FULL DAY OF MEALS from the 1940s 🍽️ Joy of Cooking recipes from 1943

Back at it with another full day of meals, this time from the 1940s. And now I'm going to show you which cookbook I am using. You knew I'd get to it sooner or later, it's The Joy of Cooking. This particular copy is from the 40s, obviously. It's a little delicate. So this is the 1943 edition, but my copy was published in 1946. That means we get to talk about rationing. I'm going to save the rationing talk for just a little bit later because I need to get going on my first recipe. And that recipe is molasses bars. So one interesting thing about where the cookies and bar cookies and things appear in this book, it's in the cake section. I was looking for something like a cookie or a treat or something, and I was like, why can't I find this chapter? It's because they just appear in the cake section. I need to combine some butter and powdered sugar. So I've got one third of a cup of butter. Let me tell you, some of the measurements in this recipe are just wild. You'll see what I mean in a little bit. I'm supposed to just get that started, beating it until, I mean, it's pretty soft, but it says beat until soft. And then I am gradually going to add my powdered sugar to this, just a little at a time. That is looking correct. Powdered sugar, interesting choice. Sugar was rationed at the original publication date of this cookbook, however, molasses was not. I wanted to find something that just had like a little bit of sugar and also used molasses. One egg, one third of a cup of molasses. You might already know this trick, but if you're measuring something super sticky, like k-rose syrup or molasses or honey, you can spray your measuring cup with a little nonstick spray or in my case, I'm just using some vegetable oil so that when you pour, that opened like beautifully. So when you're pouring this into your bowl, it'll come out really easily. Yup, done. You can see just how cleanly. Salt and soda. So that is one eighth of a teaspoon of each salt and soda. Here is the doozy of a weird measurement. Seven eighths of a cup of bread flour. Never seen that measurement before in my life. A half a cup is four eighths. We're going to do some math here. Also I noticed that she uses bread flour in a lot of these recipes, which I thought was kind of interesting. Hopefully our bread flour today is the same as the bread flour back then. We're going to find out if it makes a difference. So I'm doing my four eighths. I have a one eighth of a cup measuring cup. Five eighths. Six eighths. It's the only way I could really figure out how to do it anyway. Seven eighths of a cup of bread flour. It's a pretty color. I do like that. A teaspoon of vanilla. Oh, it smells so good. I mean, vanilla smells good. Of course it does. Mixed with molasses, it smells even better. Ta-da. And next I'm folding in an entire cup of broken nut meats. And I just used walnuts. I used chopped walnuts because that's what I had. It just seems like these bars are walnuts held together with a little bit of batter. I've made recipes where I'm like, I'm just going to leave the nuts out. That was not an option for these at all. There would be no bars without the walnuts. 9.15. Okay. We're making good time. So the reason I'm so sensitive about the time on these is that I actually do need to cut them before they completely cool. So I need to let them cool for a while. And I also have to roll them in powdered sugar. Greased and lined an eight by eight pan with some parchment paper because I do, especially because these sound like they're going to be kind of sticky. I do want to be able to pull those out and cut them into squares. It's a beautiful color. It really is. It's like that Dalgona coffee. I know that was a trend back in 2020. I feel like I've heard people talking about it again, but that's what this color is. I do wonder, there really wasn't a lot of baking soda and salt in these. It's going to be kind of a thin layer of batter in this pan. What are you doing to us, Irma? I definitely have to talk about the author of this book, Irma S. Rombauer, because that lady was sassy. Let me tell you, I can't wait to get into just going over this book. I personally love the joy of cooking in general. I have a copy from the early 2000s. It was like an anniversary edition. I think I got it for Christmas one year in my early 20s, and I use that book all the time. It's like my go-to, I need a recipe for something. It's in there. They have a basic recipe for just about anything you could need. So I am always recommending the joy of cooking in general, and this 1940s edition has been really fun to explore. Here we are. It's not going anywhere. It's very thick. So I am going to go ahead and bake this in a 375 degree oven for 15 minutes. It says 15 minutes. They're like a lovely golden brown color. They smell very good. They definitely have a little bit of a fall slant, and to my surprise, these are not as sticky as I thought they would be. It's kind of like a cake. Yeah, look at that. Just look at that. That was not a problem at all. I mean, of course, the parchment paper probably helped. Irma, tell me, what size do I cut these? It just says to cut them into bars, so I don't know. I