Let's explore canned fruit with chickens

You wouldn't know it from the cover's synchronized team of birds swimming in a pool of rice and parsley, but Blue Ribbon Poultry Cookbook (Favorite Recipes of Home Economics Teachers, 1973) is really infatuated with fruit-and-poultry combinations. It is nearly impossible to find a page that doesn't feature a recipe with canned pineapple, canned mandarin oranges, or orange juice concentrate as an ingredient in at least one of the recipes. Of the five prizes awarded to the top recipes, four went to fruity dishes (and the fifth still had lemon juice and wine in it, if no actual fruit). I'm on the record as not being a fan of the fruit + savory ingredient dinners, but you'd really have to be a fan of fruit and poultry to love this book, and especially to award a prize to a recipe like this fifth-place winner:

Tutti-Frutti Chicken is serious about having all the fruits-- mandarin oranges, pears, pineapple chunks, AND maraschino cherries-- in that soy-sauce-and-fruit-juice-covered confection. In the spirit of excess, the dish also features rice on the bottom and chow mein noodles with slivered almonds on top.

I'll admit, there are a few weird non-fruity recipes in here, like the head-scratchingly-named lasagna knockoff, Toss It to Me:

A lasagna made with cubed turkey and cottage cheese, then garnished with sliced frankfurters? I'd almost expect to see this in The Thrifty Cook instead, but the Farm Journal didn't have a monopoly on odd lasagna-ish recipes.

Most recipes, though, are more fruit-forward, from the Flowering Plum Cornish Hens

covered in oranges, chili sauce, lemonade concentrate, purple plum puree, and shredded coconut....

...to the Chicken Cerise, the dish that makes diners play that popular party game "Am I about to bite into a pearl onion or a cherry?" when they take a bite without examining it too closely...

...to the Chick-A-Dilly, a dish that sounds like it was named by Ned Flanders but made by the devil himself. Who else thinks that a mélange of apricot preserves, pineapple, dill pickles, and maraschino cherries is a lovely accompaniment to chicken and rice?

Okay, maybe this would be a good sundae topper for those stereotypical pregnant women who want pickles and ice cream, but I will admire this sacrifice to the gods of canned foodstuffs from a very, very safe distance.