April: A month of cream and curry

Happy almost April! A new month means it's time once again for The Chamberlain Calendar of American Cooking (Narcisse and Narcissa Chamberlain, 1957). Since you never know what to expect from April (snow one day and sunny, you-can-forget-the-jacket weather the next), we'll look at some contrasting recipes from April.

For the more staid and buttoned-up side of the 1950s, you know we need something in cream sauce. (Actually, the cream sauce could stand for the April snow day too! It's pretty damn white.)

Minced Veal in Cream is just about what you'd expect from a basic '50s recipe collection: meat in a dairy-and-boiled-egg sauce, with just enough veggies, mace, and lemon to allow everyone to pretend that the meal has some kind of seasoning. The biggest surprise may be that the recipe recommends serving this sauce over rice rather than toast points.

For the sunny day contrast to the sludgy white veal, the book offers International Lamb Curry.

I like the admission in the first line: "East Indian curry, or a homegrown version of it, has become an American favorite...." This looks like it leans pretty heavily toward the "homegrown" side of things. I am not an expert in Indian cooking by any stretch of the imagination, but it does look like the recipe is trying to do its best with the limited spices available in mid-century America. Chili powder has to stand in for actual chilis, and candied ginger tries to replace the fresh. Even if this bears only a passing resemblance to actual international cuisine, it must have seemed pretty exciting to people used to everything being blanketed in cream sauce, and maybe the bright flavors hinted at the brighter, sunnier days ahead.

I hope your April is more sun than snow and more bright than bland!

Silly Salad Saturday!

I love me some weird-ass salad recipes, so today, let's check out what All of Our Favorites Cook Book (The Pioneer Partners of Hawkeye Chapter #17, undated) has to offer.

Of course, we need to do unspeakable things with Jell-O, so Super Meat Salad should fill that role.

This has the distinction of being the only gelatin salad recipe I've seen to incorporate a can of undiluted chicken noodle soup! (Usually it's tomato soup if they're going for the canned-soup-and-Jell-O vibe.) I'm not sure what makes this a "super meat" salad if it has only the usually-skimpy portion of chicken from a can of chicken-noodle soup, plus (maybe) a can of shrimp as the meat, but it seems nitpicky to question its meatiness when its claim to being super is at least equally questionable.

Of course, if things just won't feel the same without canned tomato soup and gelatin, there's always Tomato Soup Salad.

I know it doesn't look like there's Jell-O if you just read the ingredients, but the two packages of lemon Jell-O are listed in the narrative instructions, but not the ingredient list. That's sure to be a nice surprise when you're halfway through the recipe and realize you didn't get all the ingredients! It's also a good sign to have a recipe with instructions on what to do if the tomato-soup-cream-cheese-lemon-Jell-O mixture looks "curdled"! For that extra special touch, make sure this concoction goes into a fish mold. (This doesn't explicitly tell you that it needs olive eyes when it comes out, but you know they're required for any fish mold.)

It's not all Jell-O molds, of course. If you need a dessert salad but are sick of Jell-O since you used it in the savory salads, there's always this:

Yep! Spaghetti Salad dyes the spaghetti pink so you'll know it's dessert-y, and then loads it up with apples, pineapple, an egg, lemon juice, and powdered sugar dressing, and fluffy Cool Whip. It better be "very good" because it "Makes a big batch."

If you'd rather have a sweet salad you can keep on hand for months, though, then Fruit Salad Ice might be the way to go.

I can't really imagine keeping a freezer full of foil cupcake wrappers filled with mixed fruit in a sugar syrup to unpeel and plop down on a lettuce leaf whenever the mood strikes, but Keith "Pete" Peters heartily endorses it, and hey, when we're all still supposed to stay away from too many unnecessary trips into the outside world, it might still be reasonable advice.... It certainly seems like the most sensible idea in this whole group!

Here's hoping we can get actual fresh fruit whenever we want soon....

Entertaining? Let's entertain the idea...

People are getting their vaccinations! (Or at least hoping they can get vaccinated soon.) We all know what that means. After a year of blissful peace and a good excuse not to feel pressured into being sociable, it's time for some entertaining.

Better Homes and Gardens is prepared with Recipes for Entertaining (1972). I love how orangey-yellow this cover is! From the yellow octagonal plates to the orange daisies and crinkle-cut carrots to the cheese ball and curry-salad-filled tomato tidbits, this plays into my secret conviction that the 1970s were entirely rust-colored.

And since most people who are not me will probably think that the return of social gatherings is sweet, here's an unexpectedly sweet menu for them. We'll start out with that genre that I can't stand, but it must be beloved since it comes up so often: sweet meat.

