My recipe study began with searching for Mom’s Polish fruit soup recipe in a stack of old recipe cards this week. Once during the wintertime, Mom would make fruit soup with dumplings and, for the sake of tradition, I thought I would make some this week if I could find the recipe. I never did find it, but what I uncovered turned out to be interesting to me.
As I thumbed through Mom’s cards, I noticed that she had several recipes calling for molasses. My dad’s favorite was always a molasses cake with cooked, maple frosting. Mom probably made it at least once a month. There were also several cookie recipes with molasses as a key ingredient.
But why was molasses that prominent in her collection of recipes? I tried to research the cost of molasses versus sugar through the decades and didn’t come up with much. Perhaps molasses was cheaper or easier to obtain than sugar during the 1940s and 1950s when most of these recipes were probably written. I have to tell you, though, that if you Google “molasses” often enough, you are led to a link about the Great Molasses Flood of 1919!
Secondly, I found more recent recipes from Wisconsin friends and neighbors. My best friend’s mother had given mine a recipe for rhubarb cake. (I know that some people don’t like rhubarb, but I love it!) Our next-door neighbor in Wisconsin, Mrs. Verbrick, gave Mom a recipe for a layered vegetable salad. Mrs. Verbrick passed away this week at the amazing age of 104!
Last of all, Mom was always practical. I guess she loved summer sausage as much as I do. With the recipe below, I think her intent was either to share summer sausage with everyone in our end of the county, or to freeze a whole lot of summer sausage and then eat some little by little. Did she really ever make it? I have no idea.
I have so many recipes from my mom’s and grandmother’s generation that look like these cards. So fun to look through them. And my “Momps” always made molasses cookies when she came to visit–topped with a white frosting. I LOVED them!
Hi Gena. Yes, the recipes from our ancestors are really fun to look through. Now that I have some molasses on hand, I’m motivated to bake Mom’s molasses cake. The frosting, though, is the best part. 🙂
I collect and save those old recipes, too! I have some from Pete’s grandmother and his mom. Beware though! When a recipe calls for a cup if flour or sugar – the cups used to measure were probably coffee cups kept in that bin/drawer!
I talked to my mom – your Aunt Therese about molasses. I wondered if rationing during the war years might have affected molasses. She wasn’t sure, but remembered her dad growing a special corn, perhaps sorghum, 1 year during the war. He had someone process it yielding part of a large milk can. They laddled out the “syrup” for baking and on pancakes.
She also remembers being responsible for ordering her family’s butter and cheese with tokens they probably got on a black market.
Wow! How interesting! Tom and I discussed how it might have been possible that molasses was made nearby. I also thought about the war rationing coupons. One other item – I came across a recipe entitled “Sugar-saving Frosting.” Sugar just might have been hard to get.
When I toured the Holocaust museum in DC years ago, Mom talked about sugar rationing during the war.
I think I do recall Mom mentioning that too.
I always print your blogs and mail them to my mom. As soon as she gets them she reads them and calls me. Thank you for bringing her joy! I keep telling her she should call you to tell you!!!
When she got this story (which included our replies) in the mail, she had to correct me! Correction and additional info from my Mom: Tokens were given according to family size. The butter and cheese needed gov’t tokens, but she’s not sure what else tokens were used for. Sugar was limited, but extra sugar was probably available on the black market!
I don’t think I had known about tokens, but it would seem to make sense. Larger families would need more. Seeing my mom’s recipes, I can see the attempt to limit sugar. There are so many times when I wish my parents were still here so I could ask them questions. I’m so happy your mom is enjoying the blog. That warms my heart!