Lemon Layer Cake - 1930's

Throughout my research and discovery of vintage classic recipes, I have found quite a few badly written recipes.  I have avoided them as they are harder for my readers to work out, and they are not overly helpful.  They assume you know a lot about the cooking process, so they seem to be less a recipe as such, moreso a quick reminder for someone that has done them countless times before.
I am sticking my neck out with this one, as the recipe is short and it has a lot of 'cupfuls' which I often find off putting.  I would love to know if someone has made lemon cheese before and what it tastes like, it sounds more like icing that cheese to be honest.


2 1/4 quarter cupfuls sifted flour
1 egg
1 cupful of milk
1/4 cupful of melted butter
4 teaspoonfuls of baking power
3/4 cupful caster sugar
1/2 teaspoonful of salt
1 teaspoonful vanilla essence
lemon cheese. (recipe for lemon cheese can be found here)

1. Add the sugar to the well beaten-egg, then stir in alternately the milk and flour sifted with the baking powder and salt.
2. Add the melted butter and vanilla, beating well.
3. Bake in two buttered layer cake tins in a moderately quick oven for about half an hour until quite firm and light.
4. When cold, put layers together with lemon cheese.

Mushroom Soup - 1930's

Don't eat these mushrooms, buy them from a shop.

Its cold outside, the perfect soup weather.  Mushrooms have an earthy savory flavour that is perfect in a soup, and added with onion and scattered with some lovely crispy croutons, you're on to a satisfying vintage recipe your grandmother would have loved, assuming she liked mushrooms.
We now have pre-made croutons available to us, so a quick fix is available.  But in my opinion you cannot beat home made croutons.

2 pints of white stock
1lb mushrooms
2 eggs
1 Spanish onion
1 dessertspoonful of flour
A little milk
A little cream
salt and pepper
Croutons of fried bread.

1. Wash the mushrooms and chop them up.   Chop up the onion finely then bring the stock to the boil.
2. Add the mushroom and onion then boil for half an hour.
3. Pass all through a tammy or a fine hair sieve.  Add a dessertspoonful of flour mixed into a smooth paste with a little milk and salt and pepper to taste.
4. Boil up again, and just before serving remove teh soup from the fire and add the yolks of two eggs beaten up in a little cream.  Do not let the soup boil after adding the eggs, just enough to thicken the soup.
Serve with croutons.

Roast Pigeons - 1930's

You have to hand it to our previous generation, they really knew how to live off the land.  This recipe is probably a lot older than the 1930's but as it is from a cookbook of that period it is being cataloged as such.  The assumption made here is that the cook knows how to pluck and gut a pigeon, if you're not entirely au-fais with it then buy one from a butcher.

This recipe is a challange as it requires the pigeon to be continually basted in butter.

3 pigeons
3 slices of fat bacon
3 oz. butter
Pepper and Salt
3 slices of buttered sauce
Garnish of fried parsley

1. Singe and draw three pigeons.  Put about three-quarters of an ounce of butter inside each pigeon and season them with pepper and salt.
2. Truss them for roasting with a slice of fat bacon tied over the breast of each.
3. Toast the slice of bread, butter them, and stand one pigeon on each.  Roast them, in front of a brisk fire or in a gas oven, for 20 minutes, basting them continually with butter.
4. When pigeons are cooked, remove the strings and the bacon, or, if liked, the bacon can be left on the breasts.  Place the pigeons and toasts on a hot dish and garnish with bunches of fried parsley.

Sea Kale with Melted Butter Sauce - 1930's

There is a recipe for this on the BBC website that one of the Master Chef programmes, but the principles don't appear to have changed much.  Despite its name it is not Sea Weed and shouldn't be muddled up with Sea Kelp.

Sea Kale isn't the first thing that comes to mind, but it goes really nicely with melted butter much the same way that melted butter goes with toast.  This dish would be perfect as an a partner with meat or even just on its own as a nutricious vegetarian meal.  Replace the butter with dairy free butter for a vegan alternative.

Quarter of a pound of Butter
1 oz flour
Half a teaspoon lemon juice
Salt and White Pepper
Three quarters of a pint of water

1. Wash and rinse the sea kale thoroughly to remove the grit.  Cut away any brown or discolored parts.
2. Tie the heads up into small bundles with tape and put them into a basin of cold water until wanted.
3. Have a saucepan of boiling salted water, sufficient to cover the Sea Kale well, and put two table spoonfuls of vinegar into the water.
4. Put in the Sea Kale, and boil until it is quite tender-this will take about 20 minutes.  Lift out the bundles into a strainer, drain well, and remove the tapes.
5. Lay the Sea Kale in a hot vegetable dish and pour the following sauce over.

The Sauce

1/4 lb butter
1 oz, flour
1/2 teaspoonful Lemon Juice
Salt and White Pepper
1/4 pint water.

1. Melt half the butter in a saucepan, add flour and mix with a wooden spoon. until quite smooth.
2. Add bit by bit, three quarters of a pint of boiling water, stirring all the time.
3. Cook the sauce for a few minutes then add lemon juice.
4. Season to taste with salt and white pepper.  Finally, add the remainder of the butter in small pieces.  Pour the sauce over the Sea Kale and serve.

Golden Cheese Marbles - 1930's

Strangely enough, these appear in the 1936 edition of 'Cookery Illustrated and Household Management'.  These make excellent party appetisers.  This will serve three to four people.



1 and a half cupfuls of grated cheese (Cheddar or Edam)
2 tablespoons of flour
half a teaspoon of celery salt
2 egg whites
Paprika

1. Beat the egg whites till light but not stiff, add the flour, cheese, paprika and celery salt.
2. Roll mixture into the size of marbles and fry till golden brown in deep fat at 373F.

Serve on a hot dish lined with a lace paper d'oyley.

Stewed Pheasants and Rice - 1930's

This is one of the older recipes that I have posted on here, so bits of it might not make perfect sense.   recipe assumes that you know how to gut and skin Pheasants too, you're welcome to cheat by getting a couple from the roadside or even a butcher who specialises in Game.

2 Pheasants
4 oz lean Ham (diced)
2 Onions
2 oz Butter
A bunch of Herbs
Pepper and Sale
Flour
Rice.



1. Singe and draw two young pheasants, then cut them into neat joints.
2. Put the giblets on to boil with an onion, a bunch of herbs (bouquet?) pepper and salt and sufficient water to cover.
3.  Bring all to the boil then skim and boil gently.
4.  Melt the butter in a stew pan and put the pieces of pheasant, the other onion (sliced), the ham (diced) and a little pepper and salt.
5. Cover tightly and draw the pan to where its contents will cook gently in their own juices. (roughly translated let it simmer).
6. Turn the pieces two or three times during the cooking which should last 45 minutes.
7. Take the pieces up, put them in a soup plate, cover with a basin and stand the plate over a saucepan of boiling water to keep hot whilst making the gravy.

At this point it might be worth starting to cook the rice.

8. Sift one large tablespoonful of flour into the pan in which the pheasants were cooked and stir it well.  Then strain a pint of gravy made from the giblets into it.
9.  Bring all to the boil for 5 minutes then strain.  Rinse out the stewpan and put the pices of pheasant in to it with the sauce and boil up again.
10,  Prepare a nice circle of rice on the dishes you are to serve them on to (or put the Microwave Rice on) and place the pheasant in the centre with sauce over the top.