cooking through 100 years of vegan cookbooks for fun

I'm cooking the most iconic recipe from vegan cookbooks over the decades to see how it's evolved over time. Here's something I didn't know before researching this topic. The first vegan recipe book wasn't published in the 2000s or when the word vegan was invented. It was actually published in the 1910s by a guy named... This recipe is for nut bristles, which is a take on a UK classic that usually uses meat. We have three quarters cup of mixed nuts, two tablespoons of nut butter, one chopped white onion, and a cup of canned tomatoes. I think I'm gonna throw in like two or three. So I'm just using a cupcake tin and I'm gonna tightly pack this. Let's bake these and get started on our clear gravy. I'm adding a teaspoon of marmite to some hot water and just stirring it together. And that's clear gravy. The nut bristles are baked. These usually are fried, but a lot of our recipes take place in a pan. So I figured we should change it up a little. I mean, it does add like almost like a really mild soy sauce flavor. It tastes like the first idea of like a veggie burger. No cracking, no breaking, and hear that tone. It's RCA Victor's great... We're backtracking a little bit because the true history of veganism is really centered around the UK, specifically in the mid-1800s. The vegetarian society had three main founders, the Christian church, a private school that focused on vegetarianism and ethics, and number three is the truth tester journal, which basically told all vegetarian groups across the UK to come together into one main group. So and the recipe from this book that we're focusing on today is called The Bachelor Dish, which is supposed to be easy enough to cook if you were a bachelor. A lot of cooks from this time used vegetable shortening. The first thing I'm going to do is saute a leek just to bring out some flavor. Once the leeks get a little color, I'm going to add carrots and potatoes and let these steam in a little bit of water. We can do for now. After about 15 minutes, when the potatoes are pretty soft, we can add in our cup of beans, a tablespoon of marmite, and a tablespoon of peanut butter. I think it's pretty much done. So good. We're in the 1950s now, specifically 1951 when a reprinting of Faye K. Henderson's vegan recipes book was issued. She also included pamphlets of other popular vegan and vegetarian texts within this vegan cookbook to help with marketing, essentially. Instead of using butter and pie crust, again, what made this recipe vegan was the fact that she used vegetable shortening. So this is just finely ground wholemeal flour, vegetable shortening, and a little bit of water. And I refrigerated it overnight. Like, maybe it just has to come to room temperature. What the hell? It could just be because it's cold. I was a little nervous about this pie crust not working, but I think it was just a little cold and dry. I've been wetting my fingers and hand packing this into my dish, and it looks good. Cross your fingers. Now we're grating a half a pound of apples. So I strained them a little bit. Now I'm going to add a quarter cup of brown sugar, a couple of sultanas, which is just like a golden raisin, and some lemon zest. This is going to take me a minute. Obviously, it's a beginner pie. I maybe didn't roll the top out thin enough. What's a veganer pie? A beginner pie. You said a veganer. I did. Anyway, I'm going to try to cut out a beautifully clean slice. A buttery crust is something I really look forward to when eating any kind of pastry like this. So it was very smart for the time. I'm very thankful we have vegan butter. This can change the way you make cookies. The revolutionary Wherever Electric Super Shooter. Just load it, plug it in, and you can turn out dozens of cookies. Let's open up to 1965. Freya Dench's book just came out in the U.S. called The Vegan Kitchen. This was the first American cookbook with the word vegan in the title. So now we're not just cutting out dairy and cheese, we're trying to recreate it a little bit more. So I figured we should make her garbanzo cheese recipe to see what kind of vegan cheeses we were working with in the 1960s. I'm adding my cashews or Brazil nuts if you have them, three quarters cup of water, one cup of soaked chickpeas from a half a cup of dry, one small tomato, one shredded carrot and two sticks of celery, a half a teaspoon of lemon juice. I'm also adding a half a teaspoon of onion powder, nutritional yeast, and last but not least, our agar powder. I think I'm going to add like a half a