guess in the 40s, actually, during this time, because you were using some of your precious sugar ration and your dairy, your butter ration, maybe you would be cutting these into smaller pieces because you want them to last a long time. You want to stretch them. So I don't know. Normally I'd go like into thirds, but I'm going to go and cut them into fourths for my first pass here, because if you want a sweet treat and you don't have a lot of sugar to go around, you're probably hoarding the sugar for special occasions, like birthdays and stuff. Yeah, these are so much cakier than I thought they would be. I'm kind of tempted to taste one without the powdered sugar because I'm so curious. Let me just cut a little, just a little smidge like that. Molasses in there. It's got nice walnut. I'm thinking I probably do need the powdered sugar to get the full, the full sweetness potential, but I'm curious. I got to know. I got to know how these taste without that. It's almost like gingerbread, but there's no ginger in it. You know what? It's not bad. Okay. It's got an aftertaste, initial like taste and everything. It's really pretty pleasant. It's not in your face sweet, of course, because there's not a lot of sugar in it, but it has that, I don't know how to describe it. It's like that molasses aftertaste. So I think, you know, once I do roll these in powdered sugar, they're going to like reach their full potential. I thought these would be more like cookie, cookie-ish or something, but they're not. I better roll these though, because we're getting really cool. We'll start with just a little powdered sugar in a bowl and see, see how far that gets us. They're not sticky. Like I expected them to be very sticky, so I don't know how well this is going to stay on. I'm going to shake off that excess. This is going to be my sweet treat for tomorrow. I always like to make a little baked good just to get things off on the right foot. They look a little bit like the man bars that I made almost not quite a year ago, but those were bars that were dipped in powdered sugar. Those were quite a bit sweeter because those had sweetened condensed milk in them. If you haven't watched that video, definitely do that. Those were so good. I'll link that video in the description down below. All right, last one here. Now I get to taste one. I'm just going to taste the one that I kind of like took a little piece off of earlier. It's going to be messy. I should be doing this over the sink. I like these. They taste old fashioned. You can tell they're an old school recipe. I don't mind that. I mean, obviously, like this is this is what I do. I cook vintage recipes. If you're not used to like a very heavy molasses flavor, you might be a little bit put off by these. They're kind of like just shy of gingerbread bars because there's no spice in them. There's no cinnamon. There's no ginger. There's nothing like that. Usually, I don't taste my sweet treat the night before I'm going to be cooking a full day of meals. I'm glad I tasted them. I don't know if I could wait. I don't know if I could wait until tomorrow. These are good. I enjoy them. A little bit of an old fashioned kind of recipe. I will include it in the description down below. I'm going to wrap this up. I'm going to clean up the kitchen and I have something really special planned for breakfast. We'll see you tomorrow. It's time for breakfast and I am super, super hungry. I think I mentioned that I planned something kind of special. So here is what I am making. Today's 1940s breakfast is going to be bacon cornmeal waffles. Yes, things like bacon were rationed during World War II in the United States, but this recipe utilizes some bacon fat. It uses bacon in a kind of a different way. It really does kind of stretch it, so you're not relying on the bacon as much to be the bulk of your meal. For those of you who want to come after me in the comments and say, they didn't eat like this in the 1940s during World War II, listen, I'm not a historian. I'm just a person who cooks recipes from vintage cookbooks and I'm cooking a recipe from a vintage cookbook. But also, thank you for the engagement. I am going to cut this recipe in half. I do that all the time, but if this recipe is a success, I will put the full recipe in the description down below. I need an egg and some milk. I just have whole milk. That's just what I have on hand. It doesn't give an indication of what kind. Beat those together and set that aside because I have to sift together my dry ingredients now. And if you're wondering what bowls I'm using, this is Vintage Charm. This was a collection that Pyrex came out with, inspired by original Pyrex designs. They had a couple different ones, unfortunately, these are just about as hard to find now as actual Pyrex. I really wish I would have gotten some of the other designs. Cake flour. Again, with the different flours, you can use cake flour or bread flour in this recipe. I'm going to try it with some cake flour. It's nice to have another use for cake flour. I do wish they would package this in a slightly different way. I don't use enough cake flour to decant it into another container. Put that into my sifter. I have some baking powder. I probably should have done