Historical cookbooks offer recipes and a heaping glimpse of life in Maine’s pre-WWII kitchens.
Collecting old cookbooks can appeal to many people. Perhaps they are replacing a tattered treasure, or hoping to find Grandma’s recipe for sour cream blueberry cake. Others may be serious collectors or have a passion for discovering forgotten recipes from simpler times.
In them are discoveries like old-time New England clam chowder, shrimp wiggle and almond potato cake — often made with whole, unprocessed and local ingredients.
To find these recipes, as well as hundreds of others, you need to go no farther than the Maine State Archives in Augusta, where they have been preserved alongside many other historical documents.
According to Maine State Archivist David Cheever, vintage Maine cookbooks not only offer proven recipes, but give us a look back in history; books such as “99 Potato Recipes Tested by 33 Famous Cooking Experts,” “Maine Sea Foods — A Sampler,” “121 Tested Recipes Made with Famous State of Maine Canned Foods” and “The State of Maine’s Best Seafood Recipes.”
“That’s why they are in the archives,” explained Cheever. “They are government documents originally developed by the Maine Economic Development Commission. The first one, ’99 Potato Recipes’ was published in 1938.”
Cheever credits Auburn’s Everett Greaton for the creation of the books.
“He was a fascinating man, who some called the father of Maine tourism. In his time, when he was the executive director of the Maine Development Commission, Greaton was one of the most influential people promoting Maine resources, as well as the Maine economy.”
And what better way to promote our rich agricultural and coastal resources than to publish cookbooks with time-tested recipes from Maine’s most notable foods.
But there was another reason for producing the cookbooks.
“Take a glimpse back to the late ’30s,” said Cheever. “It was a depressed economy. The unemployment was high; those who were employed struggled. I remember my grandmother having a pantry and a root cellar. She canned vegetables like beets. Cucumbers were pickled and she even made relish. Potatoes and squash were kept in the cellar. These cookbooks were also a survival guide, to help the family get through a long, cold winter with what they had; an innovative, low-cost way to feed a family using variety — so boiled potatoes weren’t served seven days a week.”
Hence, a cookbook on 99 ways to serve them, including scalloped potatoes, Maine potato chowder and meat pie with mashed potato crust.
The cookbook was such a hit that three more were published in the next several years.
“Maine Sea Foods — A Sampler” is chock full of recipes, including fried clams, sardine burgers and baked Finnin haddie. “121 Tested Recipes Made with Famous State of Maine Canned Foods” is packed with such things as corn a la King with bacon, blueberry tarts and tomato succotash. The “State of Maine’s Best Seafood” includes recipes from both saltwater and freshwater sources — appetizing dishes such as Boothbay Harbor crab cakes, scallops au gratin, baked stuffed lobster and fish balls.
These cookbooks, which have been scanned and transferred to CD, caught the interest of Kristen Muszynski when she began working this fall as director of communications for the Secretary of State’s Office. Muszynski said she came across the cookbooks via the online store and thought they’d be perfect in making the public aware of these treasured recipes.
“They have historical significance for Maine fisheries and the state’s economic development efforts, and also offer a peek into the prevailing notions of cooking at the time – most notably who belongs in the kitchen!” she said.
Both Muszynski and Cheever were able to lure Secretary of State Matt Dunlap into cooking one of the archived recipes at a recent event at R.M. Flagg’s Maine Kitchen Cooking School in Veazie promoting the CDs, which are available to the public.
Dunlap, who has more than 20 years of culinary experience, was more than happy to oblige.
“In essence, those were my mother’s cookbooks,” he said. “They reminded me of back in the days of having a garden and tending to it . . . (and) when most of Thanksgiving dinner came from the backyard.”
The recipe Dunlap chose to prepare was fish balls.
“Yes,” Dunlap laughed. “I made fish balls, but this particular recipe was especially meaningful. I had been reading about Thomas Brackett Reed who was a giant in Maine politics. . . . He became a member of Congress from Portland and ‘Reed’s Rules’ changed how Congress conducted business. He wrote in his diaries how he loved fish balls, but they made him fat.”
Dunlap noted, “The two primary ingredients were salt cod and potatoes. And it needs to be salt cod; you could never use fresh for this. I soaked it in warm water for a while to cut some of the salt content and then sliced and boiled potatoes. The sauce was an egg sauce, which is nothing more than a bechamel with eggs.”
Once the fish was rinsed and boiled with the potatoes, Dunlap combined the ingredients.