teaspoon to start. It kind of looks like cheddar cheese. I added a little bit of salt as I was stirring this as well. Our garbanzo bean cheese has chilled. I'm going to pop it out. It doesn't really remind me of cheese, but it does remind me of like polenta and I want to fry it. It's pretty good for the 60s. So Peter, how did this place come together? Uh, you've been here about four years and uh, I guess you've been teaching for about eight years. A notable hippie commune that came out of this era was called The Farm and they came out with their own cookbook in 1975 that taught the average home cook how to make their own tofu. They were also the first to develop recipes that we see today in modern vegan cookbooks like vegan chicken nuggets. I figured we would try to make our own tofu based on the recipe it gave us in the book and we'll see how it goes. I soaked five cups of dry soybeans in 15 cups of water. Now I'm going to strain them into a colander. Now we're going to add three cups of water. There are so many soybeans and I know this will make a hefty batch of tofu, but I don't have a cheesecloth and I really don't have a big pot. I'm just using a very new and clean kitchen towel. I'm supposed to add the coagulant, which is vinegar or lemon juice, something really acidic while the soy milk is still really hot. It just makes it a lot harder to squeeze. It's like burning my hand. I'm using white vinegar to curdle my soy milk and I'm diluting it in a little bit of water. So I'm going to create almost like a whirlpool and you can see it immediately start to split. Now I'm transferring anything that's curdled into this lined bin. I used a tofu press to make this a pretty firm cake. It's not much for all the work we put into it, but I'm sure if we put the rest of the beans, we'd be left with a lot. Flash forward to the 80s. It's a very important time because people are starting to realize that veganism isn't just this lifestyle choice. It also has to do with environmentalism and animal rights and it becomes kind of the aesthetic of punk rock culture, especially in the UK. No more vegetable shortening. We've moved on and now we're using olive oil. New ingredients are available in grocery stores. The aroma is up and the translucency of my onions is way down. That's because we're sauteing aromatics. So this is the soy pulp from our tofu making. I just figured I'd use it because it's a little bit wet. I'll just cut the broth a little bit. I'm also using a couple of rolled oats, nutritional yeast, sage and dry thyme, some pine nuts, soy sauce. This is huge because remember we have been having to use Marmite. I'm also going to add some vegetable broth. We want the dry rolled oats and anything in here that isn't super wet to absorb all that liquid. So after this is well mixed, I'm going to let it sit for five minutes. I'm going to try and flip it onto a cutting board. Nice. It just tastes like tightly packed stuffing, which definitely isn't a bad thing. I think this was a great recipe and probably looked really good on like a table spread. I've been making this for years. I wrote about it in my first cookbook, but now it's an epicure over 20 years ago. And then when I had my business, We're in the nineties and a huge figurehead of the vegan movement in this decade is Miyoko Shinner and also this really viral vegan meat recipe that's supposed to replace your Thanksgiving turkey roast called the Unturkey. This is her classic spice mix that is necessary to make the Unturkey. It has 13 ingredients in it. It calls for four cups of vital wheat gluten and a quarter cup of her spice mix, three tablespoons of soy sauce, and three cups of water. I should also mention that this decade was extremely important because the classic vegan symbol that you see on a lot of vegan food items you buy at your grocery store was invented during this time. This is going to bake in the oven for 30 minutes. So it doesn't expand as much when we boil it. I'm onto the second component of the Unturkey, the stuffing. So I'm just starting with some olive oil, one white onion, some celery, carrots, and I'm making a little bit of room for my day old bread. So she tells us to take our vital wheat gluten and boil it in here for about Okay. So this really does look like skin. It's just interesting that it's skin from a bean. I'm going to try to separate it into a pretty thin layer. And now I'm going to start to make a mound of stuffing. I'm going to take my Unturkey, which we butterflied. Are you okay? It's so hot. Be careful. Be careful. I guess that's, I mean, I