Fruit-Stuffed Pork Crown is really fruit stuffed: apple, raisins, orange, and a full pound of cranberry sauce (plus a little brown sugar to make sure it's all very sweet). 

Then we'll need a nice salad.

It might look like dessert, what with those shimmery red Jell-O layers.

And it might sound a lot like a crustless cherry cheesecake, what with all the cream cheese, dessert topping, and canned cherry pie filling, but it's a salad! You can tell because it's sitting on lettuce in the picture.

Okay, let's get serious and add a real vegetable. How about some asparagus for spring?

Asparagus, hard-cooked eggs, hollandaise, a hint of lemon. Asparagus Divan sounds so much like what I'd expect that I almost missed that "special" ingredient. Yep, this calls for frozen whipped dessert topping! We've all wanted to drown our asparagus in Cool Whip, right?

Okay-- I've had about as many sweets as I can handle, so let's find a bread recipe that isn't overly cloying to round out this menu.

If you thought I was trying to fake you out and the bread would be sweet too-- Ha! I was serious for a change. The little bit of sugar in here is to be expected in a yeast bread. Yeasties need something to eat! I just couldn't resist posting a bread recipe that calls for using a mixer to beat a full can of condensed cream of potato soup into bread starter. I just can't resist cans of cream-of-something soup in unlikely places.

Now, do all these multi-serving recipes have you pumped for gatherings again?

I am as thrilled as the woman in the upper left of this picture. 

"If I have to listen to one more minute of this fascinating monologue about how you used the last year to brush up on your French skills and learn to play the violin, so help me god, I will break into your pantry and tear the labels off your entire collection of canned goods!"

Here's hoping the rest of you are better at enduring small talk as it comes creeping back into our lives.

Funny Name: 'Nam Flashback! Edition

When I saw Chop-Top Casserole in Favorite Recipes of Home Economics Teachers: Casseroles Including Breads (1965), I kind of hoped the ingredients would include a metal plate, a bent-up wire hanger, and a Sonny Bono wig.

Okay, I knew it wouldn't. I just wanted an excuse to throw in a clip of my favorite Chop Top! And now I'm going to go back to listening to In-A-Vida-Da-Gadda, baby.

Rice and quick bread that defy categorization

It's time for another dip into one of my favorite recipe genres: the casserole! If it involves dumping a bunch of stuff in a casserole dish, throwing the whole mess into the oven, and seeing what comes out, well I am here for it! (Well, at least for reading about it). (And also, don't tell anyone, occasionally eating it.)

So what is our casserole cookbook this time?

Today's special is The Garden Club Cookbook Casseroles Including Breads (The Montgomery Federation of Garden Clubs, 1969). Granted, the cover doesn't look much like it belongs on a casserole cookbook, with a chowder-esque concoction next to an aspic filled with artichoke hearts, but the actual recipes inside are generally more casseroley.

Rice-based casseroles seem to be special favorites of the garden club, and the members were not too particular in their naming conventions.

Trying to eat more whole grains? If you don't read the recipe, you might think that Mrs. Lewie P. Henry's Brown Rice would be a good choice.

The "Brown Rice" is not actually the whole grain stuff we usually mean when we say brown rice, though. It's just regular white rice cooked in beef broth and soup. If the mushroom soup is the "cream of" variety, the rice isn't even likely to be that brown. (It might be a little darker if it's supposed to use golden mushroom soup, but who knows? Accuracy of titles and clarity of ingredient descriptions are not always priorities in this book.)

Speaking of accuracy of titles, well...

It seems to have escaped Mrs. B. M. Brown (Who I would imagine would have preferred to use an actual name rather than initials...) that fried rice is generally, well, fried. I guess she's counting browning the rice before it's boiled as the frying step, but fans of Chinese-style fried rice are likely to be disappointed when they discover the fried rice is just a pilaf...

...just as they are to be disappointed by Mrs. Durwood Jones's Chinese Molds.

I'm sorry. Perhaps it should be "Chinese" Molds. I'm pretty sure that people hoping for Chinese-style rice are not imagining rice baked in a cheesy custard (just as I imagine that people who are actually familiar with Chinese cooking would wonder how this recipe got paired with that name).

All of this is to say that the preceding dishes are enough to make this purportedly Pakistani rice pilau look downright authentic by comparison...

...even though Mrs. Hubert F. Oswalt "Americanized it to simplify and suit American tastes. The Pakistani version is extremely hot." Have no fear, though. You can always throw in whatever flotsam you have in the kitchen: "almonds, raisins, pineapple, mushrooms, peas or celery or combinations. Dish may be seasoned with 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin, cayenne pepper, cardamom, ginger, saffron, red hot pepper or turmeric or combinations to make it more authentic." Yes, it's the good old trash can approach to authentic foreign dishes! Slop in whatever you may have lying around in the kitchen and it's bound to be more authentic than the stripped-down rice cooked in chicken bouillon and yellow food coloring.

