Recipes without the main ingredient

I know to expect plenty of typos and mistakes in old recipe collections that schools, church groups, charities, etc. sold to raise money. It's not like Gertrude from down the street or Mildred from the church choir was really that concerned about whether anybody else would be able to follow their instructions. Good cooks should have enough sense to figure out what they meant, and if not, well, then nobody else's version of the recipe would be as good as Gertrude's or Mildred's.

I expect at least somewhat more accuracy if I'm getting recipes that are formally published as part of a newspaper's recipe collection. Newspapers are supposed to have proofreaders, after all. The Dispatch Recipe Collection (put together by The Columbus Dispatch (newspaper) in 1933, edited by Bernice Thomas) shows that this was not always the case.

See if you can spot the missing ingredient in the egg cutlets.

That's right-- no eggs, except for the one that's beaten and used to adhere the bread crumbs to the cutlets' exteriors. Instead of the eggs, the recipe just lists the finely cut pim(i)ento a second time. (Maybe Thomas just wanted to try out both spellings?) So much for adding the eggs to the seasoned thick white sauce before "spreard"ing the mixture in a shallow pan to chill until stiff.

Okay, now guess what is in the pear macaroni salad.

If you unimaginatively guessed "pears" and "macaroni," you were only half right. The pears are saladified not with macaroni, but with macaroons. So, yes, pears slathered in cream cheese, rolled in cookie crumbs, and topped with a maraschino cherry half counted as a salad as long as they came atop a lettuce leaf with a spoonful of mayonnaise.

I guess this all suggests that the "women's pages" in 1930s weren't considered worthy of having a proofreader. Or maybe the proofreader just got so distracted by the prospect of macaroons and mayonnaise that proofreading became impossible? 

I know the explanation is probably just Occam's razor-- nobody really cared enough to notice-- but it's fun to speculate.

Miss Fluffy Rice gets a little weird

Miss Fluffy's Rice Cook Book (Rice Council, undated, but it mentions Sperry Rand on the back cover, so it's from sometime between 1955 and 1978) has a somewhat-adorable/ somewhat horrifying Miss Fluffy Rice mascot on the cover.

I'm not sure whether the rice is supposed to be her hair (though her face looks too young go with white hair) or a weird hat that could almost be described as wispy, but could also almost be described as lumpy. And I love that the title of "Miss Fluffy Rice" comes with an apron rather than the more typical beauty-pageant sash.

Miss Fluffy Rice is also unfortunately (but not all that surprisingly, given the era) a bit racist, encouraging cooks to make Plantation Chowder.

At least there is no headnote pining for the days when the euphemistically-labeled "help" would be responsible for making it. This recipe also comes with a photo-- one that highlights an oddity of the booklet.

The pictures are sideways! You might think that I forgot to rotate this picture after I scanned it, but I assure you, this is the way it appears in the book. If readers want to see the pictures at a normal angle, they have to turn the book sideways like they're checking out the centerfold in an old magazine of the type that used to be described as "girlie." I also can't help but wonder why the editors chose to crop the picture this way, as the actual chowder doesn't get much emphasis. It's almost as if they think it doesn't look that great and are trying to hide it.

I'm not sure the editors were discerning judges of what does and doesn't look good, though, considering this appeared on the very next page.

Those look more like creatures I'd want to give a wide berth to in a horror movie than like something I'd want to try to ingest. (The shrimp kind of look like appendages they would use in an attack. Lucky that some of them haven't managed to grow any yet! Or maybe they lost them in a fight?)

In any case, these gloopy little mounds-- as you might have guessed, given their "appendages"-- are Shrimp and Rice Mousse.

And they appear not to have been made according to the recipe, which directs cooks to use a 2-quart mold to make one large gloop to serve eight, rather than six little gloops.

The booklet also includes a reminder that "spicy" did NOT used to mean what it means now.

Apparently, salt (in regular, celery, and soy sauce form!) was all it took to be spicy back then.

There's a fun, old-timey use of past tense that nobody bothers with anymore. 

Well, nobody but me. I will sometimes ask if I should make "hashed browns" for dinner just because I know it will make my partner laugh-- but I hadn't heard of hash-browning rice before.

And finally, the recipe that seemed weirdest to me was Frozen Strawberry Rice Pie.

This mostly sounds delicious. Strawberries, sugar, and plenty of dairy fat in the forms of cream and cream cheese? Sign me up! But I can imagine people taking a nice, big bite expecting fruit and fluff, only to encounter weird, pasty rice lumps. It's the kind of pie you'd want to warn people about first, or they would probably ask what was wrong with it. This is a good example of the recipes made for cook booklets that feature one ingredient in everything-- whether it makes sense or not. The Rice Council wanted some dessert recipes and knew everybody already had their own preferred formula for rice pudding, so rice got thrown into some other random concoction without any regard as to whether it would make that recipe better or worse....

