These sheets (PDF File, 2.9 MB) were advertised on eBay as recipes from a 1960s Chicago restaurant, Eddie Doucette’s Pancake Plantation. The note said that the typewritten sheets had belonged to their aunt.

I wasn’t interested in recipes from a Chicago restaurant I’d never been to, so I posted it to a vintage recipe group thinking someone else might be. But the title of the sheet didn’t sound like a restaurant to me. Instead of just Eddie Doucette, I did a search on the full title, and discovered a very obscure Chicago cooking show, Home Cooking that aired in the fifties.

That sounded a lot more interesting. At $2 including postage, I decided it would be worth at least a blog post.

After I received them and looked at them, I asked the seller if they knew how their aunt acquired them, or why she’d typed them up?

Our aunt… had many recipes from Chicago area restaurants from back in the day. Also many recipes from different radio and tv programs. She was an adventurous cook!

So this does indeed sound like a viewer who typed up recipes from a television show they enjoyed. It’s a show that few people seem to remember today. The number of hits on my Internet search for it while writing this brought up all of three hits, one from a 1954 newspaper and one from someone posting old TV schedules. I was able to find a handful more results by rewording the search terms, but there’s literally nothing about anybody talking about the show. All the hits are from contemporary newspapers—mostly TV guide-style listings—and media clippings about upcoming series to watch out for.

A matchbook from the Pancake Plantation.

Addresses south and north of Chicago.

Eddie Doucette appears to have been a Chicago celebrity. He owned or ran the Chicago-area Pancake Plantation restaurant, as the seller said. And he had that local cooking show in 1954. Judging from the few references I have been able to find, Home Cooking was probably on for one season. Then Bob & Kay with Eddie Doucette was on in 1955. It was listed as “Music, guests and cooking tips”. NBC called it “Chi’s own magazine of the air and of especial interest to the housewife audience” in a trade news publication dated 4/14/55. I’m guessing “Chi” meant “Chicago”. The variety show seems to have aired at 12:45 Monday-Friday and as far as I can tell was an hour and fifteen minutes long.

That seems odd to me, but I have no sense of what television scheduling was like in the fifties.

Home Cooking aired at 1 PM on weekdays and was half an hour long, according to the December 11, 1954 TV Guide for the Chicago area. It aired on channel 5, WNBQ, an NBC station. It premiered on Monday, August 30, 1954.

Sadly, none of the recipes mentioned in the episode blurbs are the ones in this collection, so there’s no confirmation of my guess about the origin of these recipes. But there are still a lot of TV Guides missing from late 1954 and early 1955 on the Internet Archive. It may be that the recipes are in the missing episodes, or in one (or more) of the episodes that don’t have a blurb, leaving that day’s recipes unknown.

TV listing for December 13, 1954.

If you’re a collector of Chicago TV guides, and you have a 1954 Chicago TV Guide for the week of September 4, October 23, October 30, November 6, or December 4; or a 1955 Guide for January 15, January 22, January 29, or February 5, I’d love to have a scan or photo of the 1:00 afternoon slot for Monday through Friday.

Some of those recipes have intriguing names. I have no idea what “home style potatoes Chantilly-Moderne” are, and suspect a misprint of some sort. That doesn’t sound home style to me, unless you’re in France. But then, I had no idea what Miami-style chicken casserole would be, and it turns out to be pretty good, possibly Cuban-influenced.

After he left television, Doucette appears to have become “The IGA Chef”. He—or his disembodied cartoon head—introduced many recipes for the IGA supermarket chain during the sixties. Whether he developed these himself or whether IGA licensed his name and slapped it across their own recipes, I’ve no idea. But I’ll be taking a look at a few of them in a future post.

He apparently had another show, sponsored by IGA, “Cooking Can Be Fun” in 1967, at least in the Dayton, Ohio, area, “every Thursday 9:30 to 10:00 A.M.”. By 1967, television scheduling appears to have settled down to what I’m familiar with.

Judging from the title across the top of these typewritten sheets, the recipes were probably taken down from the 1955 television show, either by hand and typed later or typed during the show. The formatting looks to me like they were most likely typed later. This does not appear to be a stream-of-listening format. There are practically no misspellings, and I’d expect there to be at least some if this was typed at the speed of speech.

As such, all the warnings about older cookbooks apply double: the person taking down the recipes likely assumed things that we do not know. It’s extremely likely that the recipes as written were for their own use and were never planned to be made public.

