Try not to feel too salty (or sad) about this post

I didn't scan the cover of today's book, The Fat and Sodium Control Cookbook (Alana Smith Payne and Dorothy Callahan, 3rd edition/ Sunkist Growers Special Edition, 1965), because it's just plain orange. A Google search suggests the book once had a dust jacket, but mine is long gone, so just imagine an orange rectangle and you'll have a pretty good idea of what my copy looks like.

I don't want to make you feel too bad with today's post, so if the recipes start to get you down, just remember that the audience probably mainly consisted of old white people who raised their blood pressure by getting upset about the civil rights movement. If anybody deserved these very sad recipes, it was them.

What do I mean by "very sad recipes"? For one, the book includes not only a chapter on soups (which, unless they're dessert soups, usually rely heavily on salt to have any flavor), but also recipes for soups that need to be rich, too.

I can only imagine how flavorless a big bowl of slightly thickened nonfat (and possibly low-sodium) milk would be, regardless of the hints of white pepper, onion powder, Riesling, and paprika. Will the addition of vegetables that are so overcooked they are easy to mash be able to save this mess? You know my answer just by the wording of the question.

The book offers some gelatin salads, but they can't use flavored gelatins since the flavored ones have too much sodium. 

That's okay, though, as I'm not sure what flavor of gelatin goes with grapefruit, sherry, avocado, and green pepper. Plain might be the safest choice in this context....

The book offers a lot of sweet main dishes, as adding sugar is an easy way to add flavor without adding fat or sodium. The Pineapple-Veal Patties are a good example.

Maybe I'm overly cynical since I hate sweets combined with meaty/ savory flavors anyway, but I wonder how long it would take for anyone to get tired of leftover meats served on pineapple and coated in a brown sugar and pineapple juice syrup.

As a side note, I love that so many recipes end with a note to "Add salt for regulars." "Regulars" in this case appears to refer to family members who don't need to restrict their sodium, back in the days before writers thought so much about trying to use inclusive language.

The book attempts to offer some international foods, which goes about as well as you can imagine, considering the authors have to contend not only with the restricted tastes of 1960s middle America and the limited offerings of grocery stores but also the dietary restrictions. For instance, the American Chop Suey is even sadder than the usual "mix a few cans of La Choy together" variety.

It's nice that this version uses fresh bean sprouts, but the "glaze" that consists primarily of water and lemon juice with a hint of sugar can't possibly add much flavor-- and certainly nothing that would overtly remind diners of Chinese food. The headnote's claims that chop suey "is unknown in the Chinese tradition, and is considered the corruption of culinary tradition" may be a bit overstated, but I'm sure no one other than the authors of the book would want to claim this particular variation.

The weirdest variation of a common American dish might just be the Tamale Pie.

Instead of using the usual cornmeal mush topping, this layers "brown granular wheat cereal" cooked in low-sodium skim milk on the bottom and top of the filling. The filling itself is seasoned not with the expected chili powder, but with curry powder. Calling this "Tamale Pie" just makes me want to ask whether words actually have meanings anymore.

Oh, well. The addition of curry powder probably makes this a "foreign" food that half the original audience of this cookbook may have refused to taste on principle alone. Remember, we can't feel too sorry for whoever had to eat this stuff.... No sense ruining our days. 

But then again, if you read this blog, you may have a masochistic streak. In that case, imagine your dear friends and relatives being stuck trying to eat this stuff for the rest of their days, and it will hurt way more. You're welcome.

Some '70s Bake Off contestants give biscuits an identity crisis

My previous post about the Bake Off Cook Book from Pillsbury (1971) may have led readers to believe that all the entrants had to do to get into the Bake Off was to fill a Pillsbury biscuit with one foodstuff and then top it with some crumbled-up salty snacks to get into the Bake Off, but that's not really the case. I was surprised to see a few uses of the Pillsbury pre-made doughs that really transformed them into something new. 

Biscuit Stuffin' Atop Chops transforms the biscuit dough into something like a traditional bread stuffing.

Just cut the biscuits into tiny pieces, mix with cream of chicken soup, traditional stuffing seasonings, and an egg, and then bake on top of pork chops for a stuffing dinner.

