My collection of old recipe booklets includes the following:

Published in 1942 by the Co-operative Publishing Association, Superior, Wisconsin – apparently a consortium of agricultural cooperatives.  “Dedicated to the housewives of America, in whose hands rests the power of the market basket,” it says.  (They still couldn’t get credit without their husbands’ consent, though.)

Tomorrow I’ll try rolling out these cookies – the dough seemed a bit sticky, so we’ll see how it goes.  The recipe itself was:

1/2 cup CO-OP Vegetable Shortening
2 cups CO-OP Fancy Flour
1/2 tsp. CO-OP Baking Powder
1/2 tsp. CO-OP Soda
1/4 tsp. CO-OP Salt
1 egg
7/8 cup sugar
1/2 cup sour cream

I don’t have a 1/8 cup measuring cup (does anyone?) so I had to eyeball that, and needless to say the CO-OP ingredients were replaced with what I had on hand …

Sift together flour, baking powder, soda, and salt working in the shortening as for pie crust. [In my kitchen this means using a pastry blender.] Beat the egg and add the sugar, beating thoroughly.  Add the sour cream.  Add the liquid mixture to the flour and shortening mixture.  Stir well.  Chill thoroughly.  Roll out.  Cut.  Bake in a 400F. oven for 7 minutes.

I think the recipe assumed one owns a hand-held mixer, but since I still haven’t gotten around to re-wiring my grandmother’s I just poured the dry ingredients into my stand mixer.  The dough seemed sticky, as I said, but it tasted awfully good, even without the nutmeg I usually put in sugar cookies.  We’ll see.

ETA:  Between one thing and another, it was a good two weeks before I actually looked at this dough again.  To my surprise, it was still workable – but unfortunately it looked rather gray and tasted “off,” so I had to discard it instead of cooking it.  Oh well.