Salad-y Apple Applications

When I first wrote about Marye Dahnke's Salad Book (1954), I examined Dahnke's tendency to assign salad recipes to seemingly-random cultures. I also presented some oddities, like a "salad" that consisted of a wad of ingredients rolled up in wax paper, stored in the fridge, and sliced off like refrigerated cookie dough. Today, we're going to look at another of Dahnke's fixations, this one because it is fall-appropriate. (Hooray for the six pounds of fresh Ginger Gold I just stored away in the crisper!) Dahnke liked putting apples in pretty much anything.

Remember the salads attributed to a seemingly-random culture that I just mentioned? The Mexicana Salad exhibits both that tendency and the obsession with apples.

Yes, nothing says "Mexicana" quite like a slab of vinegary gelatin full of celery, carrots, cabbage, pimentos, and apple-- especially if it's slathered with mayonnaise before serving.

If pasta salad is more your thing, but you don't like how soft the mixture tends to be, the book suggests Macaroni and Cabbage Salad.

You get the crunch of shredded cabbage and diced apple (along with the usual suspects for a macaroni salad). And if you're craving apples, pickles, cabbage, and mayo with your macaroni and cheese, you are a very different person from me...

If you really want to show off the cabbage-and-apple combo, the Buffet Cabbage Salad is served right out of the hollowed-out cabbage heads.

This time, the cabbage/apple/mayo/cheese combo gets enriched with olives instead of macaroni and pickle. 

Finally, I am not even sure Dahnke was fully convinced of the combination in Kidney Bean Salad I. The headnote says kidney beans "are natural partners with celery, onion, and hard-cooked egg." You will notice that this description doesn't mention apples.

But apples are in there all the same. Maybe Dahnke realizes they are not such "natural partners" but throws them in anyway, just because she can't help herself? Or maybe she was bribed by USApple Association to throw them into extra recipes? (Or maybe she was bribed by some orange growers to sour readers on apples?)

Whatever the case, I'd recommend using Red "Delicious" apples in these recipes. They combinations don't sound good anyway, so there is no point in wasting an apple you'd actually want to eat in one of these salads. 😆

Recipe Dispatches from the Dispatch

Do you remember newspapers? You know, the kind that came on actual paper and that (if you were like me) you begged your parents to get every day because you didn't want to miss out on the comic strips and they were too cheap to get a subscription? Today's pick is from back when newspapers were so popular they would sell their own cookbooks. Well, kind of. 

This is a loose-leaf cookbook (edited by Bernice Thomas) in a binder, and readers could send away for additional recipe sets to keep adding to their collections. More specifically, "From time to time, 20 pages of recipes will be released for distribution to Dispatch Readers and can be secured by writing the Household Department of The Columbus Dispatch, Columbus, Ohio, and inclosing 9 cents in stamps." Whoever owned this one gave up pretty quickly, as my Dispatch Recipe Book only has pages 1 and 2 of each chapter (1 on the front and 2 on the back-- so I only have one sheet of paper for each chapter). It's undated, but the Columbus Metropolitan library dates the collection as beginning in February 1933. (They also scanned the whole thing, so the link is worth checking out-- though you will be limited as to how many pages you can access at one time.) As far as I can tell, "Volume One" was an ambitious claim. I couldn't find evidence of a volume two (though the library's copy of volume one proves there were a lot more pages than I have).

For today, let's "enjoy" a brief menu from the small selection of pages in my volume. We need to start with an appetizer, of course.

It's pickled green chili peppers, olives, Worcestershire, and "enough yellow grated cheese to make a paste." (Doesn't that sound appetizing? Mmmm.... Paste.) And then the paste is spread on pineapple, topped with more pineapple, frosted with "plain soft yellow cream cheese," and broiled. So... weird. 

Also, my brain broke when I was trying to figure out what "Cut six slices pineapple in half, making two circles" meant. I thought pineapple slices were already circles, so how halving six of them would result in two circles (rather than a dozen half-circles) completely eluded me. I am terrible at visualizing written directions for real-world physical processes (I need pictures!), so I knew I must be missing something. (I finally realized cooks were probably supposed to try to cut the pineapple slices like a layer cake, so each single thicker circle turns into two thinner ones, but it took me a while-- longer than I am willing to admit. I'm still not convinced I would have the coordination to make that happen, but at least I think I understand the process now.) These are the instructions you get when nobody has home cooks test the recipe before you print it.

