Men can cook too! (Of course, they expect a parade.)

I love old cookbooks in large part because they give me some tiny insight into the lives of women in the past. Today's book has a different angle, though.

Shriners Parade of Recipes: Main Dish Edition Including Meats and Casseroles (1966) "is designed to represent the thousands of men who enjoy cooking," according to the introduction. It encourages its male audience, saying "Whether you are a weekend cook, a bachelor, a cook when the wife's away or a fellow who just likes to cook anytime-- this book is for you!" It's notable that this assumes men only cook occasionally under special circumstances, but it allows for the occasional man who "just likes to cook." Of course, this is all followed up with "Do the wife a favor and let her borrow [the book]." So, you know. Women are still mostly responsible for the cooking. Men just want the credit for when they occasionally feel like taking over.

After the introduction is a section claiming to explain "Main Dishes for Masculine Tastes," but the page is mostly about how to plan a meal and make sure the meat is cooked correctly. I was looking forward to seeing how Shriners thought men's tastes differed from women's, but there is little explanation.

The answer, as far as I could gather from the cookbook, is "not a lot." Shriners sent in recipes for dishes with names that I assumed would sound too fancy for 1960s men, like French Market-Style Sautéd Beef Tenderloin.

They not only liked Roast Spring Lamb with Brussels Sprouts (a vegetable right in the title!)...

...but they also served it in a noodle ring! I'd always assumed that noodle rings were fripperies that no one cared about except mom, and she only cared because her days were so disappointing that being able to successfully unmold a ring gave her a feeling of accomplishment. Nope! Shriner men loved a good noodle ring too.

Shriner men also seemed just as afraid of seasoning as most other white people in the 1960s. Their Tostados con Pollo are seasoned with ... 

Well, the kidney beans have a bit of garlic powder in them, and the chicken is of the straight-out-of-a-can variety. Maybe the sprinkle of Tabasco on the tortilla will come to the rescue in the flavor department, but I wouldn't count on it. And does anyone else think that Parmesan is a weird cheese for a tostada topper? Sometimes I think people in the mid-20th century just threw Parmesan (if they were fancy) or American (if they were not fancy) on anything that they thought needed cheese so they wouldn't have to keep more than one variety on hand.

Don't get me wrong-- Shriners had recipes like Camp-Style Beaver for when they were out hunting with the boys.

But they were just as happy to whip up gelatin-based salads as the women-folk.

And they would be right up front about the fact that the crab salad was based on lime gelatin. None of this business of covering it with enough condiments that maybe people could imagine for a second that it was made with unflavored gelatin before they bit in and found out how sweet it was...

Hell, the Shriners even included the mawkish little "recipes" I so often see in community cookbooks for women's organizations, like how to preserve the children or braise a friendship or drown the cleanup committee in gravy so they will leave you alone for one goddamn minute. (Okay, I think I've strayed a bit from the spirit of those "recipes...") Anyway, here is how to make a Shriner's Lady and Mother.

I'm sure she's thrilled to know that laundress, maid, and cook are all in that description, rather than any idealized and higher-minded terms. (She's probably also driven a bit crazy by the non-parallel scrambling of adjectives and nouns and the spelling of "campanion," but she just puts on that winning smile and "accidentally" makes her favorite dinner that she "forgot" he dislikes when it's her night to cook.)

So... I guess the lesson is that men sometimes cooked. If they felt like it. And what they cooked seems remarkably similar to a lot of what women in the '60s cooked too. Either that, or the men just had their wives submit a few recipes and took credit for the recipes themselves. (Not that I can picture that happening from guys who liked to throw themselves a parade!)