Radio Menus & Recipes for New Year, 1928.

Radio Menus & Recipes for New Year, 1928.

I have shared with you, in a number of posts over the years, scripts from the United States Department of Agriculture Radio Service program ‘Housekeeper’s Chat.’ I want to do the same in this post, partly because the theme on Friday December 28, 1928 was New Year’s Dinners, which is the topic on all our minds today, and partly because the script highlights the different ways we collect recipes today compared with the housewife of nearly a hundred years ago. Careful listening and rapid note-taking was the process back then, with the aid of free notebooks available from the radio service. Compare this with today’s easy pinning, clipping, or bookmarking!

NOT FOR PUBLICATION.

Subject: “New Year’s Dinner Menus.” Menus and recipes from Bureau of Home Economics, U.S.D.A.

Bulletin available: “Aunt Sammy’s Radio Record.”

As I told you yesterday, we'll spend today talking about the New Year's dinners. Two of them— both so good that you'll want to follow one menu for New Year's day, and save the other for a very special Sunday dinner, some time later, when you're having a family reunion.

Please let's write the first menu now. Write it in year Radio Record. By the way, I wish everybody who listens to me had a copy of the Radio Record. It's such a convenient way to keep menus and recipes. There's a special place for each menu, and a special place for each recipe. When the Radio Record is full, it will contain some of the very best recipes that you could get anywhere, for every one of them has been tested in the Bureau of Home Economics. The Radio Record is the same size and color as the Radio Cookbook. Both of them are free — and I can tell you from experience that they are a great help, when it comes to getting three meals a day.

To get back where we were — here's the first New Year's dinner menu:

Roast Pork Shoulder with Savory Stuffing

Mashed Ratabaga Turnip

Spinach, or other green vegetable

Glazed Apples

Celery and Pickles

Mince Tarts

Now let's see what you'll want to know about this menu. How to cook the Roast Pork Shoulder with Savory Stuffing, perhaps. Turn to the Recipe department of your Radio' Record, and write this recipe, for Roast Pork Shoulder with Savory Stuffing — ten ingredients:

Fresh pork shoulder, trimmed                  1 tablespoon chopped parsley

2 cups fine dry bread crumbs                     ⅛ teaspoon celery seed

¼ cup chopped celery                                ¼ teaspoon savory seasoning

2 tablespoons butter                                    ¾ teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon chopped onion                       ⅛ teaspoon pepper

Ten ingredients, for Roast Pork Shoulder with Savory Stuffing: (Repeat ) .

When you go to market to buy the pork, ask your butcher to skin a shoulder of fresh pork of medium- to-large size, with the butt trimmed off. Also, ask him to remove the tones. Wipe the meat with a damp cloth. Lay the boned shoulder, skin side down, and carefully cut a few gashes in the parts where the meat is thickest, so as to make it hold more stuffing. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Then pile in the hot stuffing.

This is the way to make the stuffing: melt the butter in a skillet, add the celery, onion, and parsley, and cook for two or three minutes. Then add the bread crumbs, and other seasonings, and stir until well mixed and hot.

After the shoulder is stuffed, draw the edges together, and sew them securely. Rub the outside of the stuffed shoulder with salt, pepper, and flour. Place the roast on a rack, in an open pan, without water. Sear the meat for thirty minutes, or until it is lightly browned, in a hot oven — 480 degrees Fahrenheit. Then reduce the oven temperature to 300 to 325 degrees Fahrenheit, and continue roasting at this temperature until the meat is tender. A four-pound shoulder will require about 3- ½ hours to cook. The shoulder, boned and stuffed in this way, is a toothsome article, and it's just as easy to carve as a loaf of bread. Be sure that the head of the house carves it crosswise of the grain of the meat.

So much for the Roast Pork Shoulder, with Savory Stuffing. (NOTE:

IF THERE IS TIME, DIRECTIONS FOR [THIS RECIFE SHOULD BE REPEATED.)

