Vintage "Radio Recipes of the Month" from Texas A&I

As I was bumbling around yesterday morning, juggling cartographers and quickies and airline stewardess outfits, I noticed, with some alarm, that the last official "Recipes" post on Papergreat was on November 26, 2016. A whole cycle of Christmas, New Year's, Easter, summer cookout and picnic season and Halloween has zipped right on by without any culinary-tip contributions from this blog!

This caused me to exclaim to the Twitterverse:

Holy stromboli. It's been almost a FULL YEAR since Papergreat's last "Recipes" post. Have to remedy that. Time for a recipes week leading up to Thanksgiving?

— Chris Otto (@Papergreat) November 18, 2017

(Note: There are only about 120,000 Google results for "Holy Stromboli," which seems low.)

And so here we are. Today, we have an undated 8½-by-11 sheet of paper that is covered, front and back, with recipes from the Texas A&I College "Classroom of the Air." Texas College of Arts and Industries was the official name, from 1929 to 1967, of what is now Texas A&M University–Kingsville. So it makes plenty of sense to have this in the family papers, as Mom was born in Kingsville, Texas, in 1948 and the family lived there for a number of years.

So I would guess this piece of ephemera dates to sometime between 1946 and 1950. According to "Recipes of the Month," the "Classroom of the Air" was broadcast on KWBU three mornings a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. (KWBU is now an NPR affiliate based in Waco, Texas.) The show was sponsored by the Houston Natural Gas Corporation, which was acquired in the mid 1980s by InterNorth, which later renamed itself Enron.

These recipes are all from a week in May. They include custard, cucumber mustard pickles, gingerbread cupcakes with apricot topping, piquant potatoes, party punch (non-alcoholic), "one-dish meal," chocolate cake with fluffy seven-minute frosting, ham cornettes, Harvard beets with raisins, "meat balls," and savory cabbage.

Here are a couple of the recipes, for your reading or cooking pleasure:

Gingerbread Cupcakes
with Apricot Topping

• 1/2 c. boiling water
• 1/2 c. shortening
• 3/4 c. light molasses
• 1 beaten egg
• 1 1/2 c. flour
• 1/4 t. salt
• 3/4 t. soda
• 1/2 t. cinnamon
• 1/4 t. cloves
• 1/2 t. ginger

Pour water over shortening; blend well. Add molasses and egg. Add flour sifted with salt, soda, and spices. Fill greased cupcake pans two-thirds full. Bake in moderate oven (350° F.) 25 minutes. Makes 12 cupcakes. Remove cone-shaped piece from center of each cake. Fill with apricot filling. Replace cone.

Apricot filling: Mix 2 T. sugar, 3 T. flour, and dash of salt. Add 2/3 c. cooked, sieved apricot pulp. Cook over low heat until thick and smooth. Add 1 T. lemon juice; chill. Fold in 1/2 c. heavy cream, whipped. (Note: Evaporated milk, scalded and chilled, whips well.)

One-Dish Meal

• 1/2 lb. ground meat
• 1 No. 1 can corn
• 1/2 lb. egg noodles
• 1 large onion
• 1 small green pepper
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 No. 1 can tomato soup
• 2 T. margarine

Boil noodles until tender. Drain. Melt butter; add ground meat, green pepper, and onion cut fine. Brown. In a buttered baking dish, add layer of noodles, meat, and corn, until all are used. Season well. Add tomato soup and bake 1/2 hour at 350° F. Serves 6.