Thanks for watching everyone! Did you catch some of our other videos this week? Pro Butcher Breaks Down A Hog Snout To Tail*: th-cam.com/video/u1hlaWVzwAo/w-d-xo.html How about our *Mexico City Street Food Tour: th-cam.com/video/f-ADQPVJKVc/w-d-xo.html
I clicked on this video after seeing the photo of a dark loaf. As I live in Minnesota, close to the border with North Dakota, I anticipated and am well satisfied with an "up home" recipe. I'd assumed the dark loaf would have a small measure of molasses in it, but strong and dark coffee and some of the spices apparently provide the color. I've always loved recipes, sweet and savory (I put very strong, black coffee in my baked beans along with molasses and would add dried, cured leaf tobacco if I could find it) that include strong coffee. It's 2023 now and North Dakota is still next door to me. Love your research and your work in the kitchen, Glenn. Thank you.
DROMEDARY Brand dates from California were widely available in the United States and found their way into date nut bread and date cookies. Dried dates were good keepers and shipped well, as well as provided a sweet component.
Yeah, I would assume dates and raisins would have been pretty popular cause it was a way pre electric refrigeration to have someting sweet, and have fruit anywhere, all year long.
I'm a connoisseur of old cookbooks as well and I've seen tons of old American recipes that include dates, raisins, prunes, etc. In the early 20th century dried fruit was a popular addition to cakes, I think for obvious reasons. Pre-refrigeration, dried fruits would keep much more readily in a pantry or root cellar than fresh fruit.
Before then. Dates were imported to Europe for almost ever. The Roman’s certainly took them to areas they went. The cost of getting them across the Atlantic would have made them a lot dearer and patchy supply until ships entered the steaming cargo age. So you used had plenty of other native fruits.
This is my third time making this cake because it is so delicious. This time I had to add dried cranberries to the raisins as I only had 1/4 cup. Such a simple recipe but so tasty with the perfect combo of spices......they knew what they were doing in 1936! It is a tip off when both Glen and Jules both like it from first bite.
Being in social isolation I am loving your videos. I made this cake and my husband said, "Wow this is a keeper recipe." I have shared it with multiple friends. Thank you for all the cooking videos that your doing.
Thank you so much Chef Glen 🙏 my mother in law used to make the same recipe with chopped dates and I always wanted to know how to do it 😊 I’m going to add the coffee as you did to enhance the flavour 👌we appreciate all you amazing efforts👍💐💖
I’m from ND, a few hours west of grafton and an hour from Canada and I can say that a lot of our recipes will still call for dates. From what I know dates were readily available at the time and were much less expensive as opposed to other options. I can’t believe you did a ND recipe 😆
According to my Mother, who worked along side dust bowl refugees picking fruit and vegetables in the 30s, dates were plentiful in So Cal. The date palm grew in many back yards, and of course out in our desert. There were lots of roadside fruit stands along The Mother Road (Route 66) selling date shakes. To this day you can still jump in the car and drive out to Palm Springs and get your fill of dates and shakes. This looks absolutely delicious!s
I recently found your channel, and I love it. Thank you for all the fantastic recipes. I really enjoy making recipes from old cookbooks. As a matter of fact, I collect them.
Glen, I have a large collection of vintage cookbooks, and always found it interesting that so many of the baking recipes called for dates. So yes, dates were used a lot in American baking.
Far more available and cheaper than chocolate in those days, especially baker's or semi-sweet. It gave cakes and cookies something sweet in them that kept well in abundance on a counter or in a cookie jar.
The A&P Grocery Store had a cake that I think was called Spanish Bar with a very sweet white frosting. This cake tastes a lot like it but is much more delicious minus the too sweet frosting! I think this is my favorite recipe from Glen and Friends!
Glen my wife and I love your Sunday morning series! As for dates I recall listening to a NPR story on the subject of dates. Apparently in 1900 some people from the U.S. Department of Agriculture we’re studying Dates and pushed for bringing the crop to the US. Fast forward to the Teens & Twenties and the Coachella Valley in California had turned into the hub of date growing in the US. My thought, and I have no evidence of this, but since it was sponsored by the Dept of Ag they probably put their resources towards dates being added to recipes. Here is the link to the show and article. www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/06/10/320346869/forbidding-fruit-how-america-got-turned-on-to-the-date
I started doing some Googling when Glenn mentioned the prices as well. I found this showing the ramp-up of u.s. date production, which seems to have really taken off in the 30s. That could account for it being included in a lot of recipes because they were trying to break into different markets as the previously planted trees began production. See p. 51 of the .pdf www.researchgate.net/publication/265981491_An_Overview_of_the_Changing_Date_Industry_in_the_United_States
I would like to theorize on usage of dates in certain regions of American baking. There were vague mentions of food and spices in Willa Cather's novels about upper Midwestern life during the 19th century. If I remember correctly, I may have read certain mentions of dates and currants in cooking. That and I recall that dates and spices were popular in Northern cooking in the USA. I always associated dates and spices with white American baking. The reason why I am making this distinction is due to my multicultural upbringing. Every different culture and/or ethnicity had their own preferred and traditional baking and desserts. I was always thankful for everything that I tried 🙏🏼. Thank you for sharing your true Northern cooking 🌨️❄️🍁.
I'm from southern New England, Massachusetts but closer to Providence than to Boston. Dates were a big part of my mother's and both grandmothers' baking repertoire. My mother was born in 1936, but both grandmothers were young housewives throughout the Depression. Dates appeared more often at the holidays, but a date nut bread could appear on the breakfast table or with coffee or tea any time of year.
