substitute breads and meats more palatable. 

The only change I made to this recipe was adding the rasped orange rind. I didn't want it to go to waste. After Thanksgiving I'm planning on using the leftovers to make Cranberry Cream Cheese and Cranberry horseradish sauce.  

Simplifying Bagels | Vintage Jewish Bagel Recipe (1921)

This recipe is from the Settlement Cook Book (1921). Written by progressive reformer, Elizabeth Black Kander, the book was so popular, it went through 35 editions from 1901 to 1940.  

Kander, was the daughter of Jewish, English and Bavarian immigrants.  She was a  member of many charity organizations, such as the Ladies Relief Sewing Society, the National Council of Jewish Women, and founded the Settlement House in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  

The Settlement House was part of the Settlement Movement which was a philanthropic response to Nativism, racism, and calls for restrictive immigration policies in the early 20th century. Followers of the movement lived and worked among the poor with an aim to reform society by working for better labor standards, education, living conditions, and healthcare. The Settlement House provided Eastern European immigrants, classes on English, sewing, and cooking. The Settlement Cook book was used in their cooking classes and also raised money to fund their mission. 

The earlier editions of the cook book were focused on helping immigrants assimilate and contained many Eastern European recipes, but specifically Jewish and Kosher recipes were added in later editions including holiday recipes. 

I was interested in trying this recipe because "bagel pretzel rolls" intrigued me. I always thought making bagels was too hard but it ended up being easy and it cost less that a $1 for 12 bagels. Seeing the process done in the home and not in a bagel shop really demystifies the process. 

 

Vintage Jewish Bagel Recipe 

 
Ingredients:

- 1 cup warm Milk 
- 1 Yeast Cake or 1 Tablespoon of Yeast 
- 1/4 Cup Butter, melted but cool
- 1 Egg, seperated 
- 1 1/2 Tablespoons Sugar 
- 3 3/4 Cups Flour 
- 1/2 teaspoon Salt 

Instructions:

Stir the sugar into the warm milk . Pour yeast on top of the warm milk, let sit a minute and stir in.  Pour Flour, yeast, egg white, butter, and salt into a mixing bowl. Mix until it is too hard to mix with a spoon then use hands. Knead for about 6 minutes. Place in a greased bowl and let rise, covered for 1 hour. Punch the dough down, cut it in two. Set aside half covered. Cut the other half into 6 pieces and roll into bagel shapes. Seal with water and place on a greased baking pan.

 For the cinnamon version, roll out the other half of the dough, coat the dough with water and sprinkle with a mixture of 2 Tablespoons of sugar and 1 Tablespoon of Cinnamon. Cut into 6 pieces an roll into bagel shapes and put on a greased cookie sheet. 

Preheat your oven to 375 F.

Bring a large, shallow pot of water to just below simmering. Put your bagels in a few at a time and cook for 20 seconds. Flip them over and cook another 20 seconds. Remove to a greased cookie pan. Lightly brush the bagels with a mixture of egg yolk and water. Add your toppings ( I used poppy seeds and almonds on top of the cinnamon ones as the recipes called for). Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.  

For those asking where I got my tray, it's this one painted.

 

This is an early version of The Settlement Cook Book:

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How to Render Lard and Tallow for Cooking, Soap Making and Cosmetics

In early America, grease pots were a ubiquitous part of a kitchen. Grease was collected during cooking and butchering and was later rendered (made clean), and used to make soap, candles, grease pans, for cooking, and cosmetics. Tallow is the rendered fat of a ruminant and lard is fat from pigs. 

Today, so much good fat goes to waste.   

I'm using fat that my family saved for me from tacos and meatloaf. I don't eat meat so I'm reliant on friends and family whenever I need lard or tallow. My fat wasn't too gross. Yours might have chunks of meat on it, and that's fine for this. Just chop it into pieces and melt.

   

How to Render Lard

Put your fat in a pan on medium heat and add enough water to cover it.

Add 1 teaspoon of salt per pound of fat.

Heat until melted.

Pour into a sieve over a bowl.

Let the bowl Rest for 24 hours. 

Cut the tallow out of the bowl.

Rinse the tallow under running water.

You can repeat the process a second time with a finer sieve. Freeze in zip lock bags for up to a year. 

In the next few weeks I'll hopefully post a few tutorials on what you can do with rendered tallow. Stay tuned! 

World War I Era Scottish Shortbread Recipe from Chester, PA

I have been wanting to make a recipe from this book for years. I've been searching and searching for an original copy of The Third Presbyterian Cookbook, 1917 but had to make due with a digital copy.

