Freezing Combination Main Dishes (USDA, July 1954) is basically a pamphlet advocating an early version of what we now call meal prep.
The process entailed making big batches of food, maybe eating some of it right now, and freezing the rest for later. (It's kind of weird how the cover of the pamphlet makes it look like the woman is putting home-canned goods into the freezer. That would be a good way to shatter a bunch of mason jars.)
Though the recipes are often for basic foods that families at the time would have found familiar, I was amused by how vague the instructions often were about scaling them up. Granted, the filling for the Lamb or Beef Pie wouldn't be too difficult.
Stew a few pounds of meat cubes with a few cups of veggies and then thicken it into a gravy. Easy. The hard part would be figuring out how to portion everything out and top it with pastry, and the book doesn't really offer much advice. For the part to be served immediately, dump it into a baking dish and top with some of the pastry. (Not even any rough guidelines on how much to use!) Then bake at 400℉ for a half hour. For the rest-- cool filling. Place in ovenproof baking dish and top with pastry. Freeze. These older cookbooks really rely on readers to already have a pretty solid grasp of cooking, as there's no handholding on how to make those 24 portions come out right. Hopefully the cook just has the sense to figure out how to make six pies that will serve four people each or two pies for 12 people.
At least readers get a recipe for the crust rather than being expected to use their own.
Though the cookbook is mostly for old standards like creamed chicken or baked beans, there is an attempt to add excitement with Beans and Sausage Mexican Style.
One might even be half-tempted to be impressed that this calls for two tablespoons of chili powder-- until remembering that this is for a recipe that serves 25. Still, at least it gestures toward seasoning.
The most interesting recipe, though, might just be for Jellied Ham Loaf.
Yes, I picked it partly just because it's one of those gelatin-meat-mayo-assorted-veggies recipes that used to be considered sophisticated and now just seem horrifying, but I was more interested in the instructions to prepare for serving. After freezing(!) portions of the jellied loaf, the cook was supposed to thaw them at room temperature for 3 to 4 hours-- something the USDA would definitely consider a hard "NO" today. Leaving something meaty at room temp for that long would now be considered a recipe for food poisoning.
Even though this booklet is small, it's a surprisingly good window into the ways that our ideas about cooking have changed in 70 years.
I'm assuming that room temperature is not an unheated room in winter. Imagine how rank that would be in a 100 degree heat wave in a house with no air conditioning. Room temperature has a pretty wide range of definitions. I know someone who is terrified of leaving food out after attending a food safety class that quantified how many bacteria were present at different intervals of time.
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