Ragú thinks you should put pasta sauce in everything!

I know that Ragú pasta sauce is often considered a punchline today. (Try typing "why is ragu" into Google and "so bad" is the top suggestion.) However, my hopelessly stained up and damaged There's More to Italian Cooking than Spaghetti (Ragú Foods, undated, but looks like it's probably from the 1970s) suggests that this book was well-loved by its earlier owner.

The cover is one of those pretty wraparound ones, so I scanned the full thing. (Plus, this way you can admire all the water damage.) I am most amused by the tureen with the birds on top, as it makes me imagine birds shitting into the food. That would be one way to make Ragú even less appealing!

The booklet offers some unexpected uses for a sauce that's usually used as a pasta topper. It's the sauce on what I initially thought were little tiny sausage pizzas.

I was kinda right. The crust, sauce, cheese, and sausage all scream pizza, but the title gives away the ingredient that surprised me: Florentine Baked Eggs with Sausage. 

I thought the addition of an egg to the top of what is basically a miniature sausage pizza seemed kind of random-- especially for something that is not being billed as a breakfast pizza-- but this is apparently just a thing I was unaware of. Even after more than a decade of looking at old cookbooks, I keep finding surprises. (At least I was right about one thing. I always expect spinach in recipes labeled "Florentine," and the other recipes I linked to do include it! I guess Ragú thought spinach on pizza was a step too far for their target audience.)

The book also includes a reminder that most non-Italian Americans had no idea what risotto was (other than something involving rice) until relatively recently, so cookbooks could get away with calling pretty much anything a risotto as long as there was some kind of rice somewhere.

Rice cooked as a loaf bound with Ragú Italian Cooking Sauce, eggs, cheese and breadcrumbs, flavored with veggie bits and mustard? Sure. That's risotto-style.

There are also attempts to make American classics, like tuna-noodle casserole, more "Italian" (or Sicilian, in this case). 

I kind of suspected that what amounts to the tuna-noodle casserole that is familiar to Americans who need to feed a crowd quickly and cheaply-- except with Ragú and ricotta substituted for the can of cream-of-something soup-- was not really Sicilian. My Google searches did not turn up anything to dispute this conclusion.

My favorite efforts, though, were those that tried to give Ragú a new spin, like as an ingredient for southwestern cuisine...

...or as the start to a curry.

Maybe it's not that far-fetched. Chili and curry sauce both often start with tomato-based sauces. I can't imagine that the addition of chili powder, kidney beans, shredded chicken, olives, corn, and cheese could make Ragú much worse. (I question pretty much anything with raisins thrown into it, though, so I feel a little less inclined to give the curry a pass, though that is just my personal anti-raisin prejudice speaking.)

In any case, this booklet is an interesting effort to get readers to use way more Ragú, but it also feels a bit like an admission that Ragú is not, in fact, very good. If you just plop it on some spaghetti, you might be pretty disappointed. This anticipated the "Why is Ragú so bad?" search decades ago, and tried to counter by saying, "Dress it up and it will be fine!" And apparently, the earlier owner agreed.

A non-debatable non-sandwich

What constitutes a sandwich is a hot topic of debate on some corners of the internet. Whether hot dogs are sandwiches is probably the most popular debate, and there have been recent legal rulings over whether things like burritos or tacos qualify as sandwiches. My search revealed that people also ask whether pizza, Pop Tarts, calzones, bagels with cream cheese, corndogs, or Oreos count as sandwiches often enough for Google to recommend the questions. Wherever you may stand on any of those debates, though, I hope we can all agree on the status of this Mexican Sandwich recipe from River Road Recipes II: A Second Helping (The Junior League of Baton Rouge, Louisiana; January 1977 fourth printing).

Tortas, pepitos, and cemitas are Mexican sandwiches. This "Mexican Sandwich" might be considered a Mexican bowl if you focus on the rice or a taco salad if you focus on the corn chips, lettuce, and fresh tomatoes, but this is by no stretch of the imagination a sandwich. The claims people could get away with in 1977, before people on the internet could argue with them!

Fabulous foods and (maybe, if you're lucky) how to cook them

I'm not sure of the age of Louisiana's Fabulous Foods and How to Cook Them (Lady Helen Henriques Hardy and Raymond J. Martinez). It's undated, but NOLA.com says the book was originally released in 1960 and "recently" re-released in paperback (2014, according to Amazon). The book's condition suggests it's from a newer printing, but at least the recipes should still be vintage!

