~Guest Post by Bridene Fisher, Snoqualmie Valley Museum Staff Member
The turn of the century was a period when science and technology radically changed daily life and was replete with social reform movements. Gas and electricity and a greater understanding of nutrition, calories, and germ theory were just some of the few innovations and theories that impacted how women approached domestic duties like cooking.
It was an era of scientific advancement, yet concurrently, scientific fraud and discoveries led to beneficial and harmful practices. Food was no longer produced solely at home; processed options began hitting the shelves. Technologically advanced kitchen appliances like gas stoves and ice boxes became increasingly prevalent.
Yet, it was also an era of egregious food adulteration, such as peas dyed with copper sulfate and coffee that wasn’t coffee but various grains and husks. And milk was often the most frequent offender. Particularly in a time before refrigeration was standard, keeping milk from spoiling was an immense concern.
Children were known to become ill in the summer months, perhaps even deathly so, due to mishandled milk that had been left too long in the sun or handled by unclean hands. In particular, unscrupulous milk producers used formaldehyde to keep it from spoiling. Government regulation for food quality was woefully substandard. Laws protecting consumers from tainted food were not passed until the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act.
It is no wonder that this period also saw the birth of a domestic reform movement, sometimes called “domestic science” or “scientific housekeeping,” that believed improving eating habits was a vehicle for improving the nation as a whole and that incorporating new scientific discoveries into cooking was the best way to do so. This new approach to household chores took the country by storm, and soon, courses, schools like the Boston Cooking School, and books were produced to teach women the art of domestic science. The movement grew in tandem with concerns over adulterated and contaminated food and the public’s demand for government intervention.
The humble condensed milk exemplifies these turn-of-the-century attitudes toward food. When Carnation first introduced its cans of evaporated milk, it would have been considered highly innovative and hygienic. Canning was an ideal way to increase the shelf life of food and guarantee it remained untainted. Companies like Carnation promised a sterilized, superior product from “contented cows.” At the 1915 Panama -Pacific Exposition, Carnation demonstrated to onlookers its process of evaporating, sealing, and sterilizing with the promise that Carnation was “the safe milk for summer.” Precisely, the standard discerning and concerned housewives armed with their newfound knowledge of domestic science were looking for.
With the holidays already here, you may want to spice up your cooking repertoire for those big family gatherings. Why not explore the past while doing so and try some vintage recipes courtesy of the 1915 recipe booklet, “The Story of Carnation Milk.” The following may be exactly what you need to perfect that dinner menu.
“The Story of Carnation Milk”
The author has selected two recipes to review: savory and sweet. The milk used is evaporated but not sweetened condensed milk. Recipes are transcribed as precisely as they appear in the original publication. I want to preface the following, acknowledging that I am an unskilled cook, and mistakes were almost certainly made.
Potatoes Au Gratin
“Potatoes, salt, pepper, cheese, thin white sauce, butter, and bread crumbs. Cut the potatoes in slices, season with salt and pepper. Grease bake dish and put in a layer of potatoes, small pieces of cheese, and thin white sauce (see recipe on page 28). Alternate these layers until baking dish is full. Sprinkle top with cracker or bread crumbs, dot with butter, and bake slowly for about forty-five minutes”
Thin White Sauce
“(For Vegetables and Meat Dishes) Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in saucepan; when bubbling add 1 tablespoonful of flour, and stir until well blended. Pour in, very gradually, ½ cup of Carnation Milk mixed with ½ cup of water. Add ¼ teaspoonful of salt and a dash of pepper. Beat until smooth and creamy.”
The recipe does not indicate measurements for any ingredients or the kind of potato or cheese. I chose to use four medium yellow potatoes and shredded sharp cheddar cheese. It also does not say whether or not to peel the potatoes. I decided not to peel as this is how I prefer them. Unfortunately, I only had pink Himalayan salt at home, which I can only assume is historically inaccurate, but I decided to proceed and hope for the best.