Dates were common enough between 1910-1940 in Detroit and Minnesota that both my grandmothers were routinely making all kinds of date cookies, breads, and bars. And neither of them were rich. I think you should compile a date recipe series. Those recipes look delicious and dates are underrated. I’m’na make that date cake this afternoon.
What an interesting episode, and a recipe we want to try. It reminds me of my great mother Laura Ford's "date and nut loaf" recipe. She was born in 1892 in Detroit, but married and lived in Windsor the rest of her life until 1995. My mom was close to her and I (born in '64) knew her well. I have several heirlooms from her and a number of recipes, including the loaf, which I still make sometimes. It starts, "Dissolve baking soda in boiling water and pour over chopped dates...," a measure which must have been necessary at the time. Her nine-day pickle recipe (still a favourite) calls for a piece of alum "the size of a walnut."
My Gandmother lived in North Dakota in the 1930's and she often used dates in her recipes. My favorites were date cookies and chopped dates in coleslaw.
Great video Glen. These old recipes are some of my favorites and trying them is a lot of fun. Quick to make using simple ingredients and you have great flavor.
I can't wait to try the recipe this weekend. I have a similar recipe, Fresh Apple Cake, minus the coffee. I don't have raisins or dates, but I do have chopped dried fig pieces that a friend gave to me. It should be interesting.
A Excellent Video.. Highly Recommended.. Thank You Very Much For Sharing.. Where Do You Find All The Nice Vintage Recipes? You Have Got So Many Of Them. Eh? Please Keep Sharing The Old Vintage Recipes..
I live in Eastern Michigan and my late Grandmothers cook book I now possess features recipes with dates! I believe most of her recipes are from the 30s /40s ... Love your Channel! (Great Detroit Style Pizza! btw We love Buddy’s Pizza! ; )
My parents and grandparents all cooked with dates. Dates were the preferred fruit addition to cakes and cookies, along with pecans. We’re talking Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky…1930’s to present.
My grandmother made my wedding cake 42 years ago. It was a recipe from the 1930’s. It was full of dates and she was from Southern Utah, USA. There were LOTS of dates in the USA during the 1930’s. Raisins were a different story.
I was surprised to hear people claim that dates weren't used here then. At least two generations of my family from that era used them. When I was little I considered them an "old people" food because of that.
I know my mom ate date cookies as a kid in the 50's, and I've seen older recipes with dates. She grew up in South Dakota, and dates weren't uncommon. They store well and can add sweetness without needing a lot of sugar.
I grew up in Manitoba and dated with a guy from Grafton. When he left me I was in a depression, but I found out it was for the best because he was nuts.
Yum! Thanks for the recipe. I made this today but used the melt and mix method (because I am lazy!). I put the dried fruit, coffee and sugar in saucepan, added the butter and heated it all over a low heat until the butter melted. Gave it abit of a stir and then put aside to cool for 10 mins. Added eggs followed by flour, then apple and nuts. Turned out perfectly. Tastes lovely with a slathering of salted butter and a cup of tea to wash it all down!
I just made this to go with my decaf this morning before going to church. It was delicious; however, it needed salt and vanilla. I almost added them, but I wanted to stay true to the recipe before tweaking it. I used Kerrygold Irish butter, Starbucks cold-brewed coffee, and dried fig pieces. Also, it sunk in the middle probably because I wasn't sure what a slow oven was. I Googled it, and it is between 300 and 350 degrees. I started at 350, turned the oven to 300 when I realized it was baking too quickly, and after an hour it still was not thoroughly baked. I turned up the heat to 350 degrees and covered the top to finish baking the cake. The taste, however, is excellent. Thank you.
Many of my grandmother's cookbooks and handwritten recipes come from when she was learning to cook as a young wife and mother during the late 30's and WWII and you are correct that dates were much more popular then. During WWII dates were suggested as a substitute for scarce sugar and even before the war brought rationing sugar was, relatively speaking, quite expensive compared to today. While you are looking at "obsolete" ingredients, take a note of how often you see anchovies, or herring (kippers) on the menu, even for breakfast!
I have a 1933 Mary Matensen's Century of Progress Cook book from Chicago IL and it has about 6 recipes with dates in it. My 1929 Partially complete township cookbook only had 2. I have the township cook book available on internet archive under JohnstownCenterCookbook1929. Our own township doesn't even have a copy so I think I have the last one in existence!
I grew up near Grafton! Although it was in the 1980's and 1990's. Date cookies were very popular. Edit to add, a lot of those surnames in the cookbook are very familiar! So cool to see this! How did your cousin end up with the book?
My suspicion is that dates were just much more common back then. There are all kinds of fruits, vegetables,and concoctions (like kinds of catsup that didn't have tomatoes in them) that we simply no longer eat commonly, or don't even know once existed.
In 1838 Daltons Baking Goods was founded and provided and still to this day provides most of the dates, raisins, cherries, and candied fruit mix to Southern Ontario. They were bought by Reinhart Vinegar in 1998. Doesn’t answer the question about Grafton ND but it does answer why dates were used in Southern Ontario cakes.
You're probably not going to see this, as it's an old video, but I'll leave this here, anyway. I grew up in western Minnesota and southeastern North Dakota, and all of my paternal relatives in that area used a lot of dates in baking, especially around the winter Holiday season. Raisins usually ended up in things like dressing/stuffing for the bird, and in fruit salads, but baked treats more often had dates.
