Food Recipes of the Repeal Era and Beyond, Part IV

Editor’s Note: Before reading this installment to Beer & Food: An American History, keep in mind that these recipes represent the beginning of the American brewing industry’s pairing and use of beer in food. Up until the post-Prohibition era, most written instances of beer used in food were merely attempts to reconcile what to do with spoiled and stale beer.

As you look through the upcoming segments with their food recipes, keep this thought in mind; many contemporary food recipes reflect an evolution of food preparation. Switch an ingredient or two, maybe add a foodstuff that no one ever heard of 15 or 20 years ago and you’re working with a newer interpretation of an old standard.

If you want to catch-up before reading Part IV, here are links to

Part I     Part II      Part III    

More info about Beer & Food: An American History by me, Bob Skilnik (with a foreword by Jim Koch from The Boston Beer Co) here.

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With the war winding down, brewers continued their public relations campaign to keep beer in the kitchen, or better yet, simply in the home. The publishing firm of Frederic H. Girnau Creations of Minneapolis, Minnesota, took an approach similar to the pre-Prohibition Mendelsohn recipe books. By utilizing a couple of different culinary themes, Girnau helped promote various regional breweries with his collection of hefty-sized booklets—Famous International Themes, 300 New Ways of Making Delicious Sandwiches, the Sandwich Book of All Nations, Tried and Tested Cookie Recipes, Fish and Sea-Food Cookery, How to Prepare Wild Game & Fowl, Madame Chiang’s Chinese Cook Book (with the helpful hint that the recipes were “Translated in English”), Housewives Home Canning Methods, and lastly, How to Cook with Beer.

 

With ads for various competing brews placed between the same stock recipes in each booklet, cooks could learn the intricacies of preparing Chicago Style Chow Mein Noodles, Calf’s Head Stew, Tutti-Frutti Sandwiches, Potato Doughnuts, and obvious regional delights such as Bear Northern Style, Roast Raccoon, or Porcupine—probably all an acquired taste—and that old beer drinkers’ favorite, at least in publisher Girnau’s mind, Striped Bass Pudding.

 

While it’s amusing for city-slickers to look back at many of these dishes and laugh, there’s a lot of colonial-era frugality still involved here, all the more obvious when one considers the strong rural landscape that continued to exist in the U.S. in the ’40s. The philosophy of waste not, want not continued.

 

Although the food recipes were the same, two of Girnau’s How to Cook with Beer booklets displayed an interesting contrast in how the American Brewing Company of Miami, Florida, and the Minneapolis-based Gluek Brewing Company decided to handle the introduction to the sixty-four-page recipe collection template. A.B.C. President Louis F. Garrard took the customary approach of most brewers, using the book template format that Girnau provided. Garrard pointed out “…the importance of beer as a delicious cooking ingredient,” noting the importance of including beer in food recipes “…has been lost to our generation.” Garrard’s answer to this generational gap, of course, was to start including the use of the brewery’s Regal Premium Beer in the recipes provided.

 

The introduction to the Gluek Brewing Company’s recipe booklet, however, took a different approach, giving President and Chairman Edward V. Lahey of the United Brewers Industrial Foundation a forum to lay out the economic and social benefits of beer, all cooking aside. Of course, the Gluek booklet was also sprinkled with plugs for its Gluek beer, “The beer that speaks for itself.” A sample of Lahey’s introduction follows:

 

The brewing industry is a national asset in that it contributes importantly to the economic and social welfare of this country.

 

BEER ranks the top as a revenue source, contributing at the rate of about $700,000,000 annually in federal, state and local taxes. Since beer was re-legalized on April 7, 1933—after 13 years of Prohibition—combined revenues to public treasuries have exceeded ten billion dollars.

 

Beer, however, extends its economic benefits not only to public treasuries but also to many allied industries—agriculture, manufacturers of brewing equipment and machinery, bottles, cans, kegs, etc., and to the employment ranks, paying out about $300,000,000 annually in wages and salaries.

 

Socially, beer has served not only as a wholesome refreshment and adjunct to gracious living, but has been an aid to moderation and temperance. Military authorities have acclaimed beer also as a morale builder and as a factor in making the American Army, during World War II, the soberest in history.

 

Although the introductions to the brewers’ respective cookbooks varied in their focus, the intent was the same. Twentieth century beer had made it through the grain restrictions of the First World War, the blood-splattered years of bootlegging and Prohibition; had stumbled into American homes with the beginnings of Repeal; helped the troops to victory on two fronts, and was now ready to guide the nation through the post-war boom. It was time to really push beer into American homes and American lives. The Gluek and the American Brewing Company booklets touched on beer’s use as a flavor builder and food  seasoning. The real message, however, was clear; beer belonged not merely in the kitchen. Beer belonged in the home, whether it was included in food or not.

