Thoughts and Review of February's 1950s Tuna Bake Meal

All of the recipes came from Better Homes & Gardens New Cook Book, publish date 1953. To refresh your memory, here's the menu from the other night:

Tuna Bake -- Cheese Swirls

Green Beans in Crumbs

Deviled Beets

my plate

I had several thoughts about each recipe. Again, my entire family commented that everything was delicious. I was unsure if we'd all like everything. But as it turns out, this was another winner of a menu.

Tuna Bake -- Cheese Swirls (all of the full recipes are in this post)

Ingredients:

• chopped green pepper
• chopped yellow onion
• cooking fat (I used vegetable oil)
• salt
• flour
• can of condensed chicken with rice soup (I used homemade chicken stock, seasonings, and leftover cooked rice)
• milk
• canned tuna (I used 2 cans)
• lemon juice
• Cheese Swirls for topping

to give you an idea of what the cheese swirls were,
this is what the casserole looked like before baking

Cheese Swirls

Ingredients:

• flour
• baking powder
• salt
• shortening
• milk
• American cheese (I used cheddar)

The things I liked about this recipe:

1) This recipe called for basic pantry items, such as yellow onions, flour, canned soup (which I was easily able make a substitution), and canned tuna. I also happened to have a green pepper in the fridge needing using, as well as almost all of the rest of the ingredients.

2) Even with making my canned soup substitution, the filling part was still a quick recipe to throw together.

3) The recipe is very budget-friendly. The topping was very do-able and inexpensive. The recipe for Cheese Swirls called for 1/2 cup of shredded cheese. That's really not very much. Canned tuna is under $1 a can in my area still. That's a good price for animal protein.

4) Not only was it tasty and filling, but it seemed "lighter" to me than traditional tuna casserole. I am not a fan of lots of pasta to wade through in tuna-noodle casserole just to get some tuna.

5) This could easily be turned into an all-in-one meal by simply adding 1 1/2 to 2 cups of fresh, frozen or canned vegetables, such as frozen peas, canned green beans, or chopped spinach. This would be a very good use for fresh spinach that was on its last legs.

6) I was able to put together almost all of the casserole in advance and have it waiting in the fridge to bake just before dinner.

7) Made according to the recipe, this likely would serve 6 adults, or a family of 8 if some were children. We had enough for all four of us both for dinner and a smaller portion for the next day's lunch. I made 12 cheese biscuit pinwheels to go on top of the filling, giving 3 to my husband, 2 to myself, and my daughters took 1 each for dinner. That left 5 pinwheels and the filling beneath each to serve us all for lunch the next day.

8) This was easy to make and didn't dirty too many dishes. I really appreciate that now that I'm washing all dishes by hand.

9) The rice in the soup (or my homemade rendition) added body to the tuna filling. Additional vegetables would have served the same purpose.

10) The biscuit topping was delicious and economical. Some casserole toppings can be on the more costly side, such as potato chips, lots of shredded cheese, crumbled cereal or crackers, or nuts. Scratch biscuits are right there with buttered bread crumbs for a frugal casserole topping. The biscuit topping also served as the starch part of the meal. So a dual purpose topping.

What I didn't like about this recipe:

1) The canned soup. I don't keep canned soup on hand. Even if I did, this would be an odd type for me to have chosen. Since I was able to find an easy work-around for the canned soup, I wish the recipe had just added an alternative to the chicken with rice soup, something such as " or 1/2 cup leftover cooked rice, 2 teaspoons of chicken bouillon granules, plus water to equal 1 1/4 cups."

Green Beans in Crumbs

Ingredients:

• canned green beans
• butter (I used part butter, part vegetable oil)
• salt
• cracker crumbs
• black pepper

The things I liked about this recipe:

1) We loved this! It was tasty and the cracker crumbs added texture and flavor. The key to making this is to either drain out or simmer out all of the water content before adding the crumbs. While the casserole was baking, I put the saucepan of green beans with butter and seasonings on the stove on Low to simmer until all I could hear was the fat crackling a bit. When all of the water had cooked out, moments before serving, I added the cracker crumbs. There was still a bit of crunch to some of the crumbs.

