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It was quarter past one when we came in and took off our wraps and we had to leave the house by quarter past two in order to secure our seats for a lecture. On a wild impulse I had asked three friends to come out and be good sports with me in getting a bite to eat. Veal stew and dumplings I had planned for myself, with just a pound of stewing veal in the refrigerator. New Bermuda potatoes were on hand, however, and we hastily washed and brushed these while the meat was turned into the hot pressure cooker to brown in a bit of vegetable oil and butter. The meat browned, the potatoes were turned in and High-Pressure Dinners salted with the meat on the rack, two cups of hot water added, and the cover was clamped on. In five minutes the pressure gauge ran up to twenty pounds, where by turning down the gas flame, it was held for ten minutes.
A can of tomatoes was opened, sugared, and put on to heat. Four level tablespoonfuls of coffee were put into the percolator and two cups of hot water added and set over the simmerer of the gas range to percolate. The celery was washed and cut and the butter put on the butter dishes. The mushroom caps were washed and peeled and the bread cut. The ten minutes up, the pressure cooker was taken to the window sill and exhausted to the outer air. The meat and potatoes were removed, and three tablespoonfuls of browned flour and the mushroom caps were added to the stock in the kettle to make the brown gravy.
The salad had to be stretched as much as the meat, so each salad plate drew for its share two heart leaves of lettuce with some shredded outer leaves. Two tablespoonfuls of grated carrot were placed on each serving of lettuce; a French dressing was quickly made in the glass-stoppered salad bottle and poured over the carrot and lettuce.
In just forty minutes from the time we entered the door we sat down to the following dinner : Browned Veal with Mushroom Sauce Steamed Potatoes Stewed Tomatoes Celery Ripe Olives Bread and Butter Complexion Salad with Crackers Fruit Coffee BOSTON BAKED BEANS IN A KITCHENETTE?
A narrative rather than a numbered recipe, but the working method is all there: one pound of stewing veal, two cups of water, ten minutes under pressure, and a gravy built from the pot liquor. A few of the details belong to a 1920s gas range and an early gauge cooker.
- Twenty pounds is not a modern settingPeriod gauge cookers were often run at 15 to 20 lb; the standard household figure today is 15 psi, and many electric models top out near 11-12 psi. At those lower pressures the ten minutes given here may not be enough for cubed veal and potatoes on the rack together.
- Do not exhaust it out the windowThe writer carries the pressurised, hot cooker to a window sill and vents it into the open air. Use the release valve on the appliance, at the stove, with the vent pointed away from you and from cabinets.
- Browned flourFlour toasted dry in a pan or a slow oven until nut-coloured. It was kept in a jar as a pantry staple for quick brown gravies. It thickens noticeably less than raw flour, which may be why three tablespoons are used here against roughly two cups of stock.
- New Bermuda potatoesA thin-skinned early spring potato, sweet and waxy. Any small new potato works; they are washed and brushed rather than peeled. The text is unclear whether they joined the meat on the rack, though the menu calls them steamed rather than stewed.
- Mushroom caps, washed and peeledPeeling was standard when mushrooms came in with grit and tough cuticles. Cultivated button or cremini caps need only a wipe. They go into the hot stock at the end and need two or three minutes, no more.
- Complexion SaladA period name for grated raw carrot on lettuce; the name is usually explained by the belief that carrots improved the skin, though that is tradition rather than documented. The French dressing is shaken in a glass-stoppered bottle, which is simply an oil-and-vinegar dressing brought together by agitation.
- YieldOne pound of veal, four servings, and the writer is candid that both the meat and the salad had to be stretched. Read as a modern main course this feeds two comfortably or four with the tomatoes, celery, olives and bread doing real work.
This comes from the kitchenette era, when small city apartments were built with a two-burner gas plate and a cupboard instead of a kitchen, and cookbooks appeared specifically for women running a household out of a closet. The pressure cooker is the point of the piece: home models with clamp lids and a pressure gauge were sold on exactly this promise, a full dinner in the time it takes to set the table. The menu that closes the passage is a period dinner in miniature -- meat, two vegetables, relishes, salad, fruit and coffee -- and the writer's pride is not in the food but in the forty minutes. The taunting last line, "Boston baked beans in a kitchenette?", is a section heading for what follows, and a fair summary of what these books were arguing: that nothing in the traditional American repertoire was actually out of reach of a woman with one burner and a gauge.