Reliable Recipes and Helpful Hints

“Not made by the Trust.” Calumet's 1918 recipe book, with its medals, its court testimony, and a good deal to prove.

Curious Facts

Everything below is in the book — each one links straight to the page it comes from.

  1. "Baking Powder is not a food, but it is a preparer of food". The book opens its case with a definition — and a correction: people misled by advertising "have been led to believe that they eat Baking Powder, but this is not the case."
  2. The star witness is a Kentucky champion. Mrs. W. E. Farley — "winner of twenty blue ribbon first prizes for cakes and pastries at the great Kentucky State Fair" — testifies she used "the high-priced Trust Brand" for 26 years before seeing the light. Read it in the book →
  3. The price page names the enemy. "Calumet is not made by a trust and not sold at trust prices" — about half the price of the high-priced brands, and the cover's boast (NOT MADE BY THE TRUST) done in arithmetic. Read it in the book →
  4. The medals are printed like diplomas. Highest Award, World's Pure Food Exposition, Chicago; Grand Prize and Gold Medal, Paris Exposition 1912 — the book reproduces its certificates as full pages.
  5. It plans your whole dinner in combinations. The "Ideal Combinations" pages pair meats with vegetables like a menu wheel: chicken with mushrooms, turkey with fresh lima beans, goose with squash and onions. Read it in the book →
  6. It reviews the fireless cooker — a rival's appliance. "The use of the fireless cooker is spreading rapidly on account of its saving in fuel, time, work and worry" — a baking powder company keeping up with the kitchen news of 1918. Read it in the book →
  7. Bacon muffins, from the wartime kitchen. Six tablespoons of melted lard, two tablespoons of diced crisp bacon, and cold water instead of milk — a 1918 recipe economizing in every line. Read it in the book →
  8. The fritter physics are explained. Apple fritters fried in smoking hot lard: "Each fritter will at first sink to the b[ottom]" — then rise as it cooks, which is how you know the fat is right. Read it in the book →
Rights & ReuseThe complete text of Reliable Recipes and Helpful Hints (1918) is in the public domain in the United States — like all works published before 1928 — and is free to read, download, quote, teach from, and reuse. This digital edition (its transcription, restored images, and site design) is © 2026 PhotoOpAI, and any editorial commentary we add is clearly marked as ours; the underlying public-domain text carries no such restriction.