Now you may have 30 seconds to rest, before I broadcast the recipe for the Glazed Apples. Speaking of apples reminds me of the little boy who had been warned that he mast not eat the green apples which grew in his grandmother's yard, because green apples would be bad for his stomach. But one day the temptation became too great for Tommy. His grandmother saw him out in the yard, holding a big, green apple in his hand. He meditated solemnly for a few minutes, then he was heard to exclaim: “On your mark! Get ready! Lookout, stomach, it's a-coming!”

Well, there's no danger attached to this recipe for Glazed Apples: I assure you they are all right. Five ingredients, for Glazed Apples:

4 large, tart, firm apples     2 tablespoons butter, melted

1 cup sugar                            ⅛ teaspoon salt

1 cup water

Five ingredients, for Glazed Apples: (Repeat ingredients)

Prepare a sirup of the water, sugar, and salt. Cook for about 10 minutes, then add the butter. Wash, score and pare the apples. Cut them crosswise into two or three thick slices, depending upon the size of the apples. Butter a large shallow pan and place the apples in it in a single layer. Pour the hot sirup over the apples, cover, and cook slowly in a moderate oven until the apples are tender. Turn the slices of apples carefully, so as not to break them, leave the pan uncovered, and continue the cooking until the sirup has "become very thick, and slightly browned. Serve either hot or cold, with the main course of the meat. (IF TIME ALLOWS, REPEAT DIRECTIONS. )

That's all the new recipes, for New Year's dinner Number One. Lets's run over the menu quickly:

Roast Fresh Pork Shoulder with Savory Stuffing

Mashed Rutabaga Turnip

Spinach, or other green vegetable

Glazed Apples

Celery and Pickles

Mince Tarts

Ready now, for New Year's dinner Number Two. As I said before, you might as well keep both these menus on hand. One of them will be just the thing next month, when Uncle James and Aunt Mary celebrate their wedding anniversary.

New Year's dinner Number Two:

Roast Duck

Baked Sweet Potato with Raisins

Buttered Onions

Spiced Crabapples, or Applesauce, or Pickle

 Celery

Kumquat Salad with French Dressing

Cranberry Pudding Supreme

Only one new recipe connected with this menu. That's for the Baked

Sweet Potatoes with Raisins. Five ingredients, for Baked Sweet Potatoes

with Raisins:

6 medium sized sweet potatoes                 ½ cup milk

1 teaspoon salt                                              3 tablespoons melted butter

½ cup seedless raisins, plumped

Once more, five ingredients, for Baked Sweet Potatoes with Raisins; (Repeat ingredients.) Do I hear someone chuckling? It does sound funny, to say ½ cup seedless raisins, plumped? You know what I mean — soaked in hot water for a few minutes so they'll be nice and plump.

Wash and cock the potatoes in their skins. When tender, scrape off the skins, and mash the potatoes, or force them through a potato ricer. Mix the milk, melted hitter and salt with the potato, and beat until light. Pour hot water over the raisins, and let them stand for a few minutes until plumped; then drain, and add to the sweet potato. Grease a baking dish, and pile the potato lightly into the dish. Put in a medium oven to heat through and brown lightly over the top. Serve from the dish in which cooked. (REPEAT DIRECTIONS IF TIME ALLOWS.)

The recipe for Cranberry Pudding Supreme is in the Radio Cookbook,

and I expect you are glad of that — it's not easy to write so many recipes,

is it?

The Kumquat Salad is simple to prepare: just slice raw kumquats crosswise, very thin, and take out the seeds. Lay the sliced kumquats on your lettuce, or whatever salad greens you use and pour French dressing over all. This makes a pretty salad, as well as an appetizing one.

To repeat the menu, for New Year's Dinner Number Two: (Please repeat menu).

I have waved a magic wand over both these menus, so whichever one you follow will he sure to turn out all right — provided the stove is working right.

— 00O00 —

Monday: "Making the Cookstove Cook."