Survey: bit.ly/GlenAndFriendsCooking Julie and I love to travel (and eat) - so we've teamed up with the people over at trovatrip.com to offer a food travel tour in 2022... Covid restrictions are top of mind, but we're hoping for clear sailing by then. In order to help us plan the trip we need your input. So please help us out by taking a short survey and let us know what you'd like to do and see. Survey: bit.ly/GlenAndFriendsCooking Launch Video:th-cam.com/video/kXB5y5eqXXw/w-d-xo.html
Way to make me feel ancient, Glen, LOL!! When I got married in 1985, my sister in law threw me a kitchen shower, and all the guests each provided a recipe card with a recipe that utilized the gift they gave. This was to create a "starter" recipe card file.
When I joined the navy, my grandmother baked canteen cookies for me. According to her, the ww2 ones were small and well cooked into dryness so they would survive the upto 3 month shipping periods.
1942 was the year my grandmother retired her wood stove because she finally had a new electric stove. My grandmother was an excellent baker, her eldest son was in the Navy fighting in the Pacific. I'll have to ask mom if they baked cookies to send him. I know at some point they sent him a Christmas Tree and gifts. He managed to survive the war and return home, much to everyone's joy. I also know the family used to invite servicemen to the farm for big home cooked meals on Sundays before the young men were sent overseas. My mom and two of her sisters really enjoyed serving the young men as fancy of a meal as they could prepare. The farm was very productive food wise and rationing barely impacted their diets at all. My grandfather had bee hives and they had a neighbor that made molasses so even the sugar rationing wasn't an issue. Your comment about it being illegal to grow currents in the US makes me wonder what it was they grew on the farm and called currents. They were small round berries that grew on bushes or trees, definitely not anything growing on any type of grape vine. Maybe my mom will know.
There were currant bushes here. Just not the black currant variety. Lots of people grow the red and white varieties. The black ones were until recently banned because they were thought to have a deadly fungus to the trees they used for timber production.
@@anneirenej All plants of the Ribes genus (blackcurrants, gooseberries, and others) carry white pine blister dust (Cronartium ribicola). The Ribes plants foster the fungus until it spores and the spores attack American white pine trees. This was literally destroying forests in the early 1900s. Now botanists understand that planting American white pine trees on high ground in well drained soil contains the spread, as the fungus cannot survive in those conditions. So, many places are now taking blackcurrants and gooseberries off the banned list.
My Mom had a lot of recipes but no box. However, my Dad had a recipe box. It is a tin box painted to look like a pound box of Land O Lakes Butter & I have it. It is filled w/recipes in my Dad's handwriting. I cherish that box & I miss my Dad. It was the only thing I kept after he died.
I bought my wife an old one full of recipes from eBay lots of cool old recipes we weeded through them and started adding our own from family I love the idea of recipe boxes
My mother still has one of those card boxes from her mother with recipes in it from the 50s/60s/70s. It's kinda neat. It's all faded and yellow now but it's cool to see their notes and little tips for old recipes written all over the cards.
I make small wooden boxes with live edge tops that are purposely made to fit recipe cards, they’re good sellers at craft shows. Recipe cards are still a thing.
@@werelemur1138 mine was originally an address box. I threw away the cards because i was using mine for recipes. I use small index cards. Your mom may have the same one, but also, everything in the 70's had orange and yellow groovy flowers on it, so i actually doubt they're the same 😆
I still have my recipe box from my home economics class during my high school years. I graduated in 1983 and schools required these classes. So glad I kept it!
When i was a child we used to frequent a little bakery in Carnarvon Ontario that was run by a man who had learned his trade in the army. He made cookies like this; they called them hermit cookies. So nice to have a recipe so I can make them myself.
My mother sent cookies to my dad, stationed on Saipan in WWII. The only way they would arrive intact was in a sheet metal box she had made just for that and then packed in popcorn. They had to be tough cookies just like the greatest generation.
As a student of WWII I have read about servicemen overseas getting cakes that had mold on them. A dry cookie would travel better. Though if not properly packed they would get a box of crumbs which they also enjoyed. The US servicemen would dip them in their coffee. Nice episode.
These Look like Rock cakes or rock buns (contain no rocks) just dried fruit and spices! Made them a lot as a child in the 80’s and 90’s! Delicious! Great video! Thanks x
Hello, and thank you for yet another interesting, amusing and informative show. Sunday isn't Sunday without the old cook book show. Currants (the vine fruit!) Are still widely available and much liked here in the UK 🇬🇧. They're used widely in "Eccles cakes" which are a type of pastry, and griddle cakes known as "Welsh cakes", "singin' hinnies", or "hearth cakes" depending on which part of the country you're from. I love food history too!
