Meals for penance

In case Cookbook for Fridays and Lent, the original title of The Meatless Cookbook (Irma Rhode, 1961) doesn't give it away, the shrimp on the cover should. This is not a meatless cookbook in the modern vegetarian or vegan sense, but a fish-heavy cookbook for Catholics who were supposed to abstain from proteins from warm-blooded animals on Fridays, during Lent, and for other holy days. (At least, I think that was the rule. Mammals and birds were out, but fish and shellfish were in as far as I can tell.) I wonder if Irma Rhode was disappointed about the decreased chance of selling reprints of the book once the rules were relaxed in 1966.

Even though the book does have a lot of fish, it has plenty of ... uh ... unusual vegetable-based meals. How about a stuffed head of lettuce?

I can't quite picture sitting down to a head of baked iceberg lettuce stuffed full of mashed potatoes, veggies, and breadcrumbs. The only remotely interesting thing about iceberg lettuce is its crunch, and I imagine that's gone after parboiling and a half-hour in the oven...

Another vegetable-based main that packs in plenty of leafy greens made me do a double take. I was expecting "Cabbage-Egg Roll" to be a Chinese takeout style egg roll filled with cabbage. 

Nope! A Cabbage-Egg Roll is literally that-- cabbage leaves stuffed with eggs that have, for some reason, been stuffed inside of tomatoes. It's a Lent Turducken! 

Some meals mix a bunch of random veggies with a little fish, like Vegetable Medley.

I'm sure Catholic kids looked forward to the night mom plopped a big pile of lima beans, potatoes, beets, apples, pickles, anchovies, and capers bound together with mayo and mustard onto their plates. This was definitely some serious penance.

Of course, there are plenty of fishy recipes too. My favorite might be this one, even though the name Fish Pie doesn't do it justice.

This would more accurately be named Fish Meringue Pie, as it sports a frothy cap of cheesy meringue over its fish-and-mushroom filling. If you're going to be weird, own it! Tell the world you're Fish Meringue Pie and not just Fish Pie! Trust me... I've been openly weird my whole life. And it has won me all of a half-dozen readers and an apartment crammed with crumbling books, so you know I'm a great source of life advice.... Well, at least as good at life advice as this book is at meatless meal recipes.