When people make rich desserts, they often brag about how the recipe is made with real butter. I'd think that would be the case for the Kentucky cooks who put together Morehead Woman's Club's Our Ways with Food (undated, but from the early 1960s), but I was very wrong.
Yes, these cookies brag about being made with margarine right in the title! How was this a point of distinction?
Let's kick back and make a dessert this weekend! The alarmist "health" cookbook Let's Cook It Right (Adelle Davis, originally 1947, but mine is a 1962 edition) recommends desserts only if they are "made particularly nutritious to compensate for the disadvantages they offer." Davis reluctantly offers dessert recipes only because she realizes people will make dessert anyway, so she might as well recommend some more nutritious versions. Her practicality follows through in recommending cooks use plain old sugar, too, observing that "persons who believe 'raw' sugar and honey to be nutritious foods usually eat far too much of them." Davis is nearly predicting the Snackwell cookie craze here, another instance when people felt free to pig out on junk if they have a semi-plausible reason to believe that the junk is somehow healthy.
In any case, her dessert recipes don't seem particularly likely to induce overeating. The Molasses Drop Cookies with their wheat germ, powdered milk, and whole wheat flour seem like they would taste overly health-foody as it is.
And then you might notice the variation of Mock Nut Cookies. Why mock nuts, when the book recommends real nuts in other recipes? Because the mock "nuts" are an excuse to slip in a cup of soy grits.
The Wheat-Germ-and-Oatmeal Cookies remind us that in addition to being the kind of book that slips wheat germ and milk powder into everything...
...this is also the type of book that sees wheat germ as exciting enough to be a headliner and whole wheat pastry flour, soy flour, and rice polish as interchangeably good cookie ingredients.
The book does allow for using mixes occasionally (At least, I assume the reference to the "package prepared pudding" is for a mix, as it would be really hard to thin out already-cooked pudding with 2-1/2 cups of milk and then thicken it back up in just four minutes on the stove.), as in this Prepared Puddings recipe.
I mainly highlighted it because I loved the "Flaming puddings" variation. It's hard to imagine putting that much work into pudding from a mix-- not just the cook-and-serve part (I'm an instant fan!), but then putting it in individual serving dishes to be topped with a marshmallow stuffed with a lemon-extract-saturated sugar cube and set aflame. (All that for a visual spectacle that is not even "effective except by candle light.")
And for the occasion when kids really demand sugar-- like a birthday party-- the book recommends making a big batch of Modeling Fondant out of mashed potatoes, sugar, and powdered milk.
I love that the fondant is to be shaped into "tiny melons, fruits, and vegetables," as if Davis can somehow will these to be more nutritious simply by the shape. The headnote (which I cut off because part of it is on a different page and I'm too lazy to fuss with it) observes that if the fondant is left unshaped and distributed to birthday party guests, the kids are likely to make "pigs, giraffes, and caricatures of each other," which seems likely. This will also be so much fun that the party will end with the guests "forgetting to go home," which seems much less so (and is the opposite of a selling point in my world).
At any rate, Davis has convinced me not to use any of her dessert recipes, so she could claim that as a win, I guess. (Well, as long as nobody notices that I avoid the desserts because I'd much rather use up all those empty calories for various Reese's peanut butter candies.)
I didn't necessarily pick up the Frigidaire Recipe Book (Miss Verna L. Miller, 1931) for the recipes.
They're mostly pretty unremarkable, like orange sherbet, strawberry whip, or lettuce and tomato salad. (That last one is just lettuce with tomatoes and salad dressing-- as if 1930s cooks needed to be told that they could put tomatoes and salad dressing on top of lettuce.)
Still, there are a few oddities, like the frozen cereal creams. I guess the idea for Grape Nut Cream is that if you soak Grape Nuts in dairy long enough, they're less likely to break your teeth.
And the sugar and dairy fat will make them seem more like food and less like aquarium gravel.
There's even an exciting variation of Grape Nut Cream: Bran Flake Cream!
Yippee.
And as a reminder that cereal milk was waaaay more boring before the invention of things like Cocoa Puffs and Cinnamon Toast Crunch, there's also a Shredded Wheat Cream.