 

COMING SOON: PART V

Food Recipes of the Repeal Era and Beyond, Part I

Beer can be used in hundreds of recipes to add flavor, point up the savor of other ingredients, turn old dishes into new exciting adventures.
Beer and Brewing in America, 1948

With the return of legal beer, the brewery industry faced the question of a possible change in consumer attitudes toward beer and its relationship to competing intoxicants. “The new status of women as beverage-consumers,” warned distribution consultant Paul T. Cherington, at a meeting of brewery representatives in early 1934, “the glamour of illicit consumption for fifteen years, the growth of the cocktail and the hip-flask habits…are factors of real weight in the new status of beverages…”

With worries that consumers might have grown weary of beer during Prohibition, the brewing industry began its second push during the twentieth century to place beer into American homes—and keep it there. Looking at its past approaches in trying to make malt syrup a kitchen staple during National Prohibition, the revived brewing industry took a similar approach by publishing food recipe books, booklets, and pamphlets that featured beer, not malt syrups, as a food ingredient or as a food accompaniment.

Until hundreds of recipes could be devised and kitchen tested, the earliest brewery publications chose to feature suggestions for beer paired with food, and not surprisingly, the tried-and-true foods of the saloon free lunch era were dragged out again. Suggestions of beer with salty pretzels and potato chips were mingled with calls for dark breads, cheeses, sausages, smoked meats, sandwiches, oysters, pickled foods, and side dishes of coleslaw and potato salad.

One of the earliest examples of a publication that matched beer and food was “Here’s how!” ~ and what to serve with BEER, by the Theo. Hamm Brewing Company. This twenty-four-page booklet helped set the stage for not only why beer should be served with beer-friendly foods, but also gave the hows. It’s amusing today to read through the detailed, but perhaps clichéd, suggestions from 1934 for preparing a “Lager Lunch,” a “Buffet Beer Supper,” a “Sunday Night Beer Supper,” or a “Swedish Ale Party Menu,” until one realizes that having beer in the home at the time, pairing it with food, and using these elements as an important part of home entertainment, was not clichéd at all. The notion of holding a home “beer party” was virgin territory, and because of this, the Hamm’s publication holds significance as it detailed the food and entertainment guidelines of Christine Frederick, a former household editor of the Ladies’ Home Journal. In setting up a “Beer Party Table,” for instance, Mrs. Frederick, also author of Household Engineering, advised using this festive decor:


Table cloths with bright, gay stripes, or the attractive “peasant” cloths with matching napkins…[and] tankards, pitchers and mugs…while on a small round or “beer-barrel” table, two narrow runners of crash toweling, placed crosswise, give a smart effect.

With the kind of care that contemporary beer geeks faithfully practice, the home economist added tips on how to serve beer, setting up rituals and practices that still hold true today.

Remove the cap from the bottle quickly and pour beer slowly against the side of the tilted glass. Beer should always be well chilled, but not too cold. Beer that is too icy loses the delicate flavor and life that makes it the most popular drink of today. Never under any circumstances put ice or ice cubes in beer. The water from the melting ice dilutes the beer and makes it unpalatable and flat…If you chill your beer in an automatic refrigerator, do not place bottles in the coldest compartment. A few hours in the bottom of the refrigerator will bring the beer to the right temperature.

Mrs. Frederick, however, allowing her “household management” skills to overshadow her skill with beer, gave the budding beer party hostess one more serving tip that beer cookbook authors have thankfully chosen to ignore:

Never offer any…dessert type of dish. Candies are “out” also! Cakes are not suitable either…

A two-page centerfold advertisement in a 1939 edition of Liberty, a popular general interest magazine, featured Schlitz beer, “with that famous flavor,” surrounded by “Favorite Recipes of famous Amateur Chefs.” The recipes included a corned beef hash dish put together by legendary cartoonist Rube Goldberg, washed down, of course, with Schlitz since its “fresh, clean aftertaste makes good food seem better.” Six years after Repeal, the brewing industry was still taking the tentative step of simply pairing beer with food rather than using beer as a recipe ingredient in its advertising. The same magazine also carried a full-page ad from the recently founded United Brewers Industrial Foundation (U.B.I.F.) that trumpeted the fact that the brewing industry had contributed over $400 million in taxes in 1938 to various government agencies, claiming that this amount of money could theoretically cover the entire cost of President F.D.R.’s Civilian Conservation Corps. Beer not only had revenue-enhancing features, it had a sense of patriotism behind it too.

