Are You Savvy with Celery Stalks?!

So sorry about the post title...had to do it.  I have two very different recipes that are celery centered (again - sorry) from different time periods in American history.  The first one hails from a time when frugality was the banner held in every American household and stretching food was a main goal for every woman who cooked for her family.  I'm not talking about the 70's although I very well could be, no, this recipe is approximately 100 years old and would have been carried to work in the field or to school in a lunch pail and provided plenty of nourishment.  It may have been served at the dinner table but I can see it's usefulness for eating on the go wrapped in paper or wax paper.  Not very pretty but terribly practical and filling! 

Celery Cutlets

Take a cupful of finely chopped celery, a cupful of cold baked beans, two well beaten eggs, two tablespoons of bread crumbs, the same quantity of melted butter, salt, pepper and a little lemon juice; mix all together and shape into oblong balls, roll in finely grated bread crumbs and fry in deep fat.

Yum.  My sons will eat anything fried in deep fat.  Seriously, I don't know why I bothered with all that healthy eating stuff when they were kids.  Fat is king.  It also kept people full and satisfied if there wasn't much else to go around. 

Now - on to the fancy and mainly for show recipe from the 1950's when housewives were persuaded into spending hours and hours in the kitchen creating these things with the sole purpose of outdoing a neighbor or earning a reputation as the most creative in the kitchen.  In this case, the 'Canape Connection'.  Sorry.  Not really.  Read on for some 1950's fun - I think I figured out how to construct this and at the end of the recipe I'll tell you how!

Stuffed Celery (Canapes)

3 stalks celery
6 oz. butter
1/2 pound bleu* cheese
salt, black pepper
slices of good* white bread cut into small rounds, toasted if desired

Cut the green part off the celery, remove all the pieces and wash them well in a very cold salted water.  Dry well in a cloth, then cream the butter add the bleu cheese which has been rubbed thru a sieve, and the salt and pepper.

Spread the pieces of celery very thickly with the cheese mixture and reshape the celery stalks.  Roll the up tightly in wax paper and refrigerate for two hours.  Remove and cut into thin slices and place them on rounds of bread or toast.

Tops can be decorated with small rounds of canned pimento or slices of stuffed olives.  Serve very cold.

*Sooo.. bleu cheese spelled that way can only mean that this is a fancy appetizer type recipe meant for a very fancy dinner party that most likely does not involve children but most assuredly does involve martinis!  And the reference to 'good white bread' can only mean - stay away from 'Wonder Bread'! 

Once the 'bleu' cheese mixture is added you slice it this way!

OK.  Here's how to do this thing. You cut the tops and bottom off (save the leafy greens for soups, etc.) wash the separate stalks, dry them and them spread the cheese and butter mixture thickly into the separate stalks.  'Reassemble' the stalks into a celery bunch and then wrap it.  After it has cooled in the refrigerator, take it out and slice it in very thin rounds and then place onto toasted rounds of bread.  Decorate this creation to look very grown up! 

There you have it.  Two recipes for celery (a vegetable by the way) served at different times in our American history in two very different manners.  And what do we use it for today?  Crudite.  If we have kids we smear peanut butter in it and call it a snack and if we're super creative in the kitchen we use it in stuffing, soups and to add crunch to chicken, egg or tuna salad!  The days of 'Celery Cutlets' are long gone and that's a shame.  But the way the economy is going...


Anyway, here's a cute Sesame Street clip featuring 'Captain Vegetable' and Celery - of course!

The Ashville Salad Mystery

I've been meaning to write about this recipe for quite some time now and thought that the end of July was just as good a time as any.  I have 2 copies of this recipe.  One looks like it is from sometime during the 1950's and is typed (on a real typewriter) on an index card.  The other is on a faded piece of notepaper and handwritten as a 'receipt'.  There are 3 other 'receipts' written on this faded piece of paper in light pencil.  The paper is delicate and worn.  Words used include 'fire' for heat and 'flavoring' for vanilla.  The handwritten recipe contains no instruction - just ingredients.  I'm guessing it must be from the 1920's.  Ashville salad was difficult to research.  I found nothing in any of my food reference books and images and information on the Internet was sketchy. 