The book also offers some odd frozen salads, like Frozen Cress Salad.
It's basically frozen squares of cream cheese, whipped cream, and mayonnaise suspending olives and a full quart of watercress. Yum! (Well, as long as it is "not allowed to freeze too solid.")
If you'd rather have frozen squares of cream cheese, whipped cream, and mayonnaise suspending a bunch of fruit and some chopped pecans, there's the Frigidaire Cheese Salad.
If you're curious about the "Rubyettes," they were a brand of grapes made to resemble maraschino cherries (and I've found an even better explanation of them than the one I posted last time I wrote about Rubyettes).
But as I said, the recipes weren't really the draw. I just loved some of the photos, like this one of a woman showing off her brand-new fridge to all her stylish friends. Just imagine a kitchen full of women in their high heels (and even furs!) eager to ogle a squat white cabinet.
But who could blame their weakness for "glass-like, gleaming surfaces" that are "just as easy to clean, and to keep clean, as a china dish." (Sure, Frigidaire, fine china is known for being super easy to clean and maintain.) It's also interesting that the fridge "when it is ten years old, will boast that same glistening white showroom newness" when the "complete guarantee that covers the cabinet and mechanism alike" is good for only three years.
The thing that really got my attention, though, is the caption under this picture of mother and son excitedly discussing the Frigidaire as it languishes before them with its doors akimbo, letting all of the kitchen's warm air inside and driving up the electric bill in the process.
The great thing about the Frigidaire with its fancy self-sealing electric trays is that they can turn "your creamy fluids into firm, tempting desserts in record time." Uhhh... Is anybody else suddenly feeling very uncomfortable, and perhaps eying the frozen cereal creams with A LOT more suspicion?
Not sure whether this suggests that 1931 was a much more innocent time or that bored housewives had to get their laughs somehow and still maintain plausible deniability. I'm just glad I decided to read the captions.
When I first wrote about Marye Dahnke's Salad Book (1954), I examined Dahnke's tendency to assign salad recipes to seemingly-random cultures. I also presented some oddities, like a "salad" that consisted of a wad of ingredients rolled up in wax paper, stored in the fridge, and sliced off like refrigerated cookie dough. Today, we're going to look at another of Dahnke's fixations, this one because it is fall-appropriate. (Hooray for the six pounds of fresh Ginger Gold I just stored away in the crisper!) Dahnke liked putting apples in pretty much anything.
Remember the salads attributed to a seemingly-random culture that I just mentioned? The Mexicana Salad exhibits both that tendency and the obsession with apples.
Yes, nothing says "Mexicana" quite like a slab of vinegary gelatin full of celery, carrots, cabbage, pimentos, and apple-- especially if it's slathered with mayonnaise before serving.
If pasta salad is more your thing, but you don't like how soft the mixture tends to be, the book suggests Macaroni and Cabbage Salad.
You get the crunch of shredded cabbage and diced apple (along with the usual suspects for a macaroni salad). And if you're craving apples, pickles, cabbage, and mayo with your macaroni and cheese, you are a very different person from me...
If you really want to show off the cabbage-and-apple combo, the Buffet Cabbage Salad is served right out of the hollowed-out cabbage heads.
This time, the cabbage/apple/mayo/cheese combo gets enriched with olives instead of macaroni and pickle.
Finally, I am not even sure Dahnke was fully convinced of the combination in Kidney Bean Salad I. The headnote says kidney beans "are natural partners with celery, onion, and hard-cooked egg." You will notice that this description doesn't mention apples.
But apples are in there all the same. Maybe Dahnke realizes they are not such "natural partners" but throws them in anyway, just because she can't help herself? Or maybe she was bribed by USApple Association to throw them into extra recipes? (Or maybe she was bribed by some orange growers to sour readers on apples?)
Whatever the case, I'd recommend using Red "Delicious" apples in these recipes. They combinations don't sound good anyway, so there is no point in wasting an apple you'd actually want to eat in one of these salads. 😆
Do you remember newspapers? You know, the kind that came on actual paper and that (if you were like me) you begged your parents to get every day because you didn't want to miss out on the comic strips and they were too cheap to get a subscription? Today's pick is from back when newspapers were so popular they would sell their own cookbooks. Well, kind of.
