My sister texted me this picture the other day:
My first thought (Well, second after being sad that whoever created this doesn't know how to make "horseman" plural, but I won't admit that since the language police are so annoying.) was to wonder about the theology. Do I accept that the Four Horsem[e]n of the Vintage Recipe Apocalypse are cottage cheese, gelatin, mayo, and pineapple? I might quibble and suggest that mayo seems as ubiquitous as ever and go with canned soup instead, but that's just because I like quibbling. The four seem pretty representative of the contents of my regional fundraising cookbooks.
So then my third thought, of course, was that I could probably find ALL FOUR in one recipe without too much trouble. The top book on one of the stacks nearest my desk happened to be Police Potpourri (Iowa State Policeman's Association Auxiliary, 1977), so I opened it up and immediately found Lime Jello Salad.
I didn't think the search would be hard, but I didn't think it would be that easy, either! First try! But it's kind of a boring post if I just have one recipe that's got all four horsemen and nothing else, so I decided to dig a little deeper and find other gelatin salads (The gelatin horseman is absolutely not subject to change as far as I'm concerned!) that could contest the identities of the other three horsemen.
The very same page as Lime Jello Salad offered up an alternative take:
Frozen Fruit Salad omits the cottage cheese, but which ingredient should take its place? Maraschino cherries (The cherries are probably maraschino since I've never seen any other type of green cherries.) and marshmallows are both strong contenders! I could go either way....
Tested, Tried, and True (Junior League of Flint, Michigan, Incorporated, second printing, April 1976) includes Heavenly Salad.
This one says keep the cottage cheese, and swap out the mayo for Cool Whip. That's also a solid choice to represent vintage recipes (though I would also accept Dream Whip, prepared per package instructions, for Cool Whip).
Everyday Cook Book (Trinity United Methodist Church in New Springfield, Ohio, 1976) wants to swap out two ingredients:
Keep the Jello and cottage cheese, but swap out the can of pineapple for a can of fruit cocktail (That's a solid choice.), and swap out mayo for marshmallows. (I guess this seconds the idea that marshmallows are a good runner-up possibility for a displaced horseman. Sorry, maraschino cherries!)
The voting for which one ingredient(s) go(es) and what would replace it/ them is pretty complicated, though, so I'll just end with a different recipe that shows that all four Horsemen of the Vintage Recipe Apocalypse made it into a recipe from Hawaii. Last, we have the tropical rendition from 4-H Local and Ethnic Food Show 1983 (Aiea, Pearl City, Weipahu, Wahiawa, and Honolulu 4-H clubs).
It's got two flavors of gelatin, crushed pineapple, cottage cheese (with extra pineapple!), and mayonnaise, plus evaporated milk, carrots, and macadamia nuts to give this fancy Jello mold that extra Hawaiian flair.
Sadly, I didn't find anything with cottage cheese, gelatin, pineapple, and a can of cream of something soup, but this was still a fun hunt! Now it's your turn to think about what your Four Horsemen of the Vintage Recipe Apocalypse might be. Are you doctrinaire, sticking to the four shown here? Would you swap out one or two? Start over? I'm usually a grump, but for this topic I'm more interested in the debate than in torturing any heretics.
Wow, hit them all on the first recipe. It's almost like those vintage recipes are really predictable. Given the era's focus on eating from all of the food groups, I wonder if marshmallows were fruits because they were sweet, or vegetables because they went into salads. Same for cool whip/dream whip, what food group is non-dairy dairy? The Jello is obviously part of the fruit group because of its flavoring, but not its content. Cream of something soup contains a bit of cream, maybe. Probably less than the bits of whatever that are added to assign its flavor. Maybe the horsemen should be "foods" that are heavily processed and defy categorization. Jello, marshmallows, cool whip, and cream of something soup. I propose an additional food group: WTF, or why are you eating that? Something along those lines...
ReplyDeleteI'm going to side with marshmallows as fruit since they're sweet. I prefer grouping foods by flavor profile. (I hate it when people point out that technically tomatoes/ squashes/ peppers/ etc. are fruits. A LOT of vegetables are technically fruit. Why should I care? We treat them as vegetables when we eat them.) (Bet you didn't think that your vote would turn into an only tangentially-related rant about fruit v. vegetable.)
DeleteI would also categorize marshmallows as fruit (if there was no junk food category). If you really cut back on your consumption of sweets, tomatoes and peppers do start to taste sweet, but these recipes will not take you down that road. And for the record, no, I have never considered a zucchini to taste sweet. They also make one of the most horrific fruit pies ever conceived (thanks grandma).
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