I can’t tell you how much I enjoy your videos Glenn and Jules ! I watch every night. When I’m on break at work. I’ve learned so much. I just get so relaxed. Thank you ! Keep on !
i really love your channel and i really love that you show the vintage recipes/books/papers/pamplets as it is likely the closest thing most of us will ever get to being able to see a vintage recipe.
These videos make me so happy. I collect old photographs, old books, old documents, etc., so watching these things being made rather than on a page is so neat. This one especially hit me because I was recently gifted tons of letters from WWII. I'm quite curious to see if anyone mentions any sort of baked goods in these letters. I believe the oldest piece of literature that I have that lists out recipes is an Almanac from 1879! This is all so interesting.
Great video, thanks for sharing! These cookies remind me of "Hermit Cookies"...one of my favourites! Hermit cookies are usually softer in consistency than these but this batch looks like it would preserve longer. Thanks again! Cheers, Rick in Vancouver, B.C.
Love these old cookbook videos. I have a bunch of "collections" in my Kindle account and have tried a few. Refreshing how minimally seasoned recipes are often the best tasting
At 1 teaspoon size they probably would have been hard dry biscuits suitable for long distance travel and then dunking on arrival. They sound quite delicious and those lucky servicemen and women would have been so happy to receive them.
I'm sure they are meant to hold up under mailing conditions of old. They look good though and given the context of your recipe and the firmness of the shell on the outside of the cookie, I'd say that with proper packing a soldier overseas would be glad indeed to share these with his buddies. (or maybe just keep them for himself in his gear. LOL) I'm sure that slightly under baking these would make them more palatable....especially to modern taste buds. But...I really think the hardness is intentional here. Great video, I JUST found this channel and have enjoyed this very much. I'll be back! thank you for sharing these old gems so they don't die out completely
My grandmother made a similar cookie… it started off crisp and rather tough… but became softer and chewier over time… she would leave them in a tin with a piece of apple to help soften them.
These are VERY similar to how my great grandmother made chocolate chip cookies. The sour milk (buttermilk or milk with vinegar in it) gives it a rise that are very similar to American scones.
That’s interesting that you say about the fruit being mixed in the flour. I make boiled raisin cake from my Mom’s old recipe box. I never coat the raisins in flour and the cake always turns out really good and the raisins are well dispersed throughout the cake. 😊. Hmmm…now I want to do some baking. Maybe jumbo raisin cookies
Glenn, I’m very surprised that you don’t test out, the baking times. I would love to see on a batch of cookies, you removing say 1/3 about 3 mins. Early. Then the second 1/3 about 1.5 mins. Early. Then at the end let us know, which cooking time you preferred! We need to always also remember, oven temperatures very. My oven may run a bit higher than my neighbour’s. I also would add that Dried Apricot as well as Ginger would be great possible additions/substitutions! As always, really enjoyed the video!
I'm in the US and I agree anytime when American cookbook would have called for currents they would be referring to dried currants. We can buy dried currants here I've seen them they come in a box. Guess they were too lazy to make up a new name for dried currants has no-one goes around asking for a dried grape when they want a raisin.
These are just like my late friend’s family Christmas cookie except her recipe calls for sour cream. They start out crispy but when you make a bunch and then store them for a few weeks, the flavours meld and they are awesome! That’s funny you mentioned cranberries, I put them in my version of the cookie too!
I still use a recipe card box, I'm not even 30 yet. It's great to write ones I've found online and don't want to seek out later. I have scrolling through a blog to remind myself how many cups of flour I need
We had red currant bushes in NJ back in the 1950s. My parents made red currant jelly which is excellent. It's somewhat similar to the Cape Cod favorite Beach Plum Jelly. A quick Google suggests the red currants are legal in NJ. The cause of restrictions is White Pine Rust.
They would have wanted them more crispy so they would travel better and last longer. Remember they would have taken a lot longer through the mail than now days. This is a perfect recipe to modify for gluten free and i am so going to use the parchment paper trick thank you so much.
This sounds very much like the Hermit cookies my mom used to make which had spices, raisins, dates and walnuts. Every cookie that mom made was crisp and dry-even when using a recipe for a soft chewy cookie.