I doubt that it means anything, but we used to travel from southeastern Saskatchewan to North Dakota quite often. Minot was the big city for us in Gainsborough.
were the dates/raisins being given out as a commodity type thing. i know the usda gives out commodities now that have dates or raisins. granted this was in the 70s but i remember my grandparents got canned milk and raisins in a food allotment from the state of Kansas because grandpa was disabled.
Reminds me of another Canadian recipe from long ago. Apple Cake (Arnie Cake) By Dale Calder Ingredients 1 cup of sugar 1 large egg 2 tablespoons shortening (or lard) 3 cups of chopped apples (peeled and cored) 1 cup all purpose flour 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon salt Directions Cream the sugar, egg and shortening together Add the dry ingredients and mix well if the mix appears to be too dry you can add a little milk to lighten it up. Add the apples and mix well. Turn into a buttered 8X8 inch baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees F. Until a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out dry, around 30 to 40 minutes.
It was due to Prohibition in the US effectively stifling vineyard production that dates became so popular. Sure, you can make dates into booze. But, since wine was a much more lucrative industry prior to then the date growers (date palms produce pretty early on in their growth cycle) took over for the failing raisin industry due to the fact that they couldn't sell as large an amount to wineries. It took a number of years after it was repealed for grape vines to come back on song to produce enough for raisins to be easily found.
I mean it makes sense that dates were so available. Most of the major date producing regions of the world (North Africa, the ME, Central Asia, India) were part of either the British empire or other European empires, meaning that their produce were freely available at relatively low prices to the economies of Europe and North America. In some cases I imagine whole regions depended on western markets for dates merely to get by. The oil economies that would come to transform many of those countries had yet to be fully developed and independence was a few decades away for most of them so they had limited control over how or to whom their national products were sold.
Fumerie Hilaire My family lived in the U.K. from the 1950s to 60s, where my recollection is that Californian dates were unknown. Instead we had moist, sticky table dates, packed in oblong wooden trays with rounded ends, and cooking dates, rectangular slabs of compressed dry-ish dates weighing about half a pound and wrapped in cellophane with the brand and place of origin printed on it. Cheap cooking dates came from the Middle East, often Turkey or Syria (I think). My mother used to make dates scones and breads quite regularly - the process would always start with chopping the solid blocks into pieces with a sturdy knife. This century, back in New Zealand, all the dates in the supermarket are Californian and relatively expensive. I haven’t seen cooking dates for years (not that I’ve been actively looking for them). Maybe Depression-era Canadian dates were imported from Imperial sources?
I scrape - I edit it out, or do it 'off camera'. It keeps the video moving at a nice pace. It's a given that the bowls are scraped. I learned early on that viewers click away if they have to watch / listen to scraping of every bowl and measuring cup for what seems like an eternity. Now I just have to contend with a few comments from people who are bothered by what they perceive as food waste.
Glen & Friends Cooking totally understand that! Thanks Glenn I’m not complaining at all I’m just anal that way! Irregardless I wrote that recipe down and I’m going to make it. Really enjoying the depression series! Thanks!
Apparently my grandparents or parents didn’t like dates. I didn’t grow up eating them but I don’t like cooked raisins. I had my first dates in a carrot cake muffins that I made in my late 40s. They were wonderful. I didn’t add the raisins which was in the recipe too.
I suspect that the many date recipes may have to do with the British Empire dominating many date producing areas in the Middle East. As others have pointed out, dates keep and ship well and in the protectionist environment of the interwar years, it seems likely that dates from within the Empire would have been quite reasonably priced in Canada. Then there would of course be the sort of “exotica” aspect of cooking with dates (perhaps reminiscent of the “sheik” orientalism of early cinema?), rather than “just” sugar and the general tradition of using dried fruit as a sweet treat (probably stemming from English cooking from the 19th century).
I might be able to shed some light on why North Dakotans use dates (this may or may not be true, but I feel like this is true). There is a group of people that came to North Dakota called the Germans from Russia, or the Volga Germans. This is my heritage, although I'm not from Grafton. These people lived in what is now Moldova and Ukraine. These people brought dates along with them. My grandmothers made many, many, many desserts with dates and I love them. My favorites are date pinwheel cookies and date kuchen, which is more of a custard pie with a yeast risen crust than it is a cake.
There's also an Icelandic population north of Grafton which might have brought date recipes to that area as well. And there's a large Norwegian population all across the state. It's not too surprising that there are a bunch of recipes in that cookbook that include dates. Dried fruits have definitely fallen out of fashion here but a lot of the older generation still like to use them in dishes both savory and sweet.
I've read a lot of old depression era recipes with dates and I live in the western US so maybe that's a regional thing? Most of them seemed to use either raisins or dates as a cheap sweetener so I guess they fell out of favor when things got better? Or it might be a throwback to the cultures. A lot that moved west might have held on to older recipes from Europe? Who knows, but I've seen plenty of recipes calling for dates or raisins. Mant seemed to favor one but also mentioned the other could be used too.
My mother never really baked with dates but I know that her mother, my grandmother (grew up in the 1930s in the Boston area) would bake a lot of recipes using dates when my mother was little.
Strangely enough my stateside cousins told me dates were prevalent in certain areas in California even before the 2 world wars. Maybe it's a regional thing?
I was curious myself and did a quick search. I found this NPR article talking about how dates were first cultivated in California, www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/06/10/320346869/forbidding-fruit-how-america-got-turned-on-to-the-date. I think dates were a new exotic food trend for North America in the first half of the 20th century. Like Quinoa has been the past few decades.
