Everyone loves oatmeal raisin cookies, and I found this recipe, clipped from a newspaper, and stuck in the ‘Cookies’ pages of my Searchlight Cookbook, printed in about 1940. It is interesting to note that some of the ingredients and methods are a bit different.  I never heard of soaking the raisins in hot water and draining them, and modern recipes use butter or margarine.  Modern flours are pre-sifted.  Oven controls (like the one on my oven) were not reliable, and needed to be watched.  My own solution to the problem is the same one they used.  I use a sixty year old tin oven thermometer that inherited from my mother, and then I fiddle with the gas control to regulate the oven heat.

But this recipe gives us some insight into what cooks 70 years ago were doing. Incidentally, the full title of the cookbook is The Household Searchlight Recipe Book, put together by the Household Searchlight Magazine, with its headquarters in Topeka, Kansas.  The cookbook I have came out in 1940, as part of a reprinting of 100,000 copies, but was written and copyrighted in 1931.

This is a pretty standard take on oatmeal cookies, with those minor differences I’ve already noted.

It calls for 1 cup of seedless raisins, 1/2 cup of shortening (Most modern recipes call for butter or margarine, but times were tough in the thirties.) 1 cup of granulated sugar, two eggs, 1/4 cup of milk, 1-2/3 cups quick-cooking oats, 1-1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour, 1 t baking soda, 1/2 t salt, and 1 t ground cinammon.

Rinse the raisins in hot water and drain. Cream shortening with sugar; add beaten eggs, milk, oats and raisins and mix will.  Add the flour, sifted with the soda, salt and cinnamon and beat.

Drop onto a greased cookie sheet and bake about 10 minutes in  a moderately hot oven (400 degrees F.)

Makes about 6 dozen medium-sized cookies.

Miz Parker is an inquisitive old soul, who enjoys cooking and feeding her friends.  Her maternal grandmother taught her to cook, with an emphasis on Central and Eastern European foods and methods. Miz Parker has enjoyed cooking and baking for her family and friends since she was very young.