This week in April 100 years ago, the Arkansas Gazette sponsored a free Wartime Cooking School with recipe demonstrations and musical interludes. School was in session five afternoons in a row.
Daily reports in the newspaper described marvels prepared by a famous cook and domestic science instructor, Mrs. Betty Lyles Wilson of Nashville, Tenn. Today we would call her a workshop presenter. She was a widow, which we know because her first name was used after the honorific "Mrs."
Here's a photograph of her: bit.ly/2pWm5AZ
And here is her 1914 cookbook, which would have been well known to the ladies of Little Rock by 1917: bit.ly/2oOGsm4
The Gazette reported that she "gave many valuable hints on reducing the cost of meals and still keeping them up to standard in point of food value." Also, "economy was the keynote of Mrs. Wilson's talks. She urged the women to awake to the responsibility and privilege that rests upon them in reducing grocery bills during the war. She explained various ways of using the waste food that often is thrown away."
For example, the menu published for the April 25, 1917, class included an orange cake "having all parts of the orange in all parts of the cake and with a decoration of miniature oranges and orange blossoms."
That day's fare also promised creamed meat in baskets of bread -- "especially pretty for entertainments yet very easy and simple to accomplish." Cup rolls, egg rolls, brown bread. Salad of mixed cheese. And "Exhibition of Cinderella's Bouquet, a specialty of Mrs. Wilson's designing for the ladies of her cooking school."
Each day included a yummy-sounding cake. One used 160 eggs. If only we could have been there, Hungry Reader, I'm sure we would not be wondering today how using 160 eggs was a good wartime economy. Especially considering that the April 23 menu had promised to teach "Eggless Dressing." But of course! People kept chickens.
Also on tap for April 23 were "Whole Egg Dressing, Dressing With Fruit or Vegetable Variations, Aspic Mayonnaise Ring, Jellied Eggs, Aspic a la America" ... and "Something About Sandwiches" with "Ribbon Sandwiches, Hot Sandwiches, Rolled Sandwiches."
April 23 concluded with Ice Cream Baskets and "President Wilson's Inauguration Cake":
This is Mrs. Wilson's latest triumph in decorative achievement. The cake will be a reproduction of the one made for the president on March 5, during Mrs. Wilson's Cooking School in New Orleans, La.
The cake was, of course, dedicated to President Wilson, but it has been rededicated to the Women of America and is a plea to women everywhere in the land from this gifted cook. A plea that housekeepers look into the responsibility and the privilege that is theirs in these anxious days. Mrs. Wilson says: "A nation is only as strong as her men -- a man is only as fit as his body is healthy -- food can make health or ruin it -- and the women are responsible for the food question. Ours is a great and noble part -- won't every housekeeper join with me in the pledge that we will proudly stand by Uncle Sam and do our share to keep our wonderful America always 'the land of the free and the home of the brave!'"
For sanitary reasons every lady was requested to provide her own spoon and saucer to taste all dishes demonstrated.
Black women were invited, and they filled the balcony. The Gazette reported that more than 1,000 women attended.
The daily music was all upliftingly classical or patriotic fare, performed on one of them newfangled internal-horn record players provided by the Victrola-Grafonola department of Gus Blass Co.
There was a live singer for April 23, "Mrs. William Noel Adams, wife of W.N. Adams, president of the Arkadelphia Milling Company." Insightful Reader, you are quite right to observe that simply using the woman's first name would have removed the need to name her spouse twice to prevent readers from confusing her with the wives of all the other W.N. Adamses in Arkansas. But then folks would have assumed her Mister was dead. And she would have been insulted, you know.
"Mrs. Adams has an excellent soprano voice and formerly was director of vocal instruction in Ouachita College," the Gazette reported.
She was accompanied on the pipe organ by one Alfred Hall of Ouachita College, who had come to the college the year before from Canada, where he held a royal commission from the king of England. (Emphasis added to underscore my delight in imagining how very much the organizers approved of these details.)
We all can imagine the timbre of a soprano strong enough to compete with a pipe organ, and because the cooking school met in the Palace Theater, we know that building contained one. She sang "On Mighty Pens" from Haydn's Creation and something titled "Invictus (Huhn)." Here Huhn refers not to Gallus gallus domesticus but to British composer Bruno Siegfried Huhn (1871--1950).
On his own, Hall played the obviously fancy "Fantasia" by someone named Flagler and (this sounds cheerful) "Funeral March and Hymn of Seraphs" by French composer Felix Alexandre Guilmant (1837-1911).
The range and tone of Mrs. Adams' voice demonstrated years of training, and Mr. Hall's masterly performance at the organ was greeted with many encores.
But other days the concerts were by the record player -- which was available at Gus Blass, by the way, for as little as $200 in a small cash payment followed by weekly or monthly installments.
Here are just a few excerpts from the newspaper's daily reports of the food presented the day before:
• Cheese sandwich -- Grind one pound of cream cheese with one green pepper and one-half Spanish onion. Mix with cooked dressing and spread between white bread or brown bread.
• Good Sandwich Filling -- One cup of sweet milk, one tablespoon flour, one teaspoon salt, dash cayenne pepper, one-half pound cream cheese, one can pimentos. Cook milk, flour, salt and pepper and cheese over hot water until very thick. Add pimentos cut in pieces. When cold, spread between bread.
• Onion Aspic -- Two cups water, two tablespoons gelatine, four spring onions. Season highly with salt and white pepper. One cup mayonnaise.
• War-Time Sponge Cake -- Six yolks of eggs, one cup of sugar, half cup flour, two teaspoons baking powder, half cup boiling water. Beat the eggs and sugar very lightly together, add boiling water, then beat into the flour that has been sifted several times with the baking powder. Flavor with orange.
• Rice Balls With Cheese -- One cup tightly packed macaroni, three-fourths cup rice, one cup milk, one cup cheese, yolks of two eggs. Scald milk, add other ingredients, eggs last. Cook until thick. When cool shape into balls and fry like croquettes.
• New Way to Make Mayonnaise -- Put one whole egg in bowl. Beat into this one pint of olive oil, add lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste. Add to mayonnaise when just finished one tablespoon boiling water for each cup mayonnaise, beat in and when cool place on ice. This prevents separation.
A pretty mayonnaise ring was made by using one cup of the onion aspic and one cup of mayonnaise. This ring was then filled with cheese tidbits.
• Eggless Dressing -- One cup oil, one cup cream, one tablespoon vinegar, one teaspoon prepared mustard, juice of half lemon. Have the oil thoroughly chilled, whip seasoning into this and then beat in the cream.
Women knew how long and hot to bake a cake without being told by the newspaper, I get that. But would the average Arkansas woman have been able to get lemons economically? My dad, who was about 11 years old in 1917, told me that citrus fruits were amazing holiday treats, really exotic. Yet here they are being prescribed as a wartime economy. Hmm. Possibly people grew them in containers? Well, she only used half the lemon.
One last description to make us all regret the tardiness of our birth and maturity: One afternoon's demonstration included many dishes involving Arkansas rice as well as "brain cocktails."
Yum.
Next week: Scramble For Free Cabbage Plants
ActiveStyle on 04/24/2017