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A few months back my amusingly cantankerous neighbor Terry brought me a vintage, hardback, spiral-bound cookbook. We stumbled on a conversation about cookbooks and design a few days prior, when he was over here kindly helping to patch up a huge hole in our office caused by a broken pipe upstairs. Terry is a contractor.

One afternoon shortly thereafter he caught me out in front of the house, barked at me to stay right where I was, and a few minutes later returned carrying a well-worn copy of Martha Meade's Modern Meal Maker, a volume complete with 744 recipes and 1115 (!) menus, first published in 1939. The recipes weren't the only thing that had me excited, the way the book was designed and organized was delightful as well.

Modern Meal Maker by Martha Meade

The book is divided by tabs into monthly sections. On each of the thick dividing pages are amazing (woodblock?) prints illustrating the month at hand, and the spirit of that time of the year. Below the print was a convenient list of important holidays, quotes, and general inspiration surrounding that month. If it was June, and you needed a Brunch menu, all you needed to do was flip to a given week in the June section, and you would find menu ideas for breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, and buffets -- as well as each of the individual recipes.

The Modern Meal maker was published by General Mills to promote the use of their Sperry brand of Drifted Snow 'Home Perfected' Flour, as well as their Sperry Pancake and Waffle Flour. A large percentage of the recipes in this book use one of these flours as an ingredient. I picked the Bacon Popovers as the recipe to try first, but was tempted to try others with irresistible names like Cider Sherbet, Raspberry Shrub, Saucy Susans, and Honey Cream Waffles.

Detail of May divider

I'll admit it upfront. I didn't believe I have much of a chance with these popovers, although I hoped out loud that they would miraculously bloom into giant billowy golden puffs. I expected the trouble to come from the flour -- keep in mind these recipes were assembled in an era when Sperry Flour salesmen used carrier pigeons to relay orders from rural parts of the country.

In addition to that, I don't typically like recipes that name specific brands, because I inevitably have to substitute. I didn't know if Sperry Drifted Snow Flour could be swapped out for standard unbleached all-purpose flour, or if it had some special magic ingredient in it. I'm not sure if Sperry Drifted Snow Flour is even available anymore, I haven't seen it here in SF, although it looks like General Mills may still use the brand for other types of flour, organic, etc.

Regardless, I quickly whisked up the ingredients. My popover batter seemed very thin to me, so of course I was pissed right off the bat. I combined the batter with a generous dose of chopped Smart Bacon, and then ladled it carefully into my popover pan. The yield on Martha's recipe said 12 popovers, I barely got 5 out of it. Maybe muffin tins are getting bigger? Into the oven they went. Popovers are like Shrinky Dinks for grownups, I couldn't help but flip on the oven light switch and then patiently watch and hope for their dramatic transformation.

Slowly but surely they began their ascent. They rose tall and proud above their tins and began bronzing in the heat of the 450 degree heat. When I thought they couldn't stand it a minute more I pulled them out and whipped them into the other room to take a quick picture. I pulled them out about 6 minutes early. I knew they would shrink quickly, but i certainly didn't expect them to deflate by half by the time I had them ready for their close-up (just 30 seconds!).

In my eagerness to document my success, I even ignored a little tip I remember from watching Jaques and Julia on PBS where she said to leave the popovers in the oven for a few minutes with the door open, and they won't collapse. (M. Meade's recipe doesn't mention this tip). I was too eager to capture the elusive masterpieces on film.

So, I ended up with five golden, rapidly deflating popovers with undercooked middles. All my own fault for being too eager and not having any faith in the recipe. I'm convinced that if I had followed the recipe verbatim, they would have been delicious.

In some of the early entries on this site I didn't request permission to run the recipe I was writing about from the publisher so it won't appear here. The majority of entries on 101 Cookbooks will have the recipes attached, this just happens to be one of the ones that doesn't.

From: Modern Meal Maker Page: 204
Veg-option: substitute real bacon with tempeh or Smart Bacon

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