welcome friends welcome back to the
kitchen welcome back to sunday morning
and the old cookbook show today we're
going to do
a recipe of this cookbook this was sent
in
by a viewer thank you very much for
sending it to me
it is called the larkin housewives
cookbook
now when i first arrived i looked at it
and said oh that's great it's another
community cookbook from some place
called
larkin i filed it away
and thought i'm going to take a look at
that in a little while and i'll pull out
a recipe
and do it and so when i finally did pull
the book out and look inside
the first recipe that i looked at called
for larkin baking powder
and i thought oh larkin is a company
that manufactures
baking powder it's another it's an
industry cookbook
and as i looked at that recipe i also
realized that it is a community cookbook
in that
the larkin patrons have sent in their
favorite recipes
which is not uncommon for this time
period or even for today
and then as i read through some of the
other recipes i realized
that they called for larkin peanut
butter and you put it through a larkin
meat chopper and you put it in a larkin
pan and you put it in a larkin pot a
larkin casserole dish
and i thought who's larkin so i went
down a rabbit hole and i looked it up
um beginning it says published by the
larkin company established 1875
pure food specialists buffalo new york
and buffalo is a city that's right
behind me here just across the lake
not too far away so did a little bit of
research and came to realize that the
larkin company was an
absolutely massive massive company
in this time period um
dedicated to mail order they sent out
catalogs
they sort of went through periods where
they had sales people who sold
they had what they called the larkin
secretaries who ran
parties just like a tupperware party or
say like avon sales people
but mostly direct to consumer direct
from the factory
via mail order from their catalogs and
they either
made the products in house or they
had them white label they had other
manufacturers make them
put the larkin name on them and then
they just shipped them from there from
their warehouses
they were like amazon in the early 1900s
if amazon made all of the products on
the website
and they were into everything they were
into clothing they were into furniture
they were into
kitchenware they were into food
absolutely amazing array of
products and they also had a real hand
in the cultural
progress of buffalo as a city
they had frank lloyd wright come in and
design and build
their office tower and then he stuck
around and built houses
for a bunch of the executives of larkin
in and around buffalo
giant company of course it didn't last
during the great depression they fell
into a decline
depending on which history you read they
sold the brand name to another company
who tried to carry on into the 60s
and that was the end of it so today
we're going to do
a recipe called michigan hash and it was
sent in
by mrs rowe from fort
smith arkansas and it
seems like a recipe that is very similar
to a lot of
other recipes from this time period so
first we start off with
one pound of hamburg steak and i'm
supposed to layer the hamburg steak in
the bottom of
a baking dish now hamburg steak is
i realize one of those english isms that
doesn't mean the same to everybody
and hasn't meant the same through time
i've realized through the comment
section that
globally um depending on where you live
hamburger
or hamburg only means one thing and that
is the sandwich
that is the patty of beef between two
buns with you know
whatever condiments you want on it but
down through time
hamburg can mean minced meat
like this or chopped beef like this
it can also mean the patty on its own
or it could mean the sandwich it has all
of those multiple meanings so a few
weeks ago i did
hamburger helper and that threw a lot of
people they were like
in the comment section where's the
hamburgers i don't understand what
you're talking about why is that called
hamburger helper
one of the vagaries of the english
language
okay i'll just wash my hands again now
i'm supposed to season each layer
with larkin salt black pepper
and celery salt and though it doesn't
explicitly say
larkin black pepper or larkin celery
salt
further investigation through the book
reveals that they made
each of these products as well so you
would be expected to use
each of their products and i'm going to
go easy on the celery salt because it
can be a little bit overpowering
there we go next in is
one cup of cooked larkin rice so
put a layer of this on
if this seems familiar it's very close
to other things that we've done in the
past or
other dishes from this time period that
go by
different names so in goes the rice
now i didn't cook the hamburg it didn't
explicitly say to cook the hamburg
it only mentioned that the rice and the
macaroni
are cooked so and we'll season this
layer with some pepper
and a little bit of celery salt
and a little bit of salt i'm going to go
easy on the salt on this layer though
because i don't think i need quite as
much
next ingredient it calls for 2 cups
cooked
larkin macaroni so i've got this elbow
macaroni
and i don't know if that's correct
because on the next page over there's a
recipe for
selma gundy and it calls for
larkin shortcut macaroni so did they
make two kinds of macaroni did they make
the long version that you had to break
up and did they make a short version
who knows so i'm going to put that in
and the recipe
tells us that this can be either hot or
cold so you could be working with
leftovers here
and i think this is a great way to use
up leftovers if you have leftover rice
or leftover macaroni though i don't know
why you would have leftover macaroni
i can see leftover rice and we'll season
that with some
larkin black pepper
a little bit more celery salt
and some salt now i'm supposed to pour
some strained tomatoes over the top
strangely it doesn't say larkin tomatoes
i can't imagine they didn't make a type
of tomato
so i've got some crushed tomato here
and i'm supposed to pour these over top
until quite
moist so i imagine that's
the entire can and now i sprinkle
cracker crumbs over top and then stick
it in the oven
and bake it for 45 minutes
fork or spoon that's a lot of
carbohydrates spoon let's say spoon
that's it there's there's looks like
there's
rice and pasta and crackers rice pasta
crackers
yes light on the spicing
well that's you know par for the course
yeah this time period yeah
and then it might it has all also has
also has all the criteria to me comfort
food
clearly i can tell by your tone i
haven't even had any yeah
so it's kind of this weird mix of a
casserole version of
what some people would call american
goulash or
chili mac or american chop suey
a lot of the same ingredients just put
it in a different way and spice
differently
and i find all of those things really
comforting
and the best thing about something like
this is that you can put whatever spice
makes you happy
i feel like you could put jerk spice in
this and it'd be pretty good jerk spicy
really good in this yeah so mix it up
you don't have to put in
celery salt if you don't like celery
salt and i'm not a big fan of celery
salt
um you know switch it up change it but
for the basics of a really easy
inexpensive weekday meal or even
something to make for
heating up for lunches later this is
great
and you're going to see lots more from
the larkin housewives cookbook
because the larkin company who knew like
that it was a surprise to everyone
surprise except of course perhaps the
larkins yes um
and there probably still are larkins in
buffalo just across the lake behind us
there you go thanks for stopping by see
you again soon
you