Glen, as regards your currants question. I'm english and we have three types of dried grapes available - raisins (the largest), sultanas (usually yellowy) and currants. These currants are very small and generally still have seeds in. Personally I don't much like them, but if you're making a Christmas cake or pudding, you would have them in the dried fruit mix. Currants have nothing to do with blackcurrants etc.
For eating fresh, I can see cooking them for less time. But for mailing them to the boys in the service, I can see wanting them hard and dry to help them stay together and to forestall any molding of the fruit.
I did know about currants in the US only because my husband told me yesterday about a farmer who asked his representative to see about undoing the law. It was passed because the timber industry said the its growth affected a particular pine tree that was grown for paper. The farmer’s representative asked how many ppl would be affected by the law as it stood, and the farmer said just me, because it’s illegal to grow. Representative turned cold shoulder because it didn’t affect enough ppl. Really makes u wonder …
I mailed chocolate chip cookies to friends serving in Viet Nam. I always wondered about the condition of the cookies when they arrived. No one ever complained though. By the crunch I wondered if they could be double cooked like a biscotti? Love your show - thanks!
Interesting thing about currants, made me look up about blackcurrants, fungus and pine trees ... being UK, currants for baking are well understood to be dried grapes (Black Corinth as Glen says), same generally for the rest of Europe. Raisins and sultanas being different grapes. So this intrigued me and looking at a few online grocery stores in the US and Canada and see currants don't figure. Interestingly Walmart.ca lists currants/cassis with illustrations on the packet showing fresh blackcurrants. Currants are widely available here...as are blackcurrants and redcurrants, whitecurrants less so, and delicious in Summer Pudding. To explore the use of currants more, try Dead Fly Biscuits, aka Garibaldi Biscuits.
In my experience in shipping cookies to service members on ship or shore, the less they fall apart the better. Yes, they love to dunk in tea or coffee or milk.
I know they grow red and black currants in California. I sometimes see them in the grocery stores here (in California). As for the "2 1/2" written next to the 3 cups, I suspect the person who originally had that sheet found the cookies to be too dry for standard home use and solved the problem by cutting back on the flour. I bet those cookies would be really good with chocolate chips (says she who loathes raisins in any form)!
I live in Georgia and we've always had currants available, I've never heard of it being illegal, a lot of people around here have always grown red and black currants and our walmart even has fresh currants and seeds.
Me too! For anyone nerdy reading this, the reason currants are illegal to grow in the US is because they carry a disease which was threatening to wipe out the US Eastern Pine trees (which were more important for building, etc).
I have recipe cards, hand written, from about 20 years ago, but I have them in a photo album that has plastic sleeves that hold about 4 cards each sleeve.
HI Glen - I've heard the 'prevents sinking' theory too but understood that what the flouring of the fruit really does is that it stops it from sticking together - especially candied peel and other sticky ingredients. Just another perspective. I do find it speeds up the process on fruitcakes and seems to get a better distribution of the many fruits. Try putting some of them aside in a tin for a couple of weeks...they may have a texture change if they were developed to survive travel to the 'front'.
From an old lady… Currents were small Grapes that were driied and were rather hard and really never used unless they were soaked for a couple hours. Of course the same can be said for the raisins. They were soaked also.
I did not know that about the currents I actually grow currants...I have a bout 10-15 plants...they produce well...i also have some service berry bushes that produce well..I live in Olympia Wa
All the old cookie recipes I have, call for you to bake your cookies until crisp. I think our modern taste-buds are more interested in soft cookies. Maybe, because we don't cook large batches and store them for a week or two. With that in mind, the German tradition of Christmas baking and everyone of those cookies are baked until crisp.
If you really think about it, the electric mixer is actually helpful here. It’s gonna ensure a perfect mix making sure no pockets of the cookie are lacking sugar or salt to keep them from spoiling.
Makes sense that it's dry if it's for military, had to get to them unspoiled. Think sweet hardtack. I bet these cookies put a smile on quite a few GI faces.
The texture you got makes sense if you consider the fact that they were meant to be shipped overseas during the 1940s. Softer cookies would have either turned into crumbs or spoiled on the trip there
I think they lifted the ban on those in Oregon. I had never seen one before, but they grow wild and are cultivated. Our local nursery sells them. I don’t know if they bred them to eliminate the problem or what, but I will ask this fall when we go to the annual Apple Festival (canceled last year) at the nursery.