The recipe went through a period of popularity as a savory, cool side dish. It seems to have been served two ways.  It could be molded in a square pan and sliced into individual squares or molded in individual salad jello molds.  Everything I read suggested serving it on a lettuce leaf with some form of garnishment.  As you can see from the one photo I was able to locate, it is not the 'prettiest' of creations!  One reviewer of this dish implored the preparer to serve it with fresh shrimp while others suggested it be served alongside a warm vegetable.  I'm partial to serving it with shrimp and maybe a bright sprig of parsley to add some 'personality'.  Without further ado...

Ashville Salad

1 can tomato soup

2 pkgs. cream cheese
2 Tbsps. gelatine
1/2 cup cold water
1 and 1/2 cups finely chopped celery
1 Tbsp. lemon juice
1 green pepper, finely cut
1 pimiento, finely cut
1 dozen stuffed olives, finely cut
1 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. cayenne
1 cup mayonnaise

Heat soup, add gelatine to which cold water has been added.  Combine remaining ingredients and chill in salad bowl, or make individual salads.  Serves 12.

The directions are rudimentary at best but you get the idea.  Everything goes in!  I found it spelled as above and also as 'Asheville'.  Other than that I found no other information about this dish that seems to have enjoyed a period of popularity before fading into obscurity.  If anyone can shed any light on this gelatinous mystery - please do!

Iced Coffee Angostura - What?

It's the end of July and while the weather here is anything but conducive to iced drinks (non-stop rain and thunderstorms) I thought it would be fun to explore a 'recipe' for iced coffee from the late 1930's or so.  Believe me, we're grateful for the rain and storms knowing the drought conditions that are affecting our country currently but a small ray of sunshine would be appreciated in our corner of the world!  In most parts of the United States the sun is blazing, the crops are suffering and relief is nowhere in sight.  A tall glass of iced coffee would certainly take the edge off a stifling day of heat and humidity.  I was surprised to find this recipe in my collection for 'coffee-iced' but that's exactly what it is!  Follow the recipe carefully because of the special ingredient!

Coffee - Iced

Into a 12 oz. glass pour one T. of angostura*, add 2 t. sugar, fill the glass with ice.  Then add 2 oz. cream, 4 oz. double strength hot black coffee.  Stir thoroughly - serve.

*Call me naive but I had never in my life heard of angostura.  Click on the link to read all about Angostura bitters and what they were used for!  It was difficult to discover much information about this strong 'elixir' but I did find this nugget of information from 'The Food Lover's Companion',

"Angostura bitters - Formulated by German Surgeon Johann Gottlieb Benjamin Siegert, who served under Marshall von Blucher at the battle of Waterloo, angostura bitters are the most widely known bitters today.  Dr. Siegert created the bitter elixir (based on angostura bark, gentian root, rum and other ingredients) as a tonic to stimulate the troops' lagging appetites and improve their health.  Although bitters are still taken as a Digestif, angostura bitters are often used today as a flavoring in foods and drinks and are essential in many cocktails such as the Manhattan and Old Fashioned.  At 90 proof, angostura bitters are the most potent among this genre."

I found the photo below on www.pinterest.com of an Angostura bottle in case you ever ran across one.  It has always had a distinctive over sized label.  Personally, I prefer a 'regular' iced coffee with nothing special done to it.  Click on this Wikipedia Iced Coffee link to read about all the different varieties of this cool summer thirst quencher! 

Fruit Salads and French Dressing - From the Past!

Are you finding yourself with some time on your hands in late July?  Do you have friends coming for dinner and have to come up with something a little 'different'?  I found these gems among some of my oldest recipes and thought you might like to read how a fruit salad was properly constructed over 100 years ago.  It's just a really good thing that I live in this particular time and place.  I would starve, my family would starve - it would not be good.  Read on...