I wasn't quite sure what to anticipate when I picked this up. The book is divided into various sections that don't correspond to the typical cookbook divisions like type of recipe (breads, meats, etc.) or types of preparation. The first section is nearly 15 pages devoted to explaining the nutritional value of Louisiana sugar cane molasses and providing recipes to encourage readers to use as much molasses as possible. (I kind of wondered if the book was sponsored in part by "big molasses.") The recipes for cookies and cakes and gingerbread were to be expected, but there's also a section for molasses-containing drinks. I guess molasses makes sense as a liquid sweetener, but it just seems so thick and sticky that I can't imagine it being refreshing. Still, the book assures readers that molasses can be "A grand 'cooler-offer' for torrid days" when mixed with citrus rind and juice, additional sugar, cloves, mint, and water.

Or, in the unlikely event that you're cold in Louisiana, a Molasses Toddy is "A fine chill-chaser on frosty days!"

And for those special occasions, you can break out the Molasses Egg Nog.

I'm kind of surprised that this doesn't call for any alcoholic ingredients, but maybe that would make the claim to being "Rich in nourishment" a bit harder to believe.

After the molasses chapter, there's a brief section on the wonders of American rice, followed by "Selected Recipes Tried Many Times and Found Delicious," such as this Crab Meat Mousse.

This recipe reinforces the point made repeatedly by Campbell's Great Restaurants Cookbook, USA that canned soup was considered a great starting point for a "fancy" dish. Mix it with enough cream cheese, veggies, mayo, seafood, seasonings, and gelatin, and you've got yourself a party.

And then there are recipes that come from Louisiana restaurants. The dividing lines in this section aren't very clear, so I think the Chaurice is supposed to be from Maylie's, but I could be wrong.  

In any case, if you wanted to try to make a Louisiana specialty using actual Creole sausage (rather than store-bought smoked sausage, hot links, or other things that some Louisiana cooks would surely consider abominations), this is an option! 

Not all the recipes in this section are quite so eager to give up their secrets. I was especially amused by the "recipe" for Mme. Esparbe's Broiled Beefsteak or Filet Mignon aux Cepes. 

There's no real recipe (or even instructions) here! Just an explanation that cepes are a large, flat mushroom that "can be still found in the piney woods of St. Tammany Parish," though you can also find expensive imported canned versions. We also find out that Mme. "always insisted on having her steaks of the best quality" (Quelle surprise!). The "recipe" ends with an assertion that steak is better broiled over coals and that Mme. Esparbe's Charter Oak stove was used for broiling nearly every day. This looks more like someone took a moment to brag about their superior eating habits than like they intended to provide a recipe...

The book ends with brief sections on honey and sweet potatoes, including this recipe for Sweet Potato Waffles.

It doesn't look bad, exactly, but a pint of milk and an egg seems like a LOT of liquid for a recipe with a quarter cup of flour and two rounded tablespoons of masked sweet potatoes. I imagine it would come out more like a custard than a waffle and be virtually impossible to remove from the waffle iron. (Plus, no spices at all? I'd think at least a little cinnamon would be in order...)

The book ends with an illustration of a Creole family at the French opera.

I love the very specific caption and the refusal to provide any sense at all of why this is there. I guess maybe to lament the passing of the days when Mme. Esparbe could regale everyone with descriptions of mushrooms and fine cuts of meat, and then they could all go to the opera to stare blankly into the distance.

Microwave recipes that would confuse and anger nonna

When I initially wrote about Microwave Magic (produced by the staff of Farm Wife News, edited by Annette Gohlke, 1977), I just looked at the general impracticality of some of the offerings. As I read, though, I realized that one category of odd and impractical microwave recipes seemed especially appealing to the farm wives: Italian. So today, we're going to check out some of the microwave Italian specialties. 

Some recipes seemed fine, but pointless to make in the microwave. The Italian Spaghetti Sauce, for instance, doesn't seem to offer any real advantages when it's microwaved instead of cooked on the stovetop. 

This sauce still has to be cooked for nearly 40 minutes, so it's not like it's super speedy. The lack of browning on the hamburger along with the fact that the sauce won't reduce much since it's trapped in a steamy box rather than evaporating on the stovetop means this is unlikely to get a deeper flavor in those 40 minutes. And, while the sauce is splattering the microwave with bits of tomato that will be a real pain in the ass to scrub out later, the cook has to make spaghetti on the conventional stovetop anyway. Unless the kitchen has only a single-burner hot plate, there doesn't seem to be much point to making the sauce in the microwave.

The book also offers some lasagnas. While I have no objections to microwaved pre-made lasagna (and remember buying myself a microwave lasagna as a quick and affordable birthday celebration for one when I was in grad school), I'm not so sure about making a homemade lasagna in the microwave. It seems like the kind of thing that takes enough work, you might as well make it the conventional way so it's more likely to taste good.

Seeing the recipe doesn't change my mind. You can cook the noodles and the filling at the same time on the stovetop, rather than microwaving the noodles for 15 minutes followed by microwaving the meat. I'll admit, the cooking time for the full casserole-- 10 minutes!-- is reduced compared to traditional lasagna, but there's no crusty brown cheese on the top, either. (And I live for cheese that is so brown it's about two seconds shy of burned.)

