Not-so-fancy toast toppers from the 1920s

Having a New Year's Eve party? If you need appetizers, you can put some toppings onto slices of toast and cut them into little squares! Or if you're not social enough to want a party, you might still want some toast topping recipes if your resolution is to eat more breakfast. Or maybe you don't care about toast no matter how much I try to talk you into it. The point is that today I'm posting  really old toast topping recipes from The Science of Food and Cookery (H. S. Anderson, 1921).

If prior to reading this book I were asked to guess what kind of toast a 100+-year-old health food cookbook instructed readers to make, there's a pretty good chance I would have guessed prune toast.

Yep-- I would have been right. Old cookbooks really have a thing for prunes. I would not have foreseen that the toast itself would be dipped in hot milk or prune juice to soften it up before spreading it with prune mush, though. I guess the zwieback must have been really dry. (I guess this also makes prune toast not a great choice for parties, but hey, the fact that it's prunes is probably reason enough before we also contend with it being soggy.)

I'm sure I would have imagined creamed peas as a recipe in the book-- probably in the vegetable chapter. I wasn't really expecting them to be listed as a toast-topper, though.

I guess it makes sense, though-- a little extra protein for the morning. I would have expected a peanut butter toast for that role, though (especially since peanut butter toast is one of my favorite warm-weather breakfasts). The closest the book comes is walnut cream toast.

Yep-- white sauce draped over over a bread product so hard it has to be dunked in hot milk before it's sauced, and then a sprinkle of finely chopped walnuts to make it seem fancier. (Okay, none of these would work well as apps, but you could probably have guessed I wouldn't really choose anything that sounded too good for the role anyway.)

The last recipe made me laugh just because of its title. Considering how angry people on the far right got about millennials eating avocado toast a few years ago, I half-expected Snowflake Toast to be topped with avocadoes.

Nope. This one is just white sauce lightened up with a whipped egg white. Whee.

Reading through the toast list made me understand why the family at the start of the chapter looks so eerie.

Even drawings of people who supposedly live on this book's recipes can't work up too much enthusiasm for them. The boy looks like he's been threatened with a beating if he doesn't act like he thinks the breakfast chapter is great, and you can see the strain of pretense in his eyes. Mom is giving side-eye to the menacing illustrator, but she's too goddamn tired to intervene. What a glorious start to the day-- or the new year.

A post about bread lovers-- literally....

Are you ready for some peak 1970s earth mother madness? If so, thank S.S. from the delightful A Book of Cookrye blog for mentioning Bread Sculpture: The Edible Art (Ann Wiseman, 1975) in the comments many months ago, plus providing a link to a few pages of this book in Awful Library Books.

This is just the type of thing I love: An insistence that bread making is nearly innate and something that home cooks will want to do frequently! Food converted into kitschy craft projects that will take hours to construct and minutes to devour! Instructions on how to use common kitchen implements to make bread features! (Did you know that a garlic press can make hair, and the edge of a spoon can make dove feathers?) A random story about a woman in Maine who gathered day-old bread from neighbors so she could somehow recycle part of it into fresh bread and feed the rest of it to the raccoons on her back porch! And I haven't even gotten around to mentioning the mermaid with (whole clove?) nipples right on the cover!

When I checked the mermaid recipe, it didn't say what the nipples were actually made of, so I'll just hope my guess is right.

The tail is supposed to be decorated with dill or herbs according to the instructions, but this doesn't seem to happen on the cover photo. It's weird that they'd make the presentation less dramatic for the cover. The even bigger disappointment about the cover photo, though, is that the color is off.

The mermaid is supposed to be green! Made with spinach dough! There's nothing quite so alluring as bread that looks like it's moldy as soon as you take it out of the oven. Well, unless the "moldy" bread also has nipples.

Yes, I'm making fun of these recipes, but I have to admit, as someone who used to make "mouse" dinner rolls with half-almond ears and raisin eyes, I kind of want to try turning bread baking into an arts and crafts project, especially if it involves making weird-colored dough... 

Even if that weird-colored dough is full of the sugared dirt most commonly known as "beets."

Hell, if I can cut a "mouth" into hot bread so I can cram it full of nut teeth as the finishing touch to a griffin, I am ALL IN. The version of myself who has the leisure, patience, and skill to do this bullshit is one of my favorite imaginary people.

But then again, this is from the '70s, so it's not all fanciful cryptids. There's also the imperative to "Catch-Her-in-the-Rye" (probably without asking ahead of time how she feels about that possibility).