Fruit Salad

Pare and cut fine four tart apples, 1 small head of celery freed from all strings, and cut fine, 1/2 lb. dates, 1/2 lb. nuts, 2 oranges peeled and cut in small pieces, add 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon fine sugar.  Mix and serve on lettuce with whipped cream.

That recipe seems so simple until you read between the lines.  The instruction to 'free the celery from all strings' is insane.  How many of us would do that today?  I know it would not be happening in my house!  My celery (and most things related to me) will come with 'strings attached'!!  The whipped cream would be most certainly whipped up by the hostess before serving.  I can tell from the amount of food stains on this recipe card that it was made frequently.  It's a healthy and cool salad to serve in summertime and I'm sure it was a good way to make use of all the celery that was growing in your garden.  I'm thinking that tearing the strings off of all the celery must have been a lonely, boring chore.  No TV to watch or radio to listen to.  Was it a porch activity similar to snapping the ends off of green beans?  You probably couldn't get together with friends and do this - they probably lived a significant distance away (remember, no car) and had plenty of their own family meals to prepare for along with all the other duties that a wife and mother in the late 1800's was expected to complete during the course of her day.  Meal preparation and clean up was an around the clock event.  And just think, no paper products...every dish, cup, fork and pot had to be washed! 

Orange and Onion Salad



Peel the orange, cut off the end, slice about one inch thick, using 2 slices with a thin slice of Bermuda onion (or Spanish) between.  Serve on lettuce leaf.

Now that's a simple salad!  Except at the bottom of the recipe were these words '(over)'.  Uh-oh.

French Dressing

Rub bowl with garlic
Small 1/2 teaspoon salt, and a good 1/2 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons vinegar
6 tablespoons oil

Wait a minute.  When we venture down the salad dressing aisle at the store we're used to seeing French Dressing look like some sort of strange creamy orange-red concoction.  This is not what we grew up with but it is the 'original' French Dressing.  Read this foodtimeline article to learn about the origins of this basic dressing!  If you're curious about all things onion check out this Wikipedia link! 




I just finished reading a book today.  I can say with absolute certainty that I wouldn't be doing much pleasure reading if I lived just a short time ago.  There would be no blog writing either... Just for fun, I found a Kraft TV ad for French dressing and caramels.  There's even a video recipe that involves 'piping' mashed potatoes around the edge of a casserole.  Maybe we didn't evolve too far from 'freeing the strings' from the celery!

Simple Heirloom Summer Salads

If there ever is a time for cold salads made with fresh vegetables from the garden it must be now.  Farmer's markets and family gardens are bursting with color and flavor straight from the earth.  There are many families that nurture a summer garden as a hobby rather than out of necessity today.  Many city communities offer plots of land where the harvest is shared or where families care for a portion of the garden and visit periodically to tend their own plot and enjoy their own fresh produce.  Small farms sometimes sell 'shares' of their harvest.  Our family bought 1/2 a share in a local NY farm one year and could not believe the cornucopia of vegetables we received each week.  It was really almost too much for a small family!  We're lucky to live in a country that offers an abundance of food available around the year.  That was not always the case.  Years ago, when great quantities of vegetables were harvested it followed that great quantities or batches of food were prepared and 'put up' or canned for the leaner days of Winter.   

I found these recipes for summer salads in my collection.  The Potato Salad recipe actually looks like it yields a 'normal' amount while the Corn Salad recipe would be enough for a large gathering or enough to fill quite a few glass jars!

Potato Salad

Add to one large cupful of cooked potato cubes one-quarter of a cupful of diced cooked carrots, one tablespoon of chopped parsley, one slice of minced white onion and half a chopped pickled beet.  Season to taste with salt and paprika, moisten with a mayonnaise dressing to which a slice of minced pickle has been added and serve on a bed of crisp romaine or lettuce.  Garnish with celery tops and sliced hard-boiled egg.