this over a slightly bigger bowl, but you know how I make mistakes with bowls. Just a little bit of sugar here and some salt. And then I've got my yellow cornmeal. This is still going to make more waffles than I need, so I hope I like them. Combine these ingredients with the eggs and milk, which it will do. Let's go. Whisking, whisking away. This is a very special ingredient. We've got some melted bacon fat. If you follow me on Instagram, which you definitely should be doing, I made a post a few weeks ago maybe that said I was saving my bacon fat for something special. This is the something special. Every time I make a little bit of bacon, I've been straining that fat and saving it in a jar in the fridge. It smells very bacon-y. Wow, that is a savory smell. That is the batter, I think. Let's just double check. Yes. So I'm going to let this sit for just a minute because I need to move on to coffee. Okay, so I know I'm not following absolutely everything to the letter when it comes to rationing, but I thought it would be kind of fun to try and follow the guidelines for coffee. Coffee was one of the items that was rationed during this time period. From the information I found, people would get a pound of coffee per person every five weeks, and supposedly that was going to be enough to make one cup of coffee per person per day. So I'm going to do a little math here, a little coffee math. We have 16 ounces in a pound, so 16, and five weeks is 35 days, so divided by 35. That is less than half an ounce of coffee. That's this number right here. Can you see it? I drink cold brew typically, so I don't really know what that figures out to be, but we're going to find out how good a cup of coffee is with half an ounce of coffee. I don't have an old-fashioned percolator or anything, but I do have this. So this is the Bounton Ware Insta-Brewer. It is basically a French press. This is from the 1960s. I got this at a thrift store years and years ago and just have kept it in my collection, so I'm going to make my coffee with this. I'm sure they didn't have Grounds and Hounds Shamrock blend coffee beans back in the day, but that's what I'm going to be using. I'm guessing it was probably Folgers or Maxwell House or something. I'm going to measure out my beans. I've got to tear that first. All right. Oh, dear. This is not a lot of coffee. 0.4 ounces. So I'm going to go to 0.5. Yep, so that's 0.5. And then I'm just going to take some beans away here. I don't have a scale that measures to that accuracy. There we go. This is the amount of coffee that I'm going to be brewing. It might not be so bad. I wonder if that's probably going to be, what, like a tablespoon of grounds? This is where the coffee level ends. No. Well, that certainly didn't take long. I'll show you how much this actually made as ground coffee. That much. Maybe a little more than it. Let's measure it. Let's just get a tablespoon out and measure it. Okay. You know what? That's probably, I'm going to say like two, maybe one heaping tablespoon of coffee. So not the worst. But this is only, you get one cup a day. You get one cup a day. And I know people like more than one cup a day. Pour the grounds in. I'm going to go for like six ounces of water because cups of coffee were so much smaller than what we're used to, I think. You know, if you look at coffee cups of the day, they're usually tiny. Sorry if this is not my best work. The rest of the water. And then I'll let this sit for about five minutes before I push the plunger down. So before I pour the batter on, I'm supposed to lay some bacon on it. It is supposed to be one to two pieces of bacon per person. So let's start with just one. You're supposed to cut them into halves or quarters. Oh, listen. Listen. It doesn't say how much batter to use. That's fun. And I've never made cornmeal waffles. I usually use a mix. Yep. It just says cook them until crisp. I don't know when that is. Irma. Irma! Give me more instruction. I smell the bacon, though. Like, it does smell real good. I think I'm gonna just check on this for this. Okay. It is not looking bad. I am going to let it go for like another second while I do my coffee. I think it's ready. Maybe? I don't know what, I don't know what cornmeal waffles are supposed to look like, to be honest. Just look at the bacon. Whoa. It's falling apart a little bit. Well. You know what? The first one is not usually the best one. So let's do another. Okay. I mean, I've learned, I've learned some lessons. Let's do it again. I think I need a little bit, maybe like a little bit more batter. Also, I think I'm gonna let that sizzle for a moment. This batter also isn't quite so fluffy as what I'm used to. I don't want to go too crazy. I know what can happen. I let this one cook way a bit, quite a bit longer. I think it's looking pretty good. This is the side that gave us problems to begin with. I'm going to be very careful. I don't want to touch that iron. Okay. You know, it's still not like super crispy. I don't know that it's going to get super crispy. Can I put it back on? Is that bad? Irma, what do you think? Okay. Let's, let's just call it. Let's just call it y'all. Woo. I'm slinging a waffle. So that's what it looks like. You can see the, the bacon kind