Retro Recipe Challenge Blog: RRC 6: Food of Love Round-Up

It's Valentine's Day and, beloved retro fans, I would like to cordially invite you to an old school Food-of-Love spread.

To start the day, Emily of Appetitive Behavior baked up Cinnamon-Nut Rolls from The Illustrated Good Housekeeping Encyclopedic Cookbook, 1965, Vol.1., which advises that "everyone (particularly men) likes something good and simple." (No lace teddies for Good Housekeeping's women, just a solid white Cross Your Heart bra and matching briefs, thank you very much.)
Oh, were we talking about food?

Anne-Marie at A Readable Feast is tickled by what Victorians fed their children. "Children were allowed small glasses of wine at the dinner table. Alcohol was a traditional sleep aid for all ages back then. This posset was a classic drink that nannies would prepare for kids in their care who were having trouble falling asleep. They even had special posset pots to make them in, some of which are very collectible today."

Anne-Marie suggests using it today as an adult night cap, but it's Valentine's day and you've got to get the kids to sleep somehow.

But if you don't want to drug your children, perhaps you can share a family meal with them. Freya at Writing at the Kitchen Table cooked up a Retro Meatloaf .

"Sure, it may seem about as romantic as Boston Baked Beans," Freya writes, "but Paul [her honey] loves Meatloaf and what more romantic way to celebrate love than to cook your loved one food that they love?This is the ideal retro food photo. Patry wrapped meat, accented with a boiled egg and a ketchup heart!

If you do decide to serve the kiddies liquored posset (and, honestly, that's the best way to go) you and your beloved can enjoy Haalo's aphrodisiac, Oysters Kilpatrick, all by yourselves.

Haalo, of Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once, was worried that serving Oysters Kilpatrick, instead of "au naturel [...] wouldn't be met with feelings of love, more like a flood of tears over my act of desecration." But all ended well in the end: "keeping the oysters under the grill for less then a minute meant they didn't go rubbery and in fact the sauce and bacon worked well to heighten the sweetness in the oyster."

Now that dinner is out of the way, it's time for sweets.

Kathy Maister's Start Cooking whipped up a classic chocolate fudge. Chocolate is definately associated with Valentine's day but, as Kathy points out, we "don’t need a holiday to think about chocolate!"

Elle at Feeding My Enthusiasms got her food processor going for these scrumptious Chocolate Shortbread Hearts. The recipe comes from the 1980 edition of Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Chocolate Desserts.

Brilynn from Jumbo Empanadas has her Valentine salivating with her grandmother's recipe for Self-saucing Pudding Cake (served with Brilynn's own Strawberry Ice Cream).

If you're not in the mood for chocolate sweets, there's still plenty of treats to choose from.

Breadchick from The Sour Dough took a break from kneading to bake up this Old Fashioned Coconut Cake from the McCall’s Cookbook Collection called Cook Your Way Into His Heart with Our Man-Tested Menus.

Here's the book's opening paragraph: If it’s true that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, then all a girl needs to achieve that end is a working kitchen and our man-tested menus. [...]We can almost guarantee that you can cook your way into his heart - and live happily ever afterward.”

Holly at Craving Cleaveland baked up a One-Egg Cake from the 1910 cookbook (get this) Cupid at Home in the Kitchen. She gets an extra rose for attempting a recipe consisting on one sentence.

Margaret at Kitchen Delights bested Betty Crocker AND Duncan Hines with her gorgeous St. Valentine's Day Pavlova.

Finally, Jerry Russell at Cooking by the Seat of my Pants set a romantic scene with Tipsy Pudding. It comes from Fannie Farmer's The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, published in 1918, suggesting that Fannie was all about getting men drunk.