Most of the canny cookery timesavers cleaning woman used a one C ago do n’t translate to today . The theme of serving breakfast cornflakes from a glass pitcher instead of the usual direction ( which was manifestly with a teaspoon ) is nifty , but has been completely unneeded since Kellogg ’s buzz off the idea of making their cereal box narrow and improbable for pouring rather ofsquat and squarefor dip . But there are tiny corner of our kitchens where we still do thing very much like our great grandmothers did . Here are some ways , suggest by readers of the era , test by the Good Housekeeping Institute , and published inGood Housekeeping ’s Book of Recipes and Household uncovering : Every Recipe Actually Tested and O.K. by The Good House Keeping Institute , to do those thing even better .
1. Keep Fish Firm and Flat!
When baking Pisces , a reader from Massachusetts always places “ several strips of sportsmanlike blank material extort out in frigid piddle and extending a little beyond the fish . ” ( This publication predate the pot selling of aluminum transparency for home plate use by a few years , although cloth might still work well . ) This style , when the fish is done it can be lifted from the genus Pan without breaking to mo .
2. Under-Ripe Muskmelon?
Muskmelon was and is vernacular for many different melon and even cucumbers , depending on which part of the country you were in and when . In this case , the writer were in all probability referring to cantaloupe . And what ’s worse than cutting into your cantaloupe and finding it too unripened ? Do n’t throw it to the pig slop just yet ! The magazine advises the lecturer to cut it in half and to each one-half add “ one - one-half tablespoonful of butter and a sprinkling of common salt and pepper . Bake as if it were a lowly squash racquets , and you will find that it try somewhat like one . Or you may trim down the melon vine into thin slices , duck them in batsman , and fry like eggplant . ”
3. Fancy Pants Poaching.
Americans seldom eat carefully poached testicle served in fairly little egg cups anymore , but once upon a clip they were a delicate and delightful part of breakfast . Poaching it so that the white was solid but the yolk soft was tricky . After trying years to poach her eggs “ the restaurant way , ” one lady discovered the trick was to “ put a teaspoonful of acetum in the water and track the cooking pan . The acetum keeps the Edward Douglas White Jr. of the egg from distribute , and the cover up cooking pan makes the white cook over the yolk . ”
4. Ripening Roundly.
To keep fruit and vegetables from prematurely going brown while ripening , one lecturer put her garden truck on a wire cake rest . This manner , “ the air completely surrounds the yield or vegetables , and there is no fuss of turning them over , and no contusion leave from the press of a peach or tomato on a voiceless , monotonic surface . “
5. Classy Cakes!
One female parent madea Pinterest - worthyproject out of her girl ’s natal day patty , by using melted cocoa as rouge and a hard boil white-hot frost as canvas . Using a water - colour brush , “ I made a border of small objects in silhouette — cats , razz , etc.—around the sides of the patty . ” She crown the cake with flyspeck candles and her girl ’s name paint in hot chocolate .
6. Cup o’ Salad!
In the 1920s , it was becoming more and more rough-cut for citizenry to be take walkover lunches along as they move “ by machine . ” Sometimes this require eating in car seats or other places where a full place - setting was unmanageable . So one reader from Washington DC intimate the enjoyment of “ private report drink cups ” for dish out a salad . She commends the power to pass out individual portions without pot , and even suggests the salad be “ garnish attractively with a sprig of Petroselinum crispum stuck in one side . ”
7. Shortcut for shortening!
scrape up the proper amount of shortening into a measuring cup is just as tedious now as it was then , but one peeress had an ingenious solution for mother the right amount . “ When one - half cup of shortening is called for , I fill the measuring loving cup one - one-half full of water , then drop in shortening until the water come to the top . enfeeble this off , and one - half cup of shortening remains . ”
8. Two Ingredient Maple Frosting.
It ’s so simple it would never happen to most of us . One cleaning woman found a quick fashion to frost hearty cakes : Just add maple syrup to powdered refined sugar until it ’s spreadable .
9. Bacon Makes it Better.
One reviewer writes to tellGood Housekeepingthat her family much prefers bake macaroni and cheese if raw Baron Verulam is first layered on top of the casserole before going into the over . We ’ll file that one under “ Blameless ignorance of a more innocent time . ” Or just , “ Bacon . Duh . ”
BONUS: Combine Peanut Butter and Rice!
It was a fresh strange compounding in the 1920s , and it seems to be a fresh strange combination now . We ’re instructed to “ Boil one - half cup of rice until cutter , in boiling , salt water . swarm over it one pint ofthin snowy sauce , to which one - half cupful of peanut butter has been tote up . ” The Washington reader who submits this idea is sure that you will find this “ a tasty combining . ”