of like gets in there. You can see the bacon in there. Sugar was rationed. Maple syrup was not rationed. However, there were shortages. So even if it wasn't rationed, it didn't mean it was always available, but I'm not, I'm not being completely historically accurate here. So I'm going to, I'm going to have a little bit. I don't like a ton, a ton. The full recipe makes six waffles. So you know, four to six people probably. So that is the bite. It's good. Mm-hmm. Those cornmeal waffles definitely have a little bit of a different texture than what I usually make, but it is really good. I used fine yellow cornmeal. It would probably be a little bit different, even more so if you use just like regular cornmeal, but it's got that lovely savory and sweet quality. Mm. That's good. It's really good. I could definitely use a little practice cooking this type of batter on a waffle iron. I got to have my coffee. Look at this cute mug I just got. It's probably not from the forties. It doesn't really have any markings, but it was $3. The strength of the coffee is not bad. I added a splash of milk. I didn't add any sugar to it, but do remember this is all you get. This is one day's worth of coffee and people were encouraged to reuse their coffee grounds if they wanted more coffee. But usually I just drink about one cup a day. This is just ice water. I drink a lot of water, but look at this pretty glass I have. I know it's a bar glass too, but I'm drinking water out of it. I enjoy this. This is probably not going to be your day-to-day breakfast during this time period. This is maybe a little bit special, but these videos are a special occasion, right? To me, they are. I'm going to enjoy my breakfast. I'll see you at lunch. Here's what I'm having. For my entree, I'm having a dried beef and scrambled egg sandwich with tomato cheese sauce. And as a side, I'm going to have some asparagus. Let's talk a little bit about vegetables during this time of rationing. Fresh fruits and vegetables were never rationed, but there were shortages, especially for items that maybe were going to be shipped from other places. People were encouraged to grow their own fruits and vegetables. I happen to be lousy at growing things. I've never had a successful garden in my life. I've had a couple tomato plants and maybe some peppers. That's about it. Also, I'm just doing this for one day. So here's the compromise that I made. I decided to make a trip to one of the local farm stands in my area. Now, I tried to stick with items that said homegrown or locally grown so that I can be assured that they were kind of like grown, at least in the state of Ohio. So I had to avoid things like peaches, unfortunately, because those come in from other states at this time of year. Here is what I ended up with. Now, I ended up buying more than I need for this project, mostly because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I planned this menu a little bit differently, mostly because of this whole fruits and vegetables thing. I didn't know what was going to be available exactly. I had a rough idea of kind of like what grows at this time of year. I bought several items that said homegrown, locally grown, whatever, and I brought them home and I planned my side dishes that way. So that's how I ended up with asparagus. First off, I wanted to show off this lovely pan that you've probably never seen me use. This is my steamer pot, and I absolutely love it. It's got this really fun design on the side. You've seen me use a few of the other pieces, but this is kind of a rare thing. But this is where I'm going to cook my asparagus. A little bit of water simmering in there right now, see if I can get you in there. Yeah, just a little bit. And you drop that piece in, and then there's the separate pot that goes on top of it with a handle. And then I have my asparagus. I just snipped the ends off of this and washed it, of course. I'm going to cover that and let it steam for just a little, maybe like 5-10 minutes, something like that. And then I can turn my attention to my cheese sauce. This is a tomato cheese sauce, and it will be prepared over, you know it, you love it, a double boiler. It's based on tomato soup. I don't have tomato soup, but I do have a small can of tomato sauce, so we're going to start with that as our base. I have a little bit of pepper and a little bit of paprika. I'm supposed to add salt, but there's another ingredient that is very salty on its own, and that is processed cheese. So I'm going to hold off on the salt. We don't want to get it too salty. If it needs it, I'll add it, but I seriously doubt it's going to. Mmm. An update on the cheese sauce. Melting away. It's looking very much like tomato soup. The asparagus is pretty much done. I'm just kind of keeping it warm at this point. And I'll salt it, maybe add a little butter. Moved my cheese sauce to the back burner because I do have to prepare a scrambled egg for this sandwich. I feel like I have so many pots and pans after one of these videos, it's a little bit much, so I'm letting that butter melt. I'm going to go ahead and make my toast. It's one egg per person in this case. This recipe, if I made it just as written, the full recipe, would serve four people. Oh, why