Another recipe managed to cook biscuits in soup. 

I'm not sure I'm totally sold on these sizable, slimy-looking dough wads.

Still, Chicken-Filled Biscuit Dumplings won first prize in the Biscuit Division. The fact that canned biscuits stuffed with canned chicken and then cooked in canned soups was such a hit really highlights just how much tastes have changed in the past 50+ years.

Finally, we have a recipe that covers the "covered-in-chips" trend and the transformation trend by transforming canned biscuit dough into something else by flattening it out and rolling it in chips.

Yep! Biscuit Taco Tuckaways insist that flattened biscuit dough coated in corn chips = tortilla shell.

Cooks in the 1970s could transform any bread product into any other bread product if they had to. I kind of love that resourcefulness, even if I'm not too tempted by the recipes.

Making EVERYTHING taste Amish

I love the cover of Amish Taste Cookbook (Alma T. Herschberger, 1977) because it just looks wrong.

You don't usually see a horse pulling a carriage directly upward in front of a bunch of chairs that seem to be jutting from the wall. The orientation of the title makes it clear that the cover was supposed to be at this angle, though, so readers get to enjoy the sideways mural. (It's from Danville Ohio's Der Dutchman Restaurant, btw, and painted by Heintz Gaugel.)

The cover's suggestion that something is just a bit off prepares readers for the rest of the book-- in which things continue to seem a bit off... especially in the Amish ideas of non-Amish cuisines.

Granted, I'm pretty used to seeing "Oriental" labels slapped on all kinds of recipes where they don't belong, but I usually have at least a sense of why the recipe writer chose it. Even if the dish is a casserole covered in cream-of-something soup and cheese, it usually at least has rice, water chestnuts, and/or fried noodles-- which was apparently enough to make it seem exotic to midwesterners back in the day. This Oriental Casserole had me squinting, though.

It's basically scalloped potatoes with ground beef and some veggies. What's so "oriental" about that? Then I saw the ground meat was seasoned with a bit of soy sauce, so... I guess that's the angle?

I didn't expect much in the way of spice when I saw a recipe for El Paso Casserole, either. Maybe a packet of taco seasoning, a fraction of a teaspoon of chili powder, or a drop or two of Tabasco sauce would season a family-size casserole. This, however....

This is just ham and cheese with noodles. The spiciest item is the Velveeta! Why is this not just called something like "Cheesy Ham and Noodles"? What does El Paso have to do with this?

At least the El Paso Casserole probably tastes fine, even if the name is misleading. The biggest disappointment might just be the Hamburger Pizza. And no, I'm not all that shocked by hamburger on a pizza. That's been midwest-standard for years.

I'm just put off that the tomato sauce includes catsup, mustard, Worcestershire, onion, brown sugar, and (wait for it!).... Oatmeal! Even those who might defend catsup and mustard on the theory that this could be a cheeseburger pizza have to be a little put off by throwing brown sugar oatmeal into the mix.

In short, Amish Taste suggests to me that these cooks will bend every other type of taste to their will. No matter the starting point of the recipe, it will end up tasting like it came out of a midwest potluck.

A pretty easy veg Thanksgiving from the '70s

Tired of the same-old, same-old for Thanksgiving dinner? Want to make your celebration less meat-centric and more eco-friendly? Do you want to get more '70s-style health foods in your life? You're in luck! The Vegetable Protein and Vegetarian Cookbook (Jeanne Larson and Ruth McLin, 1977) has a whole Thanksgiving menu ready and waiting.

And yes, the star of the meal is the Soy Chicken Loaf with Celery Sauce!

The Soy Chicken Loaf is almost just typical bread stuffing, aside from the "2 cups chicken roll, grated, or 1 can chicken-like loaf, mashed." I wasn't sure what a chicken roll even was, but the front of the book lists "Chicketts" as one possibility, and apparently it's still around. I'm not sure canned "chicken-like loaf" is still a thing, though Loma Linda offers cans of "Diced Chik." Maybe it's better not to think too hard about what '70s canned veggie "chicken" would be like....

The Celery Sauce reminds me that The Vegetable Protein and Vegetarian Cookbook is a lot less opposed to normal processed foods than a lot of my other vegetarian cookbooks.