“It was simply mashing them together with a bit of butter, and I added a touch of pepper and nutmeg. I then rolled them in flour and set them aside to make the egg sauce. I tried to stay authentic, but I couldn’t leave it alone and had to add some cheddar cheese to half of the sauce.”
The secretary of state then deep fried the fish balls.
“In lard!” he said, smiling. “That was what they used back then. . . . No wonder Reed said he got fat. It took about 5 to 7 minutes, then I spooned the sauce over it and garnished with parsley.”
Being a history buff, Dunlap was fascinated with the historical accounts, photos and drawings included in the publications.
“The cookbooks showed that cooking wasn’t just about putting a meal on the table. Cooking could be an art, and a lot of fun. In Maine, canning food was a huge industry. We think of the sardine canneries that used to line the coast. One of the cookbooks in the archives is exclusively made up of recipes for canned foods; one of the recipes is called Sardine Surprise, which is a boned, canned sardine wrapped in puff dough and baked. I’ve tried it, and really, it’s pretty good.
And if you do any amount of baking, you’ve probably used a can of One Pie for a dessert,” Dunlap continued. “But did you know it came from Maine? These facts and some other processes, such as how to set up a clam bake, speak to the rapidly expanding repertoire available to the home cook that would have amazed their forebears.”
Dunlap feels that these cookbooks, overall, gave Mainers a better quality of life.
“These recipes provided Maine households with variety. A can of corn turned into corn pudding or chowder; instead of boiled potatoes, families were treated to a potato souffle; and company feasted on baked stuffed haddock.”
He added, “As homely as the cookbooks may appear to us today, it was actually quite brilliant back then.”
The CDs are $15 online at: http://www10.informe.org/webshop_ifw/?storeID=5. To view Dunlap’s cooking video, visit Maine Department of the Secretary of State on Facebook.
Almond potato cake
From “99 Potato Recipes” (published 1938)
Ingredients:
2 squares unsweetened chocolate (2 oz.)
2 1/2 cups cake flour
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1 cup shortening
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 cup freshly mashed potatoes
1 teaspoon grated lemon rind
1 cup shredded almonds
1/2 cup milk
Instructions:
Melt chocolate over hot water; cool. Sift flour, measure and sift again with baking powder, salt and spices. Cream shortening, add sugar gradually (to shortening), creaming until light and fluffy.
Add unbeaten eggs one at a time; beat well, add potatoes and cooled melted chocolate; beat until well blended and add lemon rind and 3/4 cup almonds. Add flour alternately with milk, beating well after each addition. Sprinkle top with remaining almonds. Bake in well-greased pan (8x12x2) in moderate oven (325 degrees) 50 to 55 minutes or until done. The cake will cut into 24 2-inch squares.
Maine sardine burger
From “Maine Sea Foods – A Sampler” (published 1939)
Ingredients:
2 (3 1/4 oz.) cans Maine sardines
1 cup corn flakes, crushed
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons grated onion
Instructions:
Combine all ingredients; shape into patties. Fry in butter over slow heat, about 4 minutes on each side. Serve on toasted buns. Makes four generous Maine sardine burgers.
Corn a la king with bacon
From “121 Tested Recipes Made with Famous Maine Canned Foods” (published 1941)
Ingredients:
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup milk
1 canned pimiento chopped
1 teaspoon minced onion
1 teaspoon celery salt
1/2 teaspoon salt
Few grains cayenne
1 12 oz. can whole kernel Maine corn
8 strips bacon
4 pieces toast
Instructions:
Melt butter in saucepan; add flour; blend well. Add milk; cook until mixture thickens, stirring constantly. Add pimiento, onion, celery salt, salt, cayenne and corn. Serve on toast with strips of crisp bacon and garnish with parsley if desired. Serves 4.
Lobster stew
From: “State of Maine’s Best Seafood Recipes” (published 1945)
Instructions:
Boil 1 1/2 pound lobster and remove the meat immediately, saving also the tomalley or liver, the coral and the thick white substance, or blood, from inside the shell. Simmer the tomalley and coral in 1/2 cup butter or margarine 7 or 8 minutes. Use a very heavy kettle. Then add the lobster meat, cut in fairly large pieces. Cook all together 10 minutes over low heat. Remove from heat, or push kettle back on stove, and cool slightly. Then add, very slowly, 1 quart rich milk, stirring constantly. Allow the stew to stand 5 or 6 hours before reheating for serving. This is one of the secrets of truly fine flavor.
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