This recipe sounds easy enough but for the woman who initially prepared this it was slightly more involved.  Everything was grown by her or a neighbor and the mayonnaise did not come out of a jar!  The pickled beets and minced pickles were more than likely waiting for her in a glass jar that she had already prepared and pickled.  The eggs came from her own hens.  Preparing meals for a family was infinitely more involved than it is today.  And what to do with all the corn? ....

Corn Salad



1 and a half doz. ears of corn
1 large head of cabbage
4 green peppers
3 large onions
1 large cup sugar
1 quart vinegar
2 Tbsps. salt
2 Tbsps. mustard
1/4 Tsp. Turmeric

Chop fine and boil 45 minutes.

That's it.  Of course, if you grew up on this or it was made in your family you knew the rest.  The instruction for a 'large' cup of sugar is interesting.  Obviously, this was not referring to a measuring cup but a 'cup measure'.  Two entirely different things.  I guess depending on how big of a cup you used for measuring sugar your recipes could taste entirely different from your neighbor's or family member that had the same recipe!

Many of my heirloom and vintage recipes call for the spice 'Turmeric'.  I don't think I have it (if I do, it's stuffed in the back of my spice cupboard) but here's a little more about this spice from 'The Herb and Spice Companion' by Kathryn Hawkins,

"Turmeric is the flavoring used for Worcestershire sauce and piccalilli, the pickled vegetable relish.  It is added to mustard and some cheeses to enhance the yellow color.  Turmeric is almost always sold as a ground powder because the root is very hard to grind.  Only small quantities should be bought because it loses its flavor, although not its color, very quickly."

And another interesting bit of trivia about this spice native to India - it is sold whole and ground by the importing country and is considered a strong stimulant of the digestive and respiratory systems and also has anti-inflammatory and antiseptic properties.

M.F.K. Fisher had this to say about salads in her 1942 book 'How to Cook a Wolf' - published during wartime and still applicable today,

"You can still find little fresh vegetables, and still know how to cook them until they are not quite done, and chill them, and eat them in a bowl.  Why do we not do this oftener, much time as it will take?  I am tired of tossed green salads, no matter what their subtleties of flavor.  I want a salad of a dozen tiny vegetables: rosy potatoes in their tender skins, asparagus tips, pod-peas, beans two inches long and slender as thick hairs...I want them cooked, each alone, to fresh perfection.  I want them dressed, all together, in a discreet veil of oil and condiments.  Why not?  What, in peacetime, is to prevent it?  Are we too busy being peaceful for such play?"

This last paragraph was written as a post script after the war had ended.  Still profound.  If you haven't read any of her works, you just should. 

The Green Tomato Pickle Post!

I promise.  This will be the last tomato recipe for a good long while!  I'm actually getting my fill of these...but summer is here and what better way to appreciate how good we have it now by looking back at an incredibly old recipe that took much more time than we're willing or able to give to food preparation today!  I'm all in favor of slow food and meandering down the road of remembrance but my 'reality' is that my kitchen just won't fit the amount of food, fresh vegetables, or fruit called for in most of these heirloom recipes.  As long as I have been married I have had a galley kitchen.  It's narrow, small and generally only fits one person at a time.  If two are in that kitchen the potential for small outbursts of territorial arguments multiply rapidly.  It's townhouse living.  There are times when a large kitchen is on top of my wish list but then again having a small space forces you to keep only what is necessary.  Of course I write this with a pile of food reference books at my feet because my cook book bookcase is 'full'.  Oh well. 

On to the great green tomato pickle recipe!  Whoever happened to have this recipe at one point in time had an incredible vegetable garden - and access to a large variety of spices. 