Yep-- it's basically just a can of celery soup, thinned out with some milk and fancied up with some garnishes. A condensed-soup sauce is easy for people to make fun of today, but at least it sounds easier and probably tastier than something that, say, the Rosicrucians would recommend. Plus, the menu doesn't go overboard with the canned soups. Peas with Mushrooms really is mostly actual mushrooms with peas, not peas coated in a can of cream of mushroom soup. 

The Candied "Yams" (and yes, I know that Larson and McLin probably mean sweet potatoes, not yams! Don't yell at me about it.) are not coated in marshmallows the way that a lot of sweet potatoes were in the '70s, but they still have actual brown sugar on them, rather than a coat of honey or molasses that I'd typically expect from a '70s health food book.

Although there is a low-sugar version with less than half the amount of brown sugar for the more health-conscious crowd...

...and a bunch of unsweetened coconut, so Thanksgiving dinner will taste like sunblock.

The Molded Waldorf Salad starts with flavored gelatin, too, so again-- no fear of sugar or artificial colors!

Also: no fear of sweet gelatin that supplements its diced apples and chopped nuts with celery and mayonnaise. That's very mainstream for a '70s health food cookbook.

The dessert of Magic Mince Pie may have seemed unlikely to the original audience since mincemeat was expected to contain meat, but I think people are so used to meatless mince now that they would wonder at throwing in the word "magic."

The crust recipe definitely smacks of '70s health-foodery, though. 

To be fair, I did pick the Wheat Oil Pastry recipe over the Regular Oil Pastry recipe, but any oil pastry recipe still seems a bit too health-foody, especially for a holiday! Live a little and have some butter.

This is probably not a spread anyone would want to serve now, when it's easy to just grab a Tofurky roast or a Field Roast Celebration Roast, but the menu is a lot easier and perhaps a bit more flavorful than a lot of the other veggie Thanksgiving ideas from the time. Still, Larson and McLin must have known this kind of cooking wouldn't attract too many people. Remember, the menu is for four. Of course, for people with insufferable families, this aspect of the menu might be the best part! 

Pillsbury time capsule

This copy of Bake-Off Cook Book reminded me that 1968 was a very different time from 2023.

It was apparently a time when people were not afraid to put homemade bread dough directly into a greased paper grocery bag instead of a bread pan...

...even though I assume people in 1968 were more likely to own an actual bread pan than people in 2023. They apparently weren't worried about bag lint, or whatever weird chemicals might be used to make paper bags more durable or water-resistant or whatever. Or maybe they felt ambivalent about something so closely related to fruitcake and half-hoped it would be ruined by baking it in a paper bag?

They were absolutely mad for stroganoff and willing to call pretty much any main dish with sour cream in it stroganoff, even if it used canned Vienna sausages for the meat component and replaced mushrooms with canned green beans and noodles with a "crust" of mashed potatoes reconstituted from flakes and a topping of French fried onions.

At least it's more colorful than stroganoff usually is.

They were concerningly eager to label pretty much any random recipe as "Oriental" for no apparent reason.

Sorry, I meant "because it had a teaspoon of soy sauce and some canned fried noodles in the biscuit topping." That's more than enough to offset the fact that this is, you know, full of cream of mushroom soup, canned tuna, and country-style biscuits.

At least the people of 1968 and 2023 have one thing in common: a love of a two-dessert mashup. Instead of a brookie or a cronut, the people of 1968 instead went for Cookie Cap Cakes...

...which were carrot cake cupcakes topped with a butterscotch nut cookie owl face.

Maybe owls looked way different in the 1960s.... Like I said, different time!

Sweet veggies to be thankful for

Thanksgiving is approaching, and sweet potatoes are on a lot of menus. People love and/or love to hate the infamous recipes that involve marshmallows and sweet potatoes, but I felt like posting some alternative recipes from Southern Living Casseroles Cookbook (Jean Wickstrom, 1974, but mine is from the 1986 fourth printing) for sweetish veggies that might fit onto Thanksgiving menus. (At least, they might fit for people who don't gag on the sweet flavor/ stringy and/or mushy texture combo).