And then the breads have to entangle their chunky legs in such a way to ensure that the bread dick-and-balls are fully on display because what is the point of making naked man bread otherwise?

Though you can, theoretically, "Arrange them in any position"-- even those that might obscure the dude's junk. (Yeah, just try sculpting them to make the sign of the two-headed trumpet fish and let me know how it turns out.)

I suddenly feel way less all-in on the bread sculptures, especially when I start contemplating the fact that fully nude and 1970s-accurate lovers should probably have bready pubic hair... At least I know that I could make it by sending dough through a clean garlic press, and with that, I'm OUT! I think I'll enjoy my bread in boring, non-sculpted form.

Something different to leave for Santa

With Christmas fast approaching, maybe you're in a rush what with the buying, hiding, inadvertently  breaking gifts when you forgot they were on that high shelf and blindly reached for something else, swearing, finding the alternate credit card, re-buying, re-hiding, realizing you forgot to buy the goddamn batteries again this year, re-shopping, etc., but the kid wants to leave Santa something different this year because "he" put in all that work. Well, Culinary High Notes (Toledo Opera Guild, 1978) has you covered.

For a quick cookie, the book offers Hansel and Gretel Gingerbread Cookies baked in the microwave.

After shaping the claylike dough into people, you're supposed to "Microwave on SIMMER for 2 minutes and 10 seconds," but I have no idea what the directions mean when they say "It will breathe after 1 minute." If you accidentally end up creating a real, breathing, tiny child who will probably also want presents, well... your Christmas just got a lot more complicated. And now that I think about it, will this recipe actually save time by being microwave-friendly? What with all the shaping, be-raisining, etc., it will take a while to make the cookie. And this calls for enough ingredients that it will definitely make more than one cookie... And are they supposed to be micro-baked one at a time? This will take forever. It might have been more efficient to just bake them in the oven. Okay, forget the cookies. Let's just leave Santa a drink that's a little more creative than milk.

He might not to get enough sugar from all the cookies, so let's spike 7-Up with pineapple and orange juices, plus a hint of peppermint extract since peppermint goes with everything at Christmas. Then add 7-Up ice cubes to make sure that the drink stays cold without the sugar getting diluted. 

I'll bet Santa was hoping the "Surprise" in Santa's Surprise was of the alcoholic persuasion... So maybe scrap this whole plan and leave Santa a shot of bourbon... or a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon... or Dogfish Head IPA... or a black cherry White Claw... or whatever the "Santa" in your house likes best and can still afford after all those last-minute shopping trips. Cheers!

It's holiday veggie protein loaf time!

For Thanksgiving, I gave you a full menu from The Vegetable Protein and Vegetarian Cookbook (Jeanne Larson and Ruth McLin, 1977). Now I've got a follow-up stocking stuffer: the book's holiday menu from the winter chapter.

I really want to know about the Holiday Loaf with Potato Icing. The savory "icing" makes it almost sound like this concoction could be a cousin of those cream-cheese-iced sandwich loaves I love so much!

As I've researched this book, I've found a shocking number of weird old canned veggie "meats" are still available, but we're almost out of luck on the Holiday Loaf as far as I can tell. Proteena now seems to be a kind of cattle feed, and Nuteena is definitely gone, at least if Wikipedia is correct. (Loma Linda still listed a "Nutolene" (Doesn't that sound delicious? Like nuts preserved in gasoline.) on their site when I was doing research, but it didn't seem to be available to actually order as far as I could tell.) For those who feel super-ambitious, I did post a recipe for homemade Nuttose, so that might do the trick, based on the fact that it's also an old-timey vegetarian meat substitute with "nut" in its name. In any case, we've basically got a block of protein-bread-based dressing coated in mashed potatoes, as if two side dishes mashed together magically make a main dish. Maybe the gravy will make it feel more substantial.

Well-- like the Celery Gravy for Thanksgiving was based on cream of celery soup, this Mushroom Gravy is mostly cream of mushroom soup, though the cook can add extra mushrooms to make it mushroomier.

The German Red Cabbage seems Christmassy to me, if only because it makes me think of my favorite cut in A Christmas Story, when Randy's lifting of the toilet lid transforms into his mom's lifting the lid on the bubbling pot of cabbage.

Don't worry. Ralph and Randy's mom assures us that we love red cabbage (even if I'm already iffy on cabbage and definitely backing away when it also involves an apple, brown sugar, and an onion).