can't I ever get the dried beef open? Ah! A little gander at my plate. Dried beef sandwich. I steamed some asparagus. I'm just going to dip it in the additional sauce. And then for dessert, I have one of my molasses bars. Let's try this. The dried beef, it just said add dried beef. Gave no indication of how much, so I just did one serving as listed on the can. It also didn't say to rinse it, which is definitely not what I'm used to. This sandwich is also supposed to have three slices of bread. I didn't really want that much toast. It's supposed to be like a triple-decker, so toast, egg, toast, beef, toast, sauce. I've stalled long enough. You don't need to add salt to anything. The American cheese, very salty. Dried beef, even saltier. This does not need salt. No salt. No salt required. Like, no additional salt, that is. But it is pretty tasty. I mean, it's like toast, it's cheese, it's tomato, it's, you know, I like all of these things. Mmm. So salty. It's like a Welsh rare bit. Meatless meals were encouraged. This is like a low-meat meal. I'm gonna try just some of my steamed asparagus. I went for steamed asparagus because the asparagus recipes in the book were for asparagus soup or gratin or like fancy things. I don't really want anything fancy. This is just a lunch. I will say the asparagus soup, though, it said you could use the parts of the asparagus that you snipped off or scraped or whatever to make the soup. That would be a good way to use, like, your food scraps and not waste anything. Oh, it's good with that sauce. Mmm. I like it. I tried one last night, but I am interested to see how these are today, if the flavor has changed at all or anything like that. It is a little messy because it's powdered sugar. I still notice a little bit of that, like, molasses-y aftertaste, but not quite as much. It's definitely more of a cake, a cakey texture. Gonna enjoy my lunch, and then I'm gonna come back for dinner. I'm gonna get started on dinner. I wanna go ahead and make a little bit of dessert. Baked rhubarb. And there's my rhubarb right there. I really love rhubarb, but it's not something that I think I've ever really made for myself, at least not very often. However, this recipe is, hmm. It's vague. I mean, there's no time given, there's no real amounts given. We do have an oven temperature, thank goodness. So I'm just gonna do my best. I did kind of reference a couple of other recipes that I found online, so those will hopefully help. Starting out with a buttered baking dish. Even if there are no instructions, at least the preparation seems pretty simple. I'm just layering rhubarb with butter and sugar. Slice that up. I really love the color, that combination of red and green. Doesn't say how much sugar. A lot of the recipes that I looked at said a fourth of a cup total, so that's what this scoop is. So we'll start there. I know that rhubarb is very tart. This is to dot the layers with butter. I thought I was supposed to put it on top. So we'll just, we'll throw some of this butter, I just have some cubes of butter. Throw some in here. I think with either lemon rind or cinnamon, I am going cinnamon in this case. That is going to be my baked rhubarb. Hopefully it's delicious. I'm gonna let that rhubarb bake while I prepare my main dish, which is canned lima bean casserole with frankfurters. And then as a side dish, I'm just gonna saute up some yellow squash. Basically you prepare some canned lima beans with cream, question mark, sauce, it looks like sort of a cream cheese-ish sauce, and you're supposed to slice some hot dogs or frankfurters and put them in the casserole. I'm gonna keep mine whole so that I don't have to use quite as many. I don't really want to make a full recipe. Lima beans. And I need to drain them, but I need to save the liquid because it's going to be part of the sauce. Try to get as much of that liquid off as I can. It says to add cream. To make one and a half cups of liquid, I'm gonna use whole milk. Oh, I think I have like, yeah, I have exactly enough. That is fantastic. Three tablespoons of butter. Now that my butter is nice and melted, I'm adding about a quarter of a cup of diced onion. And it says I can also brown some celery. It is optional, and I will not be taking that option. So I'm just supposed to cook this until it's lightly browned. And now I have some flour, and I think you might know where this is going. We are gonna be making a white sauce. Stir this in, let it cook. Bean liquid and milk. And I'm supposed to add that in a little bit gradually. Just a little at a time. I'll probably switch over to a whisk here in a minute. There it is. I love this whisk, and if you've been with me, you've seen me use it before. This whisk has a very special feature. Can go from sort of a roux whisk that's flat to a balloon whisk that is not flat. I got this years ago. If I can find it on Amazon, I will link it in the description down below, but I love it. I use it a lot. And it would also be really great for like a camper, you know, or a small apartment or something where you don't have a ton of room. I'm convinced that if you can make a white sauce, you can make so many other things with that sauce as your base. It's time for more cheese. I say more