In my earlier post about The American Culinary Society's Menu Maker (Marguerite Patten, 1973), I questioned the extra proteins in one menu in the "Money-Saving Meals" chapter, as protein is usually the more expensive part of the meal. If you need to save money, you might do better to add more starches than to serve multiple protein-heavy dishes. As I got further and further into the money-saving ideas, I became more fascinated by all the ... unusual... recommendations.
We all know that chicken and waffles is pretty beloved in some circles, and it's not too expensive. Did that combo inspire the American Culinary Society to attempt to fuse breakfast and dinner into a new low-cost treat?
I am not at all surprised that pancakes slathered with creamed tuna have still not caught on, nearly 50 years later, even if they could be livened up with "tiny pieces of lemon pulp, diced cucumber, chopped hard-cooked egg, etc."
I was surprised by the visual contrast between the components of another low-cost menu.
Are the cute little orange cups topped with grape "flowers" supposed to make up for the fact that the main course looks like an enormous can of Fancy Feast on a platter?
Okay, fine. The "Fancy Feast" is really Steak Upside Down Pie, a savory take on the pineapple upside-down cake.
And the "steak" is really ground beef plumped up with onions, tomatoes, and bouillon.
The pretty cups of Grape and Orange Whip are mostly orange gelatin...
...plus they use up the leftover raw egg white from the Steak Upside Down Cake, so you're all set if you like risking salmonella from dessert.
One appetizer recipe from a budget menu really made me wonder what was so money-saving about it.
It calls for an avocado, and even recently people (Well, idiotic people, but the point still stands.) argued that poor people can't afford housing because they're wasting all their money on luxuries like avocado toast. I can't imagine avocadoes were more affordable in the '70s. Plus it has shrimp, and shellfish was still rather luxurious in the '70s. Then I noticed this note above the recipe:
Oh, so this is supposed to be a formal meal for six!? That means that each person gets a couple of teaspoons of shrimp and a sixth of an avocado stretched with grapefruit and served in a bed of shredded lettuce. Now it just seems sad.
Well, not quite as sad as the "celebration" menu for those who are watching both the budget and their waistlines.
Yes, they can have sumptuous Tomato and Celery Soup!
Consisting of tomatoes! And celery! Plus onions! At least it's a festive red and green, so you can pretend it's the saddest Christmas ever.
Maybe the beef spirals will have a fun stuffing.
Or maybe they'll just have a little parsley and/or green pepper secured in their folds. Woo hoo! (Make sure to use canned peas in the border of peas and carrots for maximal disappointment.)
At least there's still dessert.
It's a lot less work (and arguably at least as tasty-- possibly more!) to just set out sliced apples and raisins for dessert rather than turning that mess into an applesauce gelatin with a rat turd raisin surprise.
I don't know... I'm starting to think it might be more fun to celebrate with tuna pancakes or an enormous mound of Fancy Feast than this "festive" menu, but that's certainly an open question.
Tuna pancakes was a joke when mom and I lived in the apartment. We were trying to figure out what to make for dinner. That's all we had, so we went to the grocery store. I guess some people just settled for pancakes covered in tuna. That steak upside down pie makes the case that that trend was way overdone. You were nice by not giving that recipe for the pieathalon.
ReplyDeleteI don't like to send in recipes for meat-containing pies, but if I did, that definitely would have been a contender!
DeleteHmmm. Marguerite Patten was very much a British cookery expert. She first made her name in wartime, designing healthy, appealing recipes that could be made under severe rationing. In fact, she was one of the first ever celebrity chefs, with a popular radio cookery programme. She remained popular post-war, and in fact right up to her death a few years ago, always specialising in what you might call "good plain cooking" for families on a budget.
ReplyDeleteThis book might have been published by the American Culinary Society, and all the recipes are in American measurements and use American names for things... but the recipes sound very English to me. I think they must have bought the US rights to one of Marguerite Patten's books.
Those thin, crepe-like pancakes are the traditional English style of pancake, and it's perfectly normal to stuff them with something like that tuna filling. Any English cook would know to put a few spoonfuls of the tuna mix in each pancake and roll them up -- it's so obvious on this side of the pond that it probably wasn't mentioned in the original book. Whoever was doing the Americanisation was less familiar with stuffed pancakes, and made a wild guess about stacking them up.
Another massive giveaway is the beef spirals recipe, which directs the reader to roll up the meat "like a Swiss roll". No American writer would say that. The Americanisation editor must have either missed that phrase or gave up guessing what it meant. A Swiss roll is a rolled-up cake with jam filling -- what's known in America as a jelly roll.