Kraft wants you to make everything just a little bit French

My previous post on Kraft's Main Dish Cook Book (1970) was pretty heavy on macaroni-and-cheese-based dishes. I was a bit more surprised to find French dressing was so heavily featured, too.

Maybe it's my prejudice against salad dressings that makes me imagine that a stew based on a bottle of dressing will end up unpleasantly oily and gloppy.

Kraft thought salad dressing goes with veggies, so why not simmer them in French dressing along with a bunch of meatballs?

And why confine French dressing to an ingredient in standard American recipes like beef stew? Go a little Italian with Parma Beef Burgers.

Yep-- French dressing teams up with breadcrumbs to get these meatloaf-ish patties ready for a topping of Parmesan cheese, ready to be served on Parmesan toast.

Or maybe French dressing could be the ticket to sunny Spain?

Yep-- a typical pot roast with potatoes and onions becomes Beef Barcelona with the simple addition of French dressing and olives! (It looks like it's still a pretty popular recipe, based on a Google search, so I guess Kraft convinced diners of this one.)

Or the French dressing might take things in a more German direction with Saucy Schnitzel.

I always thought schnitzel was meat pounded thin, breaded, and pan fried, but apparently cooking meat in a salad dressing, onion, caraway, and sour cream sauce (from a mix) counts too....

I'm not saying that this entire book is a cynical attempt to sell salad dressing when home cooks didn't have access to a lot of recipes that got their flavor from something other than salad dressing or condensed soup (or grocery stores that sold ingredients with more flavor, for that matter). I'm just suggesting that a lot of this book is a cynical attempt to sell salad dressing.