Selections from Aunt Sammy's Radio Recipes and USDA Favorites

The first voice in American broadcasting to tell millions of housewives what to cook for dinner. 'Aunt Sammy' was Uncle Sam's virtual wife, a warm radio persona created by the USDA who spoke into microphones across the country from 1926 onward, offering practical cooking advice to a nation gathered around wood-paneled radio sets. This collection gathers recipes from two distinct eras: the scratch-cooking 1920s, with their hearty soups and straight-from-the-farm sensibility, and the casserole-heavy 1970s, with their canned soup shortcuts and convenience-oriented approach. Together, they trace five decades of transformation in American home cooking, from the dawn of radio to the rise of the modern kitchen. Each recipe carries the echoes of that era's anxieties, innovations, and tastes. For anyone curious about what Americans were actually cooking when they gathered around the radio to listen, this book is a fascinating time capsule, preserving not just ingredients and techniques but the very voice that guided generations of home cooks.