2:46 I am intrigued by the "Canadian Cookies" recipe. I wonder what makes them "Canadian"? They look like a pretty normal oatmeal raisin cookie. Do Americans not eat oatmeal raisin cookies?
One of my mother's stand-bys. I'm from Kansas. It had everything in it: oatmeal, raisins, nuts(black walnuts or pecans) and sweetened coconut flakes. If we could sneak in chocolate chips and peanut butter all the better.
Hello! I'm from North Dakota. I as wondering if you could direct me to a good source to purchase this book. EDIT: I'm only in my 30's but I don't know much about about why Dates were so common in that recipe book.
My cousin bought this for me at a flea market - you could contact the newspaper (who published it) or the local historical society: www.walshhistory.org/
So I found this article called, “ Forbidding fruit, How America Got Turned on to the Date.” I might answer a lot of questions of why the date was popular during this time period.
Hey Glen, After seeing a couple of your old time recipes I got inspired and started to looking for old recipes from my country (Brazil) and found a couple of PDFs. They are wild, a lot of things that I never saw. I think you would like them, but the way they are written would, probably, make the translation way harder (the words are spelled in a way that I don't think a automatic translator could understand). It sure brings me a lot of nostalgia. Thanks!
Hi Glen. I enjoy your videos. Hey I found a recipe from my Betty Crocker cookbook circa early 1980's that reminded me of this cake recipe. It's the poor man's version but is really tasty . Called applesauce cake they call for icing but I have found this cake can stand alone without it. I also bake it in a bundt pan. I found this recipe online mine is identical except mine calls for 2 eggs instead of 1 and 1/4 tsp baking powder added. Otherwise it's identical. I omit the raisins. This one is a keeper all you need on hand is applesauce and some nuts. www.recipelink.com/msgbrd/board_1/2005/NOV/5987.html
Applesauce cake goes back to the 1910s, when speculators drove egg prices up. People (re)discovered you could substitute applesauce for eggs in many baking recipes, and it was quite the fad. Popular again in the wars, due to rationing.
Dates keep without refrigeration, and I'm betting the relationship between date producing countries and the British Empire made them a relatively affordable source of sweetness in early 1900s Canada. Further south you have more local sweet produce but in Canada if you are importing anyway... All guesses but I would love to read a properly researched history
FWIW: Keep in mind that the political borders of today were not the same as those in the mid 1930s. The US had a number of "Palm plantations" on various pacific islands for various reasons in the 19'teens and through to the start of ww2. Dates may have been 'stealth' subsidized in order to bolster claims to those islands. Hence the price of dates may have been quite inexpensive. Canada's proximity to the US may have benefited from this. The thing to do would be to have your the viewers of the channel find their local news paper archives and look at the grocery advertising. Fargo Forum, Grand Forks Herald, Bismark Tribune, Winnipeg free press. Quite rural news papers would have the highest prices and the people hardest hit by the depression.
Thanks for watching everyone! Did you catch some of our other videos this week? Pro Butcher Breaks Down A Hog Snout To Tail*: th-cam.com/video/u1hlaWVzwAo/w-d-xo.html How about our *Mexico City Street Food Tour: th-cam.com/video/f-ADQPVJKVc/w-d-xo.html
Hey Glen! Can you try to make Norwegian apple cake? it's pretty simple and tastes amazing.
The butcher series is going to be awesome. Looking forward to seeing the rest of it!
Those Canadian date palm plantations are world famous
Clearly you've never had any from the rest of the world.
I suggest you to eat some of the many types of dates in saudi arabia ,, it’s all sweet and savory and eat it with arabian coffee which has zero sugar
I think this was a bit sarcastic guys lol it's too cold to grow dates here on a large scale haha!
I can't believe the level of not-getting-it here lol
If only our artic coconuts could get the same love...
I clicked on this video after seeing the photo of a dark loaf. As I live in Minnesota, close to the border with North Dakota, I anticipated and am well satisfied with an "up home" recipe. I'd assumed the dark loaf would have a small measure of molasses in it, but strong and dark coffee and some of the spices apparently provide the color. I've always loved recipes, sweet and savory (I put very strong, black coffee in my baked beans along with molasses and would add dried, cured leaf tobacco if I could find it) that include strong coffee. It's 2023 now and North Dakota is still next door to me. Love your research and your work in the kitchen, Glenn. Thank you.
DROMEDARY Brand dates from California were widely available in the United States and found their way into date nut bread and date cookies. Dried dates were good keepers and shipped well, as well as provided a sweet component.
Yeah, I would assume dates and raisins would have been pretty popular cause it was a way pre electric refrigeration to have someting sweet, and have fruit anywhere, all year long.
I'm a connoisseur of old cookbooks as well and I've seen tons of old American recipes that include dates, raisins, prunes, etc. In the early 20th century dried fruit was a popular addition to cakes, I think for obvious reasons. Pre-refrigeration, dried fruits would keep much more readily in a pantry or root cellar than fresh fruit.
Before then. Dates were imported to Europe for almost ever. The Roman’s certainly took them to areas they went. The cost of getting them across the Atlantic would have made them a lot dearer and patchy supply until ships entered the steaming cargo age. So you used had plenty of other native fruits.
Sugar could be expensive for a lot of families. But dates provided natural sweetness and good flavor. They are, I believe, nutritious.
This is my third time making this cake because it is so delicious. This time I had to add dried cranberries to the raisins as I only had 1/4 cup. Such a simple recipe but so tasty with the perfect combo of spices......they knew what they were doing in 1936! It is a tip off when both Glen and Jules both like it from first bite.
i was flabbergasted when my american friends hadn't heard of date squares! dates are delicious.
