This week’s post was inspired by a small 144-page hardcover cookbook
titled All About Home Baking and
published by the Consumer Service Department of the General Foods Corporation
in June 1936.
It’s a great little book that features a black and yellow plaid
cover and includes loads of black and white pictures, as well as several full-colour
plates. All About Home Baking begins
with a word from, well, someone in
the Consumer Service Department. The only person actually named in the book can
be found on the very last page, 144, crediting the photographs to an H. I.
Williams. Intrigued, I conducted an extensive search for the said person and
eventually discovered that the H. I. stood for Harney Isham Williams, or Hi
Williams for short. Turns out, Mr. Williams was one of the leading food and
advertising photographers of his day. One of his photographs, titled Chocolate
Chip Cookie, is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art’s collection in New York City:
All About Home Baking begins with an introduction titled “It’s a Wise Woman Who
Knows Her Baking Rules” and ensues with “Have you ever wished you were blessed
with a ‘born knack for baking’? Stop your wishing! There's no such thing to be
had! Baking skills is made and not born.” Well thank goodness for that. I can
imagine the sigh of relief from the thousands of homemakers across America,
finally let off the hook for over kneading their dough or (dear heavens) using
the wrong ingredient. (“See Ralph! You’re mother’s wrong! Not EVERYBODY is born
with a knack for baking! Says right here!”) No, as the book points out “it
takes no special gift, no magic touch, to work wonders with a mixing bowl…
Here, in this book, there are tested ways to perfect baking. Whether you're a
beginner or an old hand at the game, the things you learn here will make your
baking better, easier, and more fun!” And isn’t that what every good homemaker
wanted – more fun in the kitchen?
The introduction goes on to describe some basic rules: be
orderly, use good tools, and choose good ingredients. In fact, a whole chapter
is devoted to explaining the type of baking powder, flour, and other
ingredients required to achieve success, and that it is imperative homemakers
use the exact ingredients listed in the recipes. The book features “23 Easy
Picture Lessons – The Keys to Baking Success” that consist of pictorial
illustrations of the steps and tips to achieve some “basic” recipes. As I view
the photos, I can just imagine Hi adjusting his camera, suggesting “Miss
Turner” tilt the bowl ever so slightly to her left. No, her other left. Though
upon further study, the hands do appear to be rather manly and so it may have
been a “Mr. Turner” who beat the eggs for 10 minutes (can you imagine?), then
beat in sugar gradually. The initial lessons are followed by “Other Recipes
Made Like…” whatever was just made, so after mastering the Calumet One-egg
Cake, you can try the Raisin Cup Cakes or the Boston Cream Pie which uses the
same techniques. Very clever indeed.
Flipping through the pages seeking something to bake, a
full-colour image caught my eye and 72 pages later, I came upon the recipe:
Quick Cinnamon Rolls. What a great idea for a Sunday morning!
I skimmed the
ingredients to make sure I had everything on hand. Well, I had flour, but not
Swans Down Cake Flour, nor did I have Calumet Baking Powder but though the book
warned me that NOT using these ingredients could result in disappointment, I
went ahead and pulled out my food stuffs.
But as I reached for my brown sugar and
headed to the other cupboard for cinnamon, I couldn’t help but wonder about the
brands mentioned in the recipes. So I ventured over to the computer and let my
fingers do the tapping. General Foods Corporation…
We go back to 1895 when Charles William Post created the
Postum Cereal Company. Ironically, his first product was not cereal but a
roasted, cereal-based beverage called Postum. The drink was a combination of
wheat-grain, bran, and molasses, and was marketed as a healthy alternative to
caffeine - one that could be fed to children. Mr. Post was an astute businessman who believed in advertising and
marketing. By 1905, he was spending $400,000 a year on advertising and his
Postum Cereal Company had earned more than $10 million dollars. That’s a lot of
cereal. Post died in 1914, but he instilled this belief in his daughter
Marjorie Merriweather Post who took over the business upon his death. Six years
later, Marjorie, a smart cookie herself, married Edward F. Hutton, a Wall
Street broker. Some of you may remember the 70s television ads “When E.F.
Hutton talks, people listen.” In fact, he was the founder.
In 1925, the Postum
Cereal Company began buying companies right and left (the Jell-O Company, the
Minute Tapioca Company, Walter Baker (chocolates), Richard Hellmann Inc.
(mayo), the Cheek-Neel Coffee Company), including… wait for it – Igleheart
Brothers Inc., the makers of Swans Down cake flour AND the Calumet Baking Powder Company. Oh, and I forgot to mention the Diamond Crystal salt brand. (The recipe doesn’t specify this specific brand, but you'll note the can in the colour plate – the first product placement?) Four years later,
Postum Cereal Company would become the General Foods Corporation. This led me
to wonder if the average homemaker knew back then that the products promoted in this
book were actually brands owned by the General Foods Corporation. Probably not any
more than today’s homemaker knows that the body soap she uses (Dove), the soup she
serves (Lipton), the mayonnaise she spreads on her BLT (Hellmann’s), or the
ice-cream she feeds her children (Ben & Jerry’s) are all brands owned by
Unilever – the same people who bring you the household cleaning product Vim, “because you’re home is for
living, not just for cleaning!”
Back to our recipe. While researching online, I happened to
come across an image that closely resembled the colour plate on page 11 in my
book, the one of the cinnamon rolls. It looked very similar, but not quite the
same. The exact same items were there but laid out differently, and
the paper shelf liner was a different colour and cut. It was my daughter Rachel
who noticed the difference in the rolls. The colour plate in my 1936 edition
shows 16 rolls (scroll back up), even though the recipe specifies it makes 12. The other
colour plate I discovered online is from the first edition published in 1933,
the second printing, and shows 9 rolls. The recipe calls for an 8 x 8 square
pan. My guess is that the good folks in the Consumer Service Department failed
to notice this discrepancy in the book’s first edition, and upon discovering
their error, realized that the recipe did not produce 12 rolls but rather nine.
I like to imagine Hi being called in to re-shoot the nine rolls, tongue clicking
while a cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. Sorry, that would be
more fitting for a private eye, not a food photographer. AND I’m sure the
people at General Foods would not have approved. I digress yet again.
Quick Cinnamon Rolls it was. Well, quick they were, because I used my KitchenAid mixer with
the paddle attachment to cut the shortening into the flour mixture and melted
the butter in my microwave. But I did get distracted just long enough to over
beat the dough, thus resulting in a denser roll. My bad. I also didn’t add
currants or raisins because my daughter doesn’t like them. All in all, not bad for a first attempt, and
tasty none the less.
Next time, I’ll be sure to keep an eye on the mixing and
double the amount of butter and brown sugar in the pan to obtain a larger amount of caramel
topping. Cause you can never have too much caramel topping. And maybe I’ll add
some nuts. Walnuts or pecans…
As a side note (aside from my usual digressions), my edition of All About Home Baking arrived with an added perk - a Toytown card tucked in between pages 70 and 71. These cards were inserted in boxes of Nabisco Shredded Wheat to encourage future purchases. The card in question, No. 16 Roadside Stand, was part of a series of 36 that displayed a building or part of a village that could be cut out and coloured. My research tells me the card dates from 1946.
"Ask Mother to get more Nabisco Shredded Wheat so you can get all 36,
including a layout of the complete town."
Have a great week!
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