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Vegetable Cakes for Children
The importance of vegetables in the diet of children is constantly being brought to the attention of mothers. Some of us, however, have great difficulty in getting our children to eat vegetables. My little girl did not like them, and I was unable to persuade her to eat them until it occurred to me to try serving them like meat-balls. Prepare three or four cooked vegetables, cutting them into small pieces or putting them through the foodchopper. Add bread-crums and a beaten egg. Then shape these into little cakes, dust them with flour and brown them in the oven or fry them in a little fat. The child enjoys vegetables prepared in this way. Mrs. E. C. B., Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
A proportionless recipe of the kind household magazines printed by the hundred: the method is sound, but the binding ratio and the oven are left to the cook. Both are worth pinning down before you start.
- The hinge: dry the vegetablesCooked vegetables carry a great deal of water, and wet mixture will not hold a cake shape. Drain well and, for anything boiled, spread it on a towel or return it to a dry pan over heat for a minute to steam off moisture before chopping.
- Working proportionsFor roughly 2 cups of chopped cooked vegetables, allow 1 beaten egg and about 1/2 to 3/4 cup fresh breadcrumbs. Add crumbs gradually until the mass just holds together when squeezed; too many and the cakes taste of bread.
- Choose the vegetables for starchInclude at least one starchy vegetable — potato, sweet potato, winter squash, parsnip, peas — to act as a second binder. A mix of only watery vegetables (spinach, summer squash, cabbage) will need considerably more crumb.
- "Bread-crums"The spelling is the book's. The original does not say which kind of crumb; soft fresh crumbs from a day-old loaf work well here, while dry crumbs absorb more liquid, so if you use those, start with half the quantity.
- "Brown them in the oven"No temperature is given. 400F on a greased or parchment-lined sheet, turning once and watching for colour, gives browning without drying the cakes out. Brush or spray the tops with oil first, since there is no fat in the mixture to help them brown.
- FryingA shallow film of fat in a heavy skillet over medium heat, 3 to 4 minutes a side. Chill the shaped cakes 20 minutes first — they are much less likely to break when turned.
- SeasoningThe original says nothing about salt. Vegetables and egg alone taste flat; season the mixture, and taste a small pinched-off piece fried in advance if you are unsure.
- YieldAbout 8 cakes of two to three inches from the quantities above. They reheat in a 350F oven and freeze well raw, shaped and separated on a tray.
This is a reader's contribution — it is signed with initials and a town — and it sits in the early twentieth-century campaign to get more vegetables into American children, the period when ideas about vitamins and "protective foods" were reaching mothers through magazines. Household departments of this kind commonly paid small sums for tips signed with initials and a town. The trick itself is older than the anxiety behind it: bound vegetable cakes and croquettes were standard economy cookery, a way of using up cooked leftovers, and the food chopper the writer mentions was a widely promoted kitchen purchase in the 1900s and 1910s for precisely this sort of work. What is modern here is the framing — not thrift, but persuading a reluctant child, with the vegetables disguised in the shape of meat.