Contemplating shellfish, cheese, gelatin, and possibly criminal mermaids...

Is it cannibalism if a mermaid eats a fish? Just asking for a friend with big vacant eyes and a smile with the barest hint of menace.

I'm sure that's not supposed to be my takeaway from Tips on Cooking Fish and Shellfish (U.S. Department of the Interior Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, in cooperation with United States Fishing Industry, 1958), but you know how I am.

I was not always sure of what to expect in this booklet. I assumed that the Pizza of the Sea would be a pizza with anchovies (since they're the most traditional fishy pizza topping) or maybe tuna (as the name could be a play on chicken of the sea). Wrong on both counts.

This is a shrimp pizza! And it is only compounding my confusion about whether shellfish goes with cheese. Sometimes when I watch cooking shows like Chopped and a chef reaches for cheese to go with shellfish, the judges act like the contestant has just decided to mix dog shit into their dish. Then other times, the judges act all excited about the pairing, as if cheese and shellfish are just the best. There must either be some complicated rules that I don't grasp OR the judges react based on how they feel about the contestant rather than on any objective rules relating to shellfish plus cheese. In any case, cooking shows are the ONLY reason I care, as I don't eat shellfish anyway. But if anybody can tell me what the deal is, I'd appreciate the help. 

Oh, yeah. I was writing about Tips on Cooking Fish and Shellfish. Sorry I got distracted...  But you know what will get me back on track? Yep-- gelatin salad, or in this case, Sea Reef Salad.

I've got to give the government credit for realizing that unflavored gelatin is the way to go here. Plus real sour cream! Chill in a ring mold and serve with a salad of tomatoes, green pepper, and a hint of onion in the middle. It would be pretty to look at, and I have a feeling the type of people who actually enjoy mayonnaise-y salads would think this at least sounds okay.

You might expect the Maine Special would be a recipe for lobster, but you'd be wrong.

It's basically cheesy potatoes with those sardines Maine is apparently famous for.

Another confusing title: Fiesta Curry. Those two words generally don't come together...

I guess the Department of the Interior wanted to give the curry a name that fit the white 1950s vague and diffuse definition of ethnic, so "fiesta" it was. (Whether shrimp with onions and curry-flavored applesauce is a good combo is a separate question.)

I was probably most amused by the Seafood en Coquille, though.

Cooked peas, condensed mushroom soup, and canned seafood mixed together and cooked in shells under a layer of (apparently-acceptable) cheese? This is really just a very dressed-up, no-noodle version of a typical tuna casserole. I kind of love how sneaky it is.

In any case, if a big-eyed mermaid offers me anything to eat, I will definitely reject it.

Funny Name: Keeping it Light

Do you ever get tired of appetizers just being so serious, like consequential crab cakes or downbeat deviled eggs or brooding buffalo wings? Well, Frederica Fare (Parents Association of Frederica Academy, St. Simons Island, Georgia, 1977) has the perfect counterpoint!

It's not "Jaws," but this is still horror from the sea...

250 Fish and Sea Food Recipes (ed. Ruth Berolzheimer, 1940) emphasizes the new possibilities for homemakers because "modern refrigerated shipping facilities bring these briny morsels [of seafood] with their valuable nutritive iodine and other mineral salts to inlanders while the world sleeps." I imagine all the inlanders were mumbling, "Mmmm... Mineral salts" in their sleep.

In keeping with the wonders of modern refrigeration, there's a recipe for Frozen Tuna Cream.

I can just imagine little Billy pulling an unmarked container out of the freezer when mom wasn't looking, scooping out a big, creamy blob, and then gagging at the realization that the concoction is tuna and horseradish in whipped cream, rather than a dessert.

As is typical of these older books, there's a purportedly Mexican recipe that had me wondering about its connection to Mexico.

Anything with onion, green peppers, and tomatoes as ingredients tended to get a special label back then. A recipe was usually called Italian if the seasonings included garlic and/ or oregano, Cajun or Creole if the vegetables also included some celery, or Mexican if chili powder was involved. This has no chili powder, but the Tabasco and cloves might make it Mexican? It's kind of hard to tell... (The closest match I could find online was attributed to Spain, not Mexico, and it was flavored with garlic and parsley.)

I expected to see some sweet and sour, and I was not disappointed. However, I thought the sweet would be pineapple (since it's almost always pineapple in these older recipes). Not this time!

Yep-- this is a recipe for fish and gingersnaps! I know I must be in the minority wanting to keep cookies away from savory preparations (especially given the ubiquity of sauerbraten recipes), but I can't imagine too many people have ever longed for a fish/ gingersnap combination.

The book also offers the rather common seafood-avocado combination (that always makes me think of The Bell Jar's protagonist Esther Greenwood barfing in the backseat of a taxi). Most of the preparations for the pairing are cold, but 250 Fish and Sea Food Recipes goes a different direction.