I was hoping there would be some crazy recipe for a cottage cheese bowl-- hopefully involving lime gelatin, olives, canned crushed pineapple, and/or slices of canned veggie links along with the cottage cheese, but no such luck. I guess it just literally means a bowl of cottage cheese. So festive!

The Green Goddess Salad adds a festive green to the table, though I was surprised that this version uses green food coloring to brighten up the dressing.

I'd expect a health food cookbook to call for avocado, but maybe Larson and McLin are practical enough to worry about the dressing turning brown when there's so much to prep and the food might end up sitting out for a while.

The Easy Fruitcake is easy because it doesn't take a month or more to make it, I guess. 

It even allows for the addition of actual candied fruit, not just calling for raisins, nuts, dates, and maybe prunes, the way more hardcore health food cookbooks might. (This does use margarine instead of butter, though, so you know it's health food.)

And if there is any doubt this is a health food cookbook, the Chilled Berry Delight should put it to rest.

It's just strawberries topped with raspberries puréed with a hint of lemon juice. The whipped cream or whipped topping is supposed to make it festive. I suspect it would just have made my childhood self sadder that there wasn't a "real" dessert.

Like most of the menus in the book, this meal is just for four, so it implies very limited family presence! If you're lucky, it will just be mom and dad fighting-- not mom fighting with Aunt Carol, dad arguing with grandpa, sister Jennifer fighting with cousin Karen, and everybody arguing with Uncle George.

Happy Holidays from me and the random picture of pumpkins and beets at the end of this menu! May your holiday tables be full of food and free of conflict.

I'm dreaming of a jiggly Christmas

Christmas means big gatherings! One easy way to feed a crowd for cheap is to set out a big Jell-O salad. New Many Feature Cook Book (Aluminum Goods Mfg. Co., 1939) offers up a few possibilities. If you actually like your family, there's Christmas Salad.

It's just a simple cranberry and white grape mixture called a "salad" because people want a good excuse to eat extra dessert on a day that's sure to feature many.

If you get tired of family togetherness pretty quickly, though, the Christmas Star Salad might be a better choice.

Does anybody really want to start out the big meal with congealed canned tomatoes spiked with onion and lemon juices and pieces of celery? You can hope a dish like this might inspire at least a few people to make an early exit. 

If your family is slow to catch on to hints, then you might have to go for something even worse. Okay, technically Two-Tone Salad doesn't have Christmas (or any other holiday) in its title, but the two tones are red (from the tomato aspic) and light green (from the cucumbers), so I think this fits the theme.

If vinegary tomato gel topped with vinegary cucumber-pineapple gel doesn't horrify your family, then they must be psychopaths, which gives you a good excuse to clear out of the family gathering if they don't. It's a win-win! Or a lose-lose? In any case, it's a gelatinous excuse to part ways for another year, and that's all some of us could ever hope for.

The miraculous food converter converts food into-- well, still food... You have to finish the conversion process.

I was kind of sold on the Hamilton Beach Food Converter booklet (undated, but somebody wrote December 1961on the page stating the appliance had a five-year guarantee) just based on the title. "Food converter" is just so vague. I mean, we're all food converters already, if you think about it, turning food into energy and, well, some other less desirable things... 

This appliance isn't as exciting as the name might suggest. It can't convert rice into caviar or dried beans into morel mushrooms. It can just convert a hunk of meat into a pile of ground meat, or a whole radish into a sliced radish, or a sealed can of fruit cocktail into an open can of fruit cocktail. Just take this handsome base...

... and snap on one of the exciting attachments.

Maybe the ghost hand outlined in orange was sold separately?

The recipes are generally not too surprising. Turn a hunk of meat into a meatloaf! Turn a few potatoes and a block of cheese into scalloped potatoes! All with a the flip of a switch and followed by some cleanup that Hamilton Beach swears will not be too onerous!

There are a few odd ideas, though. I mean, Ham and Walnut Sandwiches don't sound terrible, exactly (at least, as long as I can pretend that I'm a normal human who can stand the thought of mustard in a sandwich).

I'm just not sure that "ham and walnut" sounds like a classic combination, especially when "ham and cheese" exists.

For the kids' lunches, why give them sugary peanut butter and jelly...

...when you could just spread ground-up carrots, celery, green peppers, and peanuts (with maybe a hint of mayo!) on some bread? I'm sure there would be no objections on the children's part.