If you have been following me for awhile you might know that I've been involved with the Chester Historical Preservation Committee and we had been restoring the church for the last few years. The church was the site of the first influential vacation bible school and was going to house our archives and a performing arts center once completed.

We are heartbroken that the building, which had been added to the National Register of Historical Places last year, was attacked by an arsonist and burned in a 5 alarm fire (CW: Graphic Video) earlier this year.

Third Presbyterian Church Scotch Short Bread

- 1/2 Cup Sugar
- 1/2 lbs of Butter (2 Sticks, room temperature)
- 3 1/2 Cups Flour (I only used about 2 1/2 Cups)
- 1 Egg Yolk (room temperature)

Preheat oven to 325°F Cream together sugar and butter. Mix in the egg yolk. Gradually add the flour. Mix thoroughly with a wooden spoons or hands.

Roll into a flattened ball and notch the edges or press into a mold and bake for 20-30 minutes or until golden brown. 

If you are able to donate anything at all to the Chester Historical Preservation Committee, they would be eternally grateful. If you are not able to donate, you can still help by sharing this post on your social media. Thank you.

World War I Era Pickled Eggs Recipe from Chester, PA

The Kitchen Guide (Chester, PA) 1913

When all of this started, everyone looked at their pantries and came to me and said “Now we need some of those ration recipes!” I struggled to recommend anything. This is unprecedented. Some people couldn’t find bread, others yeast. Some people had plenty of fresh fruit and others nothing.
While I did find ration recipes that helped me, it was impossible to help everyone.

This isn’t like WWII, when you knew a lot of the variables. Hindsight is 20/20 and we know most people would appreciate recipes that contained less of rationed ingredients and more of substitutes. I haven’t been posting much. It seems silly and dangerous to make special food and grocery trips right now.

This is a recipe that you can make with stuff already likely in your house. The beets are not necessary and you can stretch this a lot further if you use the picked eggs to make egg salad sandwiches. Historically, pickling eggs was a way to preserve them for future use before refrigeration. Kept in a cold place, pickled eggs can last up to 4 months! I added a little bit of water to the vinegar to remove the sharpness. They had no way of knowing the acidity of their homemade vinegars and they were likely not as acidic as ours is today.

Pickled Eggs

Ingredients:

- 6 Eggs, Hard boiled and peeled
- 1/2 teaspoon Salt
- 1/2 teaspoon Pepper
- 24 Cloves
- 1/2 teaspoon Mustard
- 2 Cups Vinegar (2/3 Cups Water, 1 1/3 Cups Vinegar)
- Boiled Beet Slices, if wanted

Instructions:


Press 4 cloves into each egg, place in sterilized jar. In a medium sized sauce pan over medium heat, bring vinegar (and beets) to a boil and add the salt, pepper and boil for one minute. Carefully pour the vinegar mixture over the eggs and let cool. Cover and store in the fridge for at least two days before eating. 

Sandusky Sand Tarts: 100+ Year Old Recipe

Did you know that the Sandusky Sand Tart is the official dish of the Maritime Museum of Sandusky in Ohio? Neither do they. I'm at that point in the Covid-19 quarantine where I am creating signature dishes for historical sites and museums. This post was made possible by the Sandusky Library and Jeremy Angstadt who created and forwarded me the book scan. If you're local or out that way, be sure to give them a visit.

I chose this recipe because it was marked it the book, and I love getting recipe input from previous cooks. Sand Tarts were a popular turn of the century dish and are included in many Pennsylvania Dutch and Amish cookbooks.

The Sandusky House-Keeper (Sandusky, Ohio) 1888

Sandusky Sand Tarts

Ingredients:

- 2 Cups Sugar
- 1 Cup Butter (2 Sticks)
- 3 Cups Flour
- 2 Eggs, reserving 1 egg white for brushing on top
- Cinnamon
- Sugar
- Blanched Almonds

Instructions:

In a mixing bowl, cream together room temperature butter and sugar. Add the eggs, reserving one egg white. Mix in the Flour. Roll out the dough on a floured surface to 1/8 of an inch thick. Cut into squares. Place sand tarts on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper or grease. Brush the egg white and sprinkle sugar and cinnamon on the tops. Press an almond into the center.  Bake in a pre-heated oven at 300 degrees F for 20-30 minutes or until golden brown.