Yes-- I said "sweetish veggies" because they're not all sweet potatoes. The Scalloped Rutabaga and Apple Casserole might be good for families that want apple pie along with their pumpkin pie but would actually feel shame eating two pies at the same time (unlike my family when I was a kid, in which we'd cut pie into half-size slices so we could justify eating multiple types of pie at the same time for dessert).

This has got the requisite apples, butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon, but it's also got rutabaga and lacks a crust, so it doesn't need to count as dessert.

If you're more of a squash fan, this recipe gussies up butternut with butter, brown sugar, raisins, pecans, and molasses.

Again, it sounds desserty, but there's no crust, so it doesn't count as dessert!

For the ultimate dessert experience that's not dessert (excluding, of course, all the Jell-O based dishes crafted with marshmallows, cream cheese, bottles of soda, etc. that count as salads if they're served atop a lettuce leaf), there's Praline Yam Casserole with Orange Sauce, loaded up with brown sugar, butter, pecans, plenty of orange juice, and a touch of Grand Marnier.

It's definitely not dessert because it's a veggie-based casserole!

And if you are more of a sweet-and-sour fan than as straight-up extra dessert person, I also offer Sweet Potato-Apple-Sauerkraut Casserole.

Yep-- it's kind of a very-austere apple-sweet potato pie hybrid layered with sauerkraut. And illustrated with a random picture of mushrooms, of course.

Whatever is on your Thanksgiving table, I hope you enjoy it more than Henry and his wife like rutabagas! I will be enjoying the homemade rolls I make every year and staying the hell away from any sweet potatoes.

These GOP recipes are not so grand

I wasn't really sure what to expect from Grand Old Party Recipes (Athens County Republican Executive Committee, 1968). 

I always imagined 1960s Republicans as being kind of snooty, the type who would want to serve something expensive to show off that they had money and to separate themselves from the dirty hippies sharing a huge communal bowl of brown rice. I wasn't entirely wrong. The book has recipes like this Salmon Tartare, which seems too expensive and involved for most of the '60s families I imagine.

It starts with six pounds of fresh salmon (not canned!), requires an hour or more of simmering in a court bouillon (a task perhaps best left to the family cook?), rounds of chilling and then masking in a sauce tartare, and finally a garnish of Dungeness crab. (It's also funny that I'd think of this as being more of a Democrat's recipe today, as it's centered around seafood. Current Republican recipes seem like they'd be for big chunks of beef to demonstrate a disregard for concerns about the climate and connect to a meat-hungry base.)

Another recipe that might have leaned Republican in 1968 and could seem Democratic now comes from the wife of the then-future President Ronald Reagan.

The specification to use "fine oranges," the product placement aspect of specifying that one should use a Wonder Shredder, the leisure time (or hired cooks) required for endless fiddling with changing the water over the peels, removing all the white skin on the oranges, etc. all seem 1960s Republican-y to my mental stereotypes. And the insistence that a bit of cooked fruit can genuinely count as "a delicious dessert" seems much more fitting to current Democrats' concerns about health (though they'd probably cut down on the added sugar).

The '60s Republican recipes weren't that different from any other recipe collection overall, though. They loved weird gelatin combos just as much as anybody else.

They were even sensible enough to start the Tongue Mousse with plain gelatin rather than sugary lemon!

Republicans also put their own spin on a recipe that I often see presented as an easy breakfast casserole option. Usually, layers of bread soaked in a savory custard are topped with cheese and sausage. Jerry's Baked Shrimp replaces the sausage with-- you guessed it!-- shrimp.

It also gets fancy by adding some bread crumbs and paprika to the top. My favorite part may just be that there is no indication of who Jerry is! I can see this recipe setting off whispers about what Mrs. Hugh Scott was up to in her spare time.

I'm not sure what else to say except that I wouldn't vote for any of these, but to be fair, I wouldn't vote for the vast majority of the recipes I post! They're not usually picked for their appeal....

Cranberries, Horseradish, and All-Purpose Cream Fill Out a Rawleigh November

Now as November trudges in, it's time to see how Rawleigh's Good Health Guide Almanac Cook Book (1953) readies its readers for months of gray skies that turn ever-more-steadily colder. Was pumpkin spice big in 1953? Did Rawleigh refuse to acknowledge the season and call for strawberry rhubarb pie?

