Vintage Foodie

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Double Boiler bliss

August 8th 2010 12:09

: A cooking utensil for busy

: housewives in the 1880s

An early double boiler. Photo courtesy www.junkables.com

The double boiler revolutionised the 19th century kitchen as much as the microwave oven revolutionised the 20th century kitchen.

An article in The Maitland Mercury May 26, 1883 extols the virtues of the double boiler.

A cooking Utensil that attends to itself is of great use to busy housekeepers. The double-boiler, which can either be bought ready-made or improved by putting the ordinary lard can inside of a saucepan, so that it does not reach the bottom, is so con- venient for boiling all porridge, farinas and delicate puddings, that no one who has ever tried it will wish to go back to the old way.

Cooks no longer needed to worry about burning and continual stirring, according to the article. The only concern was that the bottom saucepan didn't boil dry.

Curries, hashes and stews could also be cooked in the double boiler which was designed to cook and heat food evenly from the water boiling in the bottom saucepan.

The double boiler is still an effective utensil in today's modern kitchen for melting chocolate, cooking fragile sauces and custards or anything that might scorch or overcook due to direct heat.

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Posted By: Samantha Elley - Category: No Category

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The History of Hummus

August 1st 2010 05:32

: A tasty Middle Eastern dish

: made from chickpeas

Tasty hummus

Called hummus, hommus or hommous it stretches back to ancient Egyptian times and is a tasty dip.

Made from chickpeas, lemon juice and tahini it is one of the easiest dips to whip up if you know company is coming around.

The word hummus is Arabic for chickpea and is very high in protein

While there are many alternatives to the recipe I found this quite quick and easy.

I also made some tasty, toasty crackers with flatbread (my own recipe) to go with the dip.

Ingredients
125g tinned chick peas
150ml tahini (sesame seed paste found in health food sections of supermarkets)
salt
ground black pepper
2tsp ground cumin
2 large cloves garlic, crushed
3Tbs lemon juice
pinch cayenne pepper
sprigs parsley
3Tbs olive oil

Method
1. Put chick peas in a blender and season with pepper and cumin.
2. Process gradually adding remaining ingredients (except oil) until your preferred balance is achieved.
3. Add a little water and blend again to make a soft puree.
4. Spoon on a plate, garnish with parsley and drizzle over oil.

To make flatbread:
Mix oil with mustard powder or chopped chillies or whatever flavour is preferable. Brush over flatbread and place in hot oven for 10 minutes or until bread is crunchy and brown. Use to dip in hummus.

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Posted By: Samantha Elley - Category: No Category

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Fruit Salad Dressing

July 18th 2010 07:07

: Made with

: mayonnaise

Fruit Salad Dressing

One of my previous posts mentioned a fruit salad dressing from the 1950s. After a number of readers (ok, maybe just two) mentioned that it would be itneresting to make this dressing I decided to give it a go.

The recipe is at Fruit Salad recipe dressing

After making it one Sunday afternoon for the family I am wondering if perhaps mayonnaise in the 50s was made differently.

Despite the sweetness of the orange juice and icing sugar (I added extra) the slight saltiness from the mayonnaise was more than my 8 and 5 year old could bear and even hubby, who ate half his serving, God love him, didn't see it as a winner.

I chopped up fruit from the bowl and mixed it in with the dressing and while I didn't mind the taste as I found it quite refreshing, the majority wins.

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Grandma's Pumpkin Scones

July 3rd 2010 07:36

: Just like

: grandma used to make

My version of grandma's pumpkin scones. A bit more practice needed.

We recently had a dinner party where our friends who are farmers, brought along a lovely big pumpkin.

You gotta love living in the country where fresh food is just a backyard away and when there is an abundance of a crop, just share it among your friends, family and neighbours

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Vintage Tips in the Kitchen

June 25th 2010 11:41

: Tips for

: the Kitchen

A1952 kitchen. Photo courtesy www.center44.com

In 1952 the Sunday Herald, a Sydney newspaper printed some interesting kitchen tips I thought I would share.

* Use powdered milk mixed with water in which vegetables have been boiled to make white sauce

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Gingerbread for Winter

June 13th 2010 11:02

: Gingerbread

: the old fashioned way

Gingerbread as a warming treat in Winter

The wind is biting, the skies are dreary and thoughts turn to warm, filling foods.

My hubbie loves gingerbread and I must confess that I haven't made any for a long time, so after searching my old recipe books I came across the following recipe in my Carry On Cookery Book, a post-war cookbook

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Washing clothes with petrol

June 5th 2010 04:54

: Clothes washing

: with petrol

A still from the video from the California State Fire Marhsall warning against washing clothes in petrol

Trolling through some newspaper archives, as I do while searching out tidbits for my genealogy hobby or to find interesting articles for this blog, I came across a news article about a woman and her two sons who were badly burnt when she was washing her clothes with PETROL.

Apparently, she was near an open flame and a spark ignited the fumes in her kitchen setting her alight. When her sons came to her rescue they were burnt as well

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Shearers' Stew with Jumbuck Dumplings.

May 22nd 2010 05:46

: Shearers Stew

: with Jumbuck Dumplings

A stew worthy of a chilly Autumn evening.

The weather has turned colder which automatically turns our choices of dishes to cook towards heavier, stewier (is that a word), more warming meals.

My previous post was the book review so it made sense to actually make a dish from within its pages

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Vintage Book Review - Heritage Cookbook

May 18th 2010 03:13

: Book Review

: Heritage Cookbook

The Australian Family Circle Heritage Cookbook

It's not officially a vintage cookbook as the Australia Family Circle Heritage Cookbook was only published in 1988, to celebrate Australia's Bicentenary, but it does have a wonderful history of cooking (and eating) in Australia since white settlement.

I remember being given the book back in 1988 and cooking some of the recipes from it such as Creamy Mushroom Chicken and their Creme Caramel recipe

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Curried Sausages

April 22nd 2010 03:31

: Curried Sausages

: A yummy dish

Our curried sausages, they were yummo.

So one of the first ways I noticed that my grandmother was 'chatting' to me through her cookbook was by a clipping I found amongst the pages that she had cut out of a local newspaper.

It was for a recipe of curried sausages. The lady who had submitted it to the paper described it as a recipe that her grandmother used to make

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August 2010

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July 2010

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June 2010