Of course, Hamilton Beach seems to have some very odd ideas about what kids love.

Yes, children are just delighted with a heap or two of grated raw carrots, fresh out of the food converter.

Honestly, though, I'm more excited by the pictures in this booklet than the recipes. Just look at the tiny little chef with a food grater body, shaking on some kind of an unspecified deal with his grateful public. Look at him!

I can't resist the smug little smile, the eyebrows trying to jump off of his face, or the gravity-defying chef's hat.

My favorite picture has got to be the one for the beginning of the "Main Dish" section of the salad maker chapter, though. It may not look too exceptional at first-- just a woman presenting a man with some kind of main dish hidden by a cloche. 

But did you notice how far back the man is leaning? He may be smiling, but his body language suggests he wants NO PART of this. And look at the size of the cloche! I initially wanted to suggest that the woman had been driven out of her mind with all the housework and cooked up their toddler as the main dish. Her crazed smile says she's capable of anything.

Then I realized that she is leaning way too far forward for there to be anything heavy under the cloche. She'd have fallen flat if the platter held a whole roast of toddler. Maybe she's just getting ready to reveal the Hamilton Beach Food Converter and a little note saying "Make your own goddamn dinner for once."

Or maybe there's some other drama only hinted at by the illustration. Feel free to speculate. I'm off to convert some carrots and green peppers into salad toppers the good old-fashioned way: with a knife. It's way easier to wash than a teeny tiny chef who shacks up with a can opener.

Soy to world

Holiday prices got you down? Wondering how you'll finance big family meals? Well, Beat Today's Rising Food Costs with Soybean Cookery (Virg and Jo Lemley, 1975, second edition) offers some soybean-based solutions.

Consider starting out with a little appetizer, like cheese balls.

Of course, your guests will probably expect those cream-cheese based cheese balls that are often seasoned with wine and/or rolled in nuts or herbs before being served with crackers. Cream cheese can be pricey, though, and this book requires soy in every recipe. That means the cheese balls are made of soybeans, flour, egg, and seasonings mashed into a dough that is then rolled around a cube of Cheddar cheese before being deep fried. Deep frying makes a lot of things better, and maybe the green chilis and chili powder will help hide the soy flavor that even the cookbook authors admit is less-than-appealing. Or maybe not. These appetizers might be okay (if disappointing to those who want an excuse to eat a bunch of cream cheese), or they might bring the party to an early end.

If guests stick around past the appetizers, you'll need a main course, like turkey with stuffing. Sure, stuffing made out of bread is cheap, but have you considered making the holiday stuffing out of soybeans instead?

And have you considered replacing the turkey with a beef heart? The recipe suggests that's a good option too. I can only imagine a host grandly slicing open a heart before all the guests, who get to see soybeans running out like so much chunky pus. That could certainly clear out the dining room.

For the guests hardy (or foolhardy) enough to make it through the meal, offer a dessert full of warm fall spices and, yes, soybeans. Instead of the cliché pumpkin pie, maybe try an applesauce cake.

Loaded up with whole wheat and raisins in addition to the soybeans, this is peak 1970s health food! The honey glaze only makes it more so.

Will all this soy make your family reluctant to let you cook anything for the next holiday dinner? You can always hope so, and that will be the biggest money-saver of all.

VIKO manufactures aluminum utensils... and confusion!

I'm not quite sure what to call today's book, as the title page says this is the VIKO Many Feature Cook Book and the cover says this is New Many Feature Cook Book. In either case, it's by Aluminum Goods Mfg. Co. (the makers of VIKO utensils), and it's from 1939.

I love that the features of the spiral-wire-bound book are enumerated on the cover. It's not only an advertisement for VIKO cookware but also for the merits of the book itself. (Lies flat when open! Pages turn easily! Blank pages! Approved recipes!)

The recipes themselves suggest that VIKO's home economics department (Yes, the company had one, as Laura Wilson's introductory note explains.) was a bit eccentric. For instance, while I've seen enough recipes for a marshmallow surrounded by a ball of mashed sweet potatoes and then rolled in corn flakes or coconut before baking to consider recipes like that only a mild curiosity...

...the confections are usually classified as side dishes. This is the first time I've ever seen the recipe in the "Cookies and Small Cakes" chapter. It's kind of refreshing to see that the company recognizes sweet potato balls have a lot in common with dessert, but at the same time, I think you're going to get a really weird look if you offer somebody a cookie and then hand them a sweet potato wad, even if it does have a marshmallow center.

