Easter Menus
The monthly magazines and Sunday supplements presented an optimistic view of the holiday with menus and recipes featuring ham and cakes. As the holiday approached, the menus in the food columns of the daily newspapers were more likely to feature poultry. Light, airy cakes, impossible to achieve with emergency flour and no shortening, butter or sugar, disappeared with puddings, gelatin or ice cream serving as dessert.
"Maybe you can't get a ham for the Easter dinner, then try for a duck,” wrote Clementine Paddleford in the April 15 Herald Tribune. “And certainly luck will be with you for a roast chicken.” If that was too plebeian, she suggested ordering dressed pheasant for immediate delivery from the Berkshire Game Farm with an office on Madison Avenue. It came frozen, $12 for a brace including regular express or parcel post delivery. Air express to distant points was extra.
A&P and Gristedes were offering duck, chicken and turkey in their ads that week before Easter. You usually bought the whole bird back then, often with the head, feet and innards attached. You could get freshly killed birds in New York at some butcher shops. Cellophane-wrapped chicken parts didn’t show up at grocers until the 1950s, but you could ask your butcher to chop the bird up for you for frying or fricassee if you didn’t want to do it yourself.
Hearn’s department store on Fifth Avenue at 14th Street had a special Easter turkey sale that Thursday, when they were open until 9, and Friday and Saturday. Fancy Grade A turkeys, ready to roast, were 68 cents a pound up to six pounds, cleaned and drawn. As the ad said, that meant the turkey had no feet, head or entrails and had been cellophane-wrapped under government supervision. Regular dressed turkeys were 52 cents at Hearn’s and everywhere else. Long Island duckling was 35 cents a pound at the grocers. At Safeway, roasting chickens were 48 cents a pound, fowl for fricassee were 43 cents a pound and fryers and broiler were 45 cents.
Here are some holiday menus and recipes that appeared in magazines and newspapers this week.
The Ladies Home Journal Easter Ham: Food editor Ann Batchelder, one of the most prominent food authorities of the day, proposed an elaborate, traditional dinner with decorative flourishes.
Gourmet Magazine's Ham Dinner: Ham was the main topic of April's issue of this relatively new magazine aimed at affluent readers. It included multiple recipes and cream sauces abounded.
A Socially Responsible Easter Dinner From the New York Times: Jane Nickerson, one of the younger food writers, urged readers to consider their responsibilities to the starving and cut back on their fats and grains this Easter. She laid out a menu to help achieve that goal without a sense of deprivation.
An Easter Menu From the New York Sun: Scholarly Edith Michael Barber had a matter-of-fact approach in the newspaper read by the Old Guard.
Easter Meat Loaf?: That's one idea from Mary Martensen in the Journal-American's Saturday supplement.
More Easter Dinner Ideas from New York city newspapers and the leading women's magazines.
Clementine Paddleford's Easter Buffet: Some ideas for a festive Easter brunch from the most respected food journalist of the day presented in the Herald Tribune.
Easter Breakfast Suggestions From Prudence Penny: Hearst's fictional food columnist chimed in with family breakfast ideas. Like Betty Crocker, Prudence Penny was a trademark and several different women played the role in Hearst newspapers, personal appearances and radio shows in various cities.
Gelatin Gives Savory Lift to Easter Luncheons: The World-Telegram offers some Easter week luncheon ideas featuring that ever versatile ingredient, a standby for decades of housewives.
Leftover Ham: In Joy of Cooking, Irma Rombauer had defined eternity as two people and a ham. Both Gourmet and Better Homes & Gardens offered suggestions on what to do with the leftovers.
Some Yummy Ideas From the Food Processors: The typical housewife of the day got many of her recipes came from the makers of packaged food. Here are some of the Easter ideas that ran in ads that week.