The entrée should be more straightforward so my brain can rest. How about a nice spaghetti platter? A bounty of spaghetti coated in a thick tomato sauce seasoned lavishly with herbs...

...or not! Yes, this is just buttered spaghetti noodles with link sausages, pineapple, and prunes camping in Hoovervilles on the edges of the platter. You can definitely tell this one is Great Depression era.

Maybe we should end the meal with a nice novelty to lighten the mood.

Banana novelty is one of those recipes for when home cooks must have been bored out of their minds. Cutting grooves in bananas, filling the grooves with partially congealed gelatin (which sounds nearly as easy as nailing Jell-O to the wall), and then chilling the combo until the gelatin sets up (and the banana turns brown) seems so pointless when you can just stir a sliced banana or two into a container of partially set gelatin and call it a day.

Maybe these recipes are the reason that whoever owned this book gave up after the first round of pages? Who knows, but at least I got a few of them.

Gone fishin' with Litton

While my earlier post about Litton's Microwave Cooking: Everyday Dinners in Half an Hour (1980) acknowledged that the book seems more realistic about what microwaves can (and should) do than other 40+-year-old microwave cookbooks, I have to highlight that it still had more seafood recipes than any microwave cookbook probably should. I mean, we all know what microwaved seafood smells like, right?

Stuffing zucchinis with something is not a unique idea, but there are plenty of options. Cooks might stuff it with corn, or rice and pine nuts, or a meaty tomato sauce. Litton, though, thinks crab should be microwaved in a zucchini canoe. 

And it will come out looking like oddly stringy rice in a bland, watery vegetable coffin.

I'll admit I don't eat seafood, but I know from cooking shows that people (or at least cooking show judges) love a good sear on a scallop. Get that nice browning on the outside and a just-cooked middle, and scallops are supposed to be transcendent. I have a feeling the same could not be said for microwaved Scallops & Green Beans. 

At least the recipe developers had the good sense to coat the scallops in seasoned breadcrumbs before microwaving them, so diners would be less likely to notice the lack of a good sear.

The recipe that scares me the most, though, is the Tuna-Cheese Open-Face Sandwich. I know, it looks pretty innocent.

But...

Do you and the family really want to spend the rest of the day smelling microwaved tuna, mayo, and hard-cooked eggs? Even if you like tuna-and-egg salad, you can eat it cold, right? I thought that was kind of the point of salads like that. The only thing this recipe will accomplish is making the whole house stink. 

Well, maybe I underestimated this recipe. It will probably also make the English muffin soggy and/ or rubbery. So, there's that.

And with that, I'm clearing out. Can't take the (imagined) smell of microwaved fish any more!

Some highly impractical treats for September

According to Cooking by the Calendar (edited by Marilyn Hansen, 1978), "September's air is softer now, and its blue sky has a warm serenity after the hot fever of late summer." I don't remember necessarily feeling that way when I was a kid crammed into our not-at-all air-conditioned school where girls were policed for shorts that were too short and anything that might show a sliver of bare shoulder, but it's still a nice sentiment.

As for what we should cook in September, the book suggests we might want to make beef jerky to take as a snack on a late camping trip.

This book really loves recommending putting food outside to dry. Just make sure this beef jerky is dried "on string, away from animals." I keep wondering if Hansen has actually encountered any animals, as she doesn't seem to be aware of how innovative and persistent they can be when food is involved. I can just imagine going outside to see the steak covered in bugs and/or disappeared by cats who figured out exactly how far they had to jump and/or climb to get the goods. If you're going to bother with jerky, I say make it inside, even if it heats up the house.

If you'd rather enjoy fall's bounty of apples than worry about drying out beef, you can make Northwestern Apple Candy.

It's a gelatin-thickened applesauce with some walnuts for good measure. You know. Candy. I'm not sure what the confectioners' sugar at the end of the ingredient list is for, either. Maybe this is thick enough you're supposed to cut it into little squares and roll them in powdered sugar, but that's just a guess. I didn't cut off the end of the recipe. The last step is just "Refrigerate overnight." (My last step would probably be to forget about it for a few months and then pitch it when I needed the fridge space and couldn't remember wtf it was supposed to be anyway.)

Most amusing for me, though, is the section of "Back-to-School Lunch Treats." I assumed this chapter title was intended to imply that you could make these recipes and send them as part of a packed lunch. And then I read them and wondered if Hansen was aware of the mechanics of a 1970s paper bag or lunch box or had even met school-aged children.

The chapter offers a series of whimsical, fun-shaped sandwiches, like a sailboat.

