Could You Pass a 1953 Home Ec Class?

You can still buy a flour sifter at any department store, but you're unlikely to need it. Most flour you'll buy in the store is pre-sifted, so baked goods come out even-baked and not lumpy (if you've done the other parts of the recipe correctly.)

A baster is a simple kitchen utensil with a squeezable bulb at the end, a hollow body and an opening at the other end. You squeeze the bulb and then release it in the pan to suck cooking juices into the body of the baster, hold it over the roast, then squeeze it again to release the juices. This keeps roasts tender and moist.

While pineapple upside-down cake isn't the most pretty, Instagram-ready dessert, don't be fooled. This retro cake is moist, delicate and delicious!

All three of these produce items would work well. A simple way to cook them was to halve or quarter them, depending on size, and let them cook along with the roast, basting them with the pan juices.

The type of meat -- chicken, beef, pork -- will also make a difference in cook time. But no matter what kind of meat you're using, the recipe will tell you to roast it "XX minutes per pound."

It's useful to tie drawstrings or sashes to keep them from tangling with other items, but shirts should stay unbuttoned, or the back-and-forth of the agitating water will stretch the holes out of shape.

The cookie press was a cylinder about the size of a thermos in which you'd put dough. At the bottom were the "guides" that made pretty shapes. Push the dough through the guide, and voila! Why the cookie cutter has survived and the cookie press mostly died out is a mystery of kitchen evolution.

Some bedding items can't be laundered at all, like down-filled ones that would clump and lose their loft. For these items, spreading them out in the sunshine reduces moisture and kills odor-causing bacteria.

Hoovers were so big in America in the mid-20th century that "hoovering" was a synonym for "vacuuming." You might run across the term if you enjoy vintage 1950s novels.

A souffle, made with whipped separated eggs, rises in the oven, and can fall in on itself if exposed to vibrations. This gave rise to the sitcom joke in which the wife is making a souffle and the husband comes in and cheerfully bangs the door loudly behind him, "Hi, honey! I'm home!" thereby ruining the souffle. (Note: We didn't say it was a particularly funny joke--just a joke.)

While you can use all of the above in cooking and baking, sherry is the correct answer. Fun fact: Despite its usefulness in recipes, most high schools wouldn't allow cooking sherry on the grounds (outside the staff room, that is) because it was an alcoholic beverage. However, sherry is a staple in traditional European cooking.

This mild solution won't help with blood, wine, tomato sauce, or things like that, but it's good for getting out that dark stains on the armpit areas of our shirts. Soak the affected area with the lemon/water concoction and hang or lay out the shirt in the sun. Then, wash as usual.

Make sure the soapy water simmers, not a rolling boil. Afterward, scrubbing with a Brillo pad will remove the last of the dark stains.

Technically, french fries (in their most common shape) are julienned. However, you can also julienne carrots, zucchini and many other vegetables.

"Cherries jubilee" is sometimes called "cherries flambe." Pro tip: Tilt the pan so that the fruit mixture slides toward you, then pour the brandy into the top/far half, to keep the flames away from you.

These days, people mash potatoes with everything from oversize forks to immersion blenders (which gives you more of a whipped-potato effect.) However, you'll still see these old-fashioned utensils in some kitchens because they're quite effective.

The 1950s were prime time for creamed vegetables, with recipes including butter, cream and/or whole milk. So it was a lot easier to "get your veggies," but today's clean-eating gurus would shudder!

You'll still see food mills in kitchen stores -- in fact, you can pay quite a lot for one at shops like Williams-Sonoma. The comfort-food craze revived interest in this instrument used for pureeing creamy soups and smooth mashed potatoes.

A percolator has a heating element at the bottom, and forces boiling water repeatedly up through the grounds. It fell out of favor in the 1970s, when the gentler drip coffeemaker was introduced.

Ironing in this order limits the chances of scorching something with excessive heat. Frankly, though, if you're a novice at ironing, it might not hurt to do large items first, getting warmed up before doing the trickier small items. Just make sure the iron has time to cool to the proper temperature for delicate items.

The 1950s were a peak time for ketchup -- people put it on all kinds of meat, including steak. We're not sure, though, who decided to rub it on Grandma's copper pots, but it works!

Think of it like a coaster, but bigger and heavier. This probably came in very handy with the advent of easy-wipe vinyl tablecloths, which wouldn't hold up to heat very well.

Why did bread need its own box? Well, if you got it from a bakery or baked it yourself, it didn't come in plastic wrap. A breadbox reduced airflow and exposure to moisture, keeping it fresh longer. It also kept pests from getting in -- not a theoretical concern in many rural homes!

Some homemakers had electric laundry machines by the 1950s. However, it wouldn't be uncommon for a housewife to pin clothes out on a line to dry. Some people still swear by this method for saving electricity and for the freshness of the scent.

Um, would you excuse us? There's something we really ought to get to. By the cleaning the toilet once per day, it's less likely to stain or get a grimy build-up of...stuff.

We had to put "most likely" in this question because honestly, we can't be sure a burglar hasn't ever been chased off of a property by a housewife with a mallet, or that someone eager to get their drink on wouldn't use one to crush ice. That would be a messy process, though, and not to mention unsanitary, if the mallet had​ recently been used on raw meat and not properly cleaned.

Why is this important? This practice keeps the knot protected while washing and ironing the garment, so it's less likely to come undone.

Cornstarch has a variety of household uses. This one's a way to get around spending money on canned spray starch at the supermarket. You can also use it for preparing fabric for quilting.

This comb-shaped item was used for cutting soft and delicate cakes. If you tried to use a regular knife, you risked squishing the cake.

The "ice pet" shaved ice, while the ice pick just bashed it off the edge of a block of ice. There was also the ice crusher, which looked like a box with a crank handle. Today, most people settle for the plastic trays that you twist by hand to loosen ice cubes.

The household microwave arrived on the scene in 1967, along with "microwave recipe" books that foresaw us making just about everything in a microwave. With the invention of the microwave, instant microwaveable foods sprang up, from whole dinners in a tray to popcorn. That's progress!

Certain kinds of pies, especially cherry, often have a "lattice crust." This means when the dough was rolled out, it was cut into strips and placed across the top of the pie horizontally and vertically. This leaves plenty of space for steam to vent.

"Reducing" was mid-20th-century-speak for losing weight. You might also hear about a woman's desire to be "trim." Part of a homemaker's job in the 1950s was to look good for her husband.

While lemon zest is a common ingredient in baking (and probably couldn't hurt anything) traditional Key Lime pie recipes do not call for it. Also, make sure you only use the egg yolks for the curd--not the entire egg.

Meat only needs to be flipped once. Turning it only once also limits the chances that a shaped patty of ground meat, like a hamburger, will fall apart from excessive handling.