For example, the Miami Chicken Casserole calls for flouring the chicken pieces in a seasoned flour, and then laying the pieces on the bottom of a casserole. I’d almost bet money that there’s a step left out in between: brown the floured chicken pieces in oil in a fry pan before putting them in the casserole.

It’s hard to tell; I’ve made the recipe both ways, and its good both ways. But this sort of method is almost always accompanied by pre-browning, and I’m pretty sure it’s an assumed step here. Even if the typist meant to hand copies of these sheets around to friends, it might not have been an error. It might just be that she assumed everyone would know to take that step.

The lettuce on top is one of those things I’ve seen in recipes before and have been fascinated by, but until now never got around to making. It somehow retains a cooked crunchiness and gains a vaguely roasted flavor. It’s very good. If I had to guess, the combination of flavors is weirdly Cuban, without Cuban spices. I’ve only done a cursory search, but I can find no chicken casserole like this anywhere on the Internet.

It calls for MSG because Eddie Doucette liked MSG. He was an “ambassador” for Ac’cent. A lot of his recipes call for Ac’cent or MSG. I bought Ac’cent for the first time in order to try this recipe as written. When I run out, I’ll try the same recipes without and see how much it changes them.

With Ac’cent, at least, the Miami Chicken Casserole is definitely worth making again.

The Lobster Bisque is very good, too, though I’m not sure I’ll make it again. Taking apart a lobster is time-consuming, and I didn’t start from scratch. I bought a frozen, cooked lobster. This meant that I didn’t have lobster water, so as I removed the meat from the lobster I put the shell into simmering water, making a stock from it.

Casserole of Chicken, Miami.

I want to emphasize again that these recipes were probably taken down by someone watching them on television. So it doesn’t mention that the bisque is supposed to thicken when you “heat, but don’t boil”. You have to know that you have to heat it enough for the ground crackers and egg yolk to thicken the liquid. Probably 165° or higher, the same as for scalding the milk.

That said, while the recipe was time-consuming it was very simple to follow. It’s written in easy, step-by-step instructions that incorporate (a) prep, then (b) cook. Prep by removing the meat, reserving the water, creaming the butter and liver, and combining the liquids and paprika. Then cook by scalding the milk and cream, stirring into the liver, seasoning, and blending in the yolk.

This is a delicious meal in itself with crackers, toast, or hard rolls.

It is that. But adding some vegetables or salad on the side will set it off very nicely.

The Crêpe Suzette was similarly step-heavy and with easy-to-follow steps. It produced an amazing breakfast—or late supper—and all of the steps can be performed ahead of time; all that’s needed when it’s time to eat is to reheat the crêpes and the orange sauce, heat the liqueur, and assemble.

The folded, buttered crêpes are also great as a late snack without any reheating and without any sauce. In fact, the recipe can be made a lot simpler by ignoring everything after making the crêpes—these are very easy crêpes and very quick. They go great with everything from butter to powdered sugar to jam to chopped vegetables to meat sauce.

Even if you don’t take the time to make the full Crêpes Suzette, I strongly recommend trying the simple crêpe.

In the five recipes that I tried out of the seven in these pages, the crêpes have the only definite error by the typist. The instructions for the Crêpe Suzette call for adding “combined eggs, milk, butter and beat…”. But the ingredients don’t list any eggs. My guess is that it calls for two eggs; that seems to make the appropriate consistency for a thin batter. I think that three eggs would be too much, and that one egg wouldn’t be called “eggs” in the instructions.

Lobster Bisque.

The Cheese Pie is an orange-flavored cheesecake, but lighter than normal cheesecake because it doesn’t contain cream cheese. It uses sour cream and cottage cheese. This, like the Lobster Bisque and the Crêpe Suzette, is a multi-step recipe where each step is easy. Like them, it ends up being time-consuming, but the result is wonderful.

The only quibble I might have with the recipe instructions is that they make no mention of waiting for the gelatin-based filling to solidify before spreading the sour cream over the top. It’s possible that waiting isn’t necessary. I chose to wait, because it just seemed to me that trying to spread sour cream over an ungelled filling was likely to result in a mess.

That added step means, of course, that the recipe takes even more time: I let the pie and filling sit in the fridge overnight, and then put the sour cream on in the morning and put it back in the fridge to chill until lunchtime.