The book also kind of seems to want to start its own slang terms. Guess what the "California chicken" in California Chicken Pie is!

I'm sure Chicken of the Sea could have told you. VIKO's attempt to call tuna "California chicken" didn't catch on, though. My attempts to search the term just turned up a lot of chicken recipes that feature avocado.

I also wonder whether VIKO had a completely different definition of chowder than I have. I always thought that chowder was a milk- or cream-based soup that usually had seafood and/or veggies in it. While this Salmon Chowder does have both seafood and a veggie...

...I don't see how it's a soup. The only liquid is the liquid from the canned corn, and even that's evaporated to just three tablespoons! Hell, the Worcestershire sauce accounts for a full quarter of the moisture in this recipe. I keep reading this one over to see if I'm missing something-- if maybe the recipe mentions adding cream and the editors forgot to add it to the list of ingredients-- but there's nothing. This just seems like a recipe for a very chunky canned salmon and corn sauce at most.

The real puzzler, though, is the chili, or more specifically, the Chili Con Carne and Russian Apples.

In other circumstances, I might make fun of a chili that includes macaroni that's been boiled for an hour and a half, plus has only 1 tablespoon of chili powder at most to two quarts of water and 3-1/2 cups of tomatoes, but the title just has me too stumped to bother. What are "Russian apples"? I tried looking it up, but I just find results about Antonovka, apparently a very acidic apple that's popular in Russia. Searching "Chili Con Carne and Russian Apples" leads to some really weird chili recipes with actual apples in them. I even tried to find out if "Russian apples" was an alternate name for kidney beans, but kidney beans don't have any nicknames that are that wild. (Rajma was about as exciting as it got.) So I have no idea! Feel free to speculate on what the VIKO home economists might have been thinking, or just make up your own story!

Our year of Rawleigh vanishes in a puff of perfume

As the days whisper by in a cold, gray veil and the nights get holy-hell-it's-always-dark, it's time to say goodbye to Rawleigh's Good Health Guide Almanac Cook Book. What did our favorite MLM scheme recommend cooking up for the last month of 1953?

Apparently, Rawleigh thought the family would miss Thanksgiving as soon as it was over, as the week kicks off with roast turkey, fluffy potatoes, and a pumpkin chiffon pie. (Lest you assume that this was meant to be Christmas dinner, the holiday was on a Friday in 1953.) The pork chops with celery stuffing also have a Thanksgiving-esque feel, as the stuffing is similar to what would be used in a turkey, and the accompanying sweet potatoes reinforce the theme.

I'm more interested in the "Scrapple Up-to-Date." I'm not sure what makes it up-to-date except maybe that it uses pork shoulder instead of the usual offal? It looks like the recipe might substitute an egg for the buckwheat flour as a binding agent, too, though I'd be happy for anyone to correct my limited understanding on this one!

Most amusing is the recipe for Mexican Veal Chops. What makes veal chops, rice, onion, and tomato "Mexican"? Maybe it's the lavish seasoning of [reviewing the recipe to make sure I didn't miss anything] salt and pepper? Serving it with green Lima beans (instead of, oh, say refried beans) doesn't really help...

Now, let's see what Rawleigh's mystic has to say about Sagittarians. They are "not the romantic type" and "Personal freedom is [their] dominant passion," so I assume the 1950s Sagittarians started the pseudolaw movement that eventually morphed into sovereign citizens. In other words, they're the people the rest of the family felt obligated to invite to Christmas dinner, and everybody regretted inviting when the meal inevitably erupted into an argument.

Since December is the month of gift-giving, it should be no surprise that Rawleigh's product of the month is perfume.

This is probably my favorite picture from the booklet. Mixing the cartoony flowers with a real woman whose teeth-gritted smile and intense stare at someone just out of readers' view gives me the impression that our model has been kidnapped by an artist who is slowly transforming her into an imaginary meadow, and her existence in the real world will be completely erased if she doesn't play along. I hope she throws the perfume bottle at him and gets away!

We'll never know whether perfume lady makes it out alive, but I can definitively say this is goodbye to the 1953 Rawleigh Good Health Guide Almanac Cook Book. Thanks, Rawleigh, for reminding us that life is full of backaches, upset stomachs, and bad odors to cover up, but we can always make things better with a little white sauce and a lot of Rawleigh.