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 out of this
cookbook called as you like it old
philadelphia recipes this was sent in by
a viewer thank you very much for sending
it to us
this is compiled by the four counties
garden club of philadelphia in 1934
and so it is a
our community cookbook it is a community
cookbook and most of the recipes though
in this front section are from the same
half dozen people
who i imagine are members of the four
counties garden club of philadelphia
and the recipes
um the recipes are
very indicative of sort of that uh
in 1934 terms pre-world war ii
terms
sort of that middle
upper middle class
that slice of of america
that
wasn't really affected all that much
by the great depression certainly they
cut back a little bit
but they still drove an economy that was
doing pretty well for a lot of people
um and these people for this book
definitely would have been in that group
they were doing okay they may have cut
back a little bit and you can see in
some of the recipes where they've cut
back
some of the ingredients you also have to
when you look at recipe books like this
from this time period also realize that
things that we think of as expensive
today
expensive hard to get
were more common and less expensive in
this time period
but you get to the back of this book and
there's a whole separate
section and this section i find very
interesting it is called receipts from
the collection of mr john wagner 1934
and so these i imagine are his from his
personal recipe collection
either his personal recipe collection or
that of his of his wife
and
there are a number of recipes in here
from someone named mrs hunt the rabbit
and earlier in this section it's hand
written
that this is someone's cook and i don't
know if that's mr wagner's cook or mrs
wagner's cook i'm i'm not sure
a lot of dead ends in my research on
that one nothing conclusive
and so for this sunday morning old
cookbook show we're going to do
something called the hellfire stew now
this is one of those recipes
that
i look at the list of ingredients and i
look at the way that the method is
written out
then i look at the way recipes are
supposed to be written in the order of
ingredients
recipes good recipes in today's thought
process of writing a recipe the
ingredients are listed in the order that
they're used
so if i look at this recipe well written
recipes it would seem
in the order that they're used and then
i look at the method there's no browning
in the method
there's no use of oil to brown the meat
there's no softening of the onions or
the green pepper
this is
dump it all in the pot and simmer it
or at least the way it's written is dump
it all in the pot and simmer it and i
have to believe that that is
true because if if the meat was browned
and then the onions were browned or
sweated out
the can of tomatoes wouldn't be the
second thing on the list
so
let's dump it all in and see what
happens in the order of the recipe
i'm using beef but it says you could use
beef or lamb
can of tomatoes
diced onion
diced potato
chopped parsley
chopped green pepper
now i think we've come to the part of
the recipe that is the hellfire part
we have
a teaspoon of whole black peppercorns
not crushed not ground one teaspoon of
whole black peppercorns brings us to the
hellfire portion
um
i don't know i don't know that's going
to bring that much heat i had when i saw
the title to this recipe i had expected
that there would be some you know some
hot peppers and some chilies and you
know things like that but no it's it's
just 12
a teaspoon of peppercorns which is
somewhere depending on how heaped you
heap your teaspoon
between a dozen and a dozen and a half
peppercorns
really not all that much heat i don't
imagine
next in
is thyme and sweet basil
then we have
peas whole peas those go in
and then
some stock and so i have a mix of
chicken
and beef stock here
now this is this is one of those recipes
where
uh use a really good stock
because a lot of your flavor is going to
come from that liquid
i know the browning step is very
important to a lot of people
it's pretty important to me i'm i'm one
of those people that i like to i like to
brown
the beef and the onions and and really
build the fond in the bottom of the of
the pot
when you go back through time when you
go back through history
there is a
there is a school of cooking thought
where you don't brown anything it all
just goes into the pot and it gets
cooked together and the flavor builds
over a long slow cook
sort of akin to if you know
essentially this is a stew
it's probably going to be more soup-like
i think
but you're braising that beef so you
could put this in the oven for four or
five hours
tight lid
check it every once in a while add a
little bit more stock as it's needed
because it still will evaporate even
with a tight lid and you're essentially
braising that beef to get a to get a
stew
and in the case of a lot of braises
you're not doing any browning before you
put it in you just stick it in the oven
so i don't know how this is going to
turn out
it says that you could add some salt and
ground black pepper if you want
and that this pot will serve eight
people
maybe so i'm gonna put this on to a
simmer we're gonna let this simmer and
we'll come back and give it a taste and
see what happens and i may just crack
that lid just a touch
now the last step it says is to
add two tablespoons of flour to thicken
just before serving
i've mixed the flour in with some water
to make a slurry so that it doesn't
clump when you mix it in
and
okay i'll just stir this in and i will
let this cook for 10 or 15 minutes to
thicken up
hey glenn hey friends
that is like boiling hot i just want to
say a little observation that might be a
little hot to taste right now well it is
called hellfire stew
yeah but
does that mean there's lots of spicy
things in it
that's usually how those names go right
you'd think
no okay then
yeah i i
i don't know what makes it hellfire stew
they could say a naughty word in the
yeah so they couldn't say 1934 they
could say a nutty word that's it that's
gotta be it that's the only reason
i just do it's good too it's got lots of
great flavors
it's got
more vegetables than usual which is
great for me
it's pretty plain
there's no hellfire there's no heat
other than
you know
it's physically physically
so that you know the teaspoon of whole
peppercorns does not add any heat
maybe it you know it doesn't peppery
maybe in 1930 it would have been i would
say my mother would say it's probably
hot
yes because she too much pepper and it's
too hot for her but there's no there's
not too much pepper in this at all no
it's quite i actually like it and it
could it could use an extra layer of
flavors i i find it a little bit one
note
logo
um so what
you throw in some some uh
vegemite or yeah
definitely the um
the beef oh although i tell you when you
get a peppercorn hole
you get a little bit of a bite maybe
that's it um
and
i would brown the beef
it doesn't tell you to brown the beef it
it's a recipe that's written in a way
that lets me say for sure that you
weren't supposed to brown the beef
but i would brown the beef just add that
extra layer of flavor and that might be
the layer that i'm expecting
that i'm not getting there you go but i
will be eating this for lunch for the
next week and i think i will enjoy it
fair enough thanks for stopping by see
you again soon
you