Let's decorate a fish!

Happy August! My July was cool enough that it didn't feel excessively July-like, so I'm secretly hoping August will continue to chill out. Even with weather that's more late September-like than midsummery, I suspect Betty Crocker's Cooking Calendar (1962) will be right about the produce for the month:

Corn, green beans, and peaches! No quibbles here (except for the lovely "noble savage" stereotype keeping the corn company. I guess I should at least be glad that the artist didn't try to give the corn a headdress too!).

The recipe for the month was super-easy to choose because of this spectacular picture:

Yes, a whole salmon with the tail still attached, dressed up with pimento-stuffed olive eyes and a floral design on its side! If salmon could roll over in their graves, that design would be flying all over the dining room in no time, so '60s homemakers were lucky that dead salmon were so compliant.

So how to make this fantastic fish? It was a two-day process:

Day 1: Poach the fish in seasoned water; then refrigerate.

Day 2: The fun part! Make salmon presentable, put it on a platter, and lacquer it up with gelatin-enriched fish stock. Decorate and re-lacquer.

Serve with dilled mayo to creeped-out guests as a way to demonstrate that you have way too much free time (and to suggest that maybe the dosage to your special medicine should be increased)...