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

[graydon]

Baking powder has always been the same idea, but it's not always the same stuff. So the quantities can easily be off in an old recipe that expects some other formulation. It's not likely to come out actually wrong, but it might not come out optimal.

[yuuago]

Delightful!
I have a similar book, though not quite as old. I find with this sort I sometimes need to adjust things - usually baking time, sometimes the quantities as well, since modern appliances and materials are not exactly the same as they used to be. But after experimenting a little, the results tend to be great.

[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.

[dancing_crow]

Baking powder is magic and translates across time. It has both a liquid rise and a heat rise.

Baking soda only rises with liquid.

[musesfool]

That looks like a fantastic cookbook!

[pameladean]

Those recipes look wonderful. I have made one or two of them -- or versions thereof, anyway. If you really like caraway seeds, the Nun's Cake is just lovely. I think the one I made was more spartan in terms of eggs and butter, which meant it was a little dry; possibly this version is trying to make up for that, though slathering the dry version with butter also worked just fine.

But the text! My God! As an perfect encapsulation of what is STILL WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY it could hardly be bettered. And what masterful use of the passive voice.

P.

[movingfinger]

My family go-to cookbook is from the '30s, so you should be good! Newer modern ovens bake evenly enough that you should not need to turn a pan, if a recipe advises that. Fluff and sweep when you measure dry ingredients, that was the standard practice.

Manufacturers' leaflet cookbooks are a great resource and usually cheap at bookstores and flea markets! Fleischmann's (yeast) had a good one that was sent out for years, keep an eye out for it.

[kore]

Aw, I love the illustrations.

[naomikritzer]

...I'm really tempted to get myself a copy of this. My 15-year-old is an enthusiastic baker and these recipes look both appealing and fairly simple.

[skygiants]

Something about the pre-determined menus in old cookbooks always makes me want to do them even though the context is actively antithetical to anything in my actual life. I think it hits the bit of my id that imprinted on the Tumnus tea party at age four.

[carbonel]

Because my eyes insist on reading in columns, I read the first item in the teen menu as "broiled American cheese donuts." Which might be an interesting thing, especially, if you subbed something edible (but properly meltable) for the American cheese.

The thing I know about baking powder is that it comes in a single-acting variety, which is more common in England, and double-acting, which has been standard in the US for decades -- but I don't know if that was true in 1929.

In 1987, when I was staying in a flat in the south of London with pameladean and DD-B, our landlord came by on a Saturday evening and gifted us with a batch of Bramley apples. He warned us that they were strictly for cooking, not eating in hand. Pamela offered to make apple crisp if I could find ingredients. So I ventured out on Sunday morning. There were a number of small groceries within walking distance, but none of the major ones. It took three stores to find what I was assured was "American" baking powder.

IIRC, Pamela had to do some substituting for a couple of items, but despite that the apple crisp turned out quite edible. The apples cooked down sufficiently that it was more of an apple sog, but we nevertheless made short work of it.