cheese, I meant like more from earlier. This is just cheddar cheese. Cheese and dairy products were rationed, and hard cheeses were the first kind of cheese to be rationed because those traveled a little bit better and they could be shipped. But you were able to get some cheese. And a nice cheese sauce could really perk things up and make leftovers seem like something special. Seasonings to go in my cheese sauce. You can't see it, but that is salt, that is paprika, and then that is ground mustard. Worcestershire sauce, my Liam Perrins. It says two teaspoons, but I'm just gonna glug it in there and hope for the best. I need to show you this little gem. In order to provide a lima bean with glamour, you must do a fan dance with it. Oh, Irma. We add the beans back. Add our glamorous lima beans. I've never felt so fancy in my life. Pour our limas in. This seems like a lot of sauce. I even double checked the can size, because it said like a number one can, which means nothing to me. That is so saucy. Wow. Before we add the franks, we gotta add the breadcrumbs. Doesn't say how much. I'm gonna be generous. I was supposed to have mixed in six frankfurters. I'm not doing that. I'm gonna just put two on the top, nestled within, nestled within the casserole. Oh, that looks so funny. And now it's time to bake this. It says 15 minutes at 375. I'm gonna saute this squash in some butter, keeping it really simple with this preparation. I don't think any of these dishes are things that I would normally combine or make for myself, but it's all things that I like as individual ingredients. Gonna start with these lima beans. Pretty good, but you definitely have to like lima beans. They have a very beany taste to them. Try it with the frankfurter. It's pretty good. I noticed that this casserole was pretty runny. Technically, you are supposed to cut the frankfurters into slices and incorporate them into the beans. So it would have been less runny that way. I just didn't want to make a full recipe of six frankfurters. You know what? It does kind of go together, to be honest. It's like another franks and beans dish, just a little different. And then, I mean, it's just sauteed squash. Dip it in a little of that cheese sauce. It's good. This is why I'm most excited about this rhubarb, because I love rhubarb and I just never make it for myself. And this was a really easy way to prepare it, so I'm hoping that this tastes really good because I'll definitely make it again if it does. So good. I love how tart rhubarb is. I love the texture of it. This is perfect. I can eat it this way. I could easily put this over ice cream. I will do this again, for sure. Mm, rhubarb. This is an interesting day. Again, this was not meant to be a historical reenactment of the 1940s. I just wanted to touch briefly on rationing here and there and kind of point some things out and work within a few limitations. All of the food tasted pretty good. It's just a little bit different than what I would normally make, even more so than the other decades that I've worked within. But anyway, I'm going to go ahead and eat my dinner. I'll take a couple days. I always take a couple days to process, and I will come back with my final thoughts. Before I get into talking about the joy of cooking, I just wanted to share my sources on where I found my information about rationing. I'll be sure to link all of these in the description down below. The National World War II Museum website has an excellent article on rationing. The Ames History Museum website, Wikipedia, of course, and the National Women's History Museum. I also found Diane Schiffer to be a really good resource. Right as I was gearing up to start filming this video and planning everything, she announced that for an entire month, she and her daughter were going to be living as though food rationing was going on. So all of their meals would be based sort of around the rationing rules. That was just super helpful just to see in real life for an extended period of time what that would look like. If you don't follow Diane Schiffer, absolutely do. She's like if a warm cinnamon bun were a human being. She is delightful. She's very positive, very warm, caring vibes. She's on Instagram. She's on TikTok. I'm not on TikTok, but she does have a presence on YouTube. Also do keep in mind that I was using some of the ration guidelines from the United States. Rationing in the United Kingdom looked very different. Just remember that before you comment. This is my copy of The Joy of Cooking. You might remember, if you've been here that long, I picked this up at a thrift store back in summer of 2021 for 50 cents. And of course, it's not in perfect condition, but I love it. I was thrilled to have it. I think the cover is just beautiful, this blue diamond cover. And the author, Irma S. Rombauer, what a fascinating lady. What a personality. What a sense of humor. Is anybody doing a biopic or a miniseries on this woman? I know that we've had miniseries and movies about Julia Child, and she is great. She is quite a figure as well, and she's very interesting. But why can't we talk about Irma? We need to talk about this lady. And she does actually make a tiny snippet of an appearance in Julie and Julia, the