Frank Campeau
STUFFED GREEN PEPPERS
Boil green peppers, then take off skin and split in half, removing the inside, using the following for stuffing: green peppers, ham, mushrooms, onions and tomatoes, all chopped fine. Mix with bread crumbs to thicken. Put in ice box to cool, then stuff peppers with it and bake in a quick oven. Serve with a brown sauce adding a jigger of sherry.
I am fond of mixtures like this; among them, spaghetti. 仁 Very sincerely, Bauplampran Bangs ΑΝΤΟΙΝETTE WALKER
BARBECUED LAMB
1 large bottle of tomato catsup 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce 3 tablespoons sugar Have four-pound leg of lamb in pan. Mix sauce.
Put half over lamb, place in hot oven. When nicely browned, use remainder of sauce. Do not baste. If wanted rare cook about one hour. Add a little flour to the sauce in the pan, mix and serve for gravy.
Keep plenty of water in the pan to keep from burning.
I think cooking is lots of fun.
Sincerely yours, Antoinette Macker 2 cans shrimps 1 pint cream
SHRIMP JOY
1 cup cooked rice 1½ can tomatoes 1 tablespoon chopped onion Butter half the size of an egg Cook onion in butter, add tomatoes and cooked rice; when hot add shrimps cut in thirds; add cream, season with salt and pepper and serve hot on crackers. Will serve ten persons.
Right merrily yours,
Three unrelated dishes from the actors' contributions, run together by the scanner. All three are workable; the vagueness is in the measurements, not the method.
- Quick ovenIn books of this period a "quick oven" is usually taken as roughly 400-450F. The recipe does not say the stuffing is cooked before chilling, only that it is chopped and mixed with crumbs, so no firm timing can be read off the page; the peppers need long enough to brown the crumbs and heat the filling through.
- Peeling the peppersBoiling to loosen the skin works, but blistering them under a broiler or over a flame peels more cleanly and does not waterlog the flesh. Either way, drain them well before filling or the stuffing goes sodden.
- Why the ice boxChilling the filling is the hinge of the pepper recipe. A cold, firm mixture holds its shape when spooned into a soft blanched pepper half and will not slump in the oven; a warm one will.
- JiggerA jigger is 1½ fluid ounces, about 3 tablespoons. Add it to the brown sauce off the boil, at the end, so the sherry does not cook out entirely.
- Butter half the size of an eggRoughly 2 tablespoons, or 1 ounce. Nineteenth-century cookbooks commonly measured butter by egg-size.
- Canned shrimp and tomatoesCan sizes varied in this period, so the totals cannot be pinned down; two tins of shrimp is perhaps 9-10 ounces drained, and 1½ cans of tomatoes something over a pint. Rinse canned shrimp to shed the tinny brine, and add them at the very end, since they are already cooked and toughen quickly.
- The lamb timingAn hour in a hot oven for a four-pound leg gives rare to medium-rare meat; a thermometer at 130-135F in the thickest part is more reliable than the clock, as leg shape varies widely. The sugary catsup coating will darken fast, so watch it.
- Water in the panThe instruction not to baste is deliberate: the sauce is meant to set into a glaze. Keeping shallow water in the pan stops the sugar from scorching into the drippings you later thicken with flour.
- YieldShrimp Joy is the only one of the three given a yield: ten persons, served on crackers, which suggests a savoury rather than a main course. Neither the stuffed peppers nor the lamb carries a yield.
Celebrity charity cookbooks of this kind appear to have been assembled by soliciting recipes from performers, which is why they arrive with sign-offs and chatty asides such as Campeau's note that he is "fond of mixtures like this; among them, spaghetti." Frank Campeau was a stage and silent-film character actor who often played Western heavies, including opposite Douglas Fairbanks. The dishes suggest an American kitchen of the 1920s-30s: bottled catsup and Worcestershire doing the work of a barbecue sauce, canned shrimp, and cream-and-cracker suppers of the kind served after the theatre. The scanning here has mangled the signatures, and the names do not reliably line up with the recipes above them.