The Daily Hamburger

Some of us are pretty boring. In the winter, I eat just about the same thing every day: fruit and oatmeal for breakfast, soup and salad for lunch. The oatmeal gets swapped out for peanut butter toast once it's warmer, and the soup transforms to a stir-fry. Mr. Crocker usually picks dinner, so there's a little more variety, but it's often a sandwich and some form of potato. I'm not complaining. I like being boring because I'm a set-in-my-ways contrarian. (That also means I don't mind having to stay home all the time-- a real bonus right now!)

Some people want a little more variety than they can really afford, though, so Doyne Nickerson wrote 365 Ways to Cook Hamburger (1960) for all those families whose budgets could only handle hamburger, even if they wanted a more diverse diet.

The author claims that he "ate hamburger three times a day and learned to prepare it in dozens of different ways" during the Depression, which makes me suspect he was seriously overestimating his protein needs. (For breakfast, he recommends frying a donut-shaped burger patty with an egg in the middle, which sounds like it could be a keto-friendly recipe now.)

To be clear, though, there are plenty of era-appropriate "health" food recipes in addition to the straight-up meat-and-eggs stuff. Here's a nice blending of '60s health food and the ring craze.

I imagine the kids will line right up for good old Hamburger-Wheat Germ Ring. It combines the healthiness of wheat germ with the elegance of a ring mold. What more could a mid-century family ask except for a sea of creamed vegetables in the center of the ring? (But maybe I'm underestimating the appeal of wheat germ to children, as one blogger's young son seemed pretty excited about the Hamburger and Wheat Germ Peppers from this same page.)

The cover blurb about recipes for 1 to 100 people is true, too. The hamburger and egg breakfast is a recipe for one, and here's a recipe for two:

Why anyone would want to eat meatballs on a bed of broiled canned fruit is beyond me, but Nickerson must have realized this was a pretty niche recipe since it only serves two.

If, however, you want to have 49 of your closest friends over for the ever-popular English muffin pizzas, then this book has the proportions for you!

It will take 6 pounds of hamburger, 7 pounds of pork sausage, and 50 English muffins. Of course, it would be more helpful if this had done the multiplication for us for the rest of the ingredients. How many cans of tomato paste will make 50 tablespoons? (Answer: If you're a little skimpy, you can make two 12-oz. cans work, or buy an additional 6-oz. can if you don't want to short anybody.)

If you're having 99 friends over, maybe make something that requires a little less individual attention, like chop suey.

Wait-- no bean sprouts or soy sauce? This is American Chop Suey, which is apparently a New England pasta dish influenced by Italian-American foods rather than by Chinese-American foods (and also not Farmer's Chop Suey, which is a different thing too)! Mid-century people really must have loved the name chop suey.

But if you just want something different from the usual, maybe this recipe from the genre of "foods-stuffed-in-other-foods" will do.

If you've ever longed for an olive stuffed into a prune stuffed into a meat ball smothered in cream of mushroom soup, well, you're apparently not alone. Or maybe by the end of the book, Nickerson was running out of ideas and just throwing together whatever was in the pantry and calling it a recipe (not that anyone ever does that!). Either way, if you're disappointed by the lack of meat-loafage in this hamburger-centric post, take heart! There were so many weird ones that they will get a separate post of their own.