Frosty Melons v. Mad Scientists

Kentucky Cooking: New and Old (by "The Colonelettes"-- wives of members of the Louisville, Kentucky, Junior Chamber of Commerce, 1955, though mine is the 1958 second edition) really loves gender-related stereotypes, as the Colonelettes designation might suggest. While that is clearly nothing unexpected in old cookbooks, the contrast between lady food and men's recipes is was too interesting to pass up.

First, the ladies' luncheon.

Okay, technically this doesn't say it's for ladies, but 1. luncheon menus were almost always for women because they were presumed to be home for lunch while men were out working, 2. It consists primarily of sugar, which is pretty standard for ladies' luncheons, and 3. Men weren't supposed to care about "picture pretty" plates or have jaded appetites. Clearly, this is a ladies' luncheon menu. While the menu features cheese-topped English muffins, plus pineapple sherbet and brownies, the real star of the table was frosted melon salad.

This is the fruit equivalent of a sandwich loaf: the melon peeled, gutted, filled with a mixture of lemon gelatin plus prunes and other fruit, frosted with cream cheese, and cut into slices to serve. (I've got to imagine that the dainty garnish of olives, prune, and mint really added the je ne sais quoi element that made ladies remember to the luncheon for years to come.)

The section of men's recipes (set off in their own chapter to help emphasize that food prep was generally the women's domain) still sometimes expected women to do the real work and allow men to get the credit.

Yeah-- maybe you thought I was being overly dramatic, but there are instructions for the wife to do the behind-the-scenes work of cleaning and shelling shrimp, then melting and seasoning the butter so the husband of the "Husbands How To" couple can have fun performing the last step of cooking the shrimp in front of the guests.

The recipes written for men to cook on their own don't always focus so much on the actual making of the food as on how to have fun while playing at cooking.

There are many ways to spell and make this egg-tomato-cheese mixture, but it's apparently more fun for a man to make it if he can drink enough martinis while he cooks to slur the end of the recipe....

I'm kind of surprised the Rinktum Diddy recipe didn't have a martini recipe in it too! Drink recipes are the most popular types of recipes in the men's chapter. The one from the town pharmacist might be my favorite.

It's not girly kitchen work if it's done with a volumetric graduated cylinder, right? Thanks Don "Martini" Jones! (He liked martinis so much, he changed his name!)

And thanks again, Colonelettes, for reminding us how much less fun it was to be a woman in the '50s than a man.