Being in social isolation I am loving your videos. I made this cake and my husband said, "Wow this is a keeper recipe." I have shared it with multiple friends. Thank you for all the cooking videos that your doing.
Thank you so much Chef Glen 🙏 my mother in law used to make the same recipe with chopped dates and I always wanted to know how to do it 😊 I’m going to add the coffee as you did to enhance the flavour 👌we appreciate all you amazing efforts👍💐💖
I’m from ND, a few hours west of grafton and an hour from Canada and I can say that a lot of our recipes will still call for dates. From what I know dates were readily available at the time and were much less expensive as opposed to other options. I can’t believe you did a ND recipe 😆
You are the reason I love Sunday morning!
My mom are this cake I the 70's. We had it with ice cream or coffee in the evenings.
According to my Mother, who worked along side dust bowl refugees picking fruit and vegetables in the 30s, dates were plentiful in So Cal. The date palm grew in many back yards, and of course out in our desert. There were lots of roadside fruit stands along The Mother Road (Route 66) selling date shakes. To this day you can still jump in the car and drive out to Palm Springs and get your fill of dates and shakes. This looks absolutely delicious!s
I recently found your channel, and I love it. Thank you for all the fantastic recipes. I really enjoy making recipes from old cookbooks. As a matter of fact, I collect them.
Glen, I have a large collection of vintage cookbooks, and always found it interesting that so many of the baking recipes called for dates. So yes, dates were used a lot in American baking.
Far more available and cheaper than chocolate in those days, especially baker's or semi-sweet. It gave cakes and cookies something sweet in them that kept well in abundance on a counter or in a cookie jar.
The A&P Grocery Store had a cake that I think was called Spanish Bar with a very sweet white frosting. This cake tastes a lot like it but is much more delicious minus the too sweet frosting! I think this is my favorite recipe from Glen and Friends!
Glen my wife and I love your Sunday morning series! As for dates I recall listening to a NPR story on the subject of dates. Apparently in 1900 some people from the U.S. Department of Agriculture we’re studying Dates and pushed for bringing the crop to the US. Fast forward to the Teens & Twenties and the Coachella Valley in California had turned into the hub of date growing in the US. My thought, and I have no evidence of this, but since it was sponsored by the Dept of Ag they probably put their resources towards dates being added to recipes. Here is the link to the show and article. www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/06/10/320346869/forbidding-fruit-how-america-got-turned-on-to-the-date
I started doing some Googling when Glenn mentioned the prices as well. I found this showing the ramp-up of u.s. date production, which seems to have really taken off in the 30s. That could account for it being included in a lot of recipes because they were trying to break into different markets as the previously planted trees began production. See p. 51 of the .pdf
www.researchgate.net/publication/265981491_An_Overview_of_the_Changing_Date_Industry_in_the_United_States
Its true. Dates were popular at that time and they are still grown in the Southern CA desert. A must have when in the area is a classic date shake!
I am 70 and I remember dates in Grandma’s holiday baking. I still make date filled cookies at Christmas
I would like to theorize on usage of dates in certain regions of American baking. There were vague mentions of food and spices in Willa Cather's novels about upper Midwestern life during the 19th century. If I remember correctly, I may have read certain mentions of dates and currants in cooking. That and I recall that dates and spices were popular in Northern cooking in the USA. I always associated dates and spices with white American baking. The reason why I am making this distinction is due to my multicultural upbringing. Every different culture and/or ethnicity had their own preferred and traditional baking and desserts. I was always thankful for everything that I tried 🙏🏼.
Thank you for sharing your true Northern cooking 🌨️❄️🍁.
I'm from southern New England, Massachusetts but closer to Providence than to Boston. Dates were a big part of my mother's and both grandmothers' baking repertoire. My mother was born in 1936, but both grandmothers were young housewives throughout the Depression. Dates appeared more often at the holidays, but a date nut bread could appear on the breakfast table or with coffee or tea any time of year.
Dates were common enough between 1910-1940 in Detroit and Minnesota that both my grandmothers were routinely making all kinds of date cookies, breads, and bars. And neither of them were rich.
I think you should compile a date recipe series. Those recipes look delicious and dates are underrated. I’m’na make that date cake this afternoon.
I do remember my cousins telling me dates were farmed in California even before the two world wars.
If you don't already have a "Now we're cooking with dates" shirt I'm going to steal it and make millions.
I want one!
What an interesting episode, and a recipe we want to try. It reminds me of my great mother Laura Ford's "date and nut loaf" recipe. She was born in 1892 in Detroit, but married and lived in Windsor the rest of her life until 1995. My mom was close to her and I (born in '64) knew her well. I have several heirlooms from her and a number of recipes, including the loaf, which I still make sometimes. It starts, "Dissolve baking soda in boiling water and pour over chopped dates...," a measure which must have been necessary at the time. Her nine-day pickle recipe (still a favourite) calls for a piece of alum "the size of a walnut."
I included her date and nut loaf recipe in an essay about family cooking in the Winter 2016 edition of Edible Toronto.
My Gandmother lived in North Dakota in the 1930's and she often used dates in her recipes. My favorites were date cookies and chopped dates in coleslaw.
Looks great,sure it's delicious. Thank you for sharing this recipe.
Great video Glen. These old recipes are some of my favorites and trying them is a lot of fun. Quick to make using simple ingredients and you have great flavor.
I’ve got to try this soon! Looks great! Loved the bran muffin recipe and make it regularly, this will be perfect to rotate with it.
