About Me
Hi! My name is Amy. I’m a technical writer who enjoys old stuff. Sometimes, I fancy myself a detective (à la National Treasure, Indiana Jones, and Tomb Raider). Through this blog, I am going to cook through Louise’s recipes (1950s-1980s) to share her evident joy in cooking and serving others.
About Louise
I met Louise when I first laid eyes on a beaten library card catalog drawer sitting on a low coffee table at the thrift store in 2016. Being a book lover, I love card catalogs and was expecting an empty drawer. However, to my surprise, the drawer was overflowing with yellowed recipes. I was instantly, completely (and dramatically) in love. I was not leaving the store without it. I quickly snatched up the box and plopped it into the small cart, leaving no room for my family’s other purchases. The box was about $20. In the care, I immediately started riffling through the drawer and reading.
Right away, Louise’s personality leapt off the recipe cards and slips. Her personalized notes complete the charm of this whole library. I never would have thought that I’d laugh while reading recipe cards of all things. It was Louise’s funny (and always helpful) commentary that made me fall in love. She wrote when she served the recipe, sometimes where she served it- naming a certain dinner party, the date-, and who gave her the recipe. She also offered any adjustments she did. Her rating and comments are wonderful:
- For an “Orange Cake in Bundt Cake Pan” I made for Thanksgiving 2016, she recorded down to the type of bundt cake pan she used- “Bundt Cake Pan made by Northland Aluminum Products Minneapolis, Minn. Recipe given me by Mrs. C.H. 1-69 very good.”
Note: From what I remember, I thought it turned out great; husband didn’t like it, but my grandma did. It is on my list to try again. - Do-dads (snack) “will keep in sealed jars indefinitely if you can keep them that long.”
- Queen Elizabeth Cake: “Very good. Used just one recipe of icing and was fine. This recipe is not to be passed on, but must be sold for .25 for Welfare purposes. It is supposed to be the only cake that Queen Elizabeth makes herself. Mrs. R.S.P., Pres. K— Women’s Club.”
- She kept recipes she didn’t even think were good. And this is the reason that enthralled me when I first explored the collection in the shop before I even bought it.
- For a Palmetto Cake she writes, “From R.P. — hers was good, a little dry maybe.”
- For M.H.’s Pound Cake, “It has fallen every time. Baked it in May at 325* 1 hr and 25 minutes. Was (5-73) sad & heavy but fairly good.”
- For Italian Cream Cake, “M.A. Feb 1978 they say good-”
- She even recorded her actual menus/occasions:
- On the back of a Coffee Mousse recipe which “was good,” she recorded the menu that was served with this dessert: “Lemon chicken, French bread, Coffee mousse. Serving club. Put the mousse in parfait glasses- one recipe made enough for about 24.” Twenty-four people- I get nervous and frantic about my cooking when just family comes over!
- On a Strawberry Fluff recipe card: “Very good A.D.W. 2-28-63. Chicken breast, wild rice-ham, asparagus chopped egg over and buttered crumbs.”
Most endearingly, Louise marked her favorites. She recorded her “mama’s” favorites, too. Looking through the recipes, the physical condition of them sparked my imagination. For example, there is a Griddlecakes index card (Miami newspaper, Feb. 1954) that has some of its ink washed away. I can only imagine her cooking this early one morning in household full of rowdy kids.
My curiosity grew and grew. Writing about her has been in the back of my mind ever since. What can this hefty box-drawer tell me about her? Taking out every single piece of paper, I stumbled on recipe written on half of a bank deposit slip with her and her husband’s name and a P.O. Box. Identifying the owner of your vintage piece rarely happens in my experience. I then searched the internet and found her and her husband’s obituaries. She had passed a few years before her husband over ten years ago. Her husband’s obituary was long, full of details about his history and hobbies. Louise’s was short and generic. The disconnect of her recipe box from her obituary upsets me. Why is this? And why would her family give away something so full of love and history, something that was so obviously a huge part of her self? I will never know these answers, and I do not want to/try not to speculate on them. So, this blog is my response. I want to share Louise’s obvious (to me) joy of cooking and serving others. It is going to be a fun, colorful journey from the 1950s to 1980s (Read: There’s going to be a lot of gelatin where there shouldn’t be.).
About the Library Card Catalog Box
The Catalog box is fairly beaten up and is comprised of two drawers. Louise kept her recipes in order by type of food: cakes (pound cakes were big for her; they have their own section), desserts, gelatin (and not all of them are desserts…just let that statement mull around in your imagination for a while), menus, main course dinner plates, preserves, sauces and salads, soups, candy, yogurt, vegetable sides, etc.
The recipes are written on so many different things: newspaper clippings, magazine clippings, advertisement recipes, index cards, on the back of old library catalog cards, typed with a typewriter, on other people’s stationary, on empty desk calendar pages torn out (1982), and as mentioned before, on the back of blank deposit slips. Her sources include: magazines/newspaper clippings, advertisement recipes, friends, family, GHK (Good Housekeeping magazine), BHG (Better Homes and Gardens magazine), and books from which she wrote out the recipe and included the title, year, and page number.
I am so excited to finally be able to share and interact with Louise’s recipes. It is something that has been on my heart for a few years, and now it is time to take the plunge and revive her spirit of cooking. If you have any vintage cooking tips, please let me know!
For Thanksgiving tomorrow, I am planning on making a Brown Sugar Pound Cake given to her by L.R. Looking forward to baking it and sharing the experience with you all.
Happy eating!
In the Kitchen with Louise 