Bisquick goes Chinese!

You know I LOVE old recipes that consider themselves exotic because they contain a tablespoon or two of soy sauce or taco sauce.

Not one to miss out on a trend, Bisquick created some questionably authentic "oriental" dishes for So Quick with New Bisquick (1967).

What's the main dish? Will the Bisquick chefs try for something that at least kind of makes sense, like dumplings with suspiciously biscuit-like wrappers? Will they write a wan stir-fry recipe and suggest serving it over crumbled biscuits instead of rice? Or will they go in some entirely weird direction? (Okay, you know I picked this, so I'll bet you can guess the right answer.)

Yes, the Bisquick chefs went for "Oriental Meat Pie"! It's a ground beef casserole/ salt lick full of cream of mushroom soup and olives with a dash of soy sauce for that authentic "oriental" flavor. Top with biscuit strips for the requisite Bisquick-y goodness. (If you're wondering, a half recipe of biscuit dough is 1 c. of Bisquick mixed with 1/4 c. of water.)

I suspect everyone who has this for dinner will need something to get the taste out of their mouths. Luckily, Bisquick has just the dessert:



Okay, I'm sure these have no claims to authenticity, but at least they sound edible! With a few Chinese Almond Cookies (and a gallon of water to counteract the salt from dinner), diners might be able to forget about Oriental Meat Pie in no time.

Fine (cough!) French (cough! cough!) cuisine

Who were the most sophisticated people in 1976? I mean, who were the ones with refined palates and a taste for the finer things in life, and who could really appreciate fine French recipes from James Beard?

Who was the target audience for a book with the instructions to make proper escargots:

Or maybe a good ratatouille with Mornay sauce:

The sauce even uses the proper Gruyere and Parmesan, not something like American cheese with Parmesan!

This group could appreciate sauteed leeks as a side dish instead of creamed peas or corn.

Maybe they could even pronounce "Poireaux a la Provencale" correctly...

For dessert, they could have a lovely dacquoise...

...after a careful process of preparing and constructing meringue and a mocha butter cream:

Yes, this patient and cosmopolitan group must have been the tastemakers of the '70s. So who were they?

These recipes are from Benson & Hedges 100's Presents 100 of the World's Greatest Recipes. Yep. These are recipes for smokers from a tobacco company, and not just any tobacco company. Benson & Hedges was "dedicated to good taste in tobaccos," and in the kitchen too.

And suddenly I have the urge to call these recipes "classy" rather than "sophisticated."

Pies that look like something I might accidentally step in...

I must have still had pie on my mind as I was browsing through McCall's Casserole Cookbook (1974), or maybe these just happened to catch my eyes because the pictures were so... interesting?

A brief glance at this picture made me think it might be a pecan pie topped with hard-cooked eggs and olives:

But a closer look made me quickly realize my error. Instead of luscious pecan halves floating above a rich sauce, this looks oddly congealed... almost webby. It's like something I'd find growing on a tree stump during an exceptionally wet spring. Topped with hard-cooked eggs and olives. Because why not?

It's probably not as bad as it looks:

I imagine it's a bit bland-- mostly bacon and ground pork with a bit of onion and some bread cubes-- kind of a meat loaf in a pie crust.

The mushroom sauce is a canned wonder. It will add a moist salinity to the whole thing.

At least it's not really pecan pie with eggs and olives!

Then this picture made me wonder if somebody managed to scrape up enough cat puke to fill a pie shell (and top with a lemon slice!):

Yeah-- That's kind of what my carpet looks like when Fancy Feast doesn't agree with my little friend.

Judging from the recipe, he'd be more than happy to eat enough of this pie to turn it into real cat puke:

This recipe doesn't sound terrible either-- mostly fish, white wine, and sour cream-- but I think I'll pass.

If it looks like something I've been unhappy to step in on a walk to the bathroom at 3 a.m., I am not interested.

Well, unless it's Indian food. At least that has some flavor!

Why yes, the rolls are happy to see you!

