Jessie Sheehan - The Vintage Baker

dedication

To my grandmother, Hyla: Whose lemon velvet sheet cake is one for the history books. And to my parents: For always filling the pantry with Nabisco Double Stuf Oreos and Drakes Devil Dogs. My sweet tooth would be nowhere without you.

Text copyright 2018 by Jessica R. Sheehan.
Photographs copyright 2018 by Chronicle Books LLC.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 9781452163963 (epub, mobi)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Sheehan, Jessie, author. | Gao, Alice, photographer.
Title: The vintage baker: more than 50 recipes from butterscotch pecan curls to sour cream jumbles / by Jessie Sheehan ; photographs by Alice Gao. Description: San Francisco : Chronicle Books, [2018]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017024415 | ISBN 9781452163871 (hc : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Baking. | Desserts. | LCGFT: Cookbooks. Classification: LCC TX763 .S4257 2018 | DDC 641.81/5dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017024415

Photographs by Alice Gao
Prop styling by Kira Corbin
Food styling by Diana Yen
Designed by Lizzie Vaughan
Typesetting by Howie Severson
Typeset in Baskerville, Gotham, and Lulo Clean

Interior line art inspired by the Bond Bread Cookbook, General Baking Company, 1933.
Vintage interior art, Courtesy of Kraft Heinz Foods Company.
Double Stuf Oreos are a registered trademark of Intercontinental Great Brands LLC.
Drakes Devil Dogs and Yodels are registered trademarks of McKee Foods.
Kelloggs Rice Krispies and Pop Tarts are registered trademarks of Kellogg NA Co.
Kix Cereal and Pillsbury Bake-Off are registered trademarks of General Mills.
Red Hots are a registered trademark of Ferrara USA.

Chronicle Books LLC
680 Second Street
San Francisco, California 94107
www.chroniclebooks.com

I started collecting vintage recipe booklets over a decade ago in Brooklyn. My then toddler-aged son and I had just dropped off his older brother at art class, when we stumbled upon a nearby antique/junk shop. The shops door was open, and as I pushed the stroller past and peered in, several boxes filled with brightly colored antique recipe pamphlets, illustrated with baked goods and baking ingredients, caught my eye. I had recently started working as a junior baker at the hot, new Brooklyn bakery, Baked, and I was completely preoccupied with baking, eating, and reading about all things sweet. The pamphlets looked like theyd be right up my old-school-dessert-obsessed alley.

I had to move quickly, as the shop was no place for a stroller or its inhabitant, so I scooped up a handful of the booklets with the most inviting covers, paid, and departed. Once home, I discovered that my instinct had been right: not only did I love the period illustrations, both within the pages of the pamphlets as well as on their covers, but the booklets included recipes for all of the desserts I loved best: layer cakes with billowy frosting, cream pies with meringue topping, yeasted cinnamon buns, fritters, and caramel popcorn, to name a few.

Using my research skills, honed during my pre-baking days as a lawyer, I soon discovered that vintage recipe booklets were distributed from the late-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century to Americas housewives by brand-name ingredient and kitchen appliance companies. Heckers Flour and Frigidaire, for instance, offered a booklet upon the purchase of a bag of flour or a refrigerator. In light of their original content and distinctive look, the booklets proved to be a uniquely powerful advertising tool. They helped companies sell their products via recipes, tips for how best to work with the ingredient or appliance, engaging and brightly colored cover art, and promises to the housewife of fortitude in the kitchen, and a happily satiated husband.

The marketing message of the booklets changed, I learned, depending on the decade in which they were distributed. Booklets from the early 1900s, influenced by the 1906 passage of the Federal Pure Food and Drug Act, regulating food safety, advised women to keep their families healthy by baking with the pure and healthy ingredient advertised within their pages. During the Great Depression, those of the 1930s appealed to the housewifes frugal nature and sense of convenience. They implored her, for instance, to save money and time by leavening her cakes or waffles with baking powder, as opposed to doing so the old-fashioned way, with eggs or yeast. Finally, the booklets of the 1950s, the salad days of the housewife, as it were, emphasized how dazzling the life of the booklet-wielding homemaker might be, encouraging her to bake delicious, glamorous cakes and to tell her neighbors of the fabulous ingredient shed been introduced to so that they [too might] enjoy luxurious living.

Needless to say, the more I learned about the booklets, the more enamored I became, and soon the collecting of recipe pamphlets began in earnestas did the baking from their pages. The recipes themselves proved to be simple, basically foolproof, and the perfect canvas for twisting and tweaking. For instance, recipes from the booklets of the early 1900s lacked any imagination, or bold flavors, and called for nothing but the most obvious of ingredients. Those distributed fifty years later tended to rely on more processed, fewer fresh, ingredients, such as canned fruits in sugary syrups, than what we bake with today. But with the addition of an unexpected spice or extract, a different kind of milk or flour, a bit of extra salt, more butter than shortening, and a little less food coloring, I found I could modernize the recipes to appeal to the more adventurous, accepting, and global palate of todays home bakers, while still remaining true to their old-school roots. In so doing, a passion for recipe development materialized that I hadnt a clue existed.

Now, more than ten years later, I have been fortunate enough to morph my passion into a profession, and Im still just as smitten with vintage recipe booklets as I was the day I bought my first few in that junk shop. This book brings together my passion for revamping recipes, born from those early days of vintage recipe booklet collecting, and the collection itself. The vast majority of my booklet recipes are for fabulous old-school treats, such as biscuits and doughnuts, snack cakes and refrigerator desserts, ice cream and fudge. They all take beautifully to a gentle nudge into the twenty-first century with a tweak herevia an everything seasoning blend, and a twist therevia a glug of booze, or a handful of fresh basil.

For instance, to a very minimalist popover, I have added pecorino romano cheese and freshly ground black pepper .

I picked recipes from booklets published between the late 1800s and the 1950s (with one or two from the 1960s and 1970s if I found the booklet cover particularly swoon-worthy, or the recipes within it particularly deserving of a modern makeover), as the vast majority of booklets were published during this fifty-year era, and are well represented in my collection. Within that time period, I have revamped those recipes that turned up in booklet after booklet, such as coffee cake, fig cookies, chiffon pie, strawberry shortcake, and candied nuts, to name a few. Modernizing the most popular recipes proved especially gratifying, as these simple favorites take so well to the twenty-first-century bakers infatuation with ingredients like intensely flavored spices, fresh herbs, nut milks, and alternative flours.