It seems kind of like the people who actually took the photos had their doubts, too, as the pictures are all like the cover photo, on a featureless, white background stretching on to infinity. And the pictures, well, they are not exactly colorful closeups.
For example, doesn't that French onion soup look enticing?
What, you can't tell that those white bowls set so far back that they're disappearing into the white backdrop are French onion soup? They could hold mud and flat, round stones for all you can tell? Well, at least the strawberry tart and Chickens Oahu are visible.
Surprisingly enough, the Chickens Oahu are among the few Hawaii-inspired chicken recipes that don't call for pineapple, with maybe green peppers, water chestnuts, and/or soy sauce.
They're ginger-flavored instead. (And for the photo, the Cornish game hens variation was used in place of the chicken breasts or drumsticks the recipe calls for.)
The real stars of the booklet come at the end, though. The buffet menus still have the white background, but they offer slightly better views of the food along with crazy centerpieces.
The American Smorgasbord is a buffet for teens who want to "Roll back the carpet and pile the platters high on the hi-fi." It features tuna salad, potato salad, cold cuts, cheese, garnishes, and "discuits" (the pile of flat bread in the back row), along with "A centerpiece of amusing papier-mache horses, colorful feather dusters, and paper pinwheels." You know how teens just can't get enough of feather dusters arranged near their food. (And mom can enjoy the aroma of old cold cuts wafting off the dusters when she does housework later!)
The grownups get the more sophisticated Curry Table.
The food on display here is mostly accompaniments to the unexceptional shrimp curry recipe from the cookbook-- things like julienned cucumber, chutney, chopped green onions, chopped peanuts, etc. I really love the napkin rings made out of sweet roll dough (Why?) and the centerpiece. If you can resist a melon spider with banana legs and persimmon eyes wearing a borderline-racist citrus headdress, then you are a better person than I.
The white backgrounds certainly make everything look quite sanitary, if not especially appetizing. I had to go look up information on Golden Fluffo - I figured it was probably shortening but had never heard of it before. I had no idea Crisco had competition back in the day! And that Chicken Oahu is rather sophisticated for a mid-century recipe, as I doubt most cooks then were aware ginger syrup and preserved ginger existed. All we ever had when I was young was dried ginger powder - I had never even seen fresh ginger root until I was an adult. Come to think of it, I didn't know that Maui was a Hawaiian island until I was an adult either!
ReplyDeleteThose have to be the most bizarre centerpieces I have ever seen, and surrounded by the most mundane food choices at that! I particularly like the fact that the second one is constructed with slowly blackening bananas (no sense wasting good bananas on a centerpiece!). At least they were sophisticated enough to use persimmons and kumquats, two more foods I never saw until I was an adult. I wonder if the elephant-shaped bread dough napkin rings (so clever!) are actually edible? Or are they more akin to those fake bread Christmas ornaments you can make with flour, salt, and water? Is there a recipe? Do I really want to know?
Yes-- some of the ingredients are more sophisticated than one might expect from a product called "Golden Fluffo." I didn't even think to add some links to more information about the product, so here are a few commercials if you didn't see them:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=On7OFQTp4lM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfThpj5F1Os (I wish I had the "gay kitchen canister"!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KntD8R_jswI
And yes, the napkin rings are actually edible! They're made with sweet yeast dough, the same one that's used to make the "discuits." I didn't see the resemblance to elephants until you pointed it out! I don't think it's intentional, as the instructions simply say the dough should be cut into tapering strips with a gash at the thick end, and then curled around foil rings with the thin end pulled through the gash before baking.
Food styling in the '50s is certainly not the same as it is today!
With their exotic ginger, persimmons and kumquats, golden fluffo was far too upscale for their time.
ReplyDeleteAnd for their name.
DeleteThat stark and sparse look has come back into style, as has putting the feature dish out of focus. Funny how things cycle around...
ReplyDeleteNow people are too cool to want to know what the food looks like.
Delete