Fun, but there is no way this elaborate concoction is going to make the back-to-school rush easier for the person packing the lunch or even make it to school at all.  The cream-cheese spread sail and boat parts suggest this sandwich is open-faced. And then there's the matter of the celery mast, the carrot flag, and the decorative olive row. There would be absolutely no way to pack this thing, especially in the '70s before the bento box craze.

Similarly, "The Bug" has an elaborate construction process involving cheese rounds, sliced-up and carefully-arranged bologna, and a whole series of veggie accoutrements to form the eyes, mouth, and antennae.

There's a reason the instructions for these mention putting the bread on a plate. There's no way the sandwiches wouldn't immediately become piles of ingredients if you tried to add them to a paper bag. But at least I can imagine a school-aged child who wants to be a sailor liking the idea of sailboat sandwich, or a budding entomologist who would think a "bug" sandwich might be a cool lunch. 

The other "back-to-school lunch treats" seem more like they're for the preschool set. Nobody except the most hopelessly spectrum-y kids (No shade! I was certainly one of them, even if my fixations don't involve transportation.) would think that having or even discussing a Choo-Choo Train sandwich could result in anything less than immediate public shaming. 

I'm not sure it's possible to get even more "toddler" than "Choo-Choo Train," but if it is, then it's a Jack-in-the Box.

The only real saving grace for these sandwiches as far as actual school-aged children are concerned is that there is no way they would survive being dragged to school, and they're probably too elaborate for mom to bother with anyway during the back-to-school rush.

Kinda makes me glad the worst thing my mom did with my school lunches was passive-aggressively sending the exact same perpetually uneaten baggie of raisins to school with me for weeks at a time. 

Peanut butter and somethings for back-to-school lunches

Now that we're firmly into back-to-school season, people might want some ideas about how to mix things up in the lunchbox department. That means it's time to post some sandwiches from a time when home cooks thought just about any random odds and ends between two slices of bread could be a perfectly fine sandwich. From The Pocket Cook Book (Elizabeth Woody with Gertrude Lynn and Peg Heffernan, originally published in 1942, but mine is the 1960 edition), we have some recommendations for that lunchbox favorite (unless your school has a peanut ban!): peanut butter sandwiches!

If I had to name just two foods I love, cheese and peanut butter might just be the two I picked. That doesn't necessarily mean I want to eat them together, though.

Especially if the cheese is American (which is mostly just good for grilled cheese sandwiches). And I'm not really sure why you'd need to "Moisten with mayonnaise or salad dressing," as the peanut butter seems like it would work well enough on its own.

Alternatively, you could mix sweet pickle relish into the peanut-butter-mayo mixture. 

Not that I have any idea why anyone would want to do that....

Or, if you're nice and just want to class up a more traditional PB&J, you could make your own Thyme and Grape Jelly.

And then the kid could complain that the jelly tastes weird. The upside is that any of these combos might just encourage the kid to pack their own damn lunch. (At least, once they enjoy a couple really interesting food swaps and the other kids wise up and refuse to trade with them anymore.)

Glamor! Romance! Kelvinator!

I am glad I'm not old enough to remember when leftovers were especially suspect in summer because the ways to keep them cold were not particularly reliable. Still, books like New Delights from the Kitchen (Kelvinator, 1930) can almost make it seem sad that I missed the glamorous era when the days of being likely to camp out in the outhouse because you prepared too large a roast and didn't want to waste the leftovers came to an end and electric refrigeration in the home became common.

How does this little plain-looking book manage to make refrigerators seem so thrilling? Just look at this picture and caption. 

Yes, "Kelvinator truly adds glamor and romance to home-making!" I'm not sure why standing in front of an open refrigerator door-- running up the electric bill!-- and awkwardly hand-feeding a bite of an individual dessert to a man who seems perfectly capable of feeding himself while everyone else has to wait for dessert counts as "glamor and romance," but the woman's joy somehow makes it seem plausible. 

The book goes all-in on trying to make at least some of the recipes seem exciting and glamorous too. There are so many gelatin salads that would have been considered extremely fancy back then. I suspect the seafood ones would seem especially high-end, like the Shrimp and Cucumber en Gelée. (I mean, come on! Kelvinator busted out some French words!)

There's also Jellied Lobster with Mayonnaise.

I'm not sure why both recipes call for seafood with gelatin and mayonnaise, but the shrimp get the "en Gelée" description and the lobster just gets "with mayonnaise." My guess is that Kelvinator thought canned shrimp needed to be fancied-up a little more than lobster, thus the more stylish name.