Green Tomato Pickle

1 large peck (or 14 lbs.) green tomatoes
6 onions, 6 peppers without seeds

Slice tomatoes, then chop, not too fine.  Put onions and peppers through meat chopper - mix with tomatoes.  Sprinkle with one cup of salt and let stand over night.  In morning - drain, then boil 15 minutes with two quarts of water and one of vinegar.  Drain again.  Add to pickle:

2 and 1/4 lbs. granulated sugar
1 quart vinegar
2 Tbsps. cloves
1 Tbsp. allspice
2 Tbsps. ginger
2 Tbsps. mustard
3 Tbsps. cinnamon
1 tsp. cayenne
1/4 lb. white mustard seed

Boil ten minutes and put in cans hot.

Again in this vintage recipe the instruction is to put the ingredients in actual cans which makes me believe that instead of just glass jars there must have been tin cans made just for home canning.  There was a time when women got together frequently and helped each other 'put up' food for leaner times.  We didn't have the luxury of freezers or large refrigerators so pantries and cellars were put to good use.  If you're getting the urge to try your hand at canning please visit CanningAcrossAmerica.com for user friendly step by step instruction.  It can be done on a small scale and in a small kitchen!  See my July 4th post about strawberry jam! 

I promise that my next posts will have nothing to do with tomatoes...I'm pretty sure they will involve some heirloom summer salad ideas.  Something cool for these hot and weary days we're having - she says while the air conditioner is humming next to her...

Trendy Tomatoes!

There are some recipes that are so old that they deserve an opportunity to become 'trendy' once again!  I found these in my collection and they clearly come under the 'heirloom' category - and not because they are tomato recipes.  These probably have not been made for at least 100 years.  I was thinking today that women provided a truly life preserving service by preserving food when it was plentiful for use throughout the year.  I have a book in my food reference collection that reads more like a novel.  Try and grab a copy of this book if you can.  It's called 'Animal, Vegetable, Miracle' and subtitled 'A Year of Food Life' by Barbara Kingsolver.  You may have read some of her novels.  She and her family have a farm in Virginia and this is her detailed account of how she and her family managed to live off the land with only locally grown and sustainable food for one year.  It's a fascinating read and a real eye opener.  You will start to look at your food with a local eye!  She writes this about having to deal with a bounty of 'red',

 "At what point did we realize we were headed for a family tomato harvest of 20 percent of a ton?  We had a clue when they began to occupy every horizontal surface in our kitchen.  By mid-August tomatoes covered the counter tops end to end, from the front edge to the back splash.  No place to set down a dirty dish, forget it, and no place to wash it, either.  The sink stayed full of red orbs bobbing in their wash water.  The stove top stayed covered with baking sheets of halved tomatoes waiting for their turn in the oven.  The cutting board stayed full, the knives kept slicing."

She goes on to talk about the canning process and her annual purchase of canning supplies as part of the activities of a secret society with an exclusive membership!  This was most certainly not the case in our not so distant past and I'm happy to say that canning is enjoying a resurgence!  Visit Canning Across America's excellent site to learn more. 

Here are the two 'heirloom' tomato recipes that I located (ha. ha.  Get it?)  I hope if you have discovered yourself soon to be inundated with a bounty of beautiful red orbs that you'll feel inspired to preserve them for the dark days of Winter.  It will be here soon.

Canned Tomatoes

Peel tomatoes and fill cans.  1 teaspoon salt to quart can.  Put cans in cold water, bring to a boil and boil seven minutes.  Then stir down and fill can with hot water or tomatoes cooked on stove and hot.

Just a note:  I think the recipe above actually used tin cans for the canning and not jars.  Also, I believe there's much to this recipe that relies on the cook having a working knowledge of the canning process.  This 'recipe' would bring me to my knees! 

Tomato Marmalade

4 quarts tomatoes skinned and boiled down to 2 quarts
4 oranges using pulp and juice
4 lemons - juice of all and rind of one
4 pounds sugar
Boil 3 hours.