Miss Fluffy Rice essentially represents a booklet full of questionable decisions, but at least she will smile anyway! (Got to keep that hair/ hat(?) in place, as any facial movement could turn it into an avalanche.)

Stuff it, August!

The August chapter in Home Gardener's Cookbook (Marjorie Page Blanchard, 1974) is pretty thick, but not quite as thick as the July chapter. It's clear that home gardens are starting to wind down, just as summer does. Fewer new types of fruits and veggies are coming into season in August. There's still a pretty substantial list, though, and this chapter has a lot of recipes for stuffed veggies.

The brand-new heads of cabbage can be turned into stuffed cabbage. You might expect the little rolled-up leaves stuffed with ground meat and rice, but this recipe is a little different.

I think the core is kept mostly intact-- just has the leaves spread out and then reassembled once they're stuffed with a sausage-and-chicken-liver mixture before the whole thing is topped with strips of bacon and baked in a mixture of white wine and chicken stock. (I have a hard time mentally picturing this based on the instructions, though, so maybe I'm mistaken?) In any case, this seems a little classier than the usual stuffed cabbage.

If you for some reason love hot cucumbers, there's a stuffed cucumber recipe.

These make use of the tomatoes and onions that should also be in season (and count on the salty, smoky bacon to distract you from the hot cucumber part).

If the onion in the other recipes isn't quite enough to fulfill your need for alliums, there's also a recipe for stuffed onions.

The more of these stuffed veggie recipes I read, the more I suspect they were a stealthy way to get more bacon into the diet (and maybe use up extra bread crumbs and chicken livers). 

If stuffing seems like too much work, though, and you just want to use up a bunch of late summer veggies, then the Colache may be the best choice.

It's an easy way to use up zucchini, onion, corn, green peppers, and tomatoes all in one go-- a helpful way to use up what you've got as the days get shorter and more hectic...

A book that gets too sweet because it can't be salty

I am NOT in the target audience for today's book, as I am a salt fiend. (I have been known to salt pizza. Pizza!) Cooking Without a Grain of Salt (Elma W. Bagg, orig. 1964, but mine is the 1972 Bantam edition) is for people who are on a seriously restrictive low-sodium diet.

That lock on the salt shaker is no joke! The book is written for people who are trying to eat no more than 500 milligrams of sodium a day, which is a nearly impossibly-low level. One of the earliest chapters in this book actually tells the sodium content for 8 ounces of water in major cities throughout the U.S. Bad news to residents of Crandall, Texas! You better find another water source because one glass of city water will put you close to a day's limit. (Okay, the 408.0 milligrams sodium the book lists is almost certainly a typo, as the EPA says that people can taste sodium at 250 mg. per liter of water, so 180% of that in only a cup would definitely be way too salty for anyone.) In any case, readers who live in areas that are prone to snowy winters are encouraged to register with the local board of health to be notified if road salt is making the city's water too sodium-rich. My point is, this book is very serious about limiting sodium. 

Since sweet things (like fruits and straight-up sugar) have flavor without much sodium, this is a rather sweet-heavy book. There are so many main dishes flavored with fruit, like the Pork Chops with Apples and Oranges.

In addition to the titular fruits, there's plenty of pineapple juice, plus cinnamon, cloves, and a little brown sugar. 

If you'd rather have a cow, there's a Roast of Beef Cooked with Prune Juice.

With actual prunes, too, of course, so the pot roast will move right on through, hopefully before the 83 mg. of sodium can stick...

You could serve either with a side of Waikiki Rice.

With all the pineapple, sugar (brown sugar if you're naughty and can handle the extra sodium), and cloves, this might seem as if it could be intended as a dessert, but it's with other side dishes.

Perhaps to break up the monotony of all the sweetness, Bagg adds onions for a sharper bite into a lot of fruity dishes, like the Fruit-Onion Salad, which at least warns you about its intentions...

...and the Apple Salad, which doesn't.

If you'd rather cook them to mellow them out a little, there's also a recipe for Baked Onions and Apples.

But all the sugar is likely to make this just another sweet on a table full of them...

This all sounds a bit better when you consider the savory alternative, though.

Granted, it may not be terrible, but just the name "Hot Yogurt Beef Soup" makes me feel a little sick for some reason.

This book makes me realize that the sweetest thing of all is NOT being on a seriously-sodium-restricted diet. Or maybe that sweet isn't so great, and I should call things "salty" if I love them? (Or maybe I should just kick back and be glad I'm not eating some combination of apples and onions right now? That seems like the easiest takeaway.)

A story's in the title

One thing that I found quite charming about recipes in my copy of Myrtle Beach Cookin' (United Methodist Women of First United Methodist Church in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, 1977, though mine is from the 1994 fifth printing) is that some of the recipes have titles that almost tell a story. The "Men's Corner" chapter includes this recipe for Dinner for Twenty Teenagers.

