Delineator Institute Chicken Cookbook

The Delineator was originally a fashion magazine for women that began publication in 1873. The magazine was published by the Butterick Company and was originally used to market the sewing patterns invented by Ebenezer Butterick. Eventually the magazine expanded to other areas of interest to women in the home, and this, of course, included cooking recipes.

37 Ways to Serve Chicken (1931, 24 pp.) was published by the Delineator Institute of the Butterick Publishing Company. The copyright page of the booklet shown here states First Edition, May 1931. This was only one of several Delineator Institute cookbooklets that were issued that related to food; other service booklets covered the topics of General (Household), Fun, Manners, Decorations, Child Welfare and Beauty.

According to an order form in the rear, these booklets were available by mail order for (depending upon the title) 10 cents and 25 cents each. The Delineator Cook Book was available for $2.65.

The recipes in this booklet were developed by Ann Batchelder, a member of the Delineator Institute Staff. She was previously a food editor for Ladies' Home Journal.

By 1937 Butterick had decided to concentrate on its sewing patterns and the publishing rights to the cooking-related Delineator material were acquired by the Culinary Arts Press and the Delineator magazine was merged with another magazine popular with women, the Pictorial Review.

Here's one of Batchelder's recipes for chicken found in the booklet:

HASHED CHICKEN

Now we're talking! Let no one turn up his or her nose at the word hash. A good word with a long lineage. I, myself, like French names on my food when I am in the frame of mind that calls for French, but when it comes to hash, no "hachis" for me. And chicken hash is no exception. Would you make some on a night for supper? Take, then, two or three cups of finely chopped cooked chicken. Add a well minced onion. Season same with salt and pepper and the tiniest bit of dry mustard. Go light on it, but do it. Put a tablespoon or so of fat into a frying pan. Add a little stock to the meat with a beaten egg. Then put into the heated frying pan and pat it into omelet shape. Brown, fold and serve on a hot platter garnished with green peppers saute and toast points.

The recipe format shown above is like that of the other recipes in the the book. No ingredient lists followed by direction lists -- simply paragraphs as they were wont to do back then. All peppered with a bit of personal talk and opinions, as if she were in the kitchen with you.