I made half the recipe and it produced about 20 3.5 inch cookies. The tarts spread a little while cooking so be sure to give them space on the pan. It tastes like a crunchy snicker doodle and would be very good with tea. I'm generally not a fan of crunchy cookies but these have a good flavor and texture. Thanks for coming to visit! I'm getting so stir crazy stuck in the house.

Chester Jumbles a WWI - Depression Era Cookie Recipe

Things are going to look a little weird on my site for the foreseeable future. Due to the Covid-19 Quarantine, I am stuck in New York without my camera gear, and kitchen implements.

For those of you who don't know, I volunteer with the Chester Historical Preservation Committee and was very excited to find this book that was printed in Chester, Pennsylvania while I was on vacation in Massachusetts last year. Drive 4 and a half hours for some local history? Yes, Please.

What the heck is Chester, PA? It's the first European City in Pennsylvania. It's where William Penn actually landed. It's where the wounded were sent by rail after the Battle of Gettysburg. It was home of the Eddystone Rifle Plant, during WWI. It was a major shipbuilding site during WWI and II. It's where Martin Luther King Jr. went to school. It's really historic, you'll just have to trust me.

I was very excited to get to try some local recipes from this time period. This book, The Kitchen Guide, was originally published in 1913 in Philadelphia and had only 3 recipes with Chester in the Title. Sometime during the 1913 printing and the 1927 Chester printing, "Chester Jumbles" were added to the text. Jumbles are one of the earliest forms of cookies.

Chester Jumbles 

Ingredients:

- 2 Cups Sugar
- 1 Cup Butter (2 Sticks)
- 1/2 Cup Flour
- 1/2 teaspoon Salt
- 4 Eggs, beaten
- 1 Tablespoon Vanilla
- 1/2 Cups Shredded Coconut
- Almonds, sliced
- About 4-5 Cups of Flour

Instructions:

Cream the sugar and the room temperature, butter together until smooth. Add the vanilla, 1/2 cup of the flour, the salt and the 4 eggs and coconut. Add flour until the dough does not stick to your hands. Roll the dough out on a floured surface to 1/4 of an inch. Cut out with round or donut shaped cookie cutters and top with sliced almonds. Bake on a cookie sheet in a preheated oven at 375 degrees F for about 15 minutes. Remove from cookie sheet and let cool.

For whatever reason I did not think I was going to like these but they turned out very good. They're soft with a light coconut flavor and nice crunch from the almonds. I only made a half batched and it made about 14, 3 inch cookies. 

WW1 Recipes to Help Rebuild France: Serbian Sarma

This recipe is from the book Allied Cookery (1916), a book written to raise funds to support World War 1 victims in France. It contains recipes from the allied nations. It was the work of Gertrude Clergue and her sister Grace Harrison who were born of a French father and American mother.  Clergue, was awarded the Medal of French Gratitude in 1920 fr her efforts. The funds would help rebuild farms and eventually the food supply in the war torn areas:

Unfortunately the list of calamities that have melted on France does not do not stop there: all the territory invaded by the German troops, from which they have been driven, which goes from the Marne to the Aisne, and that covered hundreds of prosperous villages in one of the regions the most fertile and richest in France, was ravaged by enemy troops. The owners of these thousands of farms - old men, women and children - have returned to their homes destroyed to raise their houses and have the land produced food they need. They lost everything: houses, furniture, clothes, animals, farm implements.

The book was reprinted in 1917 and 1936. I'm not an authority on Serbian cooking and I can't claim that this recipe is the most "authentic one." The book was published in mostly English and intended for American and Canadian audiences but looking at the recipes they do seem to match up on a basic level with foreign foods at the time. Some recipes use picked cabbage instead of relying on sauerkraut for the kick.

It is delicious and I can't wait to make this again. I walked in with the cabbage and my Grandma told me to bring down the extra because she would make stuffed cabbage. I said I was making stuffed cabbage and she was way more interested in having me do it. :)

WW1 Serbian Sarma

Ingredients:

- 1 Head of Cabbage
- 1 Cup of Rice
- 2 Pounds of Ground Beef
- 2 Pounds of Ground Pork
- 5 Onions, chopped
- 4 Egg, beaten
- Sauerkraut
- Salt
- Pepper
- Spoonful of Flour
- Spoonful of Paprika
- Lard/ shortening


Instructions:

Boil a pot of water,remove from heat and carefully add your cabbage.  Fry your onions in a large frying pan in a spoonful of lard/shortening. (Remove one onion's worth to a separate bowl to use for the sauce.) Mix in the beef, pork, eggs, salt, pepper and uncooked rice until well combined. Set aside.