When my sister was in elementary school, she had to write a report about snails. I will always remember that report because she illustrated it with a picture that just cracked me up: a snail wearing novelty googly-eye glasses (you know, the kind with fake eyes popping out on springs) over its eyestalks. Eyestalks look weird enough as it is-- with the added whimsy of novelty glasses, I thought that was the funniest picture I'd seen in my young life.

So what does this have to do with vintage cookbooks? Well, I just picked up "Metropolitan Cook Book" (a pamphlet put out by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in June 1959) mostly because the whimsy of the pictures made me think of my sister.

We'll need some fanfare to start our tour:

How about an all-food band? I never knew pears could play trumpets or that a partially peeled potato could strike me as being scantily clad, but there we have it.

Some of the food seems eerily happy or excited about the prospect of being eaten:

 The cake is so delicious that it can't resist tasting itself, and the carrots, tomatoes, and other veggies are beaming as they line up for a dunk in the soup.








Other foods are less sold on the idea of being consumed, though:

The cookies are intent on making an escape from the cookie jar.











The eggs have mixed emotions:

One egg seems really pissed off at the big egg for hatching. Maybe he thinks hatching is a bit inappropriate in the view of women and children. (At least, I assume that is what the hat-wearing egg with her passel of tiny eggs is meant to represent.... I'm not quite sure how we have a mommy egg with baby eggs, but I guess I have to take this world on its own terms.) That egg between angry egg and hatching egg breaks the fourth wall by returning the viewer's gaze. He seems a bit worried about what we're thinking of all of this, perhaps concerned that we will guess his secret identity. I stared at him for a few minutes, and I think I figured it out. I'm pretty sure he's Jason from Home Movies. What do you think?

The egg family isn't the only unusual family. In its own way, this one makes more sense:

The parental cake is having trouble keeping those leap-frogging little cupcakes in line. Maybe the cake should have thought of the realities of parenthood before anybody pulled out the muffin tins....

I wanted to make sure you had at least a few recipes to go with the pictures. If you need some lunch ideas, how about a nice peanut butter and deviled ham sandwich? Cottage cheese with watercress and mayo?

The picture, as far as I can tell, has nothing to do with any of the suggested sandwiches. It also doesn't have much of a sense of scale. It looks as if a grape tomato is exasperated to find itself in a sandwich consisting of half a fish that has not been cleaned (scales, bones, and all!), a teeny weeny strip of bacon, a miniature pickle, a fried hummingbird egg, and maybe a couple of saltine crackers, along with a small patch of aquarium gravel and a berry still on its stem. That will be one memorable sandwich!





This picture probably reminds me the most of my sister's sense of humor:

A pie getting a pie in the face! I just love it.

And to cap it all off, some rolls that have yeast in their pockets AND they're happy to see you:

Know what I mean? Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge. Say no more.

It's greens month! Let's not put any in our salads...

A new month! That means a new entry from Betty Crocker's Cooking Calendar (1962). I'm afraid nothing will top fresh pea and strawberry month as far as I'm concerned, but July is pretty good too:

It's greens and berries month! I am in love with both (well, except for iceberg lettuce. It may be perfectly retro, but it is also perfectly bland-- as many retro recipes seem to be). And unlike, say, cabbage and bananas or asparagus and rhubarb, the fruit and vegetable of the month could easily go together in the same tasty dish.

How about the recipes for the month? July doesn't have any pretty full-color photos, so I will present these salads:

Even though it's greens and berries month, these salads don't really feature either. I guess Betty was not one for carrying a theme through. She would be terrible at planning spoiled children's birthday parties today.

These look pretty standard, but I do like a few details:
1. What makes the potato salad "gourmet"? It looks pretty standard to me. Maybe the word is just a psychology experiment to make home cooks perceive the salad as more exciting than it really is?
2. I love the recipe for a variation on the kidney bean salad. How could home cooks make it a chick-pea salad? By substituting chick-peas for kidney beans! I'm often amused by how few instructions older cookbooks really specify, but this one goes in the other direction by explaining something that seems pretty common sense to me.
3. Apparently Betty disagrees with me on the desirability of mixing cabbage and bananas. I'm not fully convinced by her "Ways with Cole Slaw."