We know that Rawleigh didn't envision this week's recipes for Thanksgiving-- well, not unless they thought lamb patties with molded vegetable salad and brownies à la mode was a suitable holiday feast. It looks like cranberries might have been the mid-'50s equivalent of today's pumpkin spice, as they make an appearance as Sunday's dessert (cranberry meringue pie!) and as  horseradishy molded cranberry relish on Saturday.

The recipes are mostly fall-appropriate: a cozy vegetable soup to use up some fall vegetables and canned tomatoes; an old-fashioned suet pudding loaded with raisins, nuts, and warm spices; a jam cake to showcase some of the jam mom presumably put up just a few months before.

So what does our green-faced genie have to say about Scorpios? The final line of the horoscope shows that they (well, we, since I'm one) are the types of people that are great to have right next door: "You are so busy with your own affairs that you have no time to be curious about your neighbors." Since they may "excel in short stories" (which seems like an oddly specific trait for a horoscope to call out), you might never see a Scorpio neighbor at all! Hopefully, they're too busy trying to get published in Galaxy Science Fiction or Fantastic Story Magazine to bother anyone.

And finally, the Rawleigh product of the month:

It's Raweligh's Hand Cream (also good "for arms, elbows and knees")! It's not for the face, though, even if you get that impression from the woman with a demented, far-off gleam in her eye rubbing her face. She's demonstrating the wonders of All-Purpose Cream, which is supposed to work as a foundation, cleanser, massage cream, and night cream, allowing it to "take the place of four jars on your dressing table!" I have no idea whether this claim is plausible since I have neither a dressing table nor jars of anything that would belong on one. I'll just mumble, "Sure, Rawleigh. Whatever you say" as I slowly back away from their November model, who is a little too happy with her All-Purpose Cream for my tastes.

Republican recipes that maybe represent the constituents, but maybe not

Do you feel like dehumanizing some poor and/or otherwise marginalized people? Want to shred the social safety net once you realize that non-white people might also have access to it? Well, have I got the cookbook for you....

Okay, I'm being totally unfair. The Republican Cookbook (Brownstone Press, 1969) doesn't actually push Republican policies. It's just Republican recipes (which are, as you may have guessed, often quite conventional).

The book is organized by state, with recipes from high-ranking party members to represent each one. Some politicians (actually, often their wives are given credit since most of the officials are men and traditional men don't do the cooking) seemed really proud to represent their states. For instance, Nancy Reagan was clearly into showing off California's agriculture. She sent a luncheon menu that specified it used "all California products." 

Of course it has avocado! This is from California. It even specifies the shrimp should be from Bodega Bay. I'm amused that the menu specifies using a tarragon dressing on the avocado and shrimp, but the salad dressing recipe printed immediately below it is for California wine dressing-- no tarragon.

The stuffed lemon dessert is meant to show of California lemons, and this item actually has a corresponding recipe!

It's a really easy recipe, too: carefully gut a lemon so the shell remains, fill up the shell with lemon sherbet, refreeze, and serve. My favorite part is that "You can wash out the shells, freeze them, and use them again at another time." I just can't imagine washing out, refreezing, and then reusing lemon shells as dessert cups. It's funny and also kind of gross.

Senator Margaret Chase Smith clearly seemed proud of Maine's reputation for lobster. She wasn't afraid to proclaim they had so much lobster, they were willing to throw it into anything, such as copious amounts of canned mushroom soup.

 Or even better, canned mushroom soup and American cheese.

Some of the recipe contributors seemed decidedly less interested in the products from their states. I think Senator Karl E. Mundt was not super excited about South Dakota, for instance.

I mean, sea food is not exactly the first thing that springs to mind when anyone thinks of South Dakota.

And I think Mrs. Elly M. Peterson, the assistant chair of the RNC, was hoping to go on vacation from her home state of Michigan.

A flaming tropical sundae can only help so much when the lake's frozen over and there's a foot of snow on the ground, though.

I can't think of a good ending. The Reagans keep suggesting that I claim a Welfare Queen stole it. Big surprise. 🙄