2) A great use for broken crackers. I used club crackers, but I remember my mother using Ritz crackers this way. It takes fewer crackers than you might guess (1/4 cup crumbs). I crushed about 7 or 8 small crackers and found I had more crumbs than I needed. I saved the remaining tablespoon of crumbs in a sealed baggie, waiting to be added to another dish.

What I didn't like about this recipe:

1) Although this can't be helped, as some things change in 6 decades, the size of can called for is one no longer sold. However, the recipe did provide the amount in cups, as well as size. So I was able to figure this out quickly.

Deviled Beets

Ingredients:

• butter
• prepared mustard
• honey
• Worcestershire sauce (I used a combo of soy sauce and brown sugar)
• paprika
• salt

The things I liked about this recipe:

1) This was a very tasty way to serve cooked beets. I'm not a huge fan of hot beets. I prefer them in a marinade and chilled. But I thought these were good, and I will make them again.

2) I cut the recipe in half, so I only used one 14.5-oz can of sliced beets. This was a good amount for our family of four.

What I didn't like about this recipe:

1) I felt it had too much butter. There was a smear of butter on each of our plates afterward. The full recipe called for 3 tablespoons butter. I think one could use 2 tablespoons butter and still have a great tasting side dish.

Key takeaways from this menu:

I missed having a light and cold side dish, like a salad or marinated vegetables. However, this was a filling, comfort food meal that was good for a chilly day. 

While we all liked the tuna bake, my husband really, really, really liked it! The combination of biscuit topping with the creamy tuna filling was a hit with him. We all enjoyed the leftovers the next day, too. Fish is not my favorite food, yet this was very good, and even I liked it the next day.

I'm inclined to make all of these recipes again. In the future, I would turn the tuna bake into a one-dish meal by adding vegetables to the filling. This would cut down on my kitchen time for a meal such as this. I think I spent about an hour to an hour and a half over the course of the day in hands-on work. 

I liked the way the biscuits were prepared. To me, rolling out the dough, then rolling up jelly roll-style and cutting felt less time-consuming than rolling out biscuit dough and cutting with a cutter, followed by re-rolling the scraps and cutting. And yet, the end presentation following the recipe was very nice. My mother-in-law would have been very impressed, if I'd served this to her. Yes, I do think this could make a nice potluck or informal gathering dish. If one wanted to simplify the cheese biscuit topping, drop scratch cheese biscuits (wet biscuit dough with shredded cheese mixed in) or canned biscuits topped with cheese could be used, saving 15 minutes or so on the preparation time.

This was a frugal meal for my family. The main protein was inexpensive (as far as meat goes), and the rest of the ingredients were basics for me to keep on hand. Not only was this a budget meal, but it also used basic cooking techniques, making this a good meal for anyone of any cooking ability to make. Canned vegetables are a big help for meal prep on busy days. There's no cooking, just heat and flavor right before serving.

I've had fun cooking recipes from this 50s-era cookbook. It's been a great way to shake up the cooking doldrums that can set in after many years of family cooking. I'll continue to look through this cookbook and do another meal in March. I hope this has been enjoyable for you to read about.

Dinner at 50's O'Clock: 1950's Pantry Staple Recipes

More recipes from my mother's copy of the Better Homes & Gardens New Cookbook, publish date1953

Tonight's 1950's dinner relies on several pantry items. Since I wasn't going shopping specifically for this menu, I needed to find recipes that used foods I had on hand. As it turned out, I used a lot of basic pantry foods, such as canned vegetables, crackers, and canned tuna. The main dish recipe called for a can of condensed chicken with rice soup. I made my own version of a condensed chicken with rice soup. Walmart sells a Great Value brand of this sort of soup for 92 cents, so not real a budget buster to buy a can. But like I said, I was using items I have on hand.

Better Homes & Gardens budget meal recommendations usually have a main dish (one that contains both protein and starch), a hot vegetable side dish, a cold vegetable salad, and a dessert (often fruit). I wanted to try new recipes, and my fresh vegetable selection is limited right now, so I went with two hot vegetable dishes instead of a vegetable dish plus a salad.

Again, I'm feeding a family of four adults.

Here's the menu:

Tuna Bake -- Cheese Swirls

Green Beans in Crumbs

Deviled Beets

I didn't choose a dessert recipe for tonight because our house is currently deluged with desserts that need eating up. We'll have a choice between leftover Valentine's cake, scratch brownies, or blackberry crisp for dessert.