The book isn't all weird rice dishes, though. There's a highly questionable Lasagna.

How a crescent roll crust filled with Spam, eggs, and cheese translates into a lasagna, I have no idea. It looks more like a low-rent quiche to me.

Maybe it's best to just make a quick bread and call it a day.

I really hope this recipe means self-rising flour, or the Mayonnaise Bread is more likely to turn into greasy hockey pucks than biscuits.

Maybe Mrs. Gilbert Cooper prefers hockey pucks, though, as this book has taught me that I never know what to expect from the garden club. The members seem way more interested in planting things than in actually cooking and eating them.

Horrifying recipes for middle-aged children

 The Active Woman's Cookbook (Avon/ Ideals, 1980) wasn't just for active women. The end of the book has an extremely brief children's recipe section as well. I love the picture at the section's beginning.

Ugly-ass dad waited on by his ugly-ass sleepwalking kids, serving roast turkey? chicken? bird legs, potatoes, and steaming rolls or muffins-- which match none of the recipes in this section. 

No-- the book suggests kids make some fancy cute/ horrifying pancakes instead.

I guess whether they're cute or horrifying depends on one's feelings about eating a face-- and maybe about the racial implications of having some light and some dark pancake batters. I just like that the picture shows the electric skillet getting some use! It's the perfect size and shape for batches of pancakes.

I also like that the picture doesn't really seem to follow the instructions from the recipe proper. The funny face in the picture seems like it's sitting on top of the pancake-- cooked separately. The recipe says the face should be partially cooked and then the rest of the head poured over it, so the whole thing would be one piece. If the food stylists had trouble following the directions, I wonder how well the kids would do.

The other recipe that caught my eye seems like it should be very firmly in the horrifying camp.

"Tasty, tasty, beautiful fear."

Okay, I'm horrified by the clown, but the casserole doesn't look much better.

It's a salt-lover's dream, perhaps: cream of mushroom soup with three kinds of canned veggies, plus hot dogs and bacon. I'm not sure how canned peas would turn out the technicolor green in the picture, but maybe the clown's dark magic had something to do with that.

My favorite part of this section might just be the ugly-ass kids, though, so let's end with one more picture. 

This has no explanation, but I'm guessing it's supposed to be a party of some type-- maybe Halloween since one kid's wearing a mask with pajamas and another seems fine with being dressed up like Ralphie in the outfit Aunt Clara made him (sans bunny slippers). 

My favorite image might be the kid on the far left, though. I assume she's a kid since she's the same size as everyone else, but she somehow manages to look like a middle-aged housewife trying to put on a happy face for the work buddies her husband invited over with no prior warning. Yes, she can whip up an appetizer tray of quartered peanut butter sandwiches and Nilla wafers, but what is she going to serve once those run out? You can just see she's mentally trying to go over what's still left in the pantry and how she can combine it in a way that doesn't scream, "I had no idea you were coming over and tomorrow's grocery shopping day." What might they think of condensed cream of chicken soup spread over stale Triscuits and topped with wilted parsley? She lives in such a horrifying world that even the clown guarding the Frankfurter Casserole would have no effect on her, so she night be prepared for the horrors of being an actual housewife....

Pillsbury tries for a creative spin on budget-friendly

Dwindling enrollment during the pandemic means fewer classes for me and less money than usual this spring. That means it's time to see what 1970s families did when prices for everything were rising and paychecks were not!

Pillsbury's Money Saving Meals (ed. Dianne Hennessy King, 1970) provides entire money-saving menus that try to make thrifty 1970s favorites seem exciting.

Sometimes, the book just suggests that making staples look fancy will buoy the family's spirits. Want some fancy-looking breads so dinner will seem sophisticated rather than cheap?

Nope, that's not a basket of specialty breads from the local bakery.

They're Quick Biscuit Braids: refrigerated biscuits cut up, rolled out, braided, and topped with seeds or other goodies for a little flavor/ texture, so it wouldn't be so immediately obvious that they were canned biscuits. I have to admit that I'm still kind of in love with this super-easy plan that would have seemed like the height of sophistication to me when I was a kid and thought that an Easy Cheese ruffle on a Wheat Thin was about as classy as a snack could get.

The suggestions aren't usually going for sophisticated, though. They are just attempts to make it less noticeable that there are only so many really cheap ingredients. The best a cook can often hope for is a way to recombine those well-known budget ingredients so they will at least seem new-ish, like this Saturday Night Supper menu.