want it to look good. From my Thanksgiving experiences, I'm often left with just vegetables. I think if this was done a little bit more neatly, it would be such a filling and very welcoming option for somebody who doesn't eat meat. I didn't think I was going to like this one just because of the way it was turning out, but it's very impressive. Hey, it's the Post Punk Kitchen. This is our Mexcellent show. Now the 2000s and veganism has undergone its most radical transformation yet. Now veganism is a lifestyle brand. Because of that vegan symbol on products across the nation, it's being sold a lot more in grocery stores and a public access cooking show launched in Brooklyn called the Post Punk Kitchen. We're cooking their most viral recipe from the book, their chickpea cutlets. I'm mashing the chickpeas with a tablespoon or two of oil. Now I'm going to add the vital wheat gluten, the breadcrumbs, some seasoning, two cloves of garlic, two tablespoons of soy sauce, and some lemon zest. I've been kneading this a little bit with my hand. I think if vital wheat gluten was in the recipe, it would have been a lot closer to a savory meat replacement than it was. Here are our cutlets. I might put some olive oil on this pan before I bake them, and we'll see how they turn out. I think it's really delicious. It reminds me of a schnitzel. Fried would be so good. My name is Brian Terry. I'm an Oakland-based chef, cookbook author, and food justice activist. I am here today to connect with Caleb. Now we're in the 2010s, and this is where food blogs, Instagram foodies, recipe creators really start to blow up online. And it's also where we start to see a lot of those previously marginalized vegan voices really come to light and kind of rewrite the history of where a lot of veganism originated. Yeah, so I'm very excited to make this cocoa spice cake with candied ginger, and I'm also happy that it adds a little sweetness to this recipe lineup. One of the author's tricks is to use a mashed up avocado in the chocolate cake. I'm adding a fourth a cup of coconut oil, a cup of fine cane sugar, three quarters cup of whole wheat pastry flour, three quarters cup of all-purpose flour, six tablespoons of cocoa powder, cayenne, nutmeg, baking soda, and salt. And I'm also going to add some coconut milk. I'm also adding two tablespoons of rum. This is non-alcoholic rum. I didn't have my ID on me at the time. Lori! Oh, two drops of vodka. Randy Burns accepted your follow request on Instagram. That's my dad. A teaspoon of vanilla, and a half a cup of crystallized ginger. There's a very subtle warmth in the batter from the cayenne. I'm adding three quarters cup of coconut milk to the melted chocolate, and you'll start to see the ganache come together pretty quickly. Wow, that's amazing. Hallie, do you know what that means? You are in the present now. And that's why it is so crucial to have some go-to vegan meals that you can make on the fly. Today I'm sharing three of my favorites. They're big on flavor, they're pretty wholesome, and they take just 20 minutes to make. Let's do it. It seems like everybody is focusing on a more whole food, plant-based diet. Consumers are scrutinizing ingredient labels and are really looking for clean ingredients in short lists on the back of their processed foods. And what once was a sensation in the 2010s, Impossible Meat, Beyond Meat, has now become more of a nostalgic, every once in a while kind of purchase. Start by breaking this apart in my blender. I'm going to add the vegan cream cheese, lemon, some olive oil, and some salt and pepper. Maybe the cream cheese should have been softer. I'm sure she would choose some other favorites, but I love that this can show how trends can show up in publishing, which is crazy because 50 years ago it was hard to get a vegan cookbook published to begin with. Social followings can really get you a book deal. Do a little bit of olive oil on top and some leeky salt. Now that we've gone through all the decades, I really want to highlight what I think is coming for us in 2030. My boyfriend and I eat this all the time. It's mycelium bacon. It's grown from mushrooms. As food technology advances and we start to see more vegan protein options that are actually sourced from animals themselves by taking their cells and regenerating them to make a meat that isn't really animal based, but it's animal derived. I kind of think there will be an ethical shift in veganism, so I'm interested to hear your guys' perspective. Thank you for going back in time with me, and I'll see you in the future.