Happy July! May yours be filled with gourmet salads, whatever that may mean to you. (Let me know if your favorite is rhubarb-asparagus cole slaw in a banana vinaigrette.)

In which your humble writer attempts to make a vintage pie (with a little help from an old friend)

This space is generally reserved for viewing, analyzing, discussing, and throwing (metaphorical) rotten tomatoes at vintage cookbooks, so it was with some trepidation that I signed up for a "Pieathalon." I had no trouble digging up a vintage pie recipe to let someone else try, mind you, but I was significantly less sure about making one myself.

It's not that I don't cook-- I do! But not generally desserts unless it's Christmas cookies or (on a good year) a birthday cake.

When I do cook, though, I mostly take recipes as the beginning of a suggestion. A vegan mac and "cheese" recipe may catch my eye and I'll wonder what that would taste like. Then I think about what leftovers I have in the fridge, whether my sweetheart will be home for dinner, what kind of food I'm in the mood for... And by the time I actually make the recipe I picked out, no one else would ever guess what recipe I started out with. (Yes, I know how a serves-four recipe for vegan mac and "cheese" becomes a single-serve cheesy vegetarian shepherd's pie, but the steps are not obvious to anyone outside my head.)

Following a vintage recipe was going to be a challenge. Luckily, the kind soul who sent in the recipe I was assigned actually sent something that sounded like it could be tasty:

It's a Black Bottom Pie! I remember looking at a similar recipe in my mom's Betty Crocker cookbook when I was a teenager and thinking about making it, but I never took the plunge. I guess this is my chance!

Okay, you probably can't see the instructions, so here they are:

Not only does this sound as if it might taste good, but it also uses a crumb crust! I am SOOOO lucky because I am seriously terrible at making pastry crusts. I try, but they always fall apart and look shaggy if I'm lucky. (If I'm not, they're soggy too.)

The filling sounds like it might be good. I know chocolate custard will be great! The fake rum chiffon sounds a little iffy, but even if it's not my favorite thing ever, I can't imagine it will be terrible either (unless I find a way to seriously screw it up).

Let's get started! First, the crust:

Three dozen gingersnaps, plus butter and a pinch of salt. Yeah, the bowl is too small, but I couldn't resist showing off my vintage avocado green bowl.

Two things about the crust. 1. It's supposed to be patted out in an 11" springform pan, which I totally do not have. This is going in my Pyrex pie plate. 2. I used the 1/2 cup of butter the recipe called for, but you might notice that this looks a bit swampy. It seemed like WAY too much butter when I patted the crust out. I actually ended up going in and soaking up a little bit of standing butter with a paper towel. Maybe my brand of gingersnaps was insufficiently absorbent?

Than it was time to make the filling. 

Maybe I should have thought about clearing up the backdrop a little better, but I'm lazy. I'm sure you know the salad spinner did not come into play for this recipe. You'll notice I got pasteurized eggs since the chiffon layer has raw whites in it and I don't want to give anybody salmonella. You can also tell I'm serious about this recipe because I sprung for actual baking chocolate. I usually just substitute cocoa and some extra butter.

The first step for the filling is making the custard, then taking out two cups of it to mix with the chocolate for the black bottom. The rest of the custard is for the creamy top.

I hope I don't offend anyone's delicate sensibilities by showing the bare bottom:

I swear I tempered the egg yolks when I added them to the hot custard, but I still got some lumps! You can see one at about 1 o'clock in this picture. I tried to pick out the bits that I saw, but I'm afraid it's going to be a bit lumpy....

Now to whip the meringue for the top layer:

I LOVE my '70s-orange KitchenAid mixer, and I got it on clearance, yet! Hopefully you can't tell that it's on the floor because I have nowhere else where I can use it (and nowhere convenient to store it). 

This is the third time I've used it in the 2-1/2 years I've had it.

Clearly, buying it was an excellent decision.

But you know what? I LOVE my '70s-orange KitchenAid mixer.

Then I had to mix the meringue into the custard to make chiffon for the pie's top layer. I knew there would be a little too much since my pie plate was too small, but I didn't really expect to have this much left over!