    

While the ad showed the importance of the kind of tax money the brewing industry now generated, it was also indicative of the industry’s dark fear that Prohibition could return. The additional claim in the ad of the brewers’ self-regulation of “law-violating beer outlets,” furthered the notion that the beer industry realized it still had a lot of work to do to convince all Americans that beer was assuredly an asset, and not a detriment, to American society.

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More info on Beer & Food: An American History by Bob Skilnik

THE BEER NUT: Ye olde beer recipe book; Review of Beer & Food: An American History

Beer and food they seem to go together like…well, beer and food.

Although many do not know that beer can be used for cooking more than bratwurst, people have been cooking with beer for centuries.

Chicago beer writer Bob Skilnik wanted to chronicle recipes using beer in the United States, and in so doing, presents a fascinating history of beer from colonial times to the present in his latest book, “Beer & Food: An American History.”

“I’m not sure if I should call it a history book or a cookbook,” said Skilnik, who has authored several beer-related books and appeared on numerous national television shows. “I just call it a culinary history book. It is more of a historical cookbook than a cookbook, per se.”

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William Dowd; Book Review: A tasty brew of history

Beer & Food: An American History. By Bob Skilnik. Jefferson Press. 246 pp. $24.95 U.S., $28.95 Canada.

When the history of American whiskey is written, again, George Washington will have to play a more important role than ever. The recent opening of his Mount Vernon, VA, distillery that was rebuilt 200 years after fire destroyed the original brought back to public awareness what a major distiller he was in the new United States.

However, the history of American beer — and its relationship to food as well as to society — has been written, by beer writer and historian Bob Skilnik. And in this arena, Washington also plays a major role.

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The Beer Man Gives Beer & Food: An American History, A Thumbs Up!

Todd Haefer, Appleton, Wisconsin’s “Beer Man” for the Post-Crescent newspaper, did a nice review for my latest book. Maybe it’s just me, but the more print and blog reviews that are coming out for the book, the more it seems that the reviewers actually understand the book. It’s been a minor irritant to me that some bloggers fail to see what the book really is; it’s a culinary history book. Discussions as to whether it’s a cookbook or a history book have me deducing that none of them have ever picked up a book like A Revolution In Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America (Arts and Traditions of the Table) by James E. Mcwilliams, or three wonderful books by Mark Kurlansky, The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell, Cod, and Salt. Kurlansky’s book on oysters in America inspired me to write Beer & Food using the approach that I did.

Books like these take a look at why we eat what we did—and do today, or in the case of Kurlansky’s books, fix attention on the history of a particular food (oysters, cod, and salt). If you’re a foodie like me, who just happens to also like a good beer (or 2), you’ll understand Beer & Food: An American History without confusion.

Thanks Todd for being one of them.

Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City

As you might have surmised, I’m a beer/brewing history nut.

I’ve been reading good things about Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York by Michael A. Lerner. The book (Harvard University, $28.95) hits some of the same notes that I played in Beer: A History of Brewing in Chicago. National Prohibition was a creature of prejudice– against Irish, Italians, Germans, and East Europeans — for whom drinking, chiefly wine and beer, was as much a custom as a practice. Evidence that the United States Brewers Association (USBA) was pouring large amounts of money into lobbying against prohibition helped fuel the Anti-Saloon position that “provided handy demons, and [as a result] ‘the un-American, pro-German, crime-producing, food-wasting, youth-corrupting, home-wrecking, treasonable liquor traffic’ took on a Teutonic diabolism,” as reviewer Katherine A. Powers of the Boston Globe contends.

I just went to Amazon to pick up a copy and will give a review of the book at a later date, but it looks like a good one.

If you want to help out a starving book writer, stop by www.beerinfood.com and click on any of the ads/links to Amazon to purchase Dry Manhattan and allow me a meager kickback.

P.S. And buy a copy of Beer & Food: An American History too!

Beer & Food Book Review From Appellation Beer

Stan Hieronymus ask the question in his review that does come up with Beer & Food: An American History — is it a history book, or is it a cookbook? H-m-m, how ’bout a historical cookbook?

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Choo-chooing Down To Chattanooga

April 13, Friday (Uh-oh!)
Bob Skilnik reading and signing, 7 p.m., . Author of Beer and Food. 401 Broad St. Chattanooga. Free and open to the public. (423) 756-2855.

