Anyone Can Bake: 1929 Royal Baking Powder Cookbook

[rachelmanija]

After helping a neighbor clean out his apartment for a move and bringing him homebaked bread as a consolation, he gave me a cookbook that he'd unearthed from God knows where. It's a complete delight, and unlike many old cookbooks which are only good for windows into the things people used to eat that we now find unutterably gross, or for enjoyable reading of recipes way too complex or unusual to actually make, this one's recipes look both good and extremely simple.

I am going to try some. I assume baking powder is basically the same now as in 1929, i.e., I can just do the recipes as written?

Cut for a whole lot of photos.













Anyone Can Bake

Comments

[melannen]

I don't know if it's changed or not, but I have old cookbooks of about that vintage (including an even older Rumford Baking Powder one) and have baked successfully out of them! Although never plain bread - I've mostly done some heavier spiced breads and cakes out of them, IIRC (I like my molasses) - so I don't know if it would make a difference for lighter, fluffier ones. I always have to adjust the baking time, but I always have to adjust the baking time for everything.

Old baking/dessert cookbookes tend to be less horrifying than cooking ones. Although I am still totally going to try the jello-dipped ham salad sandwiches someday.

[rachelmanija]

jello-dipped ham salad sandwiches

BARF FOREVER. Do you have the recipe online somewhere?

[melannen]

Not that I know of, but I bet someone does! Actually I have two different recipe books with jello-dipped savory sandwiches in them: one's a very old Jello cookbook, and one's the facsimile edition of the 1940s Blondie & Dagwood cookbook (which as you might expect has amazing sandwiches in general.) They both recommend them for picnics, though, so I think maybe it actually had some benefit in terms of keeping the fillings fresh? As long as the jello didn't melt... They also both suggest using celery or tomato jello, which I cannot get anywhere. :(

[tibicina]

This is where plain (unflavored) gelatin comes in! (Which, honestly, is likely what they'd have been using for either of those.) For tomato, if I remember correctly, you basically use tomato and lemon juice as the liquids (or at least the cold portion of the liquids.) You're basically making a tomato aspic without any mix-in things.

[melannen]

on, no, they were definitely using Jell-O (tm) brand vegetable flavored gelatin! There were a whole bunch of savory flavors in the 40s and 50s.

I've thought about trying to make my own using unflavored, but I've never seen Jell-O brand unflavored and it always feels like the knox sets differently, so idk about trying it with a new recipe. I'll probably just use lemon, which was mentioned as an option for some of them.

[tibicina]

Oh, right, I'd forgotten about that. (I don't have that many of the branded old cookbooks, so mine are more inclined to be generic stuff. ) I think the main issue I've had with Knox vs. Jello is that the packets are for making different amounts between the two companies so you have to be really careful about figuring out your ratios to get the same results. (I was experimenting with unusual jello flavors like using various teas as the liquid, mostly I've reverted to doing things like just making the peach jello with ginger peach tea as the hot liquid.)

But yeah, Lemon could work well for some of them.

[mme_hardy]

Those were available in the 1960s-1970s and not since; they were promoted as being for salads. There was also an Italian dressing flavor IIRC>