That's about a quart of extra filling! I'm not sure it all would have fit even if I'd had the right size pan. I will keep it in the fridge for a few days, pretending I will think of something to do with it, so I won't feel as guilty when I ultimately throw it away.

After a good chill, it's time to cut the pie. I can't put a person in the picture or I could blow my secret identity, so I'll have my friend Leatherface help with the cutting:

And now the moment of truth... I quickly discover why this was supposed to be made in a springform pan. The gingersnap crust has molecularly bonded with my pie plate! It was a good thing we had a chainsaw to cut through the crust. I bent my pie server and worked up a sweat wrestling slices of this out. The slice below doesn't look bad, considering. (I could have cleaned it up more, but I wanted my struggle to show at least a little.)

Leatherface looked at it for a few minutes, but he wouldn't try it. I think he was holding out for some headcheese. That's gonna be a looooong wait.

I guess it's up to me, so how does this taste? Pretty good, actually. The chocolate custard is the real star: thick, rich, and bittersweet. It's definitely my favorite part, and the gingersnap crust adds a delicious warmth. (Plus it must have kept me from noticing any lumps in the filling.) The chiffon layer is a welcome contrast: fluffy and mild. While I'm not a big fan of the rum flavoring, the top layer is still a nice addition to balance the intensity of the rest of the pie. (I'll bet it would be killer with almond extract instead of rum!) (Well, maybe not as killer as Leatherface, but you know what I mean.)

Be sure to visit the other Pieathaletes:

• Yinzerella of Dinner is Served 1972 - Sea Foam Pie
• Brian of Caker Cooking – Chess Pie
• Ruth of Mid Century Menu – Avocado Lime Pie
• Mimi of The Retro WW Experiment – Nesselrode Pie
• Erica of Retro Recipe Attempts – Curried Egg Pie
• Jenny of Silver Screen Suppers –Mile-High Lemon Chiffon Pie
• S.S. of A Book of Cookrye – Upside Down Chicken Pie
• Sarah of Directionally Challenged Cooking –Simone’s Pet Strawberry Pie
• Kelli of Kelli’s Kitchen –Butterscotch Pie
• Ashley of A Pinch of Vintage –Schoolteacher Pie
• Carrie of Ginger Lemon Girl –Chocolate “Pie”

Headcheese! Headcheese! Headcheese!

When I was working on my vintage recipe, a friend from 1974 helped me out a little. He agreed to help on the condition that he could pick out the topic for today's post. I pointed him toward my stacks of cookbooks and waited to see what he would pick. I expected him to choose something with an interesting picture, maybe a meatloaf covered with a gory-looking tomato sauce, so it was a bit of a shock when he grabbed The Wise Encyclopedia of Cookery (1971 edition) and headed straight to the H's. I frankly thought he was illiterate, but I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised. His family kind of bullies him and makes assumptions about his mind that are belied by a certain glint in his eyes.

"Headcheese? Are you sure?" I asked. He made a little squealing sound that I took as affirmation. Here is what the encyclopedia has to say about it:

A highly seasoned jellied loaf of the contents of a calf or pig's head.... Well, at least it's made with natural aspic instead of lemon Jell-O. We will take small blessings where we can...











I'm a bit confused about the recipe, though. It seems to be missing some steps at the page break. We're supposed to set aside the brains, but it never says what to do with them. Since the head note says the recipe includes the brains, I'm pretty sure they're supposed to go in at some point. And what does it mean to say "The tongue may be done with cayenne, nutmeg, and sage"? "Done" how? And how are we supposed to mix and pack what is apparently a whole head and tongue? I imagine some de-boning and chopping would be required first. (I checked five or six times to see if I accidentally skipped a page, but I didn't.)

Looks as if I will have to see if there's a better recipe.



It took some hunting, but Ruth Berolzheimer's The American Woman's Cook Book (1942) came to the rescue:

This one is shorter and easier to follow: boil head and tongue in slightly salted water. Drain, shred, pack, weight, and chill. And in just three days, six to eight pounds of yummy, yummy headcheese.

I read this last bit to my friend and he nodded approvingly. I tried not to notice whether he was drooling just a little.

We'll see you Monday!