Shortcut cooking

 

Last night I made a good, light summer supper—turkey tonnato (tonnato is a tuna/anchovy/caper sauce served on cold meat) and panzanella, a bread salad (no lettuce). Refreshing, different, and not a lot of work. But since I’m deep into food research into the 1950s and what they called convenience cooking, preparing that meal made me think about the difference. Everything I used last night was “from scratch”—or the meal was what some all “scratch cooking.”

By contrast, the 1950s saw the rise of convenience food, packaged food, frozen food. Everything from TV dinners to cake mixes. The goal was to have the housewife spend as little time and effort in the kitchen as possible. This was an era when women were easing into the workforce, not to replace men gone to war but on their own. Two female journalists recognized that women were stressed to cook dinner after a long day at work, and they determined to make cooking easier. You may never have heard of these two: Peg Bracken and Poppy Cannon. Each one is known today, if at all for one cookbook title, though they had varied writing careers  

You could say that Peg Bracken, a free lance journalist, lucked into a niche when she started writing about food. Her best-known book is The I Hate to Cook Book. Her recipes assume that the reader knows something about cooking and might even enjoy it. Bracken herself denied hating to cook. But she wanted to help women spend less time creating a really good meal. Taste was not inconsequential to her. One recipe I remember was Stayabed Stew—you threw stew meat, carrots, sliced potatoes, celery, onion into a crockpot. Add a can of condensed soup—tomato, cream of mushroom, cream of chicken, your choice—and dilute with two cans of water. No need to sauté the vegetables first nor brown the meat. You put it all in a Dutch oven, put it in a slow oven, and cook five hours. Probably at that time Bracken did not have access to those packages of frozen stew vegetables we see in the groceries today—remember despite the introduction of frozen food, not many homes had freezers. Bracken also apparently did not have a crockpot or slow cooker.

The fiftieth anniversary edition of The I Hate to Cook Book was published in 2010 and is still available.

Poppy Cannon wrote several cookbooks, including one for brides, but she is remembered for The Can Opener Cookbook. Whereas Bracken wrote for the housewife and really left her in the kitchen, Cannon, in person a sophisticated and well-traveled diner familiar with good food, wrote for the career woman who might be hosting a gentleman for dinner or a small cocktail party. Cannon knew that woman didn’t want to dally in the kitchen. So she invented shortcuts—a vichyssoise made with mashed potatoes and cream of chicken soup or espagnole sauce made of Franco-American canned gravy with a dash of Kitchen Bouquet and a splash of brandy. Cannon’s recipes often lacked exact measurements and gave vague directions such as “stir like crazy.” She believed that presentation was important—I can hear my mom telling me food is half eaten with the eye—and she particularly loved flaming dishes and those she could prepare at the table. Sometimes at dinner parties, she’d bring the necessary appliances—a mixer, an electric skillet, whatever—to the table so that she could cook before guests.

These cookbooks today are pretty much read for amusement rather than actual cooking directions though I maintain that some of Bracken’s recipes are pretty good. It’s like the Facebook page titled Disgusting Vintage Foods—what some find disgusting is a treat to others, salmon croquettes being a case in point. At any rate it occurs to me that the era of convenience food and shortcut cooking paved the way for the dramatic foodie revolution that followed, led by such luminary cooks as James Beard and Julia Child. Perhaps another blog about them another time.

Meantime, happy cooking!