I can't wait to try the recipe this weekend. I have a similar recipe, Fresh Apple Cake, minus the coffee. I don't have raisins or dates, but I do have chopped dried fig pieces that a friend gave to me. It should be interesting.
I really enjoy this series. I look forward to it every week. I would love to be able to get my hands on an old cook book one day.
I love your channel so much!!!!
You have inspired my family to open their own channel called Cooking & Craft
Yaaaaay! Dates for a Depression-era WIN!!!😁😂😎 EVERYTHING with Glen and Friends Cooking is a WIN! Even the fails! Thanks Glen!
A Excellent Video.. Highly Recommended.. Thank You Very Much For Sharing.. Where Do You Find All The Nice Vintage Recipes? You Have Got So Many Of Them. Eh? Please Keep Sharing The Old Vintage Recipes..
I live in Eastern Michigan and my late Grandmothers cook book I now possess features recipes with dates!
I believe most of her recipes are from the 30s /40s ... Love your Channel! (Great Detroit Style Pizza! btw We love Buddy’s Pizza! ; )
My parents and grandparents all cooked with dates. Dates were the preferred fruit addition to cakes and cookies, along with pecans. We’re talking Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky…1930’s to present.
Grafton is only 45 minutes south of the border! It's about halfway between Grand Forks and Pembina. It's about 2 hours south of Winnipeg.
My grandmother made my wedding cake 42 years ago. It was a recipe from the 1930’s. It was full of dates and she was from Southern Utah, USA. There were LOTS of dates in the USA during the 1930’s. Raisins were a different story.
I was surprised to hear people claim that dates weren't used here then. At least two generations of my family from that era used them. When I was little I considered them an "old people" food because of that.
I’m from North Dakota and a lot of recipes from local cookbooks have dates in them.
I know my mom ate date cookies as a kid in the 50's, and I've seen older recipes with dates. She grew up in South Dakota, and dates weren't uncommon. They store well and can add sweetness without needing a lot of sugar.
Welcome friends. 😌😌😂😂 love it. Every video.
I grew up in Manitoba and dated with a guy from Grafton. When he left me I was in a depression, but I found out it was for the best because he was nuts.
Yum! Thanks for the recipe. I made this today but used the melt and mix method (because I am lazy!). I put the dried fruit, coffee and sugar in saucepan, added the butter and heated it all over a low heat until the butter melted. Gave it abit of a stir and then put aside to cool for 10 mins. Added eggs followed by flour, then apple and nuts. Turned out perfectly. Tastes lovely with a slathering of salted butter and a cup of tea to wash it all down!
Miss Maude I used your melt and mix method. It is in the oven right now and smells heavenly!
love this series!
Made this cake, it was very good.
Hey pretty good, definitely will try making this one
I just made this to go with my decaf this morning before going to church. It was delicious; however, it needed salt and vanilla. I almost added them, but I wanted to stay true to the recipe before tweaking it. I used Kerrygold Irish butter, Starbucks cold-brewed coffee, and dried fig pieces. Also, it sunk in the middle probably because I wasn't sure what a slow oven was. I Googled it, and it is between 300 and 350 degrees. I started at 350, turned the oven to 300 when I realized it was baking too quickly, and after an hour it still was not thoroughly baked. I turned up the heat to 350 degrees and covered the top to finish baking the cake. The taste, however, is excellent. Thank you.
Many of my grandmother's cookbooks and handwritten recipes come from when she was learning to cook as a young wife and mother during the late 30's and WWII and you are correct that dates were much more popular then. During WWII dates were suggested as a substitute for scarce sugar and even before the war brought rationing sugar was, relatively speaking, quite expensive compared to today.
While you are looking at "obsolete" ingredients, take a note of how often you see anchovies, or herring (kippers) on the menu, even for breakfast!
I've always used dates in baking, and I'm in New Mexico. I got a recipe handed down from my great-grandmother, and it had dates in it.
I don't know about the rest of the US but in my Great Grandmas cookbook nearly all the desert recipes have dates in them.
I have a 1933 Mary Matensen's Century of Progress Cook book from Chicago IL and it has about 6 recipes with dates in it. My 1929 Partially complete township cookbook only had 2. I have the township cook book available on internet archive under JohnstownCenterCookbook1929. Our own township doesn't even have a copy so I think I have the last one in existence!
I use coffee when I make the filling for date squares. Enhances the flavour of the dates without being noticeable, much like salt in baking recipes
I grew up near Grafton! Although it was in the 1980's and 1990's. Date cookies were very popular. Edit to add, a lot of those surnames in the cookbook are very familiar! So cool to see this! How did your cousin end up with the book?
My suspicion is that dates were just much more common back then. There are all kinds of fruits, vegetables,and concoctions (like kinds of catsup that didn't have tomatoes in them) that we simply no longer eat commonly, or don't even know once existed.
Oh dang, I'm from 10 min south of Grafton!
Me too.
I looked up Minto, where the recipe's author was from. Looks nice.
Oooh... that makes me realise I have a couple of cookbooks who are 100 years old this or the next couple of years.
In 1838 Daltons Baking Goods was founded and provided and still to this day provides most of the dates, raisins, cherries, and candied fruit mix to Southern Ontario. They were bought by Reinhart Vinegar in 1998. Doesn’t answer the question about Grafton ND but it does answer why dates were used in Southern Ontario cakes.
