July trends: Breakfast-for-lunch and gelatin salads!

Happy July! Let's dig into Martha Meade's Modern Meal Maker (1935) to see what '30s cooks were supposed to make during the hottest month of the year.

July is a great month for cooking outdoors-- especially in homes well before central air was a thing-- so when I saw Combination Grill as a July lunch, I assumed it meant a cookout.

Nope! Remember that the book is a way to sell Sperry grain products, so Combination Grill is an attempt to sell more Pancake Flour (really more of a Bisquick-style mix than a type of flour) by encouraging cooks to grill boiled ham, sliced cheese, bacon, and corned beef in various quadrants of a waffle. It's like the waffle version of a Skybar, with meat and cheese instead of various nougats..

The breakfast-for-lunch theme must have seemed particularly appealing to hot summer lunch times as this sandwich filling was suggested as a French toast filling another day.

I imagine modern diners used to seeing fruit, chocolate, and/or cheesecake filling for French toast would be a bit astonished to discover a blob of bologna salad!

Of course, the real stars of July are the hot-weather recipes for jellied salads. Some were quite practical, giving homemakers a chance to kill two kitchen tasks with one stone fruit.

Not only did Spiced Ham Loaf make a cold, slippery vinegar, ham, boiled egg, and olive-based dinner, but it also provided a way to preserve the first of the peaches.

Yeah, pickling peaches took 15 minutes of boiling, but it was still way faster than canning, so the kitchen would be at least marginally cooler.

And finally, here's the recipe that made me question the 1930s idea of paradise.

If paradise is hard boiled egg, tuna, cottage cheese, green pepper, and onion floating in lemon Jell-O, well, I suspect the lack of air conditioning must really have made anything cold seem positively superlative.

Here's hoping your air conditioning is in good working order! Happy July!