This is a loose-leaf cookbook (edited by Bernice Thomas) in a binder, and readers could send away for additional recipe sets to keep adding to their collections. More specifically, "From time to time, 20 pages of recipes will be released for distribution to Dispatch Readers and can be secured by writing the Household Department of The Columbus Dispatch, Columbus, Ohio, and inclosing 9 cents in stamps." Whoever owned this one gave up pretty quickly, as my Dispatch Recipe Book only has pages 1 and 2 of each chapter (1 on the front and 2 on the back-- so I only have one sheet of paper for each chapter). It's undated, but the Columbus Metropolitan library dates the collection as beginning in February 1933. (They also scanned the whole thing, so the link is worth checking out-- though you will be limited as to how many pages you can access at one time.) As far as I can tell, "Volume One" was an ambitious claim. I couldn't find evidence of a volume two (though the library's copy of volume one proves there were a lot more pages than I have).
For today, let's "enjoy" a brief menu from the small selection of pages in my volume. We need to start with an appetizer, of course.
It's pickled green chili peppers, olives, Worcestershire, and "enough yellow grated cheese to make a paste." (Doesn't that sound appetizing? Mmmm.... Paste.) And then the paste is spread on pineapple, topped with more pineapple, frosted with "plain soft yellow cream cheese," and broiled. So... weird.
Also, my brain broke when I was trying to figure out what "Cut six slices pineapple in half, making two circles" meant. I thought pineapple slices were already circles, so how halving six of them would result in two circles (rather than a dozen half-circles) completely eluded me. I am terrible at visualizing written directions for real-world physical processes (I need pictures!), so I knew I must be missing something. (I finally realized cooks were probably supposed to try to cut the pineapple slices like a layer cake, so each single thicker circle turns into two thinner ones, but it took me a while-- longer than I am willing to admit. I'm still not convinced I would have the coordination to make that happen, but at least I think I understand the process now.) These are the instructions you get when nobody has home cooks test the recipe before you print it.
The entrée should be more straightforward so my brain can rest. How about a nice spaghetti platter? A bounty of spaghetti coated in a thick tomato sauce seasoned lavishly with herbs...
...or not! Yes, this is just buttered spaghetti noodles with link sausages, pineapple, and prunes camping in Hoovervilles on the edges of the platter. You can definitely tell this one is Great Depression era.
Maybe we should end the meal with a nice novelty to lighten the mood.
Banana novelty is one of those recipes for when home cooks must have been bored out of their minds. Cutting grooves in bananas, filling the grooves with partially congealed gelatin (which sounds nearly as easy as nailing Jell-O to the wall), and then chilling the combo until the gelatin sets up (and the banana turns brown) seems so pointless when you can just stir a sliced banana or two into a container of partially set gelatin and call it a day.
Maybe these recipes are the reason that whoever owned this book gave up after the first round of pages? Who knows, but at least I got a few of them.
While my earlier post about Litton's Microwave Cooking: Everyday Dinners in Half an Hour (1980) acknowledged that the book seems more realistic about what microwaves can (and should) do than other 40+-year-old microwave cookbooks, I have to highlight that it still had more seafood recipes than any microwave cookbook probably should. I mean, we all know what microwaved seafood smells like, right?
Stuffing zucchinis with something is not a unique idea, but there are plenty of options. Cooks might stuff it with corn, or rice and pine nuts, or a meaty tomato sauce. Litton, though, thinks crab should be microwaved in a zucchini canoe.
I'll admit I don't eat seafood, but I know from cooking shows that people (or at least cooking show judges) love a good sear on a scallop. Get that nice browning on the outside and a just-cooked middle, and scallops are supposed to be transcendent. I have a feeling the same could not be said for microwaved Scallops & Green Beans.
At least the recipe developers had the good sense to coat the scallops in seasoned breadcrumbs before microwaving them, so diners would be less likely to notice the lack of a good sear.
