The Historic District

MidCentury Menu bravely cooks recipes from vintage cookbooks, then feeds them to her husband and photographs the results.

The blog is really fun. There's an emphasis on 1950's cookbooks (because there's so many of them out there, with some strange regional specialities) but she's open to other decades. Most of the recipes are pretty simple, and she has some excellent recipes and advice for baking those lamb cakes for easter in vintage moulds. She has kindly segregated things into sections, including categories of "the Best" and "the Worst".

Probably her most shocking recipe to date (at least for me) was "Beef Fudge"(1967):

http://www.midcenturymenu.com/2016/02/b ... cipe-test/

It is apparently amazing though it is a boundary few would be brave enough to cross. In the comments is a link to a YouTube talk from the Montana Historical Society, nothing fancy, from a historian who studied early cookbooks of midwest settlers. The talk is interesting, and does mention Beef Fudge, and other frugal settler recipes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0d7Muh28x8

MidCentury Menu is also an excellent resource for jello based salads like granny or great granny used to make, in case anyone is a fan.

Just bookmarked it! Looks interesting!
Beef fudge though... can't believe it actually turned out. Whoa. Nope nope nope.

A couple of bloggers dared to make it, then eat it on camera, and everyone was amazed by how good it was. I suspect the fat in the beef made the fudge extra rich. If it was pre-cooked good quality beef that was very finely ground, it could be almost undetectable. I won't try it - but I am glad there are a few brave souls who did.

I mean - who ever thought chocolate or maple dipped bacon on cupcakes would ever be a popular thing ?

mmmm bacon!

I dare you to make it, Mick. Too bad folks are so spread out or there could be an interesting meet-up, with "dainties" served, as my mother called them. But hers didn't have beef.

Willa wrote:I dare you to make it, Mick. Too bad folks are so spread out or there could be an interesting meet-up, with "dainties" served, as my mother called them. But hers didn't have beef.

I would, if I but only had the time!

This recipe is the type for which you must find the time !

Willa, I would suspect there are a lot of soup can recipes discussed. And those jellatine salads. I can remember those. Every fancy meal at the big table had to have a moulded jelly salad of some kind. And trifle for desert after.

Gothichome - I suggest you personally investigate Midcentury Menu's blog. While there's some alarming recipes, there's also many that sound quite palatable. Nothing to upset your elderly relatives or neighbour's children for the most part. Well, except when gelatin gets mixed with meat or seafood - that's too upsetting for me, but I have an aversion to certain textures.

No fancypants imported ingredients or complicated techniques. Plus the inherent sadism of making her husband eat the dish first while photographing him. He's a cautious but good sport, all things considered. They appear to have a nice retro kitchen with vintage steel cabinets, too.

I did not have any leftover roast red meat on hand, so I used some lunch meat roast pork. I extensively utilized the optionally available walnuts.

Mrs. Weist doesn't mention anything about unique temperatures, however I understand from my genetic sweet making heritage that proper fudge relies upon more than one key temperatures. To wit: while heating up your sugar base, you have to cook dinner to a "smooth ball degree" (237 to 239 levels), then dispose of from warmness, and wait till it cools to between one hundred ten and a hundred and twenty ranges earlier than stirring inside the other elements.

I faithfully cooked to temp at the front quit, however stirred the whole thing else in earlier than it cooled all of the way - the result is a softer fudge it truly is a little more difficult to reduce and serve, but otherwise delicious.

Yes I said scrumptious. I'll be damned if I can locate any trace of pork flavor in this fudge. It just tastes like fudge, begging the question of why Mrs. Weist might have ever delivered red meat inside the first location, she may want to have simply made fudge after which elegantly used up her leftovers some place else. Unless, of direction, she absolutely changed into structured upon the truth that the fudge "maintains actual nicely" - maybe she become with out refrigeration?

Dr. Husband changed into long gone all day and I had gleeful visions of a terrible tasting consultation, but as I stated, it's scrumptious. I'd suggest in case you need to do that, use bacon rather than beef, for a bit more crunch AND some thing to counteract the beauty triple-whammy of sugar, chocolate, and marshmallow cream.