welcome friends welcome back to the
kitchen welcome back to sunday morning
in the old cookbook show today we're not
going to do a recipe from a cookbook
we're going to reach back
to a newspaper from 1935
and that's the saskatoon star phoenix
now
30
plus years ago
julie and i
dropped out of university for a year and
went west and worked at a ski resort um
called nakiska in the canadian rockies
we met this guy there and we've been
friends with him ever since
he
lives in saskatoon and he contacted me
recently and said that he had he had
started up a community newspaper
for the riversdale king george
neighborhood of saskatoon and riversdale
is one of the oldest neighborhoods of
saskatoon it's um
it's probably one of the founding
communities there were three founding
communities that amalgamated to make up
saskatoon
and because he's running this newspaper
he asked me if i could find a recipe
from the depression
leading up to the holidays that was from
saskatoon or would have been made in
saskatoon so i took a look back through
the saskatoon newspaper at that time
which was called the star phoenix and i
found one from friday december 20th 1935
and it's called christmas recipe fits
the bill perfectly so it starts off by
saying candy fruit cake is a bit rich
but good it's made with
and it goes on to tell you the
ingredients and you're supposed to put
the ingredients through a food chopper
so
this is the only food chopper that i own
so let's put the ingredients in
it is
chopped dates
it calls for shredded citron
and
candied orange lemon peels so i've got
this candied fruit peel i'm going to put
that in
brazil nuts um i haven't had a recipe
with brazil nuts in a long time i
haven't had a brazil nut in ages so
that's going to be kind of interesting
and i'm supposed to put in some pecans
so in the go
and we'll pulse this
together
so this is 1935 we're in the middle of
the great depression
making
some things hard to get
both financially and just from a
distribution standpoint
but it's also christmas and so the idea
that someone was using brazil nuts that
came from far away pecans that came from
far away dates that came from far away
it doesn't seem all that odd to me
you want to push the boat out it's a
celebration it's christmas time
so this
is a bit of an extravagant recipe but it
is for celebration
and i think it also makes really good
use of these ingredients
in that
there's not a lot of each thing and you
could probably pull this together on
your limited budget next in
is one tablespoon of orange juice
that is a very small amount of orange
juice and that sort of speaks to the
depression era nature of this recipe
um
you know you could probably get together
with your neighbors and buy an orange
and squeeze out a little bit of juice
for everybody but oranges were also
something that showed up in the north
around christmas time
that a lot of people would give as gifts
in that celebration so i'm supposed to
mix the orange juice in
now in this pot of simmering water i
have
some chocolate that i've been melting
and we're supposed to mix that into the
fruit and nuts so
get that all in there
okay now the recipe calls for
dipping chocolate
dipping chocolate is also known as
cuveture
and
it is a chocolate that has a higher
ratio of cocoa butter to cocoa solids
making it
something that will melt more smoothly
something that will set up with a more
of a shine or sheen
and of course it's more expensive so
if you don't want to go through the
trouble of getting of getting dipping
chocolate or cuveture i'm sure that any
chocolate would work and in this time
period
people would
assess their budget
and decide which chocolate they were
going to use and which chocolate they
could afford
and to that end i just went to the
grocery store and bought a chocolate bar
the chocolate bar that i really like so
that's mixed together completely we'll
set that aside here i have a pan that is
buttered and we're supposed to put this
in
form it and let it cool
now true to form for 1930s recipe it
just says pack into a buttered pan
doesn't say what size pan
i chose a 9x9 i kind of thought the 9x9
was going to be too big
i was correct it is too big so i'm going
to squish it
over
to just use half the pan
i am imagining at this point that they
meant
loaf pan probably loaf pan
for baking bread
it would be in every kitchen so there we
go
packed off to one side i'm going to let
it cool
until it firms up and then we'll cut it
now
cut these into chocolate bite size
pieces hey friends
and
roll them in a little ice cream we roll
them a little icing sugar i thought
maybe you'd just dust it on like you
know
roll them it says well
roll
as well as you can yeah they're cubes
sorry they're not square they're cubes
so this is uh this is inspired by mr
sorkowski in saskatchewan hey hey how
you doing so uh so kevin runs a
newspaper out there called the
riversdale
king george quarterly and that's
riversdale saskatoon so i reached back
to the saskatoon star phoenix from 1935
uh december 20th just before christmas
ah so this would be a festive it's
called christmas recipe
oh
so
that's appropriately so we're in the
middle of the great depression um and
we're in saskatoon in the middle of the
great depression
so christmas is going to be good
yeah
i mean that's really good but okay so
there's a
fruity kind of flavor in there so
there's citron
there's peel candied peel
[Music]
brazil nuts
it's like a mellow but it's like like a
mellow dough fruit cake it is a mellowed
out fruitcake it doesn't taste like a
fruitcake it's like if a fruitcake ran
into a cherries
chocolate orange yes i think that's a
that's a fair assessment
with some icing sugar on top just so you
know make it messy and this would be
fabulous
on one of those dessert trays or
at christmas time this is fantastic and
it's one of those recipes that
shows people
in the great depression
in tough times
still wanted to celebrate
and that this
some of these ingredients would have
been
expensive relatively expensive
and in this time period in that
newspaper
a lot of the recipes had
the actual price for each ingredient
that you were going to use so if you
were going to use a quarter pound of
butter it would it told you that a
quarter pound of butter was 10 cents
and so that your entire cake what what
your entire cake added up to
so so that price consciousness was
was there in this community in this time
period and you could in theory with this
kind of a
dessert adjust your recipe knowing what
you could afford you could afford more
raisins in i'm going to put less orange
in yes there was only a tablespoon of
orange juice so you were probably
sharing that orange with your neighbors
i would imagine maybe i mean oranges
were still special when i was a kid yeah
so
so i think this is a winner um
this is one of those things that maybe
you still make it
i'm sure that i mean there's so many
holiday recipes that are just stuff in
chocolate i would be fascinated though
if someone from saskatoon still makes
this and they think that their
grandmother got it from that or from
that or their grandfather whoever did
the cooking
got it from that newspaper newspaper
that'd be amazing so let us know let
kevin know let the riversdale king
george quarterly know
thanks for stopping by and see you again
soon
you