97 Orchard Recipe Cards

We found 20 recipe cards in 97 Orchard's apartment #9, which likely belonged to an immigrant housewife interested in learning how to prepare dishes with unfamiliar (yet economical) ingredients, like Spry Vegetable Shortening. The cards were produced by the Brooklyn Edison Company in the 1930s in an effort to promote new gadgets, like the electric mixer, and advertised in papers like the New York Times. Whether or not women could afford the new machines, they were still able to send for the cards by mail.







For cooking tips 97 Orchard's housewives also turned to the Board of Education Homemaking Book, which had everything from instructions on how to prepare simple tea and toast to recipes for souffles, ice cream, casseroles, macaroni, butterscotch, and so on.