Patricia Kauffman, WBUR

August 16, 2009

After two days spent with Susan, a close friend, at my childhood home in Falmouth.  Foodies are often attracted to vintage cookbooks, many of them found at yard sales.  Here’s the story of one such recently unearthed treasure.

We rediscovered the vintage General Electric Kitchen Institute cookbook – more like a pamphlet – stuffed with well organized recipes and cooking themes.  I found the book in the attic among musty bags and boxes, falling chunks of puffy insulation and dust.  Other treasures, too. 

Susan and I were reviewing the recently unearthed stash.  The cookbook, a 1940’s accompaniment to a shiny new GE range which I must have picked up at some flea market, yard sale or other trawling adventure, held the promise of a succession of delicious meals for friends, families and special occasions.  

 Thumbing through pages and looking for something with the ubiquitous Fluff, we laughed.  The book was designed to give the kitchen goddesses of the day the confidence to serve breakfast, lunch, dinner and hors d’oeuvres.   Entries included stuffed eggs in gelatin mayonnaise, chicken, giblet and egg sandwiches, butterscotch pie. At the back were blank pages for personal favorites.  In my copy, old yellowed newspaper clippings were taped into place with a few handwritten notes slipped in.  Then I found it: one piece of lined notebook paper with a sharp crease from its aged half-fold.

The handwriting was loopy; the recipe had no name. We were sitting right there looking at the page together and it was her handwriting. I knew instantly it was Susan’s writing.  She denied it!  I insisted. 

I couldn’t recall with certainty when I acquired the cookbook.  Did I know Susan then?  Had I received the recipe from her at a later date?  What I did know was that I was staring at Susan’s loose, pretty writing.  It was confident. too.  I tore the paper at its sharp crease, keeping the loopy scrawl to myself and handing the blank half to my friend, with a pen.   

“I just want you to write three words: ‘3 cups milk’ and the number ‘2.’” 

The number ‘2’ appeared several times in the recipe: 2 eggs, ½ teaspoon salt, 425 degrees.  I had to ask.  If I added that to the test, I would have plenty of loops to go on.  I admitted to my little deceit. The comparison convinced me I was right, but Susan was not swayed.

I asked one last question.   “If you were writing a recipe that used brown sugar, how would you write that?”

“B. Sugar.”

 Bingo.  Susan’s pumpkin pie recipe.  Case closed.

 

Patricia Kauffman, a fellow foodie, works at WBUR.