Early refrigerator owners required a LOT of types of cream

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.