I love how the title suggests that dad got talked into catering some kind of teenage get-together and wasn't sure what to do, so he just made a ton of foil packets, filled them with whatever was in the pantry, and dumped them in a coal-filled pit (mostly because he wanted an excuse to make a coal-filled pit). I'm not sure how excited teenagers are likely to get over packets of barely-seasoned potato, carrot, and onion cubes next to packets of barely-seasoned ground beef, but at least dad had an excuse to play outside. (I jut hope he dug the 3-foot-deep hole first, rather than leaving the prepared foil packs out in the sun while he prepared the pit to cook them in.)

Speaking of playing, the "Candies and Cookies" chapter offers up "Grandaughter Tea Party Quickies."

It's certainly not hard to imagine grandma realizing she doesn't have much that would make suitable refreshments for her granddaughter's impromptu tea party, so she piled whatever sweet ingredients she had on hand on top of some saltines, ran them under the broiler so they'd seem fancier, and ta-da! Sweet, delicate nibbles for the tea party were ready.

As much as I make fun of old cookbooks for having terrible recipes, I really am fascinated by them in part because of the stories they suggest. I'm just not used to the stories being quite so explicitly suggested. It's fun to get little glimpses into those long-ago lives...

Another Frigidaire collection

You might think I've already posted about Your Frigidaire Recipes (General Motors Sales Corporation, 1940), but maybe you're confusing that with Frigidaire Recipes or Frigidaire Recipe Book or that OTHER Your Frigidaire Recipes. (That one is from 1937.)

Okay, this one does have the same alarmingly basic "chili" recipe as the other booklet of the same name, but this version prints it at a jaunty angle that makes scanning the page a pain in the ass. (I know my efforts to get perfectly-level scans are minimal at best, but at least I have a better excuse for the wonky angle this time.)

The Strawberry Cheese Salad recipe is also at an annoyingly jaunty angle. I chose this in part because I always love poking fun at the idea that something that consists largely of cream cheese, whipping cream, and sugar counts as a salad as long as you chuck in some fruit.

But I also chose this because this booklet includes color photographs, and my first thought when I saw the photo was, "Do you really need a recipe to throw chunks of canned ham on lettuce?"

Surprise! The canned ham is actually strawberries and cream cheese. I'd much rather have the latter, but it would still be a shock to encounter one when you were expecting the other.

This booklet also explains the wonders of ice cubes. It's hard for me to imagine that anyone ever had to have the potential benefits of ice cubes spelled out for them, but just in case you're wondering, ice can cool beverages, keep cold foods cold, and be "wrapped in a fine cloth... [to] be used for massaging the face."

This information is so important that Frigidaire felt compelled to print it on the level rather than at that annoying angle. Also important enough to be printed on the level: a somewhat confusing recipe for Frigidaire Pie.

I love that the instructions go straight from filling a pre-baked pie shell with ice cream and fresh fruit to placing the concoction in a 500-degree oven "until meringue is golden brown." Of course, is no actual instruction to put the meringue on the pie! It would be really hard to get the meringue brown in the oven if it were still sitting on the counter. Recipe writers had so much trust in their readers (and so few recipe testers) back then.

I guess Frigidaire just wanted to make sure it had enough books on the market to sell home cooks on the idea of owning a refrigerator. They weren't as invested in writing eye-catching titles or creating fool-proof recipes or thinking too hard about how the illustrations might look...

An awkward family photo and exciting news from Robin

I got a copy of Kitchen-Klatter Magazine from near the end of their run-- July 1983. (You can see the whole series here.) I love the fabulously awkward photo that graces the cover.

I don't think anybody wanted to be there, but Elizabeth is the only one young enough to be honest about it. (Unrelated, but it's also good to know that the recipient received her copy on June 28.)

This little magazine consists of lengthy letters from various people who (maybe?) meant something to the original readers, articles with titles like "Save the Handkerchief," "Brief Encounter with a Wagon Train," and "The Sunday School Corner." (Hot tip: Most of the songs (like "This Little Light of Mine") should be geared to the pre-schoolers, but you can throw in one of the more difficult songs like "How Great Thou Art" to try to keep the older kids engaged.)

It also includes four pages of recipes. I learned that before Ben & Jerry's was popular, the idea of lemon-cheesecake ice cream was very different from what it is now. 

No tiny chunks of actual cheesecake or graham-cracker-crust swirls! Just some cottage cheese added to the lemony ice cream mixture to give it a little extra tang.

I also learned that watermelon was sometimes whipped up into a chiffon (even if I'm more familiar with chocolate, pumpkin, or orange varieties).

But there was one main thing I learned from these four little pages of recipes.

ROBIN

GOT

A MICROWAVE

AND

WANTS

EVERYBODY TO KNOW!

So, congrats on the microwave, Robin! I hope the bran muffins were not nearly as rubbery as I imagine they were. And I don't really understand using dry non-dairy creamer in the carrots and broccoli, but you do you!