But wait! There's more! There's also a Poor Man's Lasagna. This amuses me endlessly because 1. In 1977, if you had a microwave, you weren't poor, and 

2. I'm not sure what's supposed to make this version cheaper. The ingredients are pretty similar to the ones in the other lasagna. This uses elbow macaroni instead of lasagna noodles, but that's not going to be any significant savings. I guess the savings are in the use of cheddar cheese instead of a mix of cheeses like the cottage, mozzarella, and Parmesan in the other recipe. Whether the difference is substantial enough to make a real difference in the overall grocery budget is a personal call.

Want some puzzling pizzas? No worries! I found a couple of those. When I looked at Topsy Turvy Pizza, I initially thought it was going to be one of the old recipes that used ground beef mixed with a tomato product as the "crust" and topped it with typical pizza toppings.

Then I saw that this included biscuit mix. So what's going on? Well-- it starts out with a microwaved meat-veggie mix, adds soup, then spreads it on a big round of prepared biscuit mix-- to be further microwaved, before being topped with a tiny bit of American cheese (half a slice per serving!) that's microwaved just enough to melt before serving. It sounds much more like a casserole than a pizza.

And speaking of casseroles that masquerade as pizzas (or at least as something pizza adjacent), the opposite page from Topsy Turvy Pizza suggests French Bread Italian.

It's kind of like someone saw Stauffer's French bread pizzas in the frozen aisle and said, "I wonder what those would be like if they were a lot wetter." Then they went home and microwaved French bread in a cheesy custard under a bunch of sausage, Ragu, and mozzarella.

Finally, if you're worried that all these Italian-ish delights might be served without breadsticks, worry not! There's a way to turn those crispy little premade breadsticks (grissini?) into a microwave treat.

Just wrap bacon around them, "'barber pole' fashion," and microwave until the sticks are soft and the bacon is cooked. They'll crisp up again as they cool, and then you'll have an "Italian" feast fit for a '70s family who wants to get some use out of the microwave.

Rudy the Rutabaga's Ridiculous Repasts

Are you ready for a weird but VERY enthusiastic food mascot? Meet Rudy.

Yes, Rudy is apparently the very enthusiastic spokesrutabaga for the Ontario Rutabaga Producers Marketing Board's Rudy's Rutabaga Recipe Register (undated, but mentioned in a newspaper from January 7, 1981, so likely from 1980 or earlier. It looks like that page has a rant about the worst recipes from 1980 that is right up my alley, but alas, I am too cheap to sign up for Newspapers.com to read the whole thing, so I just got the gist of it from the garbled extract available for free). I love Rudy's huge smile, the fact that it looks like he's doing a little dance, and the way his arms seem to be coming out from where his ears should be.

He is so excited because rutabagas can be thrown into a lot of things. Like Waldorf Salad? (I'm not sure why you would, but Waldorf Salad appears in enough places that a lot of people must have loved it, once upon a time, including the grandma who was always trying to force me to eat things I hated.)

Throw some rutabagas into it to replace the more-typical celery. Hell, replace the fresh grapes with raisins and the walnuts with peanuts too. That way, people will be even more confused when you call it a Waldorf Salad. And Rudy will dance with glee at their confusion.

Need a side dish? Rudy recommends scalloping those rutabagas.

Throw in some apples and brown sugar, and this is a dish that seems dessert-y, can still be eaten at the main meal (leaving room for actual dessert), and doesn't contain Jell-O!

But if you want to go savory, you can use rutabaga as a savory stuffing.

There's nothing quite like a turkey packed full of sausage, bread, onions, and rutabaga.

There's also a Rutabaga Puff, which looks like a very-slightly-sweet vegetable custard.

But rutabaga is not just for salads, stuffings, and dessert-adjacent side dishes! It can be straight-up dessert too. Since previously-listed recipes featured cinnamon, mace, and ginger, it should be no surprise that there's a recipe for Ontario Rutabaga Spice Cake.

I kind of want to see tomato soup thrown into this one too, just so it can be a veggie-based spice cake mashup.

But if announcing to the world that there are rutabagas in the dessert just doesn't seem like a great idea, Rudy gives his blessing to Golden Cheesecake as well.

It's a pie that is certain to inspire diners to ask, "What's wrong with the cream cheese?"

And Rudy will pop out of nowhere to laugh and do his little rutabaga dance. And everybody will realize that he's not wearing pants. He never wears anything. The cream cheese is the least of their worries....

Celebrate the last of summer by gutting some veggies!

Early fall will begin with the autumnal equinox, but The Political Palate (The Bloodroot Collective (Betsey Beaven, Noel Giordano, Selma Miriam, and Pat Shea), 1980) offers so many things to do with end-of-summer produce in the late summer chapter that I'll give a few more late summer recipes and save early fall for October.