I had to look up why it was illegal to grow currants. Also gooseberries as it turns out. For anybody else who was curious, it is because .... (cut/paste)...... The nutrient-rich berries were banned in 1911 because they were thought to produce a fungus that could damage pine trees. As new disease-resistant berries were produced and new ways to prevent the fungus from damaging timber were developed, some states started to lift the ban in 2003.
Well Glen, you had me with the brown sugar, and it wasn't even 2 min. into the recipe. Currants were banned because they carried the White Pine Blister Rust disease. Because of your methodology I switched to Parchment Paper, it's much more convenient then greasing, and it works great, even with Caramel Nut Buns, no sticking.
In the UK, Currants are dried fruits from a grape. They are similar to Raisins but come from another variety of grape and tend to look a different colour to Raisins. They are not a dried version of Blackcurrants.
Same here - but most people don't realise that they are eating a raisin... they get confused by the name and assume that they are eating a dried Black Current.
These look a lot like what we called hermit cookies when I was growing up. Though I would have used more of the zest and more spice (harms nothing! I like these cookies to be stronger flavored)
... and having now seen how they ended up, a bit firm... I suspect they were baked a little longer to make them last a bit better. Hermit cookies are a softer cookie and while I have read that hermits are supposed to have good shelf life I can't say I believe it. Or have seen it happen, they get wiped out really fast. I added my hermit cookie recipe to a cookbook at work, with the note "serves 12. or 1. Nobody will judge you after you taste these." :)
In fairness the reason blackcurrants were illegal in the U.S between 1911-66 was because the plant is a carrier for the White Pine Blister Rust, whilst the blanket federal ban ended in 1966 most states didn't lift their own independent bans until 2003. Sadly most Americans have never tasted a blackcurrants because due to the conditions it needs to grow commercial production is limited to the North East and Pacific northwest
Survey: bit.ly/GlenAndFriendsCooking
Julie and I love to travel (and eat) - so we've teamed up with the people over at trovatrip.com to offer a food travel tour in 2022... Covid restrictions are top of mind, but we're hoping for clear sailing by then. In order to help us plan the trip we need your input. So please help us out by taking a short survey and let us know what you'd like to do and see.
Survey: bit.ly/GlenAndFriendsCooking Launch Video:th-cam.com/video/kXB5y5eqXXw/w-d-xo.html
Way to make me feel ancient, Glen, LOL!! When I got married in 1985, my sister in law threw me a kitchen shower, and all the guests each provided a recipe card with a recipe that utilized the gift they gave. This was to create a "starter" recipe card file.
@@cynthiafisher9907 It sounds so fun, compared to showers today. We need to bring things like this back!💖✌🇨🇦
When I joined the navy, my grandmother baked canteen cookies for me. According to her, the ww2 ones were small and well cooked into dryness so they would survive the upto 3 month shipping periods.
I make most of my drop cookies this size, teaspoon drops. It is actually the perfect size. So you can eat two or three cookies at a go.
Small because you want a large number so that you could share with the group would make sense too.
@@anneirenej I like the size Glen used and yes I would definitely eat 2 or 3 LOL.
...nuclear food, i call it; because they can last forever.
Probably this was supposed to be dry so they travelled well, which was the point behind the Anzac ones too :)
Was just coming in to say the same - thanks for saving me the troube. :)
@@lbbotpn5429 Me too. :D
@@lellab.8179 Same here.
Likewise.😆
They mention that in the video too :)
1942 was the year my grandmother retired her wood stove because she finally had a new electric stove. My grandmother was an excellent baker, her eldest son was in the Navy fighting in the Pacific. I'll have to ask mom if they baked cookies to send him. I know at some point they sent him a Christmas Tree and gifts. He managed to survive the war and return home, much to everyone's joy. I also know the family used to invite servicemen to the farm for big home cooked meals on Sundays before the young men were sent overseas. My mom and two of her sisters really enjoyed serving the young men as fancy of a meal as they could prepare. The farm was very productive food wise and rationing barely impacted their diets at all. My grandfather had bee hives and they had a neighbor that made molasses so even the sugar rationing wasn't an issue. Your comment about it being illegal to grow currents in the US makes me wonder what it was they grew on the farm and called currents. They were small round berries that grew on bushes or trees, definitely not anything growing on any type of grape vine. Maybe my mom will know.
There were currant bushes here. Just not the black currant variety. Lots of people grow the red and white varieties. The black ones were until recently banned because they were thought to have a deadly fungus to the trees they used for timber production.