The recipe that scares me the most, though, is the Tuna-Cheese Open-Face Sandwich. I know, it looks pretty innocent.
But...
Do you and the family really want to spend the rest of the day smelling microwaved tuna, mayo, and hard-cooked eggs? Even if you like tuna-and-egg salad, you can eat it cold, right? I thought that was kind of the point of salads like that. The only thing this recipe will accomplish is making the whole house stink.
Well, maybe I underestimated this recipe. It will probably also make the English muffin soggy and/ or rubbery. So, there's that.
And with that, I'm clearing out. Can't take the (imagined) smell of microwaved fish any more!
According to Cooking by the Calendar (edited by Marilyn Hansen, 1978), "September's air is softer now, and its blue sky has a warm serenity after the hot fever of late summer." I don't remember necessarily feeling that way when I was a kid crammed into our not-at-all air-conditioned school where girls were policed for shorts that were too short and anything that might show a sliver of bare shoulder, but it's still a nice sentiment.
As for what we should cook in September, the book suggests we might want to make beef jerky to take as a snack on a late camping trip.
This book really loves recommending putting food outside to dry. Just make sure this beef jerky is dried "on string, away from animals." I keep wondering if Hansen has actually encountered any animals, as she doesn't seem to be aware of how innovative and persistent they can be when food is involved. I can just imagine going outside to see the steak covered in bugs and/or disappeared by cats who figured out exactly how far they had to jump and/or climb to get the goods. If you're going to bother with jerky, I say make it inside, even if it heats up the house.
If you'd rather enjoy fall's bounty of apples than worry about drying out beef, you can make Northwestern Apple Candy.
It's a gelatin-thickened applesauce with some walnuts for good measure. You know. Candy. I'm not sure what the confectioners' sugar at the end of the ingredient list is for, either. Maybe this is thick enough you're supposed to cut it into little squares and roll them in powdered sugar, but that's just a guess. I didn't cut off the end of the recipe. The last step is just "Refrigerate overnight." (My last step would probably be to forget about it for a few months and then pitch it when I needed the fridge space and couldn't remember wtf it was supposed to be anyway.)
Most amusing for me, though, is the section of "Back-to-School Lunch Treats." I assumed this chapter title was intended to imply that you could make these recipes and send them as part of a packed lunch. And then I read them and wondered if Hansen was aware of the mechanics of a 1970s paper bag or lunch box or had even met school-aged children.
The chapter offers a series of whimsical, fun-shaped sandwiches, like a sailboat.
Fun, but there is no way this elaborate concoction is going to make the back-to-school rush easier for the person packing the lunch or even make it to school at all. The cream-cheese spread sail and boat parts suggest this sandwich is open-faced. And then there's the matter of the celery mast, the carrot flag, and the decorative olive row. There would be absolutely no way to pack this thing, especially in the '70s before the bento box craze.
Similarly, "The Bug" has an elaborate construction process involving cheese rounds, sliced-up and carefully-arranged bologna, and a whole series of veggie accoutrements to form the eyes, mouth, and antennae.
There's a reason the instructions for these mention putting the bread on a plate. There's no way the sandwiches wouldn't immediately become piles of ingredients if you tried to add them to a paper bag. But at least I can imagine a school-aged child who wants to be a sailor liking the idea of sailboat sandwich, or a budding entomologist who would think a "bug" sandwich might be a cool lunch.
The other "back-to-school lunch treats" seem more like they're for the preschool set. Nobody except the most hopelessly spectrum-y kids (No shade! I was certainly one of them, even if my fixations don't involve transportation.) would think that having or even discussing a Choo-Choo Train sandwich could result in anything less than immediate public shaming.
I'm not sure it's possible to get even more "toddler" than "Choo-Choo Train," but if it is, then it's a Jack-in-the Box.
The only real saving grace for these sandwiches as far as actual school-aged children are concerned is that there is no way they would survive being dragged to school, and they're probably too elaborate for mom to bother with anyway during the back-to-school rush.
Kinda makes me glad the worst thing my mom did with my school lunches was passive-aggressively sending the exact same perpetually uneaten baggie of raisins to school with me for weeks at a time.
