Mimsy Were the Borogoves

This is not a new idea; this is the idea of the age of reason. This is the philosophy that guided the men that made the democracy that we live under. The idea that no one really knew how to run a government led to the idea that we should arrange a system by which new ideas could be developed, tried out, and tossed out if necessary, with more new ideas brought in—a trial and error system. — Richard Feynman (What Do You Care What Other People Think?)

Pet Milk Mayonnaise for National Sandwich Day—Wednesday, October 30th, 2024
Pet Milk Mayonnaise: A bowl of fresh-whisked mayonnaise from evaporated milk.; evaporated milk; pet milk; mayonnaise

Evaporated milk mayonnaise whisks easily and quickly.

I generally dislike mayonnaise, and usually try to avoid it. I also tend to avoid even good recipes that use mayonnaise, because it means I’m going to have a jar of mayonnaise sitting in the refrigerator for several months and probably over a year, unused. That means that I almost always only have egg salad sandwiches and chicken salad sandwiches, two of my favorites, when I’m eating out.

National Sandwich Day is on Friday, and this year’s National Sandwich Day post will fix that problem.

Most mayonnaise recipes call for eggs. Even the one-egg versions make more mayonnaise than I need or want. What ends up happening is that when I do make a recipe that calls for mayonnaise, I start making other recipes that call for mayonnaise until I run out.

So when I saw this recipe for mayonnaise in Mary Lee Taylor’s Tempting Low Cost Meals, I was intrigued. Unlike most mayonnaise recipes, there is nothing indivisible in this one. That, in fact, is the point of the book: the subtitle is “for 2 or 4 or 6” and most recipes include a variation for two people, for four people, and for six people. The recipes are meant specifically to make great meals with little to no leftovers.

It’s a fascinating book.

Most of the time, the difference between the two or three variations is that the book does all of the math for you. In this recipe, simply double or triple the amounts for the four- or six-person version. There are minor variations, but I suspect they’re just to make the measurements easier rather than because of any changes made necessary by the change in quantity. For example, it calls for ¼ teaspoon pepper instead of 3⁄16 teaspoons in the six-person version, and it calls for ⅓ cup evaporated milk instead of six tablespoons in the four-person version1.

Trump, tariffs, and the war on American workers—Wednesday, October 23rd, 2024
Step on ’em—Work to Win: “Produced for Joint Labor-Management War Production Drive Committees by Rogers-Kellogg-Stillson, Inc.” Ca. 1941-1945.; World War II; posters

If someone were to say that war raises prices, so a country shouldn’t attack a country that has attacked them, it would seem almost a non sequiter. The first statement is almost certainly true, but it has no bearing on the second. If you’re attacked, you defend yourself or you die. Who cares about higher prices at that point?

One of the most interesting policy changes under Trump was regarding tariffs. Trump was willing to use tariffs as weapons to get better foreign trade deals. The general wisdom among the beltway crowd is that the best tariff policy is for America to remove them all unilaterally. Whether that’s true or not is a pure non-sequitur if other countries are using tariffs and dumping as weapons of war. It also makes the very elitist assumption that the only policy you can have is to remove them or have them permanent.

The justification for a failure to respond in kind is that tariffs on raw materials, for example, means that non-US companies get resources cheaper than American companies do. Which in turn means that they can make things cheaper, and be more successful. When we raise the price of raw materials only in America, we raise the price of every American-made good made from those raw materials everywhere in the world.

That means lost jobs, because it means American-made products are more expensive both in the United States and outside the United States.

But none of that matters if jobs have already been lost and are continually being lost because other countries—and even DC politicians and bureaucracies—are waging war against American workers.

It’s even worse if many of those jobs being lost are introductory jobs in higher-wage industries. Introductory jobs are essential to building a manufacturing base. Low-wage introductory jobs in restaurants, on farms, and in neighborhoods train kids to interact with customers and to manage and perform a job’s responsibilities. Higher-wage introductory jobs in manufacturing, in farming, and increasingly in data management and low-level programming, teach young adults resource management, interpersonal dynamics with other workers, and responsibility to the employer, the customer, and to their family.

The latter jobs also teach the basics of their industry in the real world. These jobs are essential to an economically sound America, and an economically sound America is essential to a secure America.

Vintage cookbook reproductions, and gold cakes compared fifty years apart—Wednesday, October 16th, 2024
Horsford Cook-Book cover: Cover for The Horsford Cook-Book, ca. 1877, available for download at clubpadgett.com.; cookbooks; food history; vintage cookbooks; Rumford Chemical Works; Horsford Acid Phosphate

This cover, and the back cover, are a large part of why I decided to do print reproductions.

I’ve added a new section to The Padgett Sunday Supper Club explicitly listing all of my print cookbooks in one place. Mainly this is to help you avoid excess shipping charges from Lulu if you enjoy reproductions of old cookbooks. All of the vintage reproductions, and most of the custom cookbooks, are available on Lulu.com.

If I wrote the book, it will be on both Amazon and Lulu. Reproductions will only be on Lulu. While Amazon does apparently allow books without the submitter’s name on the cover, they will also delay such books with questions. Navigating that sort of bureaucratic hassle is something I try to avoid.