Note that the recipe does not mention the temperature at which to cook. This is because although gas and electric stoves had been introduced by 1915, thermostats were not yet ordinary on stoves. The cook would have to use their know-how to regulate temperature. In the case of coal and wood-fueled stoves, this would mean regulating the temperature with the fuel source, adding more coal or wood to increase temperature, or letting out air from the oven to cool it down. I have a gas oven and chose to set it at 440 degrees.
I found this temperature at the recommended time of 45 minutes was perfect. The potatoes were soft, and the bread crumbs on top were toasted and crisp. I was admittedly generous with the black pepper, but I enjoy a robust spicy flavor as a matter of preference. In the future, I will make more white sauce since the amount made did not thoroughly coat every layer of the potatoes. But overall, I found this recipe to produce a rich and indulgent gratin that my family enjoyed, and we consumed the entire tray.
Ginger Bread
“2 cups flour, ½ teaspoonful soda, 1 teaspoonful ginger, ½ teaspoonful cinnamon, pinch of salt, 1 tablespoonful lard, ½ cup sugar, 1 egg, 2 tablespoonfuls Carnation Milk, 6 tablespoonfuls water, ½ cup molasses. First sift flour, and then measure two cups. Add soda, ginger, cinnamon, and salt to flour, and sift twice. Cream the lard and sugar and add the well-beaten egg. Beat this mixture thoroughly. Mix the molasses with the diluted Carnation Milk, and add alternately with flour, a little at a time. Bake in one layer.”
No bake time or temperature is given. However, a timetable for cooking in the back of the book instructs “gingerbread 20 to 30 minutes.”
What immediately jumped out at me about this recipe is the use of lard rather than butter, which seems unusual for a cake recipe. Butter would give the gingerbread a richer flavor, and I am not sure what lard would lend to a sweet. Despite my skepticism, I resolved to follow the recipe. I skipped shifting since this is no longer a necessary step in baking. This was a standard procedure in the past to break up lumps in flour caused by the way it was processed. Modern flour does not have this issue.
It was challenging to cream the lard and sugar. It felt like cheating to use an electric mixture, so I did my best to blend it by hand, but unfortunately, the mixture stubbornly remained lumpy. My next issue was the vagueness of what needed to be mixed separately or together. I combined the dry ingredients in one bowl, the lard, sugar, and egg in another, and the molasses and milk in another. I then poured the molasses mixture into the lard mixture and then slowly mixed this into the flour mixture. I am confident that this deviation from the recommendation of pouring the flour into the liquid mixture was a mistake.
I put it into the oven at 425 and baked it in a loaf pan. This was also a mistake at far too hot of a temperature, resulting in the outside cooking faster than the inside. It took far longer to cook than the suggested 20 to 30 minutes, closer to an hour, and I had to lower the temperature to 325 at the 30-minute mark. The texture ended up very dense and chewy. I suspect this is because I did not successfully cream the lard and sugar. The flavor is bland, and, as one volunteer described, it is “flat.” Molasses is the dominating flavor, and the ginger is more of an afterthought.
Both my sister and my mother hated it. Other volunteers who sampled it remarked that they found it palatable but not as sweet as a modern pastry, and the concept of a soft gingerbread rather than a crunchy one was also somewhat off-putting. Perhaps a more skilled baker than myself could make this recipe work. But for now, I have enjoyed my foray into exploring history through cooking, and I hope to undertake the challenge again. Our archives are undoubtedly full of recipes from days gone by.
Accession 883.508
Sources:
- Blum, Deborah. The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. Penguin Press, 2018.
- Pacific Coast Condensed Milk Company. The Story of Carnation Milk. Pacific Coast Condensed Milk Co. Seattle, 1915.accession number 883.508
- Shapiro, Lauren. Perfection Salad Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century. Farrar, Straus and Giroux New York, 1986.
- Wassberg, Sarah. “Was Food from the 1910s and 1930s Really Better than the 1950s?” THE FOOD HISTORIAN, 1 July 2022, www.thefoodhistorian.com/blog/was-food-from-the-1910s-and-1930s-really-better-than-the-1950s.
- Weaver, John D. Carnation the First 75 Years 1899-1974. Anderson, Ritchie & Simon, Los Angeles, 1974
