The Emilie Loring Collection

 

Ahh, fall. The air chills, leaves turn gold, russet and crimson, and our gardens offer up their last. This year, my family has its first crop of Honeycrisp apples, all the more precious for their scarcity.

Long before the apple-picking season arrives I search for odd baskets and hampers — the markets and ten cent stores are mines of opportunity — which I pack with choice specimens of apples and pears… and I have an offering which will make the eyes of the most gilded, dyed-in-the-wool city dweller glisten with anticipation.

For the Comfort of the Family

As summer’s freedoms go the way of summer produce, school and work duties resume. So does the necessity of preparing an evening meal at the end of an already long day– ugh. But you can imagine that Emilie had an answer for that.

The recurring monotony of meal-getting is the rock upon which many a home ship has dashed to pieces…

Well, it did not require half the puckered-brow thought to solve this problem that I had given to a game of bridge in less enlightened days.

For the Comfort of the Family

With make-ahead recipes, Emilie enjoyed unhurried evenings, as we can, too, with a few timely recipes from her kitchen. We have the benefit of one hundred years of kitchen appliance development, so adapt these to your convection oven, air fryer and Instant Pot, as you will.

October 4th is “Cinnamon Roll Day” in Sweden. Emilie wasn’t Swedish, but she enjoyed a good cinnamon roll with the best of them. Her cinnamon rolls weren’t just for breakfast. She served them as dinner rolls, especially with creamed dishes. Here is her recipe:

Cinnamon Rolls

Sift together twice two cups of sifted pastry flour, one-half teaspoonful of salt, four level teaspoons of baking-powder. Mix, and into this work one-quarter cup of butter with the tips of the fingers. Add one beaten egg and one-half cup of milk and mix to a dough. Knead the dough slightly, and roll into oblong sheet about one-third of an inch thick. Brush the sheet with softened butter; sprinkle with granulated sugar, about three even tablespoons, and rather lightly with powdered cinnamon; then with a quarter of a cup of chopped, seeded raisins and one-quarter of a cup of chopped walnut meats. Roll the dough into long roll and cut in pieces an inch long. Set these in buttered baking pan and bake.

June to December is the peak period for Maine lobster. If you can get it, here’s Emilie’s  recipe for Deviled Lobster, which you can prepare ahead of time and heat up later.

Deviled Lobster

Take the meat from two lobsters, each weighing about two and a half pounds, one pint of cream, two tablespoons of butter, one tablespoon of mustard, a speck of cayenne, salt, pepper, and a scant pint of bread crumbs. Put the cream on to boil, mix the flour, mustard and pepper to gether, and add three spoonfuls of boiling cream; stir all into the remaining cream and cook two minutes. Add the lobster cut in pieces, salt and cayenne, and boil one minute. Fill individual shells, or a baking dish, with the mixture, cover with bread crumbs, and when the time comes brown for twenty minutes in a hot oven.

I’ve just been to see “Downton Abbey” in the theater, and this next make-ahead seems right in theme: Steamed Pudding. I happen to know that Emilie was rather proud of the hard sauce she made to accompany hers.

Steamed Pudding

The fruit in it may be figs, dates or raisins, the foundation is the same. Sift together one cup of entire wheat flour, one-half cup of white flour, one-half teaspoon of salt, one teaspoon of soda, one teaspoon of cinnamon. Mix and add one beaten egg, one-half cup of milk, one- half cup of molasses, four tablespoons of melted butter, then a cup of fruit. Turn into buttered baking-powder tins, filling them only two-thirds full, tie down the covers firmly, and place in fireless cooker pail, in which is boiling water, on top of range. Cover, and when the water has boiled in pail one-half hour, place the pail on hot disk in the fireless and cook about three hours. Serve the pudding with hard sauce.

While you enjoy her recipes, would you start thinking about what you hope to find in Emilie Loring’s biography, Happy Landings: The Life Behind Emilie Loring’s Stories? I’m going to ask you about that in my next post.

First, though, I’m headed north to the lake house to see my mom, do fall chores, and enjoy fall colors up close from my kayak.