Beer lovers will agree that good beer goes with good food, whether it’s simply a small plate of artisan cheeses or regional specialties such as New England Cheddar Cheese, a grilled Wisconsin bratwurst or a steaming bowl of Louisiana Jambalaya. But these foods, like others that we almost instinctively pair today with contemporary beers, have their origins in our culinary past, when “making do” also helped to inspire the creation of some classic American dishes. Please join us on Friday, April 13th at 7PM for Bob Skilnik’s reading and signing of Beer & Food.Beer & Food lays out the historical origins of how and why we Americans pair certain foods with a variety of beers, starting with the earliest recorded example of colonial housewives taking their last bit of homebrew and transforming an ordinary beef stew into a dish that surely had the household coming back to the hearth for more!After penning an article for the Chicago Tribune’s Good Eating section in 2003 titled “The Lightening of American Beer,” author and beer history expert Bob Skilnik wondered if—having chronicled the differences between today’s beers and those of the generations before us—could he shed some light on beer’s historical use in America. This is Skilnik’s sixth book, featuring over 90 beer-related recipes and a fascinating, mouth-watering account of the birth and rise of our nation’s brewing industry and its lasting influence on American cuisine.

Ithaca Journal Gives Beer & Food: An American History A Thumbs Up

“If you don’t know the difference between beer and ale or you always wondered why your Pops drank his beer with a dish of pig’s feet you’ll be interested in this book. Recipes from colonial, prohibition and repeal era cookbooks give you a glimpse into how cooks incorporated beer into everything from pastries to stew. You might even want to try a few out.”

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Read more about Beer & Food: An American History

Book Review: Beer and Food by Bob Skilnik

Beer & Food: An American History received a nice endorsement from Alan McLeod up in Ontario on his “A Good Beer Blog.”

Here’s just a preview, but you really should put his blog on your saved feeds and regularly stop by the site;

“The full title is Beer and Food: An American History and it could not be a plainer truth. Bob leads us through the generations of US brewing and cuisine from colonial days to the present and shows how beer has experienced more than one rise and fall as an ingredient in the American kitchen. His research and explanations are primary - by which I mean he cites cookbooks from at least the early eighteenth century to the favorite recipes of modern craft brewers. He also ties them into the prevailing technologies and context whether it is on the frontier or in the days of prohibition. There is a good sized bibliography including booklets and papers giving confidence in the authority backing up what he tells us.”

Book Review: Beer and Food by Bob Skilnik

Buy Beer & Food: An American History

Something’s Brewing. The Art, Science and Technology of Beer Brewing

This is one of those things that seems to have fallen under the radar screen of most beer history geeks, a real shame, especially in a history-laden city like Chicago. The John Crerar Library at the University of Chicago is holding a special exhibit that “…explores the development of brewing, from the ancient Sumerians’ rice-based beverages to the rise and fall of the Chicago brewing industry.”

The exhibit will be featured until March 31.

The info on the Crerar website says this exhibit ends on March 31. The picture below says it ends on March 24. Ignore it. I just called Crerar (773-702-7715) and the exhibit runs through the 31st. 

Beer & Food: An American History Gets A Thumbs-Up From Canton, Ohio’s “The Repository”

“Beer lovers and foodies alike will enjoy a new book by Bob Skilnik called ‘Beer & Food, An American History’ (Jefferson Press, $24.95). Skilnik is an alum of Chicago’s Institute of Technology, the oldest brewing school in the U.S., where he earned his degree in brewing technology.

His book gives a fascinating account of the birth and growth of our country’s brewing industry and its influence on American cuisine. A mouth-watering 90 recipes are included, from beer soup and beer pudding to Samuel Adams roast beef and roast pork loin with Rhinelander Bock.”

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It also includes a foreword by Jim Koch, Founder of the Boston Beer Co., brewer of Samuel Adams.

William Brand Reviews Beer & Food: An American History

On the book beat

“Beer & Food: An American History” (Jefferson Press, $24.95) by Bob Skilnik is being published this month. (I’ll review it on my blogs: www.beernewsletter.com/blog and www.insidebayarea.com/beer.)

This is a lively, well-researched work by a noted Chicago beer writer. Skilnik researches beer and food in America from Colonial days until the present, including recipes. It’s a fascinating look at beer in America, from English-style ales made with pumpkins to the frothy lagers of the 1950s.

Stop by Bill’s reviews and beer tastings.

About: Beer Reviews Beer & Food: An American History

In his smart and engaging history of beer and its relationship to food, Bob Skilnik demonstrates that today’s trend isn’t the first time Americans “discovered” the joys of good beer with good food.

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