@@anneirenej All plants of the Ribes genus (blackcurrants, gooseberries, and others) carry white pine blister dust (Cronartium ribicola). The Ribes plants foster the fungus until it spores and the spores attack American white pine trees. This was literally destroying forests in the early 1900s. Now botanists understand that planting American white pine trees on high ground in well drained soil contains the spread, as the fungus cannot survive in those conditions. So, many places are now taking blackcurrants and gooseberries off the banned list.
@@patrickwilliams3108 Although gooseberries should be banned everywhere, nasty things
My Mom had a lot of recipes but no box. However, my Dad had a recipe box. It is a tin box painted to look like a pound box of Land O Lakes Butter & I have it. It is filled w/recipes in my Dad's handwriting. I cherish that box & I miss my Dad. It was the only thing I kept after he died.
My aunt has a recipe box like that!
That's my box, LOL! A gift from my mil, back in the 80s.
I bought my wife an old one full of recipes from eBay lots of cool old recipes we weeded through them and started adding our own from family I love the idea of recipe boxes
My mother still has one of those card boxes from her mother with recipes in it from the 50s/60s/70s. It's kinda neat. It's all faded and yellow now but it's cool to see their notes and little tips for old recipes written all over the cards.
I have a metal one pained with yellow and orange groovy looking flowers :)
@@Margar02 I think my stepmom has the same one.
I make small wooden boxes with live edge tops that are purposely made to fit recipe cards, they’re good sellers at craft shows. Recipe cards are still a thing.
@@werelemur1138 mine was originally an address box. I threw away the cards because i was using mine for recipes. I use small index cards. Your mom may have the same one, but also, everything in the 70's had orange and yellow groovy flowers on it, so i actually doubt they're the same 😆
Beautiful treasure to have.
I didn't know that about currants. Please never change.
You gotta dip em! and the thumbs up while chewing is a dead cert of a good biscuit/cookie. although a cup of tea to "Wash it down" would be the win!
By the crunchy sounds as you are eating them, they would travel well to the other side of the world and be appreciated by our fighting men.
Any biscuit/cookie is good dunked in a cup of tea. Yum
I still have my recipe box from my home economics class during my high school years. I graduated in 1983 and schools required these classes. So glad I kept it!
When i was a child we used to frequent a little bakery in Carnarvon Ontario that was run by a man who had learned his trade in the army. He made cookies like this; they called them hermit cookies. So nice to have a recipe so I can make them myself.
My mother sent cookies to my dad, stationed on Saipan in WWII. The only way they would arrive intact was in a sheet metal box she had made just for that and then packed in popcorn. They had to be tough cookies just like the greatest generation.
I like that "travel" conclusion. Makes sense.
As a student of WWII I have read about servicemen overseas getting cakes that had mold on them. A dry cookie would travel better. Though if not properly packed they would get a box of crumbs which they also enjoyed. The US servicemen would dip them in their coffee.
Nice episode.
They look like a nice addition to a scoop of vanilla ice cream
Maybe some peach halves in syrup too!
Awesome! I forgot all about these. My parents grew up in the depression and my mom used to make these...
Dried cranberry and orange *would* be nice.
With the pecans for sure.. those flavors really meld don’t they!
Holiday-ish.
These Look like Rock cakes or rock buns (contain no rocks) just dried fruit and spices! Made them a lot as a child in the 80’s and 90’s! Delicious! Great video! Thanks x
Was my first impression too.
Hello, and thank you for yet another interesting, amusing and informative show. Sunday isn't Sunday without the old cook book show. Currants (the vine fruit!) Are still widely available and much liked here in the UK 🇬🇧. They're used widely in "Eccles cakes" which are a type of pastry, and griddle cakes known as "Welsh cakes", "singin' hinnies", or "hearth cakes" depending on which part of the country you're from. I love food history too!
I always enjoy Julie's participation in your videos.
Since these are from the "Boston Edison Company" I think the "boys" would be dunking these in a cup of Joe.
@@neondemon5137 lol I'd like to see that study. Can you provide a link?
I can’t tell you how much I enjoy your videos Glenn and Jules ! I watch every night. When I’m on break at work. I’ve learned so much. I just get so relaxed. Thank you ! Keep on !
I was thinking dried cranberries too Glen. Especially since they don't have currants here in the States. Thanks for sharing. Y'all have a Blessed day.
i really love your channel and i really love that you show the vintage recipes/books/papers/pamplets as it is likely the closest thing most of us will ever get to being able to see a vintage recipe.