The Jellied Lobster merited a more lavish illustration, though. 

The picture kind of makes me think of olive loaf, though, which doesn't exactly scream high-end (and reminds me of the sale week I hated most when I worked in a deli. That stuff is a nightmare on the slicer).

Not all of the gelatinized "treats" were so fancy. Jellied Cheese Soufflé isn't a traditional cooked soufflé that comes out of the oven with a glorious brown layer on top. 

It's more of a "let's add gelatin to a fluffy American-cheese-flavored sauce and see what happens" soufflé. 

The book also suggests salads that seem designed-- rather than to use up bits of leftovers-- to ruin whatever nice things a cook had on hand.

I love pecans, but I don't think making them soggy in an orange-juice-and-olive gelatin is the best possible use for them. 

There's also an attempt to refine the almost-always-boring vegetable loaves that were served on Fridays in Catholic households and any time a cook had to feed a few oddball vegetarians. 

Eat a cold and jiggly slab of rice, nuts, breadcrumbs, and eggs flavored with "tomato catsup" instead of a hot and brick-like slab of the same odds and ends. So glamorous and romantic!

The Kelvinator had not only a refrigerated area, but also a freezing tray. So of course, it offered some freezer recipes for those who didn't have much idea of what to do with a home freezer (especially since this was before grocery stores offered much in the way of frozen goods). I love peanut butter sooooo much, so I was prepared to be into the idea of a Frozen Peanut Butter Salad.

And then cream cheese was the first ingredient, so I was picturing a "salad" that was closer to a frozen peanut butter cheesecake that somehow got labeled as "salad" because cooks were supposed to top it with a few strawberries or some other fruit. (You know how these old cookbooks work, right?) And then I saw green peppers... and pimento... and celery... And then my opinion of this recipe tanked even further at mayonnaise. Not sure this is the best way to get home cooks excited about the freezer, Kelvinator! (I guess this is closer to our modern idea of a salad than the dessert-y ones are, though.)

The Frozen Chicken à la King doesn't sound any better, but at least it has the benefit of being easier.

Just freeze a can of chicken à la king! Ta-da! What a "desirable luncheon dish for warm weather." And just maybe it will impress the ladies' club by virtue of showing off that you own a freezer.

I'm not impressed by many of the recipes, but Kelvinator's book still managed to make me glad that my leftovers are chill (rather than rotting) and NOT encased in gelatin, so it's good for something. 

Some "healthy" late-summer cakes

August has a lot of really boring food holidays, like National Rice Pudding Day (August 9) and National Sponge Cake Day (today!). But lately I've been feeling like posting for holidays nobody except the food industry actually celebrates, so I once again turned to The Natural Foods Cookbook (Beatrice Trum Hunter, copyright 1961, but mine is from a 1975 printing) to see if it included a health-food version. It did not disappoint. (This book rarely does!)

This version uses "wholewheat" flour (because of course it does) with some of the bran sifted out to make it more cake-appropriate. (Just make sure to "Reserve sifted-out bran for porridge or bread baking.") And it's flavored with "Powdered Fruit Rind" (which home cooks were supposed to make by thinly paring citrus fruit peels, drying the parings, and then pulverizing them in the blender). I can't help but think the addition of the fruit rinds is likely to add a little spark so this version won't be quite as boring as sponge cake typically is. Maybe the citrus will help distract from the whole wheat (which I LOVE in bread, but question in a delicate sponge cake).

Or if you're just not a fan of sponge cake and want a sweet to help you make the transition from late summer into early fall, forget about Sponge Cake Day and go with the cake recipe from the opposing page:

It's kind of like zucchini bread-- in that it's full of zucchini, molasses, and warm spices. The cake is supposed to be yeast-raised, though, not the usual quick bread preparation. I'm not convinced how well this would work, given that half of the grain component is cornmeal (no gluten!), and the other half is whole wheat flour-- so the germ and bran can also interfere with gluten development. In short, I'm not sure how much the yeast can do if there is too little gluten to capture its CO₂ belches.

So take your choice: a potentially dense but citrus-flavored sponge cake to celebrate National Sponge Cake Day or a brick of sweet spiced zucchini to celebrate seasonal change. (I'm going to forego recipes altogether and instead celebrate Halloween Candy Was Just Put on Display Day by eating a Reese's peanut butter pumpkin. That's a much better holiday, even if I just made it up.)