The avocado halves are filled with a creamed shrimp mixture, topped with American cheese, and baked! Baking avocados just seems wrong to me. And even if that doesn't horrify you the way it does me, there are plenty of other things to horrify others who are similarly judgy about food but have different aversions. There's white sauce for the white sauce haters, American cheese for the cheese snobs to hate, and a seafood-and-cheese combo for the people who swear that the two do not belong together. There's a little something for everybody to hate!

The thing that disturbed me the most about this book, though, was not a recipe at all. It's the caption for one of the photos.

"A fish is its own excuse for being when baked to flaky perfection." In what world does anyone need an "excuse for being"? Nobody asked to be here. We all just show up (and I'll bet I'm not the only one who wonders "WTF?" about my own existence with alarming regularity). If one needs an excuse for being, that's bad enough, but if that "excuse" involves being served on a platter surrounded by sliced cucumbers and lemons, with a flourish of watercress obscuring the spot where one's head should be... Well, this cookbook is way scarier than the horror movies I love. The recipes might occasionally provide jump scares, but this book's heart is existential horror.

A salad a day

When I was reading through Wonderful Ways to Prepare Salads (Jo Ann Shirley, 1978), I started to get the sense that Shirley was fixated on apples. 

At first I thought I might be a bit too critical. I'm not really one for fruit and meat pairings, so I guessed apple and chicken wasn't that bad. People often have grapes in chicken salad or oranges on a Chinese chicken salad.

Apple and chicken salad didn't sound great to me, but somebody else probably likes it. But apple and tuna...?

Canned tuna with red (likely "Delicious") apples? Fishy, mealy, medicinal glop.

And potato and apple sounds like a surefire way to make diners who have a thing about textures feel pretty wary. 

Once everything is mixed together, it might be hard to tell whether you're going to bite into a soft, cooked potato or a crunchy apple. Disconcerting.

Then I started noticing that apples were turning up in a lot of salads-- even ones that didn't mention apples in the title. For instance, one might reasonably assume that the Potato-Celery Salad doesn't have apples in it.

Pretty presumptuous of you to imagine that, though. Of course it has apples. 

As does the Chicken and Asparagus Salad...

...and the Calico Salad...

Yes, MORE potatoes and apples, along with carrots, peas, bell peppers, onion, parsley, and lettuce this time.

Care to guess what the Stuffed Tomatoes are stuffed with?

Yep! More apples! This time with celery in an oil/ sour cream/ horseradish sauce.

There are so many apples in unexpected places that I half-expected to find out the book was partially sponsored by the apple industry, but apparently not. Even they realize that maybe apples don't belong in every salad. This is just a Jo Ann Shirley fixation.

Make it a Sealtest Summer!

Are you ready for some ad copy? I hope so, because "Sealtest Cottage Cheese is truly 'The Cheese of a Thousand Uses.' It combines wonderfully with all the summer fruits and vegetables, and, like them, is now in plentiful supply. And it's just as nutritious as it is tasty and delicious." At least, so claims Sealtest in Number 84 of The Sealtest Food Adviser (1950).

This little booklet is not overly ambitious, as you might guess from the Cottage Cheese Pinwheel Salad on the cover. It is exactly what it appears to be...

...a big splop of cottage cheese in the center of some peaches and strawberries artfully arranged on a bed of watercress. Like anyone really needs a recipe for this.

This booklet also offers a few desserts that are lighter spins on cheesecake and a handful (Eww!) of salad dressings. My favorite offerings, though, are a couple of other salads. I was initially surprised by the item offered as an appetizer salad:

Who is really going to want a meal after downing a banana covered in pineapple-y cottage cheese, chopped peanuts, sour cream, and Maraschino cherries? I mean, it doesn't sound like a full meal, but it's also not exactly a little nibble to pique one's appetite before the main course...

And then I saw the recipe claiming to be a dessert salad and I understood.

While plenty of gelatin-based salads masquerade as desserts, the vinegar, cucumbers, radishes, and onion mean that this is clearly not intended as a dessert! (Plus, the fact that the title is "Lime Appetizer Salad" kind of gives it away.) The editor was clearly not paying too much attention. The appetizer salad is, in fact, the salad with "appetizer" right in the title, and the dessert salad is a concoction to sadden the heart of anyone who might reasonably have expected ice cream in a banana split. I'm not sure Sealtest's best strategy for selling more cottage cheese is to send out recipes that will make people wish they weren't eating cottage cheese, but then again, I'm not a marketer. I'm just a weirdo who likes weird old recipes.