Further, Amazon requires a bar code on the cover and I want to keep the cover reproductions clean. Some of them are quite beautiful. My first true reproduction is The Horsford Cook Book that I featured in A Centennial Meal for the Sestercentennial. It’s a wonderful book with some wonderful recipes. It’s the reason I decided to try printing reproductions. It’s not just that the recipes are great recipes, but the front and back cover are beautiful. At six inches by nine, I’ve published it larger than the original’s 3-⅝ inches by 5-½. If you enjoy putting such things on your walls, you may want to separate the cardstock cover and use the front and back as posters.

Since publishing reproductions via Lulu seems to work well I’ll be doing it with several other books I intend to feature in the future.

After posting A Centennial Meal back in June, I’ve made one more recipe from the Horsford book. I had six egg yolks left over from some Italian pudding and decided to try out a couple of gold cakes. I made the gold cake from Horsford and another gold cake from the 1926 Rumford Recipes for Cake and Cookie Making sliding cookbook.

Trump, destiny, and the flood—Wednesday, October 9th, 2024
Chesterton: The Disappointed Sphinx: G. K. Chesterton: “I delicately suggested to those who were disappointed in the Sphinx that it was just possible the Sphinx was disappointed in them.”; G. K. Chesterton; perspective

Don Surber recently wrote:

…the Lord did not deflect that bullet just to have The Donald lose on November 5th. I agree with Steve Hayward, who wrote, “I continue to think he is going to win, because I have a near mystical belief that he’s a world-historical figure of destiny.”

I’ve seen a lot of variations on this. But just because God spared Trump’s life in the face of deliberately malicious incompetence, does that mean God’s plan is for Trump to win? I understand the logic, but I think it’s dangerous to try to guess the Lord’s plans rather than take the opportunity to do what is right.

And there’s been a lot of sitting back and not doing what’s right lately.

In 2020 the Left fostered a global pandemic and blocked the most obvious and safest therapeutics. They deliberately destroyed cities with riots and plundered the savings of the poor. They stole a landslide election and criminalized any attempt at discussing what happened. In each case they not only lied about what they were doing, they made no attempt to cover the obviousness of their lies.

That was not a slowly boiling pot. It’s as if God used Trump to goad them into making their evil obvious. And yet what have we done in response? It’s difficult not to think of the parable of the drowning man. What if the Lord’s plan is to make obvious what His people should do?

Chesterton’s quote about the sphinx in The New Jerusalem is on-topic:

I delicately suggested to those who were disappointed in the Sphinx that it was just possible that the Sphinx was disappointed in them. — G. K. Chesterton (The New Jerusalem)

Eight years of economic disaster from 2008 to 2016. The beltway class was practically gloating about the permanent decline of American exceptionalism. But what followed under President Donald Trump were four years of economic boom, even under an unprecedented shutdown. And then a return to Democrat policies restored economic disaster again. The beltway class like to say that decline is inevitable, but it sure looks like policy makes a difference in whether or not we’re a declining or a booming country.

Refrigerator Revolution Revisited: 1942 Cold Cooking—Wednesday, October 2nd, 2024

View application.

For all its reliance on gelatin, Cold Cooking (PDF File, 9.9 MB) has some wonderful recipes.

In the 1931-1946 editions of The Joy of Cooking, Irma Rombauer wrote at the start of her section on Bombes and Mousses:

Today similar recipes are to be found in any book on Iceless Refrigeration. Modern equipment has made these dishes commonplace, but for me they retain a certain glamour associated with distinguished company, conviviality and the easy flow of intellectual conversation.—Irma S. Rombauer, The Joy of Cooking, p. 689

By “iceless refrigeration” she meant electric refrigerator/freezers. It’s fascinating that she chose to capitalize the phrase, much like Frigidaire eschewed articles when referring to their refrigerator in Frigidaire Recipes in 1928. By 1942 (and then 1947 for my upcoming third installment) Montgomery Ward didn’t title their manual as if choosing their brand was a lifestyle choice, as Frigidaire had. They titled it “Cold Cooking” much as Osterizer would title their blender manual decades later “Spin Cookery”. It was an Appliance That Does Things. It Cold Cooks.

In 1928, when Frigidaire included Frigidaire Recipes with their new refrigerators, about 65% of dwellings in the United States had access to electric service. Only 7.3% of farms did. The cost of electricity was, on average, about seven cents per kilowatt-hour.

Fourteen years later in 1942, when Montgomery Ward published Cold Cooking (PDF File, 9.9 MB), 81% of dwellings and 38% of farms had electricity. The cost of electricity had dropped 25%, to around five cents, depending on how much you used.

The left’s hatred of business is a lie—Wednesday, September 25th, 2024

A couple of days ago I heard a clip from a Larry Kudlow interview in which he said that the reason the economy is so bad under the Biden/Harris administration is because “the left hates businesses.” This is completely backward. It’s another example of conservatives buying into, instead of rejecting, the institutional left’s opposite-talk, their lying with fake terms and fake outrage. The left doesn’t hate businesses. The left hates you and me.