Okay.  Sooo...you know what to do, right?  Of course you would have all the time in the world to complete this task while you were preparing all the meals for your family.  Your very large family.  I found out something I didn't know today!  Marmalade always (and I mean always) has orange in it!  Did you know that was what made marmalade?  Well, now you do.  And think, it was very important to have orange and citrus available to your family's diet in the wintertime to keep everyone healthy.  To read more about all things marmalade click on the foodtimeline link!  It's important, you need to know these things!

A Bushel and a Peck?

I can't imagine why we tend to complain today about our 'lack of time'.  I was going through some of my oldest recipes this afternoon and became terribly aware of how comparatively easy our lives are today!  When recipes begin with ingredients containing the measure 'bushel' you know you have entered some sort of crazy time warp bringing you to a time and place that...wait a minute you know what place - it was the kitchen, and the time was all day long!  Women 100 years ago didn't have the opportunities our young women today do and while I might get nostalgic thinking of that time period as 'simpler', I have to remember to take a good look at the leaps and bounds we've made!  The reality is that I wouldn't trade the opportunities I've had or my education for any of the past!  It was fun for me to make and can the strawberry jam last week that I wrote about.  Fun because I didn't 'have' to do it and fun because I didn't have 'bushels' of them sitting at my feet demanding swift attention! 

Canning and food preservation was and is serious work.  It was a necessary part of life and in many parts of the world still is.  I love that when I attempt to can or preserve food that it is purely out of a desire to connect with the common bond women share!  If you would like to explore more about the food preservation world please visit the Canning Across America website for information, advice and a great community of people who are trying to instill a fresh interest in this skill.

It's summer and there are plenty of tomatoes still being harvested in gardens all across the world so I thought that these two recipes might bring back the days when eating outdoors with family and friends every night was the norm.  Putting up all these tomatoes would assure the taste of summer year round!  I'm sure it tasted more like a sunny summer day than the stuff we buy in the big box stores we all currently pour our money into.

Tomato Chow Chow

1/2 Bushel green tomatoes
16 new onions
1 dozen green peppers

Chop fine together.  Sprinkle over all 1 pint salt.  Let it stand overnight, then drain off brine, cover with good vinegar and cook slowly 1 hour.  Drain and pack in jar.  Take 2 lbs. brown sugar, 2 Tsps. cinnamon, 1 of allspice, 1 of cloves, 1 pepper (all ground), 1/2 cup ground mustard, 1 pint grated horse radish and vinegar enough to mix.  When boiling hot pour over the contents of jar.

Wow.  All I have to say about the above recipe is...how do I know if I have good vinegar?  I guess the horseradish you would have to grow and grind yourself - of course you would.  That's exactly where you would find the 16 onions and the dozen green peppers!!  Here's another recipe involving green tomatoes...just for fun!

Green Tomato Mince

2 quarts chopped green tomatoes (3 and a half lbs.)
1 pound sugar
2 pounds raisins
1/4 tsp. each of all kinds of spice.

Cook together until thick, then add one cup vinegar.

(Add 3 and a half lbs. chopped apples and a lemon if you like)

That last instruction in parentheses was added at a later date to the recipe and in a different hand. 

If you would like to see what Wikipedia says about the origin of Chow Chow click on the link!  It's actually related to Piccalilli...who knew?  Well, apparently a lot of people did.  Here's a picture for some modern uses of those bushels you might have floating around or find at the flea market...

A Jammin' Afternoon!

I found myself with an enormous amount of fresh strawberries in my refrigerator that were most definately headed for the garbage if I didn't do something with them!  That's usually the way it is after a large party or event.  We end up with a large amount of food and search tirelessly for the food to be passed off to friends or family.  For those with large freezers it is less of a problem.  Living in a small home has never been a problem for me except in cases like this.  Food must be eaten and purchased judiciously.  There is just no room!  So here I was - looking at these gorgeous Connecticut strawberries and knowing that I had to do something and fairly quickly.  What to do...

