This advertisement from the December, 1949 issue of Ladies’ Home Journal provides the reader with a number of delicious-sounding recipes that can all be made from just one pound of Diamond Walnuts! Maybe I’m just extra hungry right now, but these recipes actually all look really good to me. And none of them seem very difficult!
The Harlequin Walnut Cake comes complete with a recipe, and it looks very impressive. I’m sure it would taste great, too! The other “recipes” are really just suggestions for adding walnuts to other dishes:
Hearty Supper Salad - cold cuts, celery, onion, green pepper, carrot, and walnuts.
Always Popular Walnut Bread - maraschino cherries, raisins, walnuts added to quick bread. I bet chocolate chips would also be a nice touch.
Red Devil Parfaits - layers of jello, ice cream, and walnuts.
And another plus for the late-forties’ housewife? Diamond walnuts are cheaper, too! “At their new low prices, Diamond Walnuts are a real bargain in food value!”
In writing the last entry on the Fifth Avenue Hotel, I couldn’t stop admiring the cover of the June 1896 magazine that my source article came from. The magazine was the Ladies Home Journal, and I happen to have a handful of these magazines from the late nineteenth century. The covers are absolutely gorgeous, and I wanted to share some of my favorites with you. I couldn’t find any clue of who the artist might be, but if anyone knows I would love to hear from you. I hope you enjoy these as much as I do!
In reading the June 1896 issue of Ladies’ Home Journal, I came across a fascinating article about how a large hotel was run. The hotel was the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City, and after doing some quick research, I discovered that it was a very well-known and popular hotel at around the turn of the last century. Construction began in 1856 and took about three years to complete. As Wikipedia states,
“At the time of its construction it stood so far uptown from the centers of city life it was dubbed ‘Eno’s Folly’; New York bankers refused to capitalize the project, and Eno turned to Boston for funding. It quickly developed a reputation as New York’s most elegant hotel, brought in a quarter of a million dollars a year in profits, and spurred development of additional hotels to the north and west: the Fifth Avenue Hotel ‘became the social, cultural political hub of elite New York.’”
I highly recommend the Wikipedia article as it describes very well what the hotel looked like and lists some famous people associated with the hotel.
The hotel kitchen, while dinner is being served.
The pictures accompanying my post actually come from the article in my 1896 magazine. The article contains wonderfully interesting information on what it took to run a large city hotel at the time, and I have scanned a copy of the entire two pages at the end of this post which you may enjoy reading. As the author states, “So as to give some idea of the internal economy of a great hotel the writer recently paid a few visits to the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City, a hotel which has become, on account of its long prominence, a kind of national institution.” Here are some of the highlights:
“When the stillness of night has settled upon the house, and all save stray travelers and belated revelers are in bed and asleep, the cleaning and burnishing up begins. This is at three o’clock in the morning, when a force of fifteen scrubbers, and ten dusters and sweepers are put to work. The halls and stairways are swept and dusted, and the uncovered floors are scrubbed and polished. This work is all finished by six o’clock in the morning, so that the very early risers find that all has been made nice and clean for the new day.”
And as you can see in the picture above, there was a very large and busy kitchen to keep the guests of the hotel well fed. But the types of dishes they preferred seem very different than what we would find today, and to me it was fascinating to learn about their menu:
“Green turtle soup is the most popular with hotel diners, and when that is on the bill-of-far an extra quantity must be provided. When a popular game, such as grouse, or partridge, or quail, or canvas-back duck, is on the bill-of-fare then the supply must be very liberal. The record shows that eight out of ten will call for canvas-back, seven out of ten for quail, six out of ten for partridge and grouse. There are four portions to a grouse, partridge, and duck, and only one to a quail. There is one thing of which at dinner it is tolerably safe to say that every guest will call for - ice cream. And, therefore, this is made in great quantities - eighty quarts a day - and sometimes a new freezer or so is started after dinner has begun. Roast beef is much more popular than any other meat.”
Finally, in 1908, the end of an era came when the hotel was torn down. I was thrilled to find the New York Times story about this event, and you can read it here at the New York Times websitebut please note this will open a PDF file. The story appeared in the April 4, 1908 edition of the paper, and part of the article states that
“For the last two weeks guests who have made the hotel their home for years have been moving out, not without much sorrow. Men and women from all parts of the country, for whom the hotel holds a pleasant memory, have been visiting it for the last time. Old employees have been bidding other old employees good-bye, and sightseers have been passing through just for the pleasure of being able to say years hence that they saw the ‘American Corner.’”
