I wrote about popcorn previously, but I was looking through some old issues of Good Housekeeping magazine and saw a few popcorn recipes that I thought I’d pass on.

The recipes are from 1913, and from reading the introduction to the recipes it’s apparent that new ideas about nutrition are becoming popular.  This is just before they discover vitamins but after they’ve realized food can be divided into proteins, carbohydrates, and fats.

As the article says, “We have lately begun to recognize important food values in things which used to be regarded strictly as knickknacks.  Witness the recipes which require dates, figs, bananas, nuts, etc., as a foundation.”  The author goes on to say that “Perhaps the newest recruit to the ranks is pop-corn.”

And there are lots of popcorn (or pop-corn, as they apparently used to write back then) recipes.  It starts with popcorn cereal for breakfast, which could be served “with cream and sugar, fruit juices or plain fruit.”

A “Dressing for Fowl” required the cook to soak equal parts stale bread and popped corn in water, then squeeze the resulting mass dry and add eggs, salt, pepper, onions and celery.  All of that was cooked in a frying pan (“stirring and turning often”) over low heat for 20 minutes, and then stuffed into a bird.  I can’t imagine what that stuffing must have been like.

There are two recipes in particular that are odd, and while I assume they are variations on existing recipes, I’ve never seen modern recipes like these.

The first is for “Corn-nut Loaf,” which, instead of being a bread recipe, is closer to being a variation on a meatloaf recipe.  It started by having the cook mix together one cup each of ground popcorn, soft stale bread crumbs, and broken nut meats, then adding “salt and pepper to taste and a teaspoonful of sage.  Bind together with two beaten eggs and enough cold water to hold the mixture together.”  Make that into a loaf and bake 45 minutes in a greased pan, “in a hot oven…Serve with a brown or tomato sauce.”  Sadly, I’m allergic to flour and eggs, or else I’d try to make it.

And the other strange recipe is for popcorn soup.  The complete instructions are:

Scald one quart of milk in a double boiler with one can of corn [no, it doesn’t say what size corn, and I assume it’s sweet corn].  Press through a sieve and add salt, pepper and a tablespoonful of butter.  Thicken with cracker crumbs and a handful of pop-corn.  When serving put one tablespoonful of whipped cream on each plate of soup with a few kernels of the pop-corn.

If anyone is brave enough to try these recipes, let me know.

All of the quotes above come from “Meals from the Corn-Popper,” by May Belle Brooks, page 119 in the January, 1913, edition of Good Housekeeping.