If you have a bounty of late summer vegetables in your garden, the Stuffed Vegetable Platter recommends stuffing them and serving them as a feast.

For the eggplant, bake it and scoop out its guts. Then mix said guts with a variety of seasonings, bread crumbs, and eggs. Scoop this concoction into tomatoes that have been hollowed out (reserving their guts for later).

Next up: those well-known overproducers, the zucchini!

Core the zucchini to create zucchini tubes (or "zubes"?) and then stuff with a portion of their cores mixed with onion, rice, herbs, currants, and pignoli. Place in a pan with a tamari broth.

Finally, get out the green peppers!

Remove their centers and stuff with a mixture of onions, the rest of the zucchini cores, the tomato guts, a bunch of seasonings, and the chickpeas you should have started cooking way back when this recipe began. Refrigerate all the various stuffed veggies until a half hour before serving time, when they should all be stuffed into the oven and baked together before serving with "yoghurt" or avgolemono.

To finish off this end-of-summer produce feast, serve Peach Pudding.

Even though The Bloodroot Collective focused on fresh, local food, they were clearly not "health food" proponents. Peaches over a flaky, buttery crust and under a thick sour cream and honey custard sound positively decadent. "Health food" books of the time probably would have tried to make this dessert with whole wheat flour, margarine, and tofu or maybe yogurt, but you know it wouldn't have been the same...

In any case, enjoy the summer produce while it's still abundant! See you in early fall...

Salad Collecting

I consider myself to be a collector-- too much of one, really. If you can sidle your way around my stacks of old cookbooks, you'll probably run smack into a shelf full of tiny plastic replicas of Leatherface and Ash Williams and R.J. MacReady and Herbert West and... (And don't worry. I'm clumsy. I've knocked them off too. They should be fine as long as you don't get flustered and step on one.)

Anyway, I'm a collector. But the bar to being a collector was much lower in 1950s America, as evidenced by the Collector's Cook Book inserts that came in issues of Women's Day magazine. They were just a few pages of recipes printed on coarse paper, meant to be ripped out and kept after the rest of the magazine got tossed out, so the aggregated collection might serve as a loose-leaf cookbook. Women could collect those for a few years before they would even need to get a second folder, so this was not the type of collection that could take over one's house. The point (Surprise! I kind of have one!) is that I recently acquired the Main Dish Salads & Salad Dressings collection from June 1958.

I'm not really sure what the cover is supposed to represent. It looks like there's a bird flying in from the left, looking down at... Maybe a garden? That's kind of shaped like a blocky woman with a shrub growing in her face, and she's wearing a quilted dress that's short enough to reveal she has three legs? (And she likes lace-up boots.) Or something.

There aren't a lot of recipes, as this is only a few pages long, and about a quarter of every page is taken up by a quote like Martial's "...why is it that lettuce, which used to end our grandsires' dinners, ushers in our banquets?" I'm sure the cooks of 1958 contemplated that while they desperately tried to wrangle dinner out of whatever cans they had stocked in the pantry and whatever was in the back of the fridge that had not yet sprouted a fur coat. Some of the salads definitely suggest this desperation, like the Frankfurter, Egg, and Cheese Salad.

I guess it's egg salad for when you don't have quite enough eggs, or ham salad for when you don't actually have ham, depending on your perspective. In any case, it has definite "clearing-out-the-fridge" vibes.

It's the same with Kidney-Bean and Salami Salad, except this one raids the pantry too, not just the fridge.

Gotta do something with the canned kidney beans eventually, right? Might as well put them in salad with hard-cooked eggs and some salami strips.

The cooks who wanted to pretend the let's-use-some-shit-up salad was fancy might prefer to call it Salmagundi.

It's still just a mixture of semi-random cooked veggies, eggs, cheese, and processed meats, but at least it sounds higher class.

For those special occasions, though, there is a Jellied Lobster Ring.

You can tell it's fancy because it uses unflavored gelatin-- not lemon! And it features two cups of diced lobster meat. The peas are frozen, not canned! In short, this one goes all out because occasionally, even 1950s cooks needed something more than hard-cooked eggs mixed with mayonnaise and whatever else was in danger of spoiling or had been in the cupboards for who-knows-how-long.

I'm sure the 1950s women would think I'm weird for being an adult (by age, anyway) with a big, unruly toy collection and no affection for mayonnaise or children. I feel kind of bad for them, living in a world circumscribed by hard-cooked eggs and recipes ripped from magazines that also provided detailed instructions to sew their children's toys and threatened that their husbands would leave them if they failed to properly and regularly deodorize their crotches. At least we all share a bit of the collecting bug. That is just part of human nature.