I invite you to click on the scans below and read the article in its entirety. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
While I was searching for the Thanksgiving menus in the past entries, I came across this wonderful article in the same November, 1968 issue of Family Circle magazine that one of the menus came from. As the introduction to the article explains,
“To bring you the best - north, south, east, west - we took model Sylvia Sterling on a hairdo tour. Find your own great look among these Coast-to-Coast Hairdos by 10 Top Stylists.”
Fort Lauderdale
The author pays a visit to various big cities across the United States, and presents a look that represents the style of each place. The cities visited are St. Louis, Toronto, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Fort Lauderdale, Houston, Denver, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC. So hopefully you can find your own city on this list, but if not, there is still a lot of wonderful vintage looks to enjoy here.
On this, the last day of my Thanksgiving holiday entries, I decided to finish with a subject that even today would scare me if I actually had to bake the turkey myself. I am referring to the way to carve a turkey. The November 1907 issue of Delineator magazine had pages full of Thanksgiving articles, recipes, and decorating tips, and this article comes from that section. (The illustration above is actually from an ad in that same issue for Armour’s Extract of Beef that was all about basting the turkey. This ad, about how to make the turkey last a week, is the same.)
According to the article about How to Carve a Turkey,
“To carve a turkey neatly and economically is an art; to prepare the turkey for the oven in such a manner as to facilitate the work of a carver is a process that is based upon several hard-and-fast rules.”
And when all of the cleaning and trussing and carving is done, it is finally time to eat! Here, too, though, there were some basic instructions involved:
“In serving each person, the carver should place a piece of both white and dark meat on each plate, unless otherwise requested, and this should be followed by a generous spoonful of the stuffing. If parsley, cress, or some similar garnish has been used, a little may be serve with each portion.”
If you are celebrating Thanksgiving this week, have a very happy holiday, and I hope you have a lot of delicious food to eat, and time to spend it with people you love. I will be back again after the holidays with a normal blog post.
This is a wonderful old menu from the November 1920 issue of McCall’s magazine. There are some charming illustrations here, like the table setting in the middle of the page, with the caption reading “Dewy purple grapes, golden-brown corn, ruddy apples, vine leaves - a charming harvest table.”
On the bottom are pictures of “a tomato with its peel turned back like rose petals,” and “guinea hens ready for the roasting.”
A lot of interesting recipes are presented here, including one that seems like it would go more with Halloween today - “Jack O’ Lantern Canapes.” It is a cute little recipe that I originally thought was intended for children, until I saw that caviar was a part of it:
“Cut stale bread with a round cutter and toast it on both sides. Spread one side with butter and then spread over the butter grated American cheese as yellow as can be had. Make two eyes, nose and a mouth like a Jack o’ Lantern, using pimineto, stuffed olives or caviar. Serve as the first course.”
There are a lot of other nice recipes here - familiar ones with a vintage twist, like Stuffed Celery and Pumpkin Pie; other more unique ones include Halibut Turbans.
And to end the meal, the article reminds the reader that “perfectly made black coffee should always be the grand finale of the feast.”
Continuing on with some vintage Thanksgiving recipes, we turn now to a feature that appeared in the November 1968 issue of Family Circle magazine. The cover of the magazine boasted, “Turkey and beef!” Here is the menu for this huge holiday dinner:
and many of those items are pictured here:
Luckily, at the end of this article all of these recipes are included, and I have scanned thumbnails of them below in case anything from the menu above strikes your fancy. The lime relish baskets sound especially unusual and I can’t help wondering if they are good - it involves mixing lime pulp, artichoke hearts, corn, pimientos and onions, and serving them in little baskets cut out of the limes. The golden potato cones seen in the photo look pretty interesting, too.
But of course, any Thanksgiving dinner needs a great deal of desserts! Pies are always a traditional choice, but this article takes them way beyond the usual pumpkin or pecan. Look at the variety of recipes you’ll find here:
The raspberry-pear and the Chocolate-nut Cream sound delicious and different.
Finally, here are thumbnails of all the recipes included in the article; as always, you can click on them to enlarge and read. I hope you try something to add a little vintage style to your Thanksgiving! Or if you are not in the United States, perhaps some of these would work as a special addition to a normal weeknight dinner.
In only a few weeks, Thanksgiving will arrive here in the United States. From now until then, I will be posting some Thanksgiving recipes and tips from vintage magazines. Some of the recipes sound so outrageous today that I doubt anyone will even attempt to recreate them, but others actually sound quite good and may be worth a try.
This article filled with recipes and menus comes from the November 1907 issue of The Delineator magazine. Just as today, people were watching their budgets but still wanted to put together a holiday dinner that everyone would enjoy. So the Delineator put together three different menus for their readers to choose from, representing three different budgets.