These videos make me so happy. I collect old photographs, old books, old documents, etc., so watching these things being made rather than on a page is so neat. This one especially hit me because I was recently gifted tons of letters from WWII. I'm quite curious to see if anyone mentions any sort of baked goods in these letters.
I believe the oldest piece of literature that I have that lists out recipes is an Almanac from 1879! This is all so interesting.
Great video, thanks for sharing! These cookies remind me of "Hermit Cookies"...one of my favourites! Hermit cookies are usually softer in consistency than these but this batch looks like it would preserve longer. Thanks again! Cheers, Rick in Vancouver, B.C.
That scoop is my go to for drop cookies too. I'm not sure how I could live without it in my kitchen!
Love these old cookbook videos. I have a bunch of "collections" in my Kindle account and have tried a few. Refreshing how minimally seasoned recipes are often the best tasting
....and nutmeg.
Jon Townsend suddenly bolts upright in bed.
Yuuup! 🤣🤣
Now he's probably going thru 17th century cook books to see if there's an equivalent!
At 1 teaspoon size they probably would have been hard dry biscuits suitable for long distance travel and then dunking on arrival. They sound quite delicious and those lucky servicemen and women would have been so happy to receive them.
I'm sure they are meant to hold up under mailing conditions of old. They look good though and given the context of your recipe and the firmness of the shell on the outside of the cookie, I'd say that with proper packing a soldier overseas would be glad indeed to share these with his buddies. (or maybe just keep them for himself in his gear. LOL) I'm sure that slightly under baking these would make them more palatable....especially to modern taste buds. But...I really think the hardness is intentional here.
Great video, I JUST found this channel and have enjoyed this very much.
I'll be back! thank you for sharing these old gems so they don't die out completely
My grandmother made a similar cookie… it started off crisp and rather tough… but became softer and chewier over time… she would leave them in a tin with a piece of apple to help soften them.
These are VERY similar to how my great grandmother made chocolate chip cookies. The sour milk (buttermilk or milk with vinegar in it) gives it a rise that are very similar to American scones.
The cookies look absolutely delicious and nice. Happy to watch
I always had a recipe box. I think my daughter has it now.
That’s interesting that you say about the fruit being mixed in the flour. I make boiled raisin cake from my Mom’s old recipe box. I never coat the raisins in flour and the cake always turns out really good and the raisins are well dispersed throughout the cake. 😊. Hmmm…now I want to do some baking. Maybe jumbo raisin cookies
Glenn, I’m very surprised that you don’t test out, the baking times. I would love to see on a batch of cookies, you removing say 1/3 about 3 mins. Early. Then the second 1/3 about 1.5 mins. Early.
Then at the end let us know, which cooking time you preferred! We need to always also remember, oven temperatures very. My oven may run a bit higher than my neighbour’s.
I also would add that Dried Apricot as well as Ginger would be great possible additions/substitutions!
As always, really enjoyed the video!
My grandmother always made fruit cake cookies for Christmas and this recipe seems very similar
Nice, happy to see
Currents for me in this context would always be a small dried raisins that is ball shaped. Not to be confused with fresh currants
As in other Commonwealth countries. The UK, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa etc…
I'm in the US and I agree anytime when American cookbook would have called for currents they would be referring to dried currants. We can buy dried currants here I've seen them they come in a box. Guess they were too lazy to make up a new name for dried currants has no-one goes around asking for a dried grape when they want a raisin.
We had both a box of recipe cards and several binders that were full of hand written recipes. It was always a hunt to find a specific recipe.
These are just like my late friend’s family Christmas cookie except her recipe calls for sour cream. They start out crispy but when you make a bunch and then store them for a few weeks, the flavours meld and they are awesome! That’s funny you mentioned cranberries, I put them in my version of the cookie too!
Raisins and currants and nuts, oh, my! They look like Hermit cookies and seem similar, well, except for the currants and nutmeg.
Crispy is good!
I still use a recipe card box, I'm not even 30 yet. It's great to write ones I've found online and don't want to seek out later. I have scrolling through a blog to remind myself how many cups of flour I need
i was taught to pour boiling water over raisins and currents let them plump then strain and dry them between paper towels before use. I always do this
We had red currant bushes in NJ back in the 1950s. My parents made red currant jelly which is excellent. It's somewhat similar to the Cape Cod favorite Beach Plum Jelly. A quick Google suggests the red currants are legal in NJ. The cause of restrictions is White Pine Rust.
