The 1933 version of The Chicago Daily News – New Salads, Bridge Luncheons & Canned Meals cookbook is a composition of “carefully selected” recipes published in the paper’s “Women’s Pages”. The recipes “include delicious new salads, fine emergency meals made from food that comes in cans, delectable dished made out of icebox leftovers, and the recipe for the blueberry jelly that took first place prize in the jelly competition in which there were many thousands of glasses of jelly entered.” The cookbook was edited by Leola Allard, the Editor of The Women’s Pages for The Chicago Daily News.
Contents of the Cookbook are:
- Part One – Salad Recipes
- Part Two – Bridge Luncheons
- Part Three – Emergency Meals
- Part Four – Recipes for Using Leftovers
- Part Five – Miscellaneous Recipes
Part Two – Bridge Luncheons contains suggested luncheon menus, not recipes. Here are a few samples:
- Frozen red raspberries or melon, broiled lamb chops, broiled tomatoes, butter potato rolls, blueberry muffins, and coffee.
- Creamed sweetbreads baked in ramekins, buttered whole-wheat toast, asparagus salad, cheese straws, ginger preserves, fruit cupcakes, coffee.
- Baked sweet potato stuffed with small pork sausage, asparagus tips, diced celery, grated carrot marinated with French dressing served on crisp lettuce, cornbread, coffee, and marshmallow custard.
- Turkey and almond sandwiches, cranberry and celery sandwiches, pumpkin chips, maple mousse, frosted silver cake, tea and coffee, salted pecans.
Part Three – Emergency Meals, is like the Bridge Luncheon section, there are no recipes, only menu suggestions for dinners made entirely of canned foods:
- Vegetable-beef soup, escalloped corn, spinach, pear salad, drop biscuits and butter, marmalade, chocolate cream pie (prepared crust and chocolate pudding filling), coffee.
- Tomato soup or cocktail, baked salmon loaf, creamed asparagus, baked beans in spinach molds, olives, hot biscuits, pineapple fluff, cookies, coffee.
- Fruit cocktail, tongue with cream gravy, sweet potato patties, buttered peas, assorted sweet pickles, tea biscuits covered with strawberries.
- Fruit cocktail, cream of asparagus soup, crackers, baked ham, candied sweet potatoes, spinach, applesauce, Boston brown bread, camembert cheese, water crackers, coffee.
Prize-Winning Blueberry Jelly
The miscellaneous section of the cookbook contains the famous “Prize-Winning” Blueberry Jelly recipe. The recipe was selected from hundreds of entries. After the competition, the jellies were sent to Chicago hospitals and “settlements”. The winning recipe was submitted by Mrs. Edward Purcell, 63 Forest Avenue, Riverside IL. One condition of the recipe is that the jelly is made with bottled pectin.
Ingredients
3 1/2 cups juice
7 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 bottle of fruit pectin
Method
Place blueberries in a kettle and crush thoroughly. Heat quickly until juice starts to flow, then simmer, covered, fifteen minutes. Place in jelly bag and squeeze out the juice. measure sugar and juice into a large saucepan, add lemon juice and mix. Bring to a boil over the hottest fire and at once add bottled pectin, stirring constantly. Then bring to a full rolling boil and boil hard one-half minute. Remove from fire, skim, pour quickly. Paraffin hot jelly at once.
Makes twelve eight-ounce glasses.
Handwritten and Clipped Recipes
At the end of each section, blank pages are included so that the owner of the cookbook can “clip more recipes from The Chicago Daily News and paste them here -“. The original owner of the cookbook did not paste any recipes, but she did write a few recipes in the blank pages, here are a few of those recipes ~
Tuna Fish Salad
Ingredients
1 can Tuna Fish
2 red apples
1/2 cup celery
1/2 cup grapes
1/2 cup salted peanuts
Method
Mix with equal parts of sour cream and mayonnaise.
Salad Dressing
3/4 cup sugar
Garlic
Salt
2/3 cup wine vinegar
1 1/8 cup oil
Corn Surprise
Ingredients
1 onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
1 can corn
1 pound ground meat
1/2 cup cheese, cut small or 1/4 cup grated cheese
1 can tomatoes
1/2 package noodles or spaghetti, cooked
A little of the water in spaghetti
Celery
Salt and pepper to taste
Method
Brown onion and green pepper. Mix all ingredients and put in a buttered baking dish, cover with bread crumbs and bake for one hour.
Escalloped Oysters
Ingredients
1 pound crushed crackers
1-quart oysters
Salt and pepper
1 cup butter
1 cup sweet cream
Milk to cover
Method
Prepare in layers in a pan. Bake in oven until nicely browned.
Mrs. Veet’s Bread and Butter Pickles
2 dozen medium cucumbers
1 dozen onions
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 pints cider vinegar
1 teaspoon celery seed
1 teaspoon mustard seed
1/2 cup turmeric
heaping teaspoon cornstarch
Black Fig Wine
2 pounds black figs
6 pounds sugar
2 gallons water
1 yeast cake
Grind figs, don’t wash