Friday, July 5, 2013

Summer Salad Pie

I am obsessed with vintage cookbooks-- mostly ones from the '50s, '60s, and '70s, although I'm excited when I can find older ones and sometimes intrigued by newer ones too. I have bookshelves full of old cookbooks in my living room and dining rooms. I have piles of them-- tiny islands of cookbooks-- scattered across my office floor. I usually have to move cookbooks off the couch if I happen to have a visitor. I don't have enough books yet, but I fully expect to amass enough for my body to one day be found crushed under a stack of cookbooks that shifted unexpectedly. We all have dreams.

Old cookbooks fascinate me for so many reasons. I love finding the spattered pages or notes in the margins ("This is a good one!" or "Needs more cream soup") that indicate someone actually made a recipe. I love the ways the notes at the beginnings of chapters or recipes suggest the era's social expectations. (So many recipes are labeled as being approved by husbands and/or children! And I always thought husbands and children could be sustained by the same foods as anyone else...) And I really, really love searching for the most disgusting recipes I can find. Who can resist stopping to look at a wreck?

I feel a bit selfish keeping these wonders to myself, so I'm creating a space where I hope I can share them with you too. Since it's my favorite category, I will start with one of the most disgusting recipes I've ever found: Summer Salad Pie from Betty Crocker's Dinner in a Dish Cookbook (copyright 1965, but my copy is from the fourth printing in 1970).



I have to admit, the cheese pie shell sounds pretty good. Filling it with lemon gelatin, tomato sauce, vinegar, celery, onions, and olives does not sound the least bit appealing to me, but anyone who reads many vintage recipe books knows that just about everything imaginable had been suggested as an addition to gelatin at one time or another. Cookbooks would have you believe that people in the '50s and '60s were as obsessed with gelatin as I am with cookbooks.

If a lemon/tomato Jello pie isn't disgusting enough, though, there is still the topper: tuna salad! Again, I have to admit that I hate tuna salad anyway, but I have a hard time believing even those who like it really want to eat it on top of gelatin in a pie crust that is probably rapidly getting soggy.

The Mid-Century Menu bloggers were brave/ foolhardy enough to try this recipe. Go here to see their take on it.


The picture gets me, too. I can almost talk myself into thinking it looks good if I imagine the gelatin layer is chocolate and the topping is some kind of minty concoction, but then the cherry tomato "flowers" ruin the effect. I start imagining the pie is some kind of a primeval swamp and the cherry tomatoes are weird, carnivorous plants ready to swallow anyone unfortunate enough to wade in.

The striped glasses will just stand there and watch. Sick bastards.

4 comments:

  1. Thanks so much for posting this! I made, a few years ago,(sans the gelatine layer) a tuna pie with cheddar crust and it was amazing! Lost the recipe and have had no luck finding a cheddar pie crust recipe until I found your article.

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  2. It’s December of 2018 and I just discovered your blog. I was searching for articles which explain Crisco’s connection to White Trash cooking and found a hit which brought me here. It’s great fun reading these old recipes and I must say I share your horror. Have you got depression-era cookbooks as well? There was a government agency which invented recipes for shoestring budgets at the time and it seems that those recipes and the accompanying enabling frame of mind led to the downfall of American cuisine. Case in point: the proliferation of recipes that used Jello. Gawwwwwddddd! If you’ve written about this, please let me know which blog entry to look up. Thanks for your efforts.

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    1. I'm glad you found this amusing! I mostly post for my own amusement, but I'm always glad to have another reader.

      I don't have too many cookbooks from the Depression era. Most of mine are from the '50s to the '70s, as older ones are harder to find. (I've read some about the Depression era cooking in other books, though!)

      You may find a post on a recipe booklet for people with refrigerators in 1929 interesting: https://granniepantries.blogspot.com/2017/08/not-so-cool-after-all.html. I have a brief post about a 1930s-era "Better Homes and Gardens" cookbook at https://granniepantries.blogspot.com/2015/03/eighty-year-old-vegetables.html and one about horrifying diet recipes from 1933 at https://granniepantries.blogspot.com/2017/10/just-eat-apple-and-keep-doctor-out-of.html. There are Knox gelatin recipes from 1936 at https://granniepantries.blogspot.com/2015/08/be-glad-i-held-off-on-knox-knox-jokes.html. I also have odd fudges and catsups from 1936 at https://granniepantries.blogspot.com/2014/11/o-h-f-u-d-g-e.html and https://granniepantries.blogspot.com/2014/09/a-cavalcade-of-catsups.html.

      I also have a USDA recipe booklet of things to with surplus food that the government gave away to needy families in the 1970s at https://granniepantries.blogspot.com/2015/02/surplus-recipes.html. I know it's not the same era, but you still might find it interesting. I hope you find something you'll like in at least one of these!

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  3. Good news: I've officially read through your entire blog! :D Now I'll be able to keep up with all your new posts as you make them. This has genuinely been a sanity saver during the pandemic, so thank you for having the foresight back in 2013 to create it. <3

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