My grandma in Michigan had red currant bushes and she made the loveliest red currant jam. I think they grow wild there. As well as the white ones.
They would have wanted them more crispy so they would travel better and last longer. Remember they would have taken a lot longer through the mail than now days. This is a perfect recipe to modify for gluten free and i am so going to use the parchment paper trick thank you so much.
Definitely want to make this one
This sounds very much like the Hermit cookies my mom used to make which had spices, raisins, dates and walnuts. Every cookie that mom made was crisp and dry-even when using a recipe for a soft chewy cookie.
Glen, as regards your currants question. I'm english and we have three types of dried grapes available - raisins (the largest), sultanas (usually yellowy) and currants. These currants are very small and generally still have seeds in. Personally I don't much like them, but if you're making a Christmas cake or pudding, you would have them in the dried fruit mix. Currants have nothing to do with blackcurrants etc.
I was looking for a cookie exactly like this to send to my son in Shanghai!
For eating fresh, I can see cooking them for less time. But for mailing them to the boys in the service, I can see wanting them hard and dry to help them stay together and to forestall any molding of the fruit.
I did know about currants in the US only because my husband told me yesterday about a farmer who asked his representative to see about undoing the law. It was passed because the timber industry said the its growth affected a particular pine tree that was grown for paper. The farmer’s representative asked how many ppl would be affected by the law as it stood, and the farmer said just me, because it’s illegal to grow. Representative turned cold shoulder because it didn’t affect enough ppl. Really makes u wonder …
Thank you
I have 2 of those boxes from the late 1970s that I set up.
Simply wonderful- I actually got to go pick some currants this year- excited to put them to use
Yeah - but the recipe calls for Zante Currants, also called Corinthian Raisins.
I mailed chocolate chip cookies to friends serving in Viet Nam. I always wondered about the condition of the cookies when they arrived. No one ever complained though. By the crunch I wondered if they could be double cooked like a biscotti? Love your show - thanks!
Interesting thing about currants, made me look up about blackcurrants, fungus and pine trees ... being UK, currants for baking are well understood to be dried grapes (Black Corinth as Glen says), same generally for the rest of Europe. Raisins and sultanas being different grapes. So this intrigued me and looking at a few online grocery stores in the US and Canada and see currants don't figure. Interestingly Walmart.ca lists currants/cassis with illustrations on the packet showing fresh blackcurrants. Currants are widely available here...as are blackcurrants and redcurrants, whitecurrants less so, and delicious in Summer Pudding. To explore the use of currants more, try Dead Fly Biscuits, aka Garibaldi Biscuits.
In my experience in shipping cookies to service members on ship or shore, the less they fall apart the better. Yes, they love to dunk in tea or coffee or milk.
I know they grow red and black currants in California. I sometimes see them in the grocery stores here (in California).
As for the "2 1/2" written next to the 3 cups, I suspect the person who originally had that sheet found the cookies to be too dry for standard home use and solved the problem by cutting back on the flour.
I bet those cookies would be really good with chocolate chips (says she who loathes raisins in any form)!
Amazon in Canada sells 3x5 and 4x6 recipe boxes if you need a place to store the recipe cards.
Glen, During WW2 mostly the troops had coffee and water so try dunking the cookie in some coffee and see if the cookie and coffee goes together.
I live in Georgia and we've always had currants available, I've never heard of it being illegal, a lot of people around here have always grown red and black currants and our walmart even has fresh currants and seeds.
Anarchy!
I’ve wondered for a while why there are a lot of dessert recipes with raisins, currants, and other dried fruit. At least in old recipes like this.
I knew about currents being illegal thanks to Lofty Pursuits!
36 teeny-tiny cookies would be more shareable than a dozen medium-size cookies.
Me too! For anyone nerdy reading this, the reason currants are illegal to grow in the US is because they carry a disease which was threatening to wipe out the US Eastern Pine trees (which were more important for building, etc).
I have recipe cards, hand written, from about 20 years ago, but I have them in a photo album that has plastic sleeves that hold about 4 cards each sleeve.
HI Glen - I've heard the 'prevents sinking' theory too but understood that what the flouring of the fruit really does is that it stops it from sticking together - especially candied peel and other sticky ingredients. Just another perspective. I do find it speeds up the process on fruitcakes and seems to get a better distribution of the many fruits. Try putting some of them aside in a tin for a couple of weeks...they may have a texture change if they were developed to survive travel to the 'front'.
