Lawrence resident Jane Garrett wrote the book The

Jane Garrett’s book, “The Market Basket: Cooking and Eating in Lawrence, Kansas, 1921-1949,” is available at several local bookstores.

Recipes today just aren’t like they used to be.

Sure, you can get a recipe nearly anywhere these days: a book, the Internet, the back of a soup can.

But can you get a recipe like Mrs. Martin’s Canned Chicken? Before you run off to the store for the poultry cousin of Chicken of the Sea, check out the first few lines of Mrs. Martin’s meal:

• Let fowl fast 24 hours before killing.

• Kill, dress at once, washing carefully, and let cool 24 hours before canning.

• Cut in convenient pieces. (You’ll note that she adds: “Never wash after cutting up as it draws out delicious juices.”)

Not exactly “The Joy of Cooking” for the housewife, nor the backyard chicken. But that was the way it was back in 1936 when Mrs. Jessie Martin of Route 4 sent in her recipe to a contest the Journal-World sponsored called “The Market Basket.”

Each week, between July 1921 and November 1949, readers were beckoned to send in a recipe fitting that week’s guidelines — be it canned chicken or jam or another homemade goodie. The weekly winner took home $2 and the envy of his or her (but mostly her) neighbors with publication of the tasty treat.

No doubt Mrs. Jessie Martin of Route 4 wasn’t surprised her recipe for canned chicken made the paper on Sept. 11, 1936, but she’d probably be shocked that her recipe has found new life, now, nearly 73 years later.

That’s because Mrs. Martin’s Canned Chicken is one of more than 600 recipes featured in “The Market Basket: Cooking and Eating in Lawrence, Kansas, 1921-1949” by Jane Garrett.

Garrett, who lives in Lawrence, spent a decade on the book, including a year and a half in the basement of the Lawrence Public Library, 707 Vt., poring over old microfilm, trying to find each and every recipe featured in the contest. And though it turned into an intensive project, it was somewhat of an accident that it even came about, Garrett says.

“I had done a book for my hometown, Neodesha, Kansas — it was my high school reunion — and I did a book that featured old recipes. I’m a recipe nerd anyway,” Garrett says. “I was just down there playing around and I found this recipe … I think it was for apple butter, in a 1933 issue of the Journal-World.”

The book, spawned from that chance encounter, now is available for $24.95 at The Raven Book Store, 6 E. Seventh St.; Oread Books, 1301 Jayhawk Blvd.; and Borders Books and Music, 700 N.H. It brings to life a time in Lawrence very different from today. It was a time when eating out was a rarity, every woman knew how to cook and no scrap was wasted — though Mrs. Jessie Martin reminds us that when canning older fowl to “can only the better pieces.”

Paul Bahnmaier, who lives southwest of Lecompton, fondly remembers his Aunt Elizabeth, though he doesn’t particularly remember her Mrs. Bahnmaier’s Combination Vegetable Salad, for which she was featured in the contest on Dec. 4, 1931 — 11 years before he was born.

Bahnmaier says the aunt cooked for the Kansas University football team, spending six days a week making sure the boys were fed well enough for the gridiron. But he says many women of the time probably had a similar experience, even if they weren’t being paid to cook by KU.

“I think the idea was, they used to cook for hay men or thrashers and maybe cooking for 15 or 20 in the kitchen and the heat and never thought a thing about doing that,” Bahnmaier says.

Don Westheffer’s mother, Phebe, was featured on July 7, 1939, when her recipe for Mrs. Westheffer’s Picnic Dish was published. The Lawrence resident says he was 17 at the time and his mother, a teacher/commercial egg-seller in Eudora, was clearly educated in the art of saving and using everything.

“She was quite active in that kind of thing — baking bread and making bread pudding with what was left,” Westheffer says. “Well, after a couple of days, they had to do something with it, instead of throwing it away.”

Interestingly, Garrett can’t picture her own mother, Genevieve, entering the contest.

“No, she would never have (entered),” Garrett says. “My mother was a good cook, but she hated to cook. She hated being in the kitchen. I’m just the opposite.”

And though she can’t picture her own mother triumphantly flitting about the kitchen cooking her award-winning recipe, she did find a rather close connection to one of the winners: Mrs. Thomas Pearson, who won March 14, 1947, with her Mrs. Pearson’s Muffins recipe. The woman was not a relative, friend or neighbor, but when Garrett came across the muffin recipe, the hair certainly stood up on the back of her neck: The year she won, Mrs. Pearson lived in a house Garrett had lived in herself, 1336 Mass.

Garrett has yet to find time to make any of the recipes from the book. She’s been too busy working on a second book — “The Market Basket Volume 2: More Cooking and Eating in Lawrence, Kansas 1921-1949,” which she hopes to have published in the future.

Looking forward to that book, and to trying out the recipes from this one, is Jinny Ashlock of Lawrence. Ashlock picked up the book from The Raven last week, intrigued as much by history as the recipes.

“This is at least partly an educational cookbook,” she says, settling in a chair to take a look. “I think it’ll be great fun.”

Recipes from “The Market Basket,” by Jane Garrett, and originally published in the Journal-World.

Miss Koerner’s Spring Salad

1 cup shredded cabbage

1 cup shredded carrots

1 cup shredded apples

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup raisins

1 banana, sliced

1/4 teaspoon salt

juice of 1/2 lemon

Mix salt with cabbage, brown sugar, carrots, lemon juice and raisins. Put all the ingredients together. Serve on lettuce leaves.

— Recipe from Miss Wilma Koerner, 750 N. 3rd St., April 6, 1945.

Mrs. O’Connor’s Corn Pudding

3 eggs

2 cups canned or fresh corn

2 tablespoons melted better

2 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon salt

Pepper

2 cups milk

Beat eggs and add the other ingredients. Pour into a greased baking dish. Place in a pan of hot water and bake in 350-degree oven for 1 hour, or until set in center.

— Recipe from Mrs. J.M. O’Connor, Route 1, Oct. 29, 1948.

Mrs. Pardee’s Boston Brown Bread

1 cup white flour

2 cups graham flour

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons soda

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1/4 cup molasses

2 cups sour milk or buttermilk

1/2 cup seedless raisins

1/2 cup chopped nut meats

Sift white flour; measure and sift with salt and soda. Add graham flour, brown sugar, nuts and raisins. Mix well. Add molasses and milk to well-beaten egg. Combine wet and dry ingredients. Pour into four well-greased and floured baking powder cans. Steam 1 1/2 hours, or if preferred, bake in a moderate over, about 325 degrees, for one hour.

— Recipe from Mrs. Alice Pardee, 734 Ark., Jan. 29, 1943.