You're probably not going to see this, as it's an old video, but I'll leave this here, anyway. I grew up in western Minnesota and southeastern North Dakota, and all of my paternal relatives in that area used a lot of dates in baking, especially around the winter Holiday season. Raisins usually ended up in things like dressing/stuffing for the bird, and in fruit salads, but baked treats more often had dates.
I doubt that it means anything, but we used to travel from southeastern Saskatchewan to North Dakota quite often. Minot was the big city for us in Gainsborough.
were the dates/raisins being given out as a commodity type thing. i know the usda gives out commodities now that have dates or raisins. granted this was in the 70s but i remember my grandparents got canned milk and raisins in a food allotment from the state of Kansas because grandpa was disabled.
very nice team 😅😅😅
It looked pretty dense to me for being so moist. I wonder how it would be if you spread some butter on a slice, like it was a sweet bread.
Kinkajou1015 it would be magnificent
It's an amazing cake... Holds its own 🙂
or whipped cream cheese
Reminds me of another Canadian recipe from long ago.
Apple Cake
(Arnie Cake)
By Dale Calder
Ingredients
1 cup of sugar
1 large egg
2 tablespoons shortening (or lard)
3 cups of chopped apples (peeled and cored)
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
Directions
Cream the sugar, egg and shortening together
Add the dry ingredients and mix well if the mix appears to be too dry you can add a little milk to lighten it up.
Add the apples and mix well.
Turn into a buttered 8X8 inch baking pan.
Bake at 350 degrees F. Until a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out dry, around 30 to 40 minutes.
Well if anyone doubted your Canadianness they need to ask you where North Dakota is, just south of Winnipeg :) Nice recipe
"Thanks Hellen" as if somebody from early XX century would be watching, I just found it amusing 😊😊😊
It was due to Prohibition in the US effectively stifling vineyard production that dates became so popular. Sure, you can make dates into booze. But, since wine was a much more lucrative industry prior to then the date growers (date palms produce pretty early on in their growth cycle) took over for the failing raisin industry due to the fact that they couldn't sell as large an amount to wineries. It took a number of years after it was repealed for grape vines to come back on song to produce enough for raisins to be easily found.
Dades feels very British-style baking to me. Does it get moister than by making it with sugar?
I wonder if the addition of coffee is a evolution of something like Barmbrack aka. Irish tea cake
I mean it makes sense that dates were so available. Most of the major date producing regions of the world (North Africa, the ME, Central Asia, India) were part of either the British empire or other European empires, meaning that their produce were freely available at relatively low prices to the economies of Europe and North America. In some cases I imagine whole regions depended on western markets for dates merely to get by. The oil economies that would come to transform many of those countries had yet to be fully developed and independence was a few decades away for most of them so they had limited control over how or to whom their national products were sold.
Fumerie Hilaire My family lived in the U.K. from the 1950s to 60s, where my recollection is that Californian dates were unknown. Instead we had moist, sticky table dates, packed in oblong wooden trays with rounded ends, and cooking dates, rectangular slabs of compressed dry-ish dates weighing about half a pound and wrapped in cellophane with the brand and place of origin printed on it. Cheap cooking dates came from the Middle East, often Turkey or Syria (I think). My mother used to make dates scones and breads quite regularly - the process would always start with chopping the solid blocks into pieces with a sturdy knife.
This century, back in New Zealand, all the dates in the supermarket are Californian and relatively expensive. I haven’t seen cooking dates for years (not that I’ve been actively looking for them). Maybe Depression-era Canadian dates were imported from Imperial sources?
It’s driving me crazy that you don’t scrapey scrapey out the bowl Glenn lol Aaack! Luv your recipes! I’m gonna make this one
I scrape - I edit it out, or do it 'off camera'. It keeps the video moving at a nice pace. It's a given that the bowls are scraped.
I learned early on that viewers click away if they have to watch / listen to scraping of every bowl and measuring cup for what seems like an eternity. Now I just have to contend with a few comments from people who are bothered by what they perceive as food waste.
Glen & Friends Cooking totally understand that! Thanks Glenn I’m not complaining at all I’m just anal that way! Irregardless I wrote that recipe down and I’m going to make it. Really enjoying the depression series! Thanks!
Hahaha, my sunday snack show, damn I'm out of Dates.
Actually that was cloves... Little early there Glen? Lol. Enjoy the videos. Keep up the good work!
Apparently my grandparents or parents didn’t like dates. I didn’t grow up eating them but I don’t like cooked raisins. I had my first dates in a carrot cake muffins that I made in my late 40s. They were wonderful. I didn’t add the raisins which was in the recipe too.
ND native here!
How prevalent was the apple flavor? I might think to add some apple sauce to up the apple flavor and add a little more moisture.
This American grew up having dates in a lot of baked goods. Mom was first generation English.
The recipe also mentions figs could be used.
I suspect that the many date recipes may have to do with the British Empire dominating many date producing areas in the Middle East. As others have pointed out, dates keep and ship well and in the protectionist environment of the interwar years, it seems likely that dates from within the Empire would have been quite reasonably priced in Canada.
Then there would of course be the sort of “exotica” aspect of cooking with dates (perhaps reminiscent of the “sheik” orientalism of early cinema?), rather than “just” sugar and the general tradition of using dried fruit as a sweet treat (probably stemming from English cooking from the 19th century).
Hypothesis: Sugar was rationed; Dates, unprocessed, were cheaper / easier to obtain than the rationed sugar, and just as sweet.
