A blandified and randomly frozen world from Frigidaire

Once again, it's time for a trip back to a time when a refrigerator was still kind of a novelty. Your Frigidaire Recipes (the Home Economics Department of the Frigidaire Division of General Motors Sales Corporation, Dayton, Ohio, 1937) assures readers that the Frigidaire is capable of many things.

The booklet explains that price of the refrigerator will be more than made up for over time, as safe reuse of ingredients means "The [leftover] pork chop may be ground with other pieces of meat and used for stuffing green peppers or for making sandwich filling. The tomato slices may be used for garnishing the next meat loaf. The buttered peas may be used in a jellied salad ring or vegetable salad or scalloped vegetable dish. These are just a few of the many possibilities." Whether people really wanted to eat a jellied salad ring full of (likely overcooked) buttered peas was immaterial.

Alternatively, the bits of leftover vegetables might make a grand Cottage Cheese and Vegetable Salad.

Simply mix leftover veggies with cottage cheese and mayo, leaven with a bit of whipped cream, and then freeze into a solid mass that is sure to put nearly everyone's teeth on edge-- mayo-haters and cottage-cheese-haters alike.

As much as the introduction touts using leftovers, many of the recipes start with all fresh ingredients. The more common denominator among recipes is that everything should be bland. Take the Chicken and Rice Creole. I'm not sure what makes it Creole. Maybe Frigidaire thought using tomatoes in the rice was enough?

I'm absolutely not a southern cook, but I was under the impression that recipes like this should at least have the holy trinity of bell peppers, celery, and onion, plus more spices than a couple whole cloves and some paprika. (And online recipes suggest I'm not wrong.)

The Cajun Chicken and Rice is downright wild compared to the chili, though.

Frigidaire Chili is basically the saddest, most basic sloppy joe mix ever (hamburger, onions, catsup) with a can of kidney beans thrown in for good measure. Plus, the instruction to "Add catsup and cook until the mixture appears oily" do not do the recipe any favors.

The book does offer plenty of delicious-sounding desserts: mousses and parfaits and fruit ices. They're not all winners, though. 

Even if Chilled Fruit Dessert sounds really sad (As if anyone wants to eat a partially-frozen can of mixed fruit! Just scrape the whipped cream and maraschino cherries off the top if you like them and skip the rest...), this recipe seems to have had quite a ride, showing up as an even scarier variation in Quick & Easy Dishes (Favorite Recipes of Home Economics Teachers, 1968).

I guess I've learned that blandified foods have a chance of surviving their initial awkward phase in appliance cookbooks that were probably marketed to wealthy white families. Chili and "Creole" cooking managed to survive despite their initially being presented as a meat flavored primarily with onion, a tomato product, and hope. Once people had better access to spices and could afford them, they realized that dinner didn't always have to taste like ketchup and sadness. 

Freezing random things for no clear reason seems less popular now, though. I can't quite imagine anyone serving frozen fruit cocktail or a slab of veggies frozen into cottage cheese today (even if the fruit cocktail abomination did live into the '60s). We need our freezer space for ice cream and trays of Lean Cuisine and/or Hungry Man.