movie, but I think she deserves her own story to be told. The first printing of The Joy of Cooking came out in 1931, and Irma Rombauer's conversational tone and her sense of humor and her wit, actually, that was a selling point of the cookbook. So there's a preface here to the 1943 edition. This was added because of rationing. Food rationing began in May of 1942 in the United States. When the revision of this book was begun a year ago, we had no intimation that international obligations would lead our land of plenty to ration cards. It now goes to print with a number of emergency chapters added, written to meet the difficulties that beset the present-day cook. I believe in this 1946 edition, some of those things still remain. Some were removed. She does kind of bring it up here and there throughout the book. The format of the recipes is very different from what you might see in your typical cookbook. If you think of, let's just say, a Betty Crocker cookbook, usually the top of the recipe will be an ingredient list, and then below that will be the step-by-step process. They changed the format of these recipes after the first printing, and they have stuck with this format ever since. So what that looks like, and I'll just pop in a photo of an example recipe, you have the title of the recipe, and then instead of having all of the ingredients listed at the top, they are incorporated throughout the recipe as you use them in the steps. The ingredients are bold, so it does help you identify what you're going to need ahead of time. It can be a little bit difficult to follow. You just have to be really, really thoughtful and really careful because it's just not like other cookbooks. In my more modern version of The Joy of Cooking, they have stuck with this format. A signature move right there. So something really interesting came up when I was looking for recipes for cucumbers. I initially knew that those were something that would grow here at the time I was filming, and I thought, maybe I'll just do a cucumber dish. But it seems that at the time this book was published, they were a little less common. It just wasn't something that people would always eat. Let me just read this little section to you. The cucumber is banned from many tables as indigestible or even poisonous. Digestion, alas, is an individual matter. Since it is said that good judgment is the result of experience and that experience is the result of bad judgment, why not give the cucumber the benefit of the doubt at least once to see whether it has really been maligned? These are most innocuous and very good. I'm reading the preface to a recipe for mulled cucumbers. There's also a recipe for fried or sautéed cucumbers. Not something I ever do. I don't think I've ever cooked a cucumber. I usually eat them raw, make them into cucumber salad. I just thought that was interesting that even at this time, when was 1943? Even 80 years ago, the way that we viewed some vegetables, some people still thought they were poisonous. They can cause some digestion distress in some people, from my understanding. I don't personally have that problem, but I just thought that was something that was so interesting because it really wasn't that long ago. As for the food that I cooked in this video, I mentioned earlier, I didn't adhere completely to all rationing guidelines. I wanted to touch on it a little bit. This food was different and I don't know that it was just due to the choices that I made. When I was planning this menu, it seems like all of the food was very different than what I would normally cook. I think all of the food was pretty good, but I don't know that there's a ton that I'm going to make again. My top favorite, and maybe you could tell from my face, was the rhubarb. And that was so simple. I don't know why I never prepare rhubarb in this way. I don't know why I don't prepare rhubarb beery because I love it. But basically, it was just baked with a little butter and sugar and that's all you needed. So definitely doing that again. Second place, cornmeal waffles. That is one thing that I will try to make again. I'll do better next time. I don't make waffles a lot, but I got to say those cornmeal waffles with the bacon inside, doesn't that make you think TikTok kind of food trend? I see stuff like that, people cooking things on waffle irons and it's like, oh, this new idea and no, Irma was all over this, like Irma was doing this before. That has been around for quite some time. Even maybe before the publication of this cookbook. Overall, I have fun with these videos. This one did take a little bit more work. I think I had more pots and pans at the end of the day. I don't really exactly know why that is. Maybe that comes down to my choices in the menu that I put together. I don't know. I really hope you enjoyed this video. I so enjoy making these for you. If you'd like to see my other videos where I cook an entire day of meals within one decade, I have a playlist. I will link it in the description down below. If you did like this video, please give it a thumbs up and if you haven't already, please subscribe. I make videos about food, vintage cookbooks, and retro recipes every week. Thanks again and I'll see you in my next video. Bye.