Although not all of the recipes are included in this article, a few of them are, including Potatoes Hollandaise, Rabbit Pie, and Clam Cocktail Sauce. I have included the full article below, so click on the images to enlarge and see if there are any Edwardian recipes you would like to bring to your own Thanksgiving table this year!
The 1950’s were a time when family and marriage were prevalent themes in society. Magazines from that decade are filled with babies, puppies, neatly-dressed housewives, men coming home from work in suits. Of course real life is never quite as it is portrayed in the media, and of course the 1950’s were no exception. However, the average age of marriage did become lower in those years, and the nuclear family was shown as the ideal.
McCall’s magazine was no exception. For example, the September 1954 issue featured special sections just for children and teens. The illustrations in this post are from a story page entitled “Betsy McCall is Topsy-Turvy” and here is the text that accompanied the picture at the top of this entry:
“Hi, Betsy!” said Nosy. “Look at me!” Betsy McCall looked at him in surprise. “Not you,” said Nosy. “I mean the other one.” Betsy looked around and saw her doll, whose name is also Betsy McCall, sitting teetering on a chair with only three legs. Then she looked back at Nosy in amazement. “Why are you standing on your head?” she demanded. “To rest my foot,” growled Nosy. “Why are you flying a kite in the living room?” Betsy looked even more surprised. “Why, I didn’t realize I was,” she replied. “Goodness, everything’s wrong! I’m all topsy-turvy. I must be dreaming!”
The funny thing is she was dreaming! How many things can you find topsy-turvy in Betsy’s dream? We found ten.
Well? How did you do? Did you find all ten? Don’t worry if you didn’t do so well; there are paper dolls to be played with instead!
I came across this story in the August 1906 issue of Good Housekeeping magazine, and was very surprised at what I was reading. This is a story written from the point of view of the husband of a woman who has decided to get in shape, to “look like Edna May,” who was a famous beauty (and actress and singer) of the time. The mocking tone of the article would definitely be seen as condescending today, and the way her husband refers to her body (”fat”, “plump”) would be offensive to many. However, the thing that startled me was how similar many of her methods are to those followed today - vegetarianism, exercising, dieting. I had never thought of Edwardian women as ever following a regimen like the one below. Although it is obviously meant to be comedy, comedy tends to be rooted in reality, and the things the author writes about must have been familiar to his audience or they would not have found it funny.
Here I will provide you with some passages and illustrations from the story. At the end of this entry I have scanned in the entire article - I encourage you to enlarge it (just click on each image) and read the whole thing. In the end, you will see that Phyllis “learns her lesson” and goes back to being “fat and cheerful.”
“Phyllis wasn’t satisfied with herself. I was, though. I even called her pretty - which is as much better than being beautiful as people pretend it isn’t. She was plump and freckled. I didn’t mind, I liked her that way. But Phyllis wanted to look like Edna May. She wanted to wear those slithy, snaky gowns you see in the pictures in the hallways of the $3 photographers. She wanted to be able to stand with her hands clasped behind her head and throw out her chest with a tight Princess clinging ’round her legs. And, to do that successfully, you have to have a Shape. Therefore, she determined on a course of Physical Culture.”
“She subscribed to three Gymnastic-Vegetarian Magazines, and bought a Book….
“These Exercises certainly were funny. They were the kind of gestures you might imagine a Martian would make, if she were trying to attract the attention of the Earth. She bent down and back and sideways, she waved her arms, she shot out her knees, she pointed her toes, she squatted, sloped, scrouged, squirmed and slanted. The idea seemed to be that you had to imitate every letter of the alphabet in turn, from A, which was rather easy, to Z, which was as difficult as it was amusing.”
“She had given up meat long ago, in fact, she never used a knife nowadays and ate nothing but Pulverized Proteids. She would eat anything that you could put cream on, and she gnashed her teeth and counted her chews with a statistical table in front of her, leaning against the sugar bowl. After a while she adopted the Live Food theory and the cook stove was abolished. She abandoned her corsets, she wore flat-soled shoes… She began to run a half mile every morning before breakfast. She did it in the bathroom, which is five by eight.”
“Why not live Rational for a while?” I proposed. “Why not try eating Food? What do you need of Muscle, anyway? I never saw a Fat Person who wasn’t cheerful and contented.”
“Oh, I am unhappy!” Phyllis admitted. “It’s a lot of work and worry, but I do so want to have an ideal Figure. I want a Normal Healthy Body - but oh, how I’d like to wear high-heeled shoes again and eat an ice cream soda! Would you hate me if I did?”
…”A week later I came home to find her lacing on a corset. She had on silk stockings - a sure sign of mental exaltation in Phyllis - and, on her bureau was a plate with only a few crumbs left. I smelled of it - it had once been a large Lemon Pie.”
