Better Homes and Gardens magazines used to come with little pages home cooks could cut out and stuff into their Better Homes and Gardens cookbooks (which were three-ring binders, so it was easy to add to them). Sometimes I acquire random pages that someone squirreled away somewhere, long ago, and that is the long way of saying we're going to check out the section on "Holiday Puddings" from the December 1962 issue. While the page offers a couple of things to do with mincemeat (bake it into a spice-cake-like "Cottage Pudding" or layer it with vanilla pudding and cranberry-orange relish for a parfait), I was more interested in the other options.
The first seems perfectly festive with its cluster of holly on top.
It might not look quite as festive if it were in color, though, as this is not the flavor I was expecting.
Blueberry is just not a flavor I expect in the winter holidays! Blueberries aren't really in season, and a purplish cake (at least, I assume, considering it's supposed to be made from canned berries) doesn't exactly scream "Christmas" either. (Maybe Hanukkah since it's blue-ish and uses up applesauce left over from the latkes?)
The other "pudding" looks a bit like an upside-down coffee filter.
What is this ruffly blob? Why, it's a Cherry Eggnog Mold!
Cherries and Brazil nuts are not exactly the flavors I tend to associate with eggnog, though. I guess this is supposed to be eggnog-ish since it's got eggs, milk, vanilla, and rum flavoring, but I'll bet they will be overpowered by the maraschino cherries. Plus, nutmeg is the main flavor I think of with eggnog, and it's nowhere in sight! At least with the red and white, this one is likely to look Christmassy, but these kind of make me wonder about BHG's conception of Christmas. (And of pudding...) I guess you could get away with claiming dubious connections to holiday traditions back when readers couldn't immediately question your judgment on social media.
I found it interesting that they put holly on top of the concoctions. My first thought was "isn't holly poisonous"? According to Google, yes it is. At least the directions don't say to trim them with holly, but I don't feel like it's a great idea to show that serving suggestion, especially when it's harder to verify than a quick search on your phone. They must be relying on the idea that most people don't know where to get real Holly anyway.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Brazil nuts are an odd choice. Then I remembered how people used to get bags of mixed nuts in the shell for the holiday season. Now that's too much work for a bland snack.
I was assuming it was fake holly. That's the easiest type for a lot of people to get anyway, but they probably should have specified it!
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