Some little extras from Beaver Dam

Mountain Cooking in Beaver Dam (Ladies Auxiliary of Beaver Dam Volunteer Fire Department in Watauga County, North Carolina, ca. 1979) came not just with a history of the volunteer fire department, but also with some extra pages from the previous owner. I was initially a little confused about why the Chablis Apartments Newsletter from October/ November 1997 was stuffed in between pages 38 and 39. Who really needs to hold on to such exciting reminders as "Please remember to throw your trash INSIDE the dumpsters!!" or "Please remember that everyone can park up to 2 vehicles in regular parking, but visitors must park in the assigned visitor areas"? Then I saw that the other side of the sheet had some very '90s recipes, including Stuffed Chicken Breasts made with instant rice.

I love the Pac-Man-Meets-Ritz-Cracker design under the instructions on this one. (You can also see the very big "Trash Removal" headline showing through from the back of the page, so you know I wasn't joking about all the boring reminders on the other side.)

There's also a Patchwork Veggie Pizza.

I'm not sure what makes the "pizza" (really just veggies plunked down on a crescent roll sheet spread with a creamy salad dressing mixture) recipe qualify as using "less sugar, salt and fat" when the stuffed chicken breasts seem like they could just as easily fit that same designation. My guess is that the tiny serving size makes the "pizza" seem like it's diet food.

And speaking of diet food, the far more horrifying inclusion in this book was nestled between pages 24 and 25: Dr. Tarnower's Super Diet. The claim that dieters could "Lose up to 20 lbs. in 14 days" should be a huge red flag.

I'd say the plan seems kind of dangerous, seeing how little food this provides every day, but I'm not sure too many people would be able to stick to it for two solid weeks anyway. The same daily breakfast of grapefruit and a slice of toasted protein bread would get really old, really fast. (I'm sick of it just contemplating it!) Then there's an extravagant lunch of things like assorted cheese slices, spinach, and one slice of dry protein toast, or as much fruit salad as you can handle. Finish the day with a dinner like two lamb chops with celery, cucumbers, and tomatoes or cold chicken with tomatoes and grapefruit and you'll be ready to eat the lead paint off the walls for dessert.

Luckily, it seems like whoever previously owned this cookbook set aside the diet advice pretty quickly and mostly used the back of the sheet to jot down addresses and phone numbers. At least the extra paper was useful! It served as an impromptu address book then and as a sad/ weird/ funny cultural artifact now....

Pillsbury vegetable torture and other oddities

I'm not sure what I was hoping for from Pillsbury's Vegetable Cook Book (1970)-- probably some casseroles with ingredients that did not seem to go together at all and/or gelatin salads brimming with artichoke hearts, broccoli, parsnip, and/or eggplant along with a can of fruit cocktail or crushed pineapple and maybe some horseradish or cocktail sauce.

The book is rather basic, though. While it goes through individual vegetables, it has a pretty standard set of tricks: creamed veggies, veggies in a sweet and sour sauce, veggies baked in cream-of-something soup and topped with bread crumbs, and/ or if they're on the sweeter end of the spectrum, veggies baked in an orange glaze with a hint of ginger. It all kind of blends together after a while.

Still, I was a little thrilled to find crushed pineapple dumped into some pork and beans.

Old cookbooks just can't get enough crushed pineapple!

I found a few super-lazy recipes, like Chilled Picnic Peas.

Take the grossest form of plain peas (canned!), add some onion and a bit of garlic salt. Chill, drain, serve, watch as everyone avoids the cold, nasty canned peas, and then throw them out at the end of the picnic. It's a great way to avoid food poisoning!

I also found a recipe with a name that took me way longer to figure out than it should have.

What's Chemiento? I initially thought it might be some cooking technique I'd never heard of before. Google results just suggested that it was a jewelry brand I was misspelling. And then I realized that it was just a portmanteau of "cheese" and "pimiento." So Chemiento Turnips are just turnips in ersatz pimento cheese.

My favorite part, though, is probably a photograph near the middle of the book. There's no explanation. It just seems like Pillsbury wanted to include a photo of a veggie-centric art installation.

At first, I thought the veggies were hanging, perhaps as an eccentric mobile. Then I realized they're actually just on skewers, being pulled out of a variety of unnamed dips. Of course, as a horror movie lover, I imagine these veggies as being impaled by their captors and repeatedly dunked headfirst into slime that will either suffocate them or transform them into embittered and angry monsters, ready to skewer some humans when they go on a rampage. (Be stalked by celery or choked by an artichoke! Watch in terror as romaine tries to leaf the city begging for mercy!)

Just keep your eyes on the mutant vegetables so you don't notice how abruptly this post ends.

Casseroles that just won't quit!

In my previous post about Family Circle Casserole Cookbook (Ed. Malcolm E. Robinson, 1978), I highlighted some recipes that were not exactly what I (or most modern cooks) might be expecting. My favorite part of the cookbook, though, is that it has two separate sections inviting cooks to create their own casseroles. The book offers rough formulas of proportions and cook times so home cooks can use up whatever they happen to have on hand to create their own unique casseroles.

