Category: food history

More Wartime Cooking: Wheatless Fruit Tarts

wheatless fruit tart – wartime cooking

Mary Elizabeth was convinced she could develop an entire repertoire of wartime wheatless and sugarless recipes. Her 1918 Mary Elizabeth’s War Time Recipes testifies to the success of her endeavor — the cookbook is filled with dozens of delightful recipes that eschew wheat, sugar and meat. “I am gathering these recipes,” she writes, “that they may help some folks who have the same earnest desire as myself to aid the Food Administration in every way but lack the facilities and time to work out their own recipes.”

Here’s a summer recipe from Mary Elizabeth’s cookbook for a wheatless fruit tart. It uses barley flour as a substitute for wheat, which results in a wonderfully flaky crust. Containing all eight amino acids, barley flour also packs a powerful nutritional punch.

Wheatless Fruit Tarts

1 1/2 cups barley flour
1/2 cup corn flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup hard vegetable shortening
4 tablespoons ice-cold water

Sift the two flours and salt together; cut into it the shortening, using a knife, until it is in tiny bits. Then rub together lightly with the hands until all the ingredients are well blended. Now add the water, mixing as little as possible.

Mold into a ball. Place on a well-floured bread-board. Roll thin, using a little flour on the rolling pin. Cut with a large biscuit-cutter and place over bottoms of muffin tins. Bake in a hot oven until light brown. When cold, fill the shells with fruit filling.

Fruit Filling for Tarts

Use rhubarb, strawberries, cherries, raspberries or currants. Canned fruit may be used in winter, but as they are sweetened, reduce the sugar quantity by one half.

1 quart fruit (any of the above varieties)
1 cup maple sugar (crushed)
1/4 cup water
3 level tablespoons corn starch

Boil until the fruit is tender. Then add three level tablespoons of cornstarch, dissolved in a tablespoon of water. Boil slowly, stirring constantly, for able five minutes longer. When cold, fill the tart molds and serve.

 
Why Fast and Fermented Foods by Christine Baumgarthuber

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From Caernarvonshire: Thin Welsh Barley Cakes

A cottage on earth, and a castle in air,
And Diana Mereryd’s white apron shall wear,
And bake barley bread to a tender song
Of Love in a cottage, that always was young.

The old Welsh rhyme “Bara Haidd” (“Barley Bread”) celebrates the central role barley played in the lives of the Welsh peasantry, who valued it for its ability to withstand cold weather and rocky soil. In the mountainous region of Caernarvonshire, the peasantry lived almost exclusively on barley, buttermilk, oats, cheese and potatoes.

Violent storms, however, prevented the widespread cultivation of barley. Farmers would plant their crop only to have it decimated by the region’s merciless winds; half the country then remained as meadows and wastelands.

Life was difficult in mountainous Caernarvonshire. During the summer months, the peasantry herded their sheep and small cattle to wild and solitary uplands lined with walls of dry stone, which were used to mark the boundaries of a particular grazing area. The stone for these walls was carried by the peasants up the steep sides of the lofty mountains — a dangerous and tiresome business.

The region’s homes were also built of stone, with deep-set windows containing only a single pane. Moss plugged the thick walls of these simple cottages, which were sometimes drafty and cold. But their warm, roomy chimney corners offered a cozy retreat during winter nights when fires fed on peat moss blazed in the cottage fireplace.

Snowdon highest mountain in Wales UK Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales

The longevity of the inhabitants of these mountainous regions was attributed to their simple diets. Here is an 1867 recipe for barley cakes from a Welsh hermit (Meudwy) of ancient lineage who lived in a cell cut out of a rock opposite the Well of St. Gover. His diet, like that of the Caernarvonshire peasants, was austere but wholesome.

Thin Welsh Barley Cakes

Mix fine barley meal and milk together to the consistency of batter, and pour slowly on the bake-stone out of a jug until it has formed a circle the size of a small plate, then let it bake slowly. It ought to be very thin but soft, like a pancake or a pikelate; it is likewise eaten with cold butter.

 
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From the Colonial Hearth: Indian Pudding

The kitchen hearth was the center of colonial family life, providing a comfort and warmth not found in the rest of the house. Over the kitchen table loomed the hearth’s great stone chimney, festooned with hooks and trammels supporting black pots and kettles, and garlanded with strings of peppers, pumpkin and dried apples.

illustrated scene from a colonial dining room


The hearth fire, which in winter burned all day and night, was fed by tremendous logs that the family transported by sled. Sometimes these early hearths had seats built into them; the children of the house vied with one another for these rare spots of warmth from which they could gaze up and watch the stars of the night sky sparkling at the opening of the great chimney-throat.

colonial hearth
A colonial hearth

In New York, the hearths were modeled on the Dutch design. One observant traveler described the New York hearth as being “very droll-like” in that “they have no jambs nor lintell as we have, but a flat grate, and there projects over it a lum in the form of the cat-and-clay lum, and commonly a muslin or ruffled pawn around it.” In other regions, hearths were more austere–just a plain brick or stone fireplace over which hung a kettle or two.

The meals prepared in the colonial hearth were simple and could be left simmering or baking for hours at a time. The colonial housewife prepared stews of beans, salt pork and vegetables in round iron kettles. Bread was baked in a separate chamber, usually off to the side of the fireplace. Once the bricks were deemed hot enough, in went the bread or pudding to bake until finished.

Below is a recipe for Indian pudding, a favorite from the droll colonial hearth. Serve with cream or sweetened milk.

Indian Pudding

3 cups milk
1/2 cup molasses
1/3 cup yellow cornmeal
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon butter

In saucepan mix milk and molasses; stir in cornmeal, ginger, cinnamon, and salt. Cook and stir till thick, about 10 minutes. Stir in butter. Turn into a 1-quart casserole. Bake, uncovered, at 300 degrees about 45 minutes to one hour.

 
Why Fast and Fermented Foods by Christine Baumgarthuber

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