M grandmother used to make a very similar recipe that she called "Hermits"
I always mix my nuts and dried fruits into the dry ingredients, so I don't have to mix in the dry and add ins separately. One step.
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I LOVE currants but it’s so hard to find any at local stores, gotta order dried currants online or have sour currant candy but it’s so good.
The recipe card idea sounds neat. It means I could fillet my cookery books of all the poor recipes and just keep the good ones.
I'd love to see you attempt something similar to the Stewart's Orange 'n Cream soda
From an old lady… Currents were small Grapes that were driied and were rather hard and really never used unless they were soaked for a couple hours. Of course the same can be said for the raisins. They were soaked also.
I did not know that about the currents I actually grow currants...I have a bout 10-15 plants...they produce well...i also have some service berry bushes that produce well..I live in Olympia Wa
All the old cookie recipes I have, call for you to bake your cookies until crisp. I think our modern taste-buds are more interested in soft cookies. Maybe, because we don't cook large batches and store them for a week or two. With that in mind, the German tradition of Christmas baking and everyone of those cookies are baked until crisp.
The 2 1/2 cups would be the amount to use if substituting all purpose flour.
Thank-you! I was thinking the same thing.
I'm interested to know what the "Ship Ahoy" recipe is,and why it's called that.
It makes sense to mix the dried fruits in flour so they don't clump together.
If you really think about it, the electric mixer is actually helpful here. It’s gonna ensure a perfect mix making sure no pockets of the cookie are lacking sugar or salt to keep them from spoiling.
Makes sense that it's dry if it's for military, had to get to them unspoiled. Think sweet hardtack. I bet these cookies put a smile on quite a few GI faces.
Coffee dunking cookies!
my gran would soak raisins in a cup of hot coffee to plump them up sift all flour and spices no biggy then fold in fruits and nuts.
Same thing as mixing eggs in one at a time . 🤤
We call them camping cookies. We make a couple large batches. Then we also bring large bags of Beef Jerking I make for camping .
Given that these cookies are intended for being sent to soldiers abroad, the extra crispy texture makes sense.
The texture you got makes sense if you consider the fact that they were meant to be shipped overseas during the 1940s. Softer cookies would have either turned into crumbs or spoiled on the trip there
Dried Cranberries would be good in that.
I think they lifted the ban on those in Oregon. I had never seen one before, but they grow wild and are cultivated. Our local nursery sells them. I don’t know if they bred them to eliminate the problem or what, but I will ask this fall when we go to the annual Apple Festival (canceled last year) at the nursery.
I would be interested in those other recipes you have there.
I had to look up why it was illegal to grow currants. Also gooseberries as it turns out. For anybody else who was curious, it is because .... (cut/paste)...... The nutrient-rich berries were banned in 1911 because they were thought to produce a fungus that could damage pine trees. As new disease-resistant berries were produced and new ways to prevent the fungus from damaging timber were developed, some states started to lift the ban in 2003.
Add more orange. Zest and chocolate chips!
Well Glen, you had me with the brown sugar, and it wasn't even 2 min. into the recipe. Currants were banned because they carried the White Pine Blister Rust disease. Because of your methodology I switched to Parchment Paper, it's much more convenient then greasing, and it works great, even with Caramel Nut Buns, no sticking.
In the UK, Currants are dried fruits from a grape. They are similar to Raisins but come from another variety of grape and tend to look a different colour to Raisins. They are not a dried version of Blackcurrants.
Same here - but most people don't realise that they are eating a raisin... they get confused by the name and assume that they are eating a dried Black Current.
These look a lot like what we called hermit cookies when I was growing up. Though I would have used more of the zest and more spice (harms nothing! I like these cookies to be stronger flavored)
... and having now seen how they ended up, a bit firm... I suspect they were baked a little longer to make them last a bit better. Hermit cookies are a softer cookie and while I have read that hermits are supposed to have good shelf life I can't say I believe it. Or have seen it happen, they get wiped out really fast.
I added my hermit cookie recipe to a cookbook at work, with the note "serves 12. or 1. Nobody will judge you after you taste these." :)
In fairness the reason blackcurrants were illegal in the U.S between 1911-66 was because the plant is a carrier for the White Pine Blister Rust, whilst the blanket federal ban ended in 1966 most states didn't lift their own independent bans until 2003. Sadly most Americans have never tasted a blackcurrants because due to the conditions it needs to grow commercial production is limited to the North East and Pacific northwest