The first chart is less extensive and a little more prescriptive than the second, and thus, not quite so much fun. I'll start with that one.

There's no question what the sauce will be for these, as they all start with a can of undiluted condensed soup. Then there's the protein, vegetable, and the appealingly-named "starch or filler." Note that Chart II has the "more highly seasoned combinations," like tomato soup with ground beef, green pepper, and diced potatoes. Spicy! The trick is that cooks can mix and match, as long as they take one item from each column. You know where this is going! I'm going to post the combination that sounds weirdest to me... So I say New England Clam Chowder with sliced frankfurters, a one-pound can of tomatoes, and a one-pound can of hominy. Maybe throw some chow mein noodles on top (per the topping instruction from the headnote) just to keep things extra confusing.

And then, there is a big, beautiful two-page chart with even more recommendations! They're not even all soup-based! Plus, the needlework illustration of all the fruits and vegetables is adorable.

However, I realize that the columns are way too small to read easily, so I'll list each one in isolation below and pick my favorite option from each column to create a crazy, mixed-up casserole by the end.

First up: Proteins!

I'm going with 8 hard-cooked eggs, sliced. Next come the starches!

I'm going for a pound of frozen crinkle-cut French fries. Next, we need a veggie.

How about pared, cubed, and par-cooked cucumbers? Then we need a sauce to cook all this weirdness in...

How about a couple cups of bottled barbecue sauce? And finally, the toppings.

How about wheat germ with chopped parsley and green onions?

Now all I have to do is bake those ingredients in an 8-cup casserole dish in a 375° oven for 35 minutes, et voilà! Egg and Cuke Barbecue with Soggy-Ass Fries!

I hope you find the endless-casserole exercise as much fun as I do. Feel free to share your own dream/ nightmare combinations.

The only regional cookbook that told me the region's insurance rating

I love the little illustration of a small town on the cover of Mountain Cooking in Beaver Dam (Ladies Auxiliary of Beaver Dam Volunteer Fire Department in Watauga County, North Carolina, undated, but a history of the department at the beginning of the book puts the most recent development as getting a class 9-A insurance rating for the area near the department on January 1, 1979, so this is probably from 1979 or the very early 1980s).

There's a tiny horse in the foreground and some very round cows(?) further back. The tree-covered mountains partially conceal the sun as it rises-- and there are more mountains behind the sun! I guess the sun lives in Beaver Dam (Maybe it pops up from a hollow in the ground-- like toast out of a toaster-- in the morning?), so that might explain why the town needed to beef up its fire department. The sun is getting awfully close to all those trees!

The book has some local flavor, such as souse meat.

If you're wondering about the "cheese" in parentheses afterwards, it's because this is a type of headcheese (though, interestingly the link I've given says that "souse" is a different type of headcheese that involves pigs' feet, ears, and snouts along with vinegar).

There's also the evocatively-named Hoppin' Frog Stew.

You can tell the recipe is NOT from a midwestern community cookbook, as this calls for a full half-cup of Louisiana hot sauce. (It also calls for vanilla, which I would not have expected.)

I like that the recipes often sound like they're being relayed by an old friend, like this shrimp dip.

I love that the amount of ketchup depends on "how pink you want it." Not taste. Not consistency. Just pinkness.

The book offers recipes that I've seen plenty of times before, but here they have interesting community variations. I've seen so many party mixes with names like "Tidbits" or "Nuts and Bolts." They are generally variations on Chex mix, and admittedly, this version of "Party Tidbits" is too. 

I just don't generally see such rampant cereal mixing. The blends usually call for just one type-- most often Chex, sometimes Cheerios. This has Chex plus "Cherrios" AND Life cereal, which kind of makes me cringe. The Chex and Cheerios are on the savory end of the breakfast cereal spectrum, but the thought of Life (which isn't quite candy-sweet, but the sugar is definitely prominent enough) flavored with onion and garlic salts plus Worcestershire.... I think I'd just swap those out for something else!

The Mexican Dip that was popular-- usually just a block of Velveeta melted down with a can of diced tomatoes and some jalapenos (either as part of the tomatoes or from a separate can) also gets a makeover in Beaver Dam.

Yep-- this version is very creamy, swapping out the can of tomatoes for a can of cream of chicken soup.

The most interesting variation, though, might be the Cinnamon Apple Salad. I usually see this as red hots melted in applesauce and mixed into gelatin, but not in Beaver Dam.

This version cooks apples in a cinnamon candy syrup and then serves them on salad greens with a slathering of Miracle Whip/ mini marshmallow/ celery/ raisin/ pecan topping. 

From the the insistence that Miracle Whip, marshmallows, and celery belong together to the ability to get a 9-A insurance rating even though the sun emerges from the ground there, Beaver Dam is quite an interesting place. I'm happy to study it from a distance.