Monday, August 01, 2011

Cooking From Scratch in the 1930's


Cooking From Scratch in the 1930's. When one "cooked from scratch" in the thirties, it was from the first "scratch" of a match. We had a large iron cookstove in our kitchen when I was a child. The iron cookstove burned wood. (The picture to the left looks much like the stove in our kitchen in the late 1920's and early 30'except our stove had white metal on the oven door and warming closet doors)

Wood had to be cut in "stove wood" lengths, brought from the backyard into the house and stacked in wood boxes behind the stove. A fire had to be started with crumpled up newspaper and kindling wood. Then the fire was kept burning by the constant additon of larger pieces of "stove wood."


The stove had , what we called "a warming closet" near the top. It had two decorative iron doors to open and place cooked food to keep warm until time to set on the table. A large reservoir was built in on the side to heat water. I remember one of my jobs was to keep water in the reservoir. The "eyes" on top of the stove could be removed to build the fire. There was a little iron utensil to fit into a hole in the stove eye to lift it and then put back in place so large pots of beans or potatoes or meat could be cooked on top of the stove. I remember my mother cooking beef roast, pork roast, and chickens on top of the stove in water. We called them "roasts", but they were sometimes boiled or simmered on top of the stove. This was used possibly for tougher cuts of meat than the roasts we cook today.

Chicken, pork chops, and cubed steak was fried in a large iron skillet. I have seen my mother take a hammer to pound steak to tenderize it. She would then flour and fry it in serving size pieces. Meat was not served every day.

Some kind of dried beans (a wonderful sourse of protein) were cooked almost every day - large butter beans, small limas, pinto beans, navy beans, or black-eyed peas. Salt pork was plentiful and added to the dried vegetables for seasoning. Potatoes were boiled with butter and sometimes dumplings...probably bits of leftover dough from the biscuits that were cooked at every meal. The term "low-fat" had never been spoken!

Large pans of sweet potatoes were baked often. Sweet potatoes seemed plentiful and were sometimes fried or made into pies or puddings. In the summer fresh vegetables were cooked in place of or in addition to the dried beans which were a staple and inexpensive proten food nearly every day, Fresh vegetables were seasoned with fat meat (uncured bacon). Thankfully my mother did not add the fat meat to fresh vegetables as lavishly as some cooks did.

My favorite summer vegetable plate was fresh crowder peas with a few tiny pods of okra boiled on top of the peas, corn freshly cut fine off the cob, and sliced tomatoes. On a cold winter day nothing was better than chicken and dumplings, one of Mama's really great dishes. What kind of bread? Cornbread, of course and hot buttered biscuits.



Mama made great vegetable soup from fresh tomatoes and an assortment of vegetables from summer gardens. She also made soup in the winter using canned tomatoes and canned corned beef with potatoes, rice, or macaroni and any vegetables she had. We had canned salmon made into patties fairly often and sometimes fried fish. The fish meal was often fish that Mama caught from the nearby Yellow River. ( My father died when I was nine after being bedridden for a years, so I was reared by a widowed mother. My two older brothers , Grice and William Bogan...whom we called "Willie B "and two older sisters Louise and Vera (whom we called Sis and Vek) were already married when my father died. I was nine and my youngest brother Jack was 14.)


Cheese and macaroni, rice, and rice pudding were common dishes in the 30's. Grits and eggs were often served for breakfast with fried salt pork or streak-o-lean. Sometimes we had ham to go along with biscuits and butter and jelly or jam that had been prepared and put away in jars in quantity during the summer. It was not uncommon to have pork chops or fried chicken for breakfast along with the regular homemade buttered biscuits. Real butter.

The first margarine I saw looked like a hunk of lard, and, for a long time, tasted like lard to me - as it did to anyone who had been raised on country buttered biscuits. The margarine of the late thirties was white and came with a vial of yellow coloring. To make it look more like butter, the margarine had to be left out of the refrigerator to soften at room temperature. The yellow coloring had to be worked in. I suppose the butter lobbyists mandated this. In a few years the margarine people prevailed and they were allowed to make margarine that looked as yellow as butter.

An after dinner speaker named Baldy White was popular when I was young. He was a big man and used to keep his audience laughing with such comments as, "We were so poor when I was a boy, all we had for breakfast was ham, eggs, buttered grits and hot biscuits with an assortment of homemade jellies and preserves. We didn't know there was such a thing as Post Toasties!"

I remember Aunt Cora bringing her two granddaughters my age, Mildred and Allene, down from their home in Atlanta one week-end and how excited they were to have homemade biscuits for breakfast. I was amazed. I would have been more excited to have cereal and milk or toast made with "store bought" bread. Rare!

15 comments:

Carol said...

I LOVE the stories and description of food preparation when you were a child!

Anonymous said...

Mama, I really enjoyed this post. I'd love to hear more of your memories. You made my mouth water!!

Joan said...

Me, too, what they said! I'd love to read more about your memories like this one. And, boy, did that food sound good!

Jane said...

Aunt Ruth, this was so interesting. I am so glad that I did not have to cook like that. I'm afraid my family would have starved!! I agree with all of the above....tell us more.

Maeve Bradbury said...

It is absolutely wonderful to read your descriptions and to know how lucky the modern housewife is - thank you!

Babette said...

What a descriptive, tasty glimpse into the past! Brava for taking the time to record it for posterity!

I just learned about your beautiful blog through Nancy (johnandnancy.blogspot.com) and I must thank her post haste, just as soon as I finish reading on down. ;~)

I have eleven dear children and live in the Pacific NW. My little ones will enjoy your Bible quiz. Thanks, Ruth!

Babette said...

I'm at www.belleonhertoes.blogspot.com.

utenzi said...

I've read before about how during the food rationing of WW2 that "white" margarine was used instead of butter. I doubt it was very appealing.

Where I grew up there were still a lot of people, especially older folks, who were still using coal stoves. Nobody I knew was using wood burning stoves for anything but heat though. The food does sound good...

Andy McCullough said...

This makes my mouth water jsut reading this!

utenzi said...

I must be having blackouts, Ruth. I don't remember writing that comment up above. Scary!

I saw your picture on your daughter's blog and thought I'd come visit---only to see that I was here recently. BTW, I've never been able to get the hang of cooking with iron skillets. I guess I just need to practice more---but I burn stuff and then stay away for a while.

Ruth said...

I almost never use iron skillets anymore, although i have a row of them lined up decorating a space in my kitchen. I get down the largest iron skillet at least once a year when i make cornbread to use in turkey-cornbread dressing for Thanksgiving dinner.

utenzi said...

There is something very visually appealing about iron. I guess my iron skillet and Dutch oven are more decorations than anything else since they only get used a few times a year.

Janice said...

This is such a fun post! I am fortunate to remember some of the things that you mention. I remember being assigned to squeeze the margarine to burst the little capsule of yellow coloring and continue to squeeze the package until the margarine was yellow. Keep these wonderful stories coming!

Viagra Online said...

It makes me remind one time when I visited a museum where has a kitchen like this it was great to see how much do people has improved through the years.

High Energy Foods said...

A cool post indeed and really enjoyed reading it. The story was really a good one and appreciate you writing skill.
Thanks for the post and awaiting to read more.