In the past I had canned salsa, blueberries and various spreads.  I knew that getting the mason jars out along with all the other canning equipment was pretty much my only option.  Once you get going it's not a terrible process, it just demands some preparation.  And when I say 'demands', I mean you better be prepared!  It's a satisfying feeling to know that you have canned the fruit correctly and that the lids on top of the jars don't 'pop' when you press on them!

I found this simple recipe for Summer Strawberry Jam on one of my favorite recipe websites.  Take some time to search through www.AllRecipes.com - you'll probably enjoy the ingredient option!  Just type in what 'ingredients' you have to cook with and all sorts of recipes will magically appear!  Well, it's not magic, it's a search engine...but you get it.  I had to almost triple the recipe because of the amount of fresh strawberries I ended up with.  The amount of sugar required is unbelievable, however, there are low sugar recipes out there if you search for them.  This little project took up the better part of the afternoon and I couldn't help but think that I was only canning a relatively small amount of strawberry jam.   If you want to learn more about all things jam then click on the foodtimeline link! 

The women who went before me would spend days canning everything. It was that important. Canning parties were held where women would get together, can and share their bounty with each other. There was a time when a woman's canning pantry was a point of pride.  There are wonderful women and organizations that still try to spread the knowledge of canning among women today and will help with any questions.  If you're interested in expanding your canning knowledge or are maybe just a little curious, check out www.foodinjars.com and www.canningacrossamerica.com for incredible information and step by step instructions.  If you're on twitter follow Food in Jars @foodinjars and Canning Across America can be found @Canvolution. 

I won't lie.  It was a lot of work for not a very big yield but they do look pretty.  In addition to the two jars you see in the picture I had a half full jar.  We're eating that now!  I recently read that you can 'put up' ingredients for soups, any vegetable you can drag out of your garden and even meats.  I'll be doing this again but it will have to be a well organized and well thought out day.  And next time I just might wear an apron!  When you bring fruit to a rolling boil for longer than a minute while you stir - it splatters - all over.

Deviled or Stuffed Eggs?

Summertime is typically the time when we see old favorites like 'deviled or stuffed eggs' make their appearance at family picnics and events.  Whether you call them deviled or stuffed depends to a large extent upon what part of the country you are from and if you add a little 'heat' to the mixture that goes back into the hard cooked egg halves.  To learn everything you ever wanted to know about the egg click on the link!  'The Food Lover's Companion' by Sharon and Ron Herbst describes the 'stuffed egg' like this,

"A hard-cooked egg that has been cut in half lengthwise and the yolk removed, mashed and mixed with any of various flavorings, such as minced fresh herbs, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, curry powder, and so on.  Other finely chopped ingredients including chives, toasted nuts, bell peppers, chutney, and so forth, may be added.  Enough mayonnaise or sour cream is blended into the mixture to make it soft and moist.  This mixture is spooned back into the egg-white halves, the top garnished with a sprinkle of paprika.  Adding cayenne pepper or a hot sauce like Tabasco pepper makes it a deviled egg."

Aha!!  So.  Now we know.  Even more enlightening is that in my 1958 cook book 'Thoughts for Buffets', the authors suggest making a large broccoli mold and filling the center of the mold (once successfully unmolded...good luck) with chicken salad.  To decorate surround the mold with 'Deviled eggs'!  Below is a picture I found on www.pinterest.com of devilled eggs made out of jello - perfect!

I make deviled eggs frequently for family and friends for extra special occasions.  I can guarantee you that I would not be making them as a 'garnish' for any reason!  They are a labor of love.  Emphasis on labor.  These are not for the weak of heart.  Just getting hard cooked eggs to peel cleanly and properly is a matter of perfect timing with a good dose of patience thrown in.  I'll tell you one thing that I learned - don't use super fresh eggs.  Really.  Let them sit awhile in your fridge.

