Do modern recipe books have lists of helpful cooking and general household suggestions in the back? I must look and check. In the meantime, here’s a selection of ‘Useful Information’ from Nell Heaton in 1944 in the penultimate chapter of ‘Cookery To-Day and To-Morrow’, just before the final chapter of ‘Traditional Jewish Recipes’. I’ve omitted a couple, such as ‘scissors’, ‘chopping mint’ and ‘to dissolve gelatine’, and I admit I have made a couple of frivolous comments:
- to de-fur a kettle
- to season pans
- to turn out a steamed pudding
- to clean a burnt dish (also a frying pan, a cooking stove, and hands)
- to use up sour milk for cheese
- to freshen stale bread or rolls
- to cut new bread
- to cut sandwich loaves
- to keep potatoes white
- to peel onions
- turnip peel
- Gravy Browning (x2)
- to clarify fat (X2)
- to freshen rancid butter
- to pickle meats, to pickle fish
- to prevent milk from boiling over
- uses for asbestos mats
- (i) cooking smells (does it? Is that good or bad?) (ii) to prevent small when cooking greens or cauliflower (iii) to remove teh smell of onions
- to keep cakes moist (the m-word is one of the most hated in the English language)
- to prevent sausages from burning
- to use potato peelings
- to colour soups
- forcing bags (forcing them to do what?)
- to make cutlet frills
- vanilla pods, French mustard, seasoned flour
- to make cutlet frills
- to stretch the Butter Ration
Lois Elsden 
Ah the furred up kettle ….. such a feature of living in London and the solution was a small stine. Now here in the North West no such problem.
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Over here in the south-west we are very furry!
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I like the m-word: it’s suggestive of the condition it describes.
I’ve heard of forcemeat – it’s described as a bit like sausage meat or spam. The word is a corruption of the French word, “to stuff”. Maybe the bag is what the meat is stuffed into or squeezed out of. lol.
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Yes… you’ve brought back a distant memory of French lessons!
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I bet there were some good tips here!
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