I might be able to shed some light on why North Dakotans use dates (this may or may not be true, but I feel like this is true). There is a group of people that came to North Dakota called the Germans from Russia, or the Volga Germans. This is my heritage, although I'm not from Grafton. These people lived in what is now Moldova and Ukraine. These people brought dates along with them. My grandmothers made many, many, many desserts with dates and I love them. My favorites are date pinwheel cookies and date kuchen, which is more of a custard pie with a yeast risen crust than it is a cake.
There's also an Icelandic population north of Grafton which might have brought date recipes to that area as well. And there's a large Norwegian population all across the state. It's not too surprising that there are a bunch of recipes in that cookbook that include dates. Dried fruits have definitely fallen out of fashion here but a lot of the older generation still like to use them in dishes both savory and sweet.
I've read a lot of old depression era recipes with dates and I live in the western US so maybe that's a regional thing? Most of them seemed to use either raisins or dates as a cheap sweetener so I guess they fell out of favor when things got better? Or it might be a throwback to the cultures. A lot that moved west might have held on to older recipes from Europe?
Who knows, but I've seen plenty of recipes calling for dates or raisins. Mant seemed to favor one but also mentioned the other could be used too.
My mother never really baked with dates but I know that her mother, my grandmother (grew up in the 1930s in the Boston area) would bake a lot of recipes using dates when my mother was little.
We always used dates here in Maine. Maybe it's a Canadian influence. But I wouldn't call it an apple cake with one frickin' apple in it.
Have you done a dill pickle recipe and if you haven't can you?
I haven’t- maybe next summer?
@@GlenAndFriendsCooking good!!!
I’m dying for a KFC update. About 2 months since a Colonel update. Wishing ya Colonel vibes. :)
Strangely enough my stateside cousins told me dates were prevalent in certain areas in California even before the 2 world wars. Maybe it's a regional thing?
I was curious myself and did a quick search. I found this NPR article talking about how dates were first cultivated in California, www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/06/10/320346869/forbidding-fruit-how-america-got-turned-on-to-the-date. I think dates were a new exotic food trend for North America in the first half of the 20th century. Like Quinoa has been the past few decades.
@@D_M_W Yeah, Palm Springs was probably named that for all the date palm orchards they have that have been there for a very long time.
Could this be made with quince instead of apple?
I lived in ellendale for a year, not far from there
2:46 I am intrigued by the "Canadian Cookies" recipe. I wonder what makes them "Canadian"? They look like a pretty normal oatmeal raisin cookie. Do Americans not eat oatmeal raisin cookies?
One of my mother's stand-bys. I'm from Kansas. It had everything in it: oatmeal, raisins, nuts(black walnuts or pecans) and sweetened coconut flakes. If we could sneak in chocolate chips and peanut butter all the better.
Hello! I'm from North Dakota. I as wondering if you could direct me to a good source to purchase this book.
EDIT: I'm only in my 30's but I don't know much about about why Dates were so common in that recipe book.
My cousin bought this for me at a flea market - you could contact the newspaper (who published it) or the local historical society: www.walshhistory.org/
They used dates in Texas, and New Mexico at that time also.
North Dakota, the best state of the United States of America
that looks very similar to whats called apfelbrot in germany
Dates are often used as a substitute for sugar. Sugar was not so easy to get during the depression. You can grow dates
Yeah Date farming is HUGE in North Dakota and Canada! Really picked up the slack for the lack of sugar...
So I found this article called, “ Forbidding fruit, How America Got Turned on to the Date.” I might answer a lot of questions of why the date was popular during this time period.
Julie is such a pretty lady!
Geena Davis vibes
Dates were exported from the Middle East and fairly cheap.
Hey Glen,
After seeing a couple of your old time recipes I got inspired and started to looking for old recipes from my country (Brazil) and found a couple of PDFs.
They are wild, a lot of things that I never saw. I think you would like them, but the way they are written would, probably, make the translation way harder (the words are spelled in a way that I don't think a automatic translator could understand).
It sure brings me a lot of nostalgia.
Thanks!
Hi Glen. I enjoy your videos. Hey I found a recipe from my Betty Crocker cookbook circa early 1980's that reminded me of this cake recipe. It's the poor man's version but is really tasty . Called applesauce cake they call for icing but I have found this cake can stand alone without it. I also bake it in a bundt pan. I found this recipe online mine is identical except mine calls for 2 eggs instead of 1 and 1/4 tsp baking powder added. Otherwise it's identical. I omit the raisins. This one is a keeper all you need on hand is applesauce and some nuts. www.recipelink.com/msgbrd/board_1/2005/NOV/5987.html
Applesauce cake goes back to the 1910s, when speculators drove egg prices up. People (re)discovered you could substitute applesauce for eggs in many baking recipes, and it was quite the fad. Popular again in the wars, due to rationing.
Dates keep without refrigeration, and I'm betting the relationship between date producing countries and the British Empire made them a relatively affordable source of sweetness in early 1900s Canada. Further south you have more local sweet produce but in Canada if you are importing anyway...
All guesses but I would love to read a properly researched history
Exactly what I was thinking.
FWIW: Keep in mind that the political borders of today were not the same as those in the mid 1930s. The US had a number of "Palm plantations" on various pacific islands for various reasons in the 19'teens and through to the start of ww2. Dates may have been 'stealth' subsidized in order to bolster claims to those islands. Hence the price of dates may have been quite inexpensive. Canada's proximity to the US may have benefited from this. The thing to do would be to have your the viewers of the channel find their local news paper archives and look at the grocery advertising. Fargo Forum, Grand Forks Herald, Bismark Tribune, Winnipeg free press. Quite rural news papers would have the highest prices and the people hardest hit by the depression.