Beef 'n Bean Roll-Up is not quite sloppy joes. It's not quite baked beans. It's not quite pot pie. It's kind of all of those things, but not quite any of them, so it's new, right? And there are countless variations if this is a little too close to whatever usually gets made on budget night.

Okay, so there are four variations, and they're basically for different types of biscuits on top or to allow for whatever protein is on hand if the ground beef already got used up.

On the side, why choose either the budget-friendly cole slaw OR gelatin salad when you can have both?

And again, there are so many variations! Maybe try canned carrots if you don't have cabbage? How about grapes and oranges with cabbage? Who knows? The point is that you can chuck whatever you have into the Jell-O and call it a day. 

These are not sexy recipes, but they'll give the family something to eat and leave enough gas money for the parents to get to work.

Sometimes the book tries a little too hard to sell the ideas, though. On another Saturday Night, diners are offered Glazed Tuna Burgers.

I get it. Canned tuna is pretty cheap, especially if you go with chunk light and fill it out with plenty of cracker crumbs. Pretending that you're "treat[ing] the kids to tunaburgers instead of hamburgers for a change," though, is not going to fool anyone. They will just not be more excited by the idea of canned fish and crackers than they would have been by a burger.

And if the kids in question are anything like I was as a child (or as an adult, TBH), dumping gloppy, hot crushed pineapple on top is only going to make matters worse! 

At least I would have happily chowed down on the Broccoli with Cheesy Egg Sauce.

So maybe that's the moral of this? Keep looking at budget ingredients long enough, and surely something will eventually be edible, even if it is just broccoli under a layer of cheese soup and chopped-up eggs? A little paprika can even make it seem semi-fancy, just like a little extra shaping and some sesame seeds can make canned biscuits seem handmade.

Now I'm going to try to apply this logic to the rest of my life. Fewer classes also means more free time to dig through old cookbooks, and more incentive to see what I can make of all those canned beans that I neatly stow in the pantry and promptly forget about....

Meat Loaf Strata

Meat loaf recipes are usually just that-- loaves. I was interested to see Kroger's The New Ground Beef Cookbook (Mettja C. Roate, 1965, though mine is from a 1966 sixth printing) has several recipes in the meat loaf chapter that are more reminiscent of lasagnas or other casseroles, with layers of ground meat alternating with other fillings rather than the usual uniform meat-and-filler mixture or the slightly more exotic stuffed or rolled varieties.

For the breakfast-for-dinner crowd, there's Hamburger Pancake Loaf.

It even has hard-boiled eggs in with the layers of pancakes and oniony ground beef! Just top with syrup for a complete breakfast-for-dinner "treat."

If you're more of the low-carb crowd, the book also has evidence that the idea to use cauliflower for everything predated the boom that seemed like it started in 2016.

Okay, the Cauliflower Meat Loaf would be more low-carb-friendly without the cup of bread crumbs, but change them to cauliflower bread crumbs, and problem solved!

Of course, the next logical step is to figure out how to make pancakes out of cauliflower so we can have a Cauliflower Pancake Meat Loaf. It's 1966 by way of 2021!

A Seafood March

 Are you ready for some seafood? It's March, and The Chamberlain Calendar of American Cooking (Narcisse and Narcissa Chamberlain, 1957) must have had Lent in mind, as March is seafood-heavy. Easter was April 6 in 1958 (the year of the engagement calendar), so Lent lasted the whole month. (Granted, I'm pretty sure Catholics were supposed to make every Friday meatless back then, but maybe non-Catholics were less aware of it the rest of the year?)

Anyway, for those who don't want to feel too deprived on a meatless Friday, Delaware offers up an appetizer. 

The Mushroom and Shad Roe Hors-d'Oeuvre is even seasonally appropriate, as shad roe is generally available in March from what I've read. This isn't the same as calling for fresh sweetcorn in the middle of February. It must have been easy to forget about a fast day if dinner started out with mushroom stuffed with roe flavored with cream and brandy.

For those who like travel, the main course can transport the diners to Louisiana, even though Mardi Gras is long past.

I briefly wondered if sautéing the veggies in bacon fat meant this recipe was actually not Lent-appropriate, but it looks like bacon grease was A-OK as long as the actual bacon got eaten on a different day.

March is a tough month, frequently hinting at spring before emitting a blast of icy laughter at our naivety in thinking that winter might be over.... People need all the help they can get, so maybe the March recipes were a way of making a penitential time seem a little less bleak. Or maybe the Chamberlains just wanted to bust out the shrimp and bacon fat. March is as good a time as any. Who knows? Let's just power through with whatever we can!