Which modern appliance most drastically changed cooking?

Was it the microwave? Push a couple buttons and zap, your food is done.

The gas or electric range? No more fussy cast-iron cookstoves that baked unevenly and were hard to regulate.

Sandy Rosvanis of Trafford said her grandma's "favorite 'modern' kitchen convenience was hot and cold running water."

We know a few people who would make a strong case for the Mr. Coffee: Now we're finally awake enough to use all the other appliances.

But seriously, folks, it's hard to make a real case for anything but the refrigerator.

Think about it: All the other appliances changed how we cook; the refrigerator changed what we cook.

A hundred and fifty years ago, you maybe heard of ice cream getting served once in a blue moon at a Fourth of July picnic, made with ice that was stored in the wooden, sawdust-insulated icehouse over on the other end of town. But you sure didn't dig into a tub of Ben & Jerry's every night. If you wanted a cold drink, the only cold place to get it was the well. Jell-O, mayo, pudding, Popsicles, cottage cheese, yogurt, uncured meats (unless they'd been butchered that morning) -- those things rarely or never turned up on the table, and if they did, they had to be polished off pronto.

Not that you couldn't store any semi-perishables for longer periods. You maybe had a root cellar with some carrots and turnips lurking around all winter, or if you were lucky, you had a little springhouse where you could cool Old Bossy's cream for a day or so. But ice was something you skated on, not something that came automatically out of a little doodad on a door and into your drinking glass. And I doubt that anyone had even dreamed of freezing a vegetable.

Sure, the refrigerator didn't burst onto the scene entirely out of nowhere. Its predecessor was the icebox -- and for decades after real electric refrigerators were invented, many owners couldn't cut the habit of calling them iceboxes.

John "Nic" Nicolaus of Plum, a volunteer docent for the Senator John Heinz History Center, said iceboxes were insulated cabinets, typically built of wood. The ice man came around every few days to heft a new block of ice into the box, which had a hole in the bottom with a small hose that stuck down through the floor. That way, as the ice melted, the water drained down into the basement instead of onto your kitchen floor.

How does Mr. Nicolaus know all this? Partly because the History Center itself was an ice storage facility. Early last century, the Chautauqua Ice Company cut blocks of ice from Lake Chautauqua in New York, transported them by train to Pittsburgh and stored them in the warehouse on Smallman Street, which at that time was a brick-and-wood building with no windows, the better to insulate the ice. When it came time for the History Center to take over, some major renovations were required.

Icemen on horse-drawn buggies hauled the ice all over the city. First, Mr. Nicolaus noted, the horses were out of a job, replaced by the automobile. Not long thereafter, the icemen were unemployed, too, replaced by electric refrigerators.

"I'm old enough to remember iceboxes," Mr. Nicolaus said. "We were lucky -- we had a refrigerator -- but we had neighbors with iceboxes. You had a sign that you put in your window that said '15' on one side and '25' on the other, and you turned it to show how many pounds of ice you needed so the man could haul it in without coming to your door to ask, 'How many pounds do you want today, Missus?' "

Bern Nagengast, historian for the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), said the first successful, mass-produced, household refrigerator became available in about 1914, but refrigerators weren't really accepted, affordable and reliable until around 1926.

In his role as historian, Mr. Nagengast, who lives in western Ohio, has accumulated a massive collection of catalogs and manuals for early refrigerators. His wife, Carol, noticed that the early refrigerators often came with cookbooks, or at least with a recipe section as part of the owner's manual. It stands to reason -- people had to figure out what to do with this new thing!

Mrs. Nagengast combed through the collection, selected and tested old recipes and compiled many of them into a special publication for ASHRAE's 100th anniversary in 2004. "Cook With Cold: Old Tyme Refrigerator Recipes" includes recipes that came with the earliest Frigidaire, General Electric and several long-defunct companies' refrigerators, along with cover designs and illustrations from the original cookbooks.

In many of the drawings, aproned women stand smiling demurely at the contents of their opened refrigerators, "looking like June Cleaver," said June Coyne, a North Huntingdon woman who still has the cookbook that came with her parents' first Westinghouse refrigerator in the mid-1940s. Refrigerator availability must have been curtailed during World War II because Mrs. Coyne's parents had to get on a waiting list to get theirs, she recalled.

The illustrations aren't the only thing that's dated about those cookbooks. The food is also dated -- big-time.

Apparently now that they could harden and cool their gelatin in the fridge, people thought they should make molded everything. "Cook With Cold" even includes recipes for Molded Macaroni Salad and Molded Corned Beef Salad. The latter is especially ... uh ... interesting. Ingredients include gelatin, tomato juice, Worcestershire, hard-cooked eggs, pickles and corned beef. Sounds like "Sandwich Jell-O Salad."

Other remnants of yesteryear in the book include chilled drinks made with tea and fruit juices, clam juice cocktail, Turkish delight, canned pears with a dollop of cream cheese mixture served on a lettuce leaf, and salads with lots of mayonnaise in them.

June O'Leary of Monroeville, who still has a Frigidaire cookbook from her 1949 refrigerator purchase, notes that frozen salads were all the rage at church women's meetings in that era.