Carefully remove your cabbage from the water. Pat dry and remove the leaves.

Fill each cabbage leaf with two spoonfuls of filling and fold in the two sides and the top and bottom to form a little packet.

Fill the bottom of a deep casserole dish with some sauerkraut and the juice. Place the filled cabbage leaves in the dish, layering sauerkraut and cabbage leaves. Cover and bake for 45 minutes at 325.

Put the remaining onion into a frying pan on medium heat. Saute the onions in a spoonful of lard and add a spoonful of flour, a spoonful of paprika, and a cup of water. Cook until it thickens. Pour over the cabbage leaves and bake for another 15 minutes. Top with sour cream when serving, if desired.


***I used Impossible Burger meatless and Vegan Field Roast Frankfurters for this. I also halved the "meat" in the recipe, used vegetable shortening instead of lard and smoked paprika. You certainly could bake or cook it on the stove for the full two hours.***

Here's a video if you want to see the "pot" sarma is supposed to be baked in. I didn't have one so had to make do with a good ol' casserole dish.

Harrison, Grace Clergue, and Gertrude Clergue. Allied Cookery, British, French, Italian, Belgian, Russian. New York: G.P. Putnams Sons, 1916.

1920s Sealing Wax Art Jewelry

Over the weekend we went antiquing and I found this really pretty booklet on sealing wax art. Sealing wax art involves melting sealing wax, originally used to seal letters, and shaping the softened wax into different beads and pendant shapes. I had seen wax flowers and pearls before but this was new and I never thought to try and make some myself.

DIY Your Own Vintage Style Jewelry with the whole book here: Sealing Wax Art

Some of my friends and I have been mailing each other letters with wax seals so I already had the materials and thought I might as well try and get some practice in before all those Roaring '20s parties start happening. I still need a lot of practice but it was fun to do. The book shows some very pretty, intricate examples. 

My attempt. I still need more practice!

The only advice I can give so far is that the harder, wax pellets that are melted in a spoon were giving me better results than the sticks with the wicks in them.

Advertisement from 1924

You can read the whole book here: Sealing Wax Art

If you try it out, I'd love to see photos of what you come up with!

Easy, DIY Cottage Cheese Tutorial, WWI Meat Substitute Recipe

This basic cottage cheese or farm cheese recipe has been used for centuries. Leftover buttermilk, lemon juice, or vinegar can be used to separate the curds and the whey. I used vinegar because I like the idea of being able to make this with stuff already in your refrigerator. I have an 18th century recipe that uses lemon juice for the purpose.

During WWI, the government encouraged Americans to make and use cottage cheese to reduce meat consumption. I've included some recipes from Cottage-Cheese Dishes, a pamphlet by the US Department of Agriculture, printed in August 1918.

Easy Cottage Cheese Recipe

Ingredients:

- 8 Cups Whole Milk

- 6 Tablespoons Vinegar or Lemon Juice
- 1 teaspoon Salt
- Splash of milk (optional for serving)

Instructions:

Pour milk into large pan. 

Heat the milk and salt until simmering (don't let it boil.) 

Stir constantly so the milk doesn't scald. Once simmering, remove from heat.

Add the vinegar or lemon juice and stir until curds and whey form.

Cover pot and let sit for 15 minutes off the heat.

Place a bowl under a colander or sieve and place quadruple folded cheese cloth or a linen cloth in it. 14" x 14" square should be enough.

Skim off the curds with a slotted spoon and place into the colander, pour the remains of the pot little by little, allowing it to drain.

Collect the corners of the cloth together to form a sack.

If you want cottage cheese, tie a string around the top of the bag and hang over a bowl overnight. When serving, add salt and a couple tablespoons of fresh milk.

 If you want meat substitute, sliceable cheese, squeeze the water out and let sit for an hour. Pack the cottage cheese into a bowl to form a loaf, refrigerate for 2 hours, then invert it on a plate and serve.

The Department of Agriculture pamphlet recommend adding chopped peppers, cucumbers, nuts, pimentos, and/or horseradish before serving, which all sound delicious. 

I froze the whey in ice cube trays until i figured out what I wanted to do with it. Whey honey sounds like a good topping for cottage cheese, especially since I'm out of honey. (I have to go pester the bees and their housekeeping staff.) The lemonade punch also sounds good. I'll keep you updated if I get to either of them.