Tuna Bake --Cheese Swirls

Cheese Swirl recipe

This is a no-noodle tuna casserole that is topped with cheese pinwheel biscuits, which are like cinnamon rolls only with cheese as the the filling instead of cinnamon and sugar.

I put the dry ingredients for the biscuit dough together, first. 

Next I assembled the casserole filling. To make the chicken with rice condensed soup, I used a quart of homemade chicken stock to which I added a pinch of thyme, a pinch of sage, the excess onions (about 2 tablespoons) from the casserole base, and some leftover cooked rice (about 1/2 cup). Since my chicken stock was not condensed, I simmered it on the stove to reduce it to equal roughly 10.5 ounces once rice was added. The stock simmered while I was working on other dinner recipes. This was one of two deviations from the original recipe. Canned chicken with rice soup would also have some vegetables in it, like diced carrots and celery.

I used bottled lemon juice, which I always have on hand. The recipe suggests fresh, frozen or canned. Maybe bottled lemon juice was not a thing then?

the casserole filling in the dish,
waiting to be topped a baked just before dinner

The other deviation was I used two cans of tuna instead of one. We all know cans of tuna have become smaller and smaller over the years. My two cans yielded 8 ounces of drained tuna.

I tasted the filling and thought it was quite good and a bit different from standard tuna-noodle casserole fillings.

the biscuit dry mixed with fats

With the biscuit recipe, I used half Crisco shortening and half butter. Although I usually make biscuits with oil, I wanted to stick with a solid shortening in following this recipe. And my cheese is cheddar instead of American. I prepared the dry ingredients of the biscuit recipe with fats cut in early in the day. This would be my one last big thing to do for dinner before baking the casserole -- stirring in the milk, then rolling out and filling with cheese. I wanted to make the recipe as close to the book as possible. In my real life, I could see making a drop cheese biscuit with this casserole filling.

Green Beans in Crumbs

Here's an odd thing -- apparently stores used to sell a size of canned foods that equated to 2 1/2 cups. Most 14.5 ounce cans of vegetables contain roughly 1 1/2 cups. The 24-ounce can, that is also found in grocery stores today, contains 3 cups of drained vegetables. Since I didn't have a No. 2 can of green beans, I used 1 1/2  14.5-oz cans of green beans. (The leftover 1/2 can of green beans will get mixed in with Thursday's vegetables to make a vegetable medley.)

This is a super easy recipe. I was able to put everything except the crack crumbs into a saucepan early in the day and allow it to sit on the counter until just before serving. At that point, I heated the green beans and seasonings/butter through, then stirred in the cracker crumbs just before serving (so they wouldn't become mushy).

all of the green bean dish ingredients
 except the cracker crumbs

Deviled Beets

Today, a deviled food generally means a recipe contains prepared (bottled) mustard and other spices -- think deviled eggs or deviled ham salad. Many years ago, deviling meant a lot of fiery spices were added to a dish. I know my family enjoys mustard with foods, so I thought this might be a good one. 

This recipe also calls for honey, and honey-mustard carrots are always a hit in my house. I used one 14.5-oz can of sliced beets for this recipe, cutting the recipe in half. I didn't have Worcestershire sauce, so I used a substitution recommended by All Recipes online, soy sauce and a pinch of brown sugar. Here's the link to 8 different Worcestershire sauce substitutes.

As with the green bean dish, I assembled the beet one in advance. I made the sauce in a saucepan and dumped the drained, canned beets on top. Just before dinner, I heated the dish and gently stirred it all together.

the beet dish, ready to heat and serve
the orange color of the sauce
 is the combo of mustard and paprika

I don't know if my recipe selection for a single dinner menu would be representative of a typical 1950s meal. As I was cooking, it did seem like I was using a lot of butter. Where I could I used less butter and substituted a little oil or shortening. In the green bean dish I used 2 tablespoons butter and 1 tablespoon oil. In the biscuit dough I used part butter, part Crisco. I didn't want to burn through our week's butter in one meal.

I suspect we will have enough leftovers for lunches tomorrow. I could have cut both the tuna dish and the green bean dish down and still had enough for my family of four.

I'll update with photos of my plate and feedback from my family later.