Like the crêpes, there is an interesting base here that could be used for other, less time-consuming dishes. The pie’s shell is a standard—but very flaky—pastry shell, overlaid with an almond-meringue inner shell. That double-crust pie shell should add appeal to any non-baked pie, whether it’s a cheese filling like this, a purely gelatin filling such as Bicentennial Pie, or a fruit filling.

Which is, I suspect, part of why Doucette used multi-step recipes like this. The steps weren’t meant to be used for one recipe, but to add new techniques to any existing recipes that his viewers might have. While I’ve only added two of these recipes to my rotation—the Miami casserole and the crescents—I regularly make the crêpes without the orange butter and orange sauce, and I expect to use that pie crust recipe as well, with and without the meringue second crust.

Crêpe with orange sauce, as in the recipe.

Leftover crêpe with Texas meat sauce.

The Yummy Crescents are also interesting. They get most of their liquid from tomato juice; and their flavor from chopped vegetables. This gives them an interesting red tint as well as flecks of green and red. There is no amount given for the grated cheese spread over them before rolling up. After making them once and just lightly grating Parmesan over the dough, next time I’ll go overboard; I think they were meant to have cheese oozing out of them.

There’s one oddity in this recipe. It calls for 3-½ cups of sifted flour. This is far too low an amount. I ended up putting in about 4-½ cups. I suspect that Doucette’s instructions were to start with 3-½ cups and add more as needed to get the right consistency while kneading. This is such a common technique in recipes of the era and earlier that the typist may have thought it completely unnecessary to make it explicit—especially if she was typing while the television was playing. After all, there was no pause and rewind in 1954!

It’s also possible that if she was handwriting the recipes and typing later, this is a misreading of her own handwriting. I think this is less likely, because the most likely misreading would mean that the recipe calls for five and a half cups, and I think that would be far too much.

And of course it could just be a simple typo: she meant to hit 4 and hit 3 instead. But I would expect to have seen a handwritten correction if that was the case, because it’s pretty obvious once you go to make them. Even when using a bread machine, as I did, to knead the dough.

A meringue crust on top of a pastry crust…

…for a sour cream/cottage cheese pie.

If you want to see these recipes for yourself, I’ve scanned them and turned them into a PDF that you can download (PDF File, 2.9 MB). You can use them as a PDF, as it’s searchable and has an index, or you can print them out.

One item of trivial technology history: the crêpes suzette are marked with a straight apostrophe where the circumflex accent should be, in each title that includes the word “crêpes”. This is not necessarily a misspelling. I have a typewriter from the era, an Underwood Champion. It has no circumflex. The nearest approximation would be the apostrophe, which could well have stood in for any of the common top-facing diacriticals. In fact, I own three typewriters, the Champion from the late 40s/early 50s, an Olivetti from the late 60s/early 70s, and a Brother from 1991. None of them have a circumflex built in, although the Brother could technically provide accented characters via an appropriate daisywheel if anyone made one.

Eddie’s Easy Crêpe Suzette

Servings: 6
Preparation Time: 30 minutes
Eddie Doucette
Tempt Them with Tastier Foods: An Eddie Doucette Recipe Collection

Ingredients

• ¾ cup sifted all-purpose flour
• 3 tbsp powdered sugar
• pinch of salt
• 2 eggs, beaten
• ¾ cup milk
• 2 tbsp melted butter

Steps

1. Mix the flour, sugar, and salt.
2. Whisk together the eggs, milk, and butter.
3. Add the dry ingredients and beat until light and smooth.
4. Pour enough batter into a heated and buttered 5-6-inch skillet to thinly cover the skillet.
5. Cook until bubbles appear, then turn to cook the other side.
6. Continue to make crêpes, adding butter to skillet each time.
7. Store finished crêpes in warm oven, covered, until all are done.
8. Serving suggestion: spread with butter and fold twice to make a four-layer triangle. Add a dollop of jam or syrup on top.

I could certainly have done a better job shaping these, but they still turned out pretty good.

Enjoy! (PDF File, 2.9 MB) and if you have any Eddie Doucette recipes among your or your family’s clippings, I would love to see them. I’ve found a lot of recipes in searchable online archives (of which more later), but I suspect I’m missing as many as I’ve found. By all appearances these are fun and interesting dishes. Drop me a note in the comments with your email, or send a scan or photo to eddie, 21, by way of clubpadgett.com. No punctuation left of the @ sign, just the name and the number.

Any information you can provide about where the recipe came from will also be appreciated! Very little information about him seems to have made it online, and that’s a shame.