"I must admit that I stopped short of preparing any of these salads or other frozen recipes because of the amounts of cream cheese, mayonnaise and whipping cream that they contained," she said. Today's calorie-counters and cholesterol-watchers are loath to suspend everything in mayo.

Ingredients, measurements, sizes of food containers and style of recipe-writing have all changed over the course of a century.

Ms. Coyne, for instance, notes that people used to make a dessert using plain gelatin, water, sugar and whipping cream; we now recognize this as Jell-O mixed with Cool Whip.

And Carol Colter of Holiday Park has three old Frigidaire cookbooks but rarely uses them because "the weight amounts have changed on boxes of Jell-O, pudding and some canned ingredients over the years and the recipes require altering a bit." Refrigerator temperatures have changed over the years, Mr. Nagengast said, meaning that old recipes' freezing times need tweaking, too.

While compiling "Cook With Cold," Mrs. Nagengast also noticed that the recipes were much shorter than modern recipes. Presumably, people then grew up learning to cook and didn't need to have every step spelled out in detail.

Some recipes, however, have stood the test of time. The book includes a section on making fancy ice cubes using fruit, mint leaves, food coloring and other tidbits. We opened our latest issue of the popular "Taste of Home" magazine, and what did it display prominently on a full-color page? Fancy ice cubes.

Mr. Nagengast said his wife still uses some of the old-time recipes for salad dressings, and just the other night she pulled out the book to make refrigerator rolls for dinner.

And in between the strange-sounding recipes for "Cabbage, Pineapple and Cheese Salad" and "Stuffed Chilled Lettuce," there are a few that surely are timeless, such as Hot Fudge Sauce. That's one that never goes out of style, even if it's labeled as a sauce for "frozen creams," not "ice cream."

To order "Cook With Cold: Old Tyme Refrigerator Recipes" ($13), use the following link: techstreet.com/cgi-bin/detail?product_id=1703580.

Molded Macaroni Salad

PG tested

I decreased salt to 1 teaspoon, and would recommend decreasing lemon juice to 1 tablespoon. I used 1 cup uncooked elbow macaroni.

• 4 ounces ( 1/4 package) elbow macaroni
• 2 tablespoons gelatin
• 1/2 cup cold water
• 1/2 cup cottage cheese
• 3/4 cup minced celery
• 1/2 cup minced green pepper
• 1 cup mayonnaise
• 3 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon minced onion
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1/2 cup cream (whipped)

Cook macaroni in boiling, salted water until tender; drain.

Soften gelatin in cold water and dissolve on simmer heat.

Add cheese and mix; cool.

Add macaroni, vegetables, mayonnaise, and seasonings.

Chill until slightly thickened; fold in whipped cream.

Turn into ring mold and chill until firm.

-- "Cook With Cold: Old Tyme Refrigerator Recipes"

Banana and Orange Cream

PG tested

This recipe is transcribed verbatim from "Cook With Cold: Old Tyme Refrigerator Recipes," a compilation of recipes from old refrigerator manuals. As you can see, recipes were not yet being written in standard form, so it wasn't unusual to see someone add a "-ful" onto the end of "teaspoon" or "cup," and gelatin was called "gelatine." Also, refrigerators no longer have "ice trays" (metal trays with separate inserts that divided water into ice cubes), so we used an 8-by-8-inch baking dish.

• 2 bananas
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 1/2 cupful powdered sugar
• 1/2 teaspoonful gelatine
• 1 tablespoonful cold water
• 1 1/2 cupfuls heavy cream

Slice bananas thin and put through a potato ricer or coarse sieve. Add orange juice and powdered sugar to banana pulp. Soak gelatine for 5 minutes in cold water and thoroughly dissolve by placing it over a pan of boiling water. Add to banana mixture. Fold into cream which has been beaten stiff. Pour into ice trays and let freeze.

-- "Cook With Cold: Old Tyme Refrigerator Recipes"

Icebox Vegetable Salad

"To update this, I use frozen peas (does anyone still eat canned peas?) and fresh roasted red peppers instead of pimentos, which I never have in my pantry," wrote Trafford resident Sandy Rosvanis, who got this recipe from her grandmother. "Fresh corn off the cob is a yummy substitute, and a can of rinsed and drained black beans adds pretty color and texture."

• 1 can cut green beans, drained
• 1 can tiny peas, drained
• 1 can whole kernel corn, drained
• 4-ounce jar chopped pimentos, drained
• 1 cup chopped celery
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 green pepper, chopped
• For the dressing
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup cider vinegar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper

In saucepan, combine dressing ingredients and bring to a boil. Cool slightly. Pour over the mixed drained vegetables, cover and refrigerate overnight or up to a week.

-- Sandy Rosvanis

Christmas Almond Icebox Cookies

This recipe comes from the mother of Plum resident John "Nic" Nicolaus, who surmises she got the recipe from her mother.

• 1 pound butter (no substitutes)
• 1 pound almonds, ground
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 scant cups flour (start with less, then add more as needed to reach proper consistency)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• Dash salt

Mix ingredients. Using wax paper, form into rolls about 1-1/2 inches in diameter. Refrigerate two hours or more. Slice thinly (about 1/4-inch slices) and bake in 375- to 400-degree oven about 10 minutes, watching closely to avoid burning. When cool, roll in powdered sugar.

-- John "Nic" Nicolaus

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