'Potluck Paradise' modernizes '50s fare and offers tips

Yesterday's recipes have a lot to offer today's cooks. That's what Debbie Miller and Rae Katherine Eighmey found as they immersed themselves in 1950s cookbooks to research and write "Potluck Paradise" (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 168 pages, $16.95), a finalist for the Minnesota Book Awards.

Many of the recipes in their book can cut meal costs, either by making food from scratch or using some readily available products.

"These recipes are as useful today as they ever were, "said Eighmey. "We all need to economize and know we're getting the most we can out of our food dollars."

The recipes, based on those in church and community cookbooks produced throughout the Midwest, reflect many regional similarities. Paging through the cookbook will be a walk down memory lane and into church basements for those who grew up in the '50s.

"There were an awful lot of recipes for dream bars and snickerdoodles [cinnamon-spiced cookies]," Miller said with a chuckle. It was her own first encounter with snickerdoodles during elementary school that set her off on a lifelong baking habit and led her to collect 2,000 church and community cookbooks, many of which she donated to the Minnesota History Center's library.

The duo consulted many of these and other books in their research.

Miller and Eighmey found that Swedish meatball recipes abounded, and not just in Lutheran cookbooks. They found the recipe in most church and community cookbooks, even the Presbyterians and the Madison, Wis., B'nai B'rith.

One quirk they discovered in their research: Jello-O salad preference colors seemed to change according to states, with North Dakotans favoring red, Iowans orange, and Minnesotans lemon or lime.

For the book, the authors modernized the recipes. The overall favorite was Bishop's Bread, an easy date-and-nut coffee cake.

The book is interspersed with useful tips, such as these:

• Country-style pork ribs or beef short ribs are meatier than standard BBQ ribs and better suited to slow cooking.

• Getting bars out of the pan is easy if you line it with aluminum foil. Grease the foil and pour the batter in. When the bars are done, lift the foil out, peel it off and cut the bars into neat pieces.

• To cut recipes in half that call for one egg, crack the egg in a measuring cup, beat to mix the white and yolk and measure out half. If the egg and yolk are to be used separately, beat each separately, measure and divide both in half. Save the remaining portions for scrambled eggs.

• Roll out pie crusts between sheets of waxed paper.

Anne Gillespie Lewis is a Minneapolis author.

Have recipes or thrifty tips to share? Send them to thethriftycook@gmail.com or by mail to Taste/ Thrifty, Star Tribune, 425 Portland Av. S., Minneapolis, MN 55488