Watch out for that rando recipe

Of course I understand that older cookbooks often had weird recipes for a very practical reason: throwing together whatever was on hand could conserve food and save money. When the average family income is $3300 and the minimum wage is $0.75 an hour, the food has to last! Still, though, sometimes I think cookbook writers took the "Let's just throw it all together and see what happens" approach a bit too far, like the Mirro Test Kitchen's ideas for the Mirro Cook Book (1950).

Maybe you can't remember quite what you have on hand, but you think the broiler might be feeling a bit neglected lately?

Try broiling a layer of creamed corn and bread crumbs, then topping it with a ham slice, pineapple slices, and tomatoes, then broiling some more! It's sure to seem... like a semi-random collection of broiled fruits and vegetables with ham and bread crumbs.

Maybe there's some ground meat to use up, but the family is kind of sick of the usual spaghetti and meatballs. You could try Meat Balls Supreme!

What makes these supreme? Well, they're stuffed with a prune that has been stuffed with pickles or olives! You've always wanted to bite through a cream of mushroom soup-slathered meatball to encounter a pickle-stuffed prune, right? It's a definite change of pace.

Maybe the meal just needs a salad to fill it out and your fridge is loaded down with leftover cooked beets, boiled potatoes, apples, dill pickles, hard-cooked eggs, olives, and cooked veal? Well, don't let the fact that this stuff all seems pretty random and nobody really begs for dill pickle-flavored apples! Just scan the pantry shelves for an onion, capers, and some pickled herring to give that mélange a burst of extra flavor, and you're in business!

Note: This salad is best if made several hours in advance so you can work up the nerve to serve it.

What to do if you accidentally picked up too many bananas? Well, banana bread is always a possibility, but it can get tiresome. There are plenty of other things to do with bananas.

How about some Banana Tuna Fish Salad? It's a great way to use up the extra bananas, and there's always some canned tuna and pineapple in the pantry, plus a few stalks of celery in a '50s fridge. Everything is already there! What are you waiting for? Engraved invitations?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I get the occasionally semi-random feel of ingredient lists, but it can be hard to tell whether a recipe is a light-hearted comedy or straight-up horror. Mirro Cook Book is the Shaun of the Dead of cookbooks.