Vintage Recipes: A 1944 Meal – Tuna Stuffed Peppers and Apple Cheese Crumble

I can’t believe it’s been over a month since I cooked from my 1944 Good Housekeeping Cook Book. Oh, I’ve thought about it numerous times…opened my vintage tome and perused the pages in search of an inspiring recipe. Yet, despite my good intentions nothing made it off the page and into our hungry bellies. You know what they say about good intentions. Well, turns out the road to the fast food drive thru is paved with them as well. 

In my defense, it’s been quite a hectic month: my belle-mere came for a 3 week visit, instead of our two front teeth we all got Covid for Christmas, storms blew through that managed to knock out both our power and the internet, and amongst all of that this business housekeeper managed to find herself a brand spanking new job. Excuses, all of them, but there we have it. No use crying over spilt milk. Get back on the horse, they say, and so I did.

For my first experiment with mid-century cooking in 2024, I decided to make not one but two dishes. It’s unseasonably cold where I live and I was craving something comforting, something warm, and something stick-to-your-ribs. I had seen both of the recipes I chose to make during my first flip-through of the cookbook and have been anxiously awaiting the perfect time to make them. Thanks to Old Man Winter, the opportunity finally presented itself.

For the main course, I made Tuna Stuffed Peppers. I love traditional stuffed peppers. I also love tuna. So I thought this dish would be delicious and I wasn’t wrong. 

From start to finish, it took an hour and half to get this on the table – an hour of prep and a half hour in the oven. The recipe calls for cooked diced potatoes and had I a can or two of potatoes lying around, the prep time would have been cut down by at least 15 minutes. But alas, I had no canned potatoes. I did, however, have 5 pounds of formerly fresh spuds sprouting eyes that needed to be used yesterday. So remembering the old saying “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without”, I happily peeled, diced, measured, and boiled my potatoes. 

Overall, the recipe was very straightforward and easy to make. I learned from my past tuna-related white sauce fiasco and cranked the heat when I made the sauce this time and it came together properly, thank goodness. I stuffed the peppers and put them in a 8×8 glass casserole dish, setting them aside whilst I made dessert.

For dessert, I selected Apple-Cheese Crisp. I’ve made many a fruit crisp in my day, but this one was intriguing due to the addition of cheese. Of course, apple pie and cheddar cheese have long been a dynamic duo – sitting side by side on the dessert plate, not necessarily baking in the same dish. I was very excited to try this. 

The Apple-Cheese Crisp took just over 20 minutes to get oven ready and, again, was very easy to make. The recipe serves 6-7, and it was just us three for dinner so I halved the recipe and the portions were perfect with no leftovers. 

A delightful surprise, the peppers and the dessert both required baking at 350 so I put them in the oven at the same time. The peppers required 30 minutes to bake and the crisp, an hour. The timing was perfect. By the time we were done with dinner, the Mister had just enough time to do the dinner dishes before the apple crisp came out of the oven. 

As to the dishes, I am happy to report that they were both delicious!

The Tuna Stuffed Peppers were just rich and filling enough to be comforting on a cold, winter’s evening without being overly heavy. At first taste they seemed to need salt, but after eating a few more bites it became apparent that they were perfectly seasoned. My Maman gave the dish 4/5, knocking off one star because she doesn’t like green peppers. She thought the filling tasted like a tuna casserole, except stuffed in a pepper. I agree. The peppers themselves gave just a hint of flavor to the tuna stuffing and provided a nice balance. I particularly enjoyed the potatoes – I thought that they not only bumped up the nutrition of the dish but gave a nice flavor as well (as opposed to the standard egg noodles found in traditional tuna casseroles). I would definitely make this dish again. 

And what did The Mister think? 

He, too liked the dish and gave it 4/5. So what caused him to withhold the final point? 

In my very first Dispatch I mentioned Dearest Aunt, who is a cooking legend in our family and whose last visit to our home and whose love of old recipes partially inspired this blog. Dearest Aunt and The Mister share a mutual affection – she likes to feed him and he LOVES to eat her cooking. Her stuffed pepper recipe (which bears no similarity to this one) is one of his favorite things to eat. So when reviewing his adoring wife’s attempt at stuffed peppers, The Mister commented: “I gave it 4/5 stars only because it’s not Dearest Aunt’s. Dearest Aunt has ruined me for stuffed peppers.”

So there you have it. 

On cue, the oven timer went off and the Apple-Cheese Crisp was ready. I was hopeful it would taste as good as it smelled and I was not disappointed.

After one bite, The Mister’s eyebrows went up and he said “Wow!”. My favorite reaction, of course. After the second bite he furrowed his brow and asked what was in the dish. Needless to say, he was gobsmacked when I told him it was cheese. 

My Maman loved it as well. She said it was like apple pie, but with a surprise. She gave it 5/5.

The Mister gave it 4.5/5, explaining that he’s “not a huge apple dessert guy. The cheese saved it from being torturous to eat.” He was in rare form, to be sure. 

I enjoyed it quite a bit as well. I love fruit pies, but pie crust is my sworn enemy. As a result, I have grown to appreciate the simplicity of crumbles, crisps, and cobblers. This recipe was very easy to make and tasted like a good apple pie without all of the frustration and foul language. Ahem. 

Overall, I was pleased as punch with my dinner and would gladly make both dishes again.

Bon Appetit!