The left is fully aware that their regulations cause businesses to raise prices, and the left is fully aware that it is you and I who pay those prices. They hate us, and they love that they can use left-friendly monopolies to screw us over.

In general, the Left loves businesses, if those businesses are run in a manner easily coopted by government. They love businesses that are run as conglomerate-by-committee. They love businesses that are run by fellow members of the beltway crowd. They especially love businesses that are run like the left runs government, although these tend to fail spectacularly the more they emulate the left.

They loved Twitter, when it was run by committee. They hated it when Elon Musk took over. The businesses they hate are businesses run by individuals. Because they don’t hate businesses. They hate people.

Everything they do that the right claims is “bad for business” isn’t bad for big businesses. It’s bad for individuals running a business—and it’s bad for individuals who no longer have the choice of buying from a local, responsive business.

It’s great for well-connected national and global businesses run by disconnected beltway billionaires and bureaucracies. It kills their local competition. It monopolizes their customers. Amazon is not going to starve from Biden’s or Harris’s “anti-business” policies. If Disney dies it won’t be because of government policies but because they act like the left. And none of the board members will suffer from its death. Only Disney fans and retirees invested in Disney, often involuntarily via big, monopolizing investment firms run by the left’s beltway billionaires.

This is the regressivism of the left: to return to a time when only the rich could afford to be businessmen. When only the rich could afford to be investors.

“He Was the Chef”: Remembering Eddie Doucette, Jr.—Wednesday, September 18th, 2024
The Chef earned his hat: Eddie Doucette III about his father, Chef Eddie Doucette: “You can tell chefs who are at the top of their profession by the height of their toque, the hat they wear. The higher it is, the higher up in their profession they are. The chef earned his hat.”; Eddie Doucette; cooks; chefs

“I remembered something my dad told me,” Doucette said. “He had a cooking show on NBC television for years… he knew the business. He said to me, ‘Be yourself, and nobody else. Don’t be an imitator; be a creator.’ Those words always stuck with me.”—Eddie Doucette III

In February I chatted for a few hours with sportscaster Eddie Doucette about his father the chef, whose recipes I’ve collected in Tempt Them with Tastier Foods.

“I think most people don’t remember Eddie Doucette the cook,” his son said toward the end of our talk.

Most people if they remember anything with the name Doucette it would be because of my more recent time in the media. It’s a shame, that someone like him who was truly a legend in his profession, that there’s not much notoriety for him today.

That certainly seems to be the case. The 1985 Chicago Celebrity Cookbook by Ann Gerber doesn’t include any mention of Eddie Doucette. Nor does Mike Douglas’s 1969 The Mike Douglas Cookbook, even though by then Eddie had made several appearances on the show.

When I first ran across the name, it was atop a few pages of recipes a viewer had typed up from his Chicago-area television show, Eddie Doucette’s Home Cooking.

He had savoir faire, that ability to make you want to sit up and move closer to the TV, grab a paper and pencil and start writing it down.

Despite the title of the show being typed across the top of the documents, the eBay seller I bought them from thought it was from an old defunct restaurant—probably because that’s the only food-related hit that came up in an Internet search on Eddie’s name.

New England

The earliest reference to Chef Eddie Doucette that I can find is the 1940 census for Felchville-Natick (JPEG Image, 1.0 MB), Massachusetts. His occupation is listed as “Chef” at a “private school”. He has a wife Teresa, and a son Edward. The Doucettes are 26, 24, and 2 years old, respectively. He’s working year-round (52 weeks a year) and full-time (48 hours a week). He makes $2,080 annually. They’re living on 7 Atherton Street in Natick.

Rumford Recipes Sliding Cookbooks—Wednesday, August 28th, 2024
Rumford Sliding Cookbooks: The two Rumford Company sliding cookbooks from the twenties.; food history; vintage cookbooks; Rumford Chemical Works

Except for the Date Sticks the recipes aren’t impressive (so far). But the presentation is fascinating.

I have no idea how recipe-based advertising campaigns were designed in the heyday of promotional recipe books at the beginning of the twentieth century. One of the best such recipes I’ve seen is a Dromedary/Hills Brothers recipe for maple coconut candies, which I’ll be talking about later when I get to some of those cookbooks. It was one of three recipes in an ad for their Dromedary Fresh Keeping Cocoanut, a coconut-in-a-can product.1 It’s an amazing candy, and yet I’ve never seen it in any of the contemporary Dromedary cookbooks. Did they have separate recipes for their ads? If so, how would they choose which goes in a book and which in an ad? Would they use their best recipes in the ads or in the cookbooks?

Presumably, they had their own ideas about advertising. And, like oven terminology their ideas were different than ours in profound ways. One of the most fascinating relics of the era are these two sliding recipe cards from the Rumford Company. Recipes for Cake and Cookie Making is from 1926, and Recipes for Biscuits, Muffins, Rolls, Etc. doesn’t have a copyright date but, judging from the code, is from 1929.

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