Fresh eggs don't want to peel cleanly.  I think they're still trying to be chicks because that egg white does not want to separate from the shell!!   After I had been completely stressed out from some especially 'difficult to peel' eggs I found that my favorite store Stew Leonards' offered the perfect solution!  They have a huge salad bar where perfect hard cooked and sliced eggs are sold by the pound.  I'll visit them next time for sure.  Visit their website at www.StewLeonards.com!  Here's a simple way to hard cook eggs from my reference book 'How to Pick a Peach' by Russ Parsons,

"Cover the eggs with cold water in a small saucepan and set over high heat.  When the water comes to a rolling boil, remove from the heat and let the eggs sit in the water until they are cool enough to handle."

There are many other ways to do this.  My husband prefers a method involving a digital timer (16 minutes) and a lot of fussing.  Not my thing.  Below is the recipe from 1958 if you want to try a very traditional recipe.

Deviled Eggs

4 hard-cooked eggs
3 ounces cream cheese
1 Tbsp. mayonnaise
1 Tbsp. prepared mustard
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vinegar
1 dash cayenne
1/8 tsp. dry mustard

Cut eggs in half, lengthwise.  Remove yolks; put through strainer and add remaining ingredients.  Blend until smooth.  Fill hollow of egg white and decorate with slices of pimento-stuffed olives.*

*Remember to save some of those olives to go with the martinis you're going to need by the time this is all put on the table!  1958...could happen.

The following is a recipe for 'stuffed eggs' from the book 'The Food of a Younger Land' by Mark Kurlansky.  This is a record of recipes gleaned from writers who toured our country documenting how we ate as a country during the 1930's.  This particular recipe is from Port Gibson, Mississippi.  It is very unusual.  You'll see...

Stuffed Eggs

12 eggs
1 lb. can of spinach or equal amount of fresh spinach
1 small onion, cut fine
salt and pepper to taste
juice of 1 lemon or 1/2 cup vinegar
1/2 cup melted butter or oil
1 large can mushroom soup

Boil eggs hard, peel, and cut lengthwise.  Mash yolks fine.  Add butter, seasoning, and spinach.  Stuff each half egg, press together, and pour over them mushroom soup thickened with cornstarch, and chopped pimento for color.

I don't think I've ever seen deviled or stuffed eggs prepared this way.  Are you supposed to bake it?  Hmmm.

M.F.K. Fisher in her 1942 book, "How to Cook a Wolf" discusses the indigestibility of hard cooked eggs.  She writes,

"A biochemist once told me that every minute an egg is cooked makes it take three hours longer to digest.  The thought of a stomach pumping and grinding and laboring for some nine hours over an average three-minute egg is a wearisome one, if true, and makes memories of picnics and their accommpanying deviled eggs seem actively haunting."

Isn't that a pleasant thought? 

To end today I wanted to provide a recipe for deviled eggs from a silly cook book I have called, "Aunt Bee's Mayberry Cookbook".  Andy Griffith died today and it reminded me that I had this collection of recipes from that time period and southern location.  Enjoy.

Sly Devil Eggs

6 hard boiled eggs
1/4 cup melted butter
1/2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1/4 tsp. dry mustard
1 - 2 and 1/2 oz. can deviled ham
3 scallions, minced
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 cups milk
salt and pepper to taste
Grated cheese
English muffins, toasted

Butter a 9-inch casserole dish.  Cut the eggs in half and remove the yolks.  Mix the yolks with the melted butter, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, ham, and scallions.  Blend until smooth.  Stuff the mixture into the egg whites.  Arrange the egg halves in the prepared dish.

Melt the remaining butter in a saucepan.  Stir in the flour to form a paste and cook for 1 to 2 minutes.  Blend in the milk and season to taste.  Heat until thickened.  Pour the sauce over the eggs and sprinkle with grated cheese.  Bake in a 350 oven for 20-25 minutes.  Serve over toasted English muffins.  Serves 6.


Look what I found on You-Tube!  It's Andy Griffith doing a short USDA propoganda type short on the price of food!!  Priceless.