These GOP recipes are not so grand

I wasn't really sure what to expect from Grand Old Party Recipes (Athens County Republican Executive Committee, 1968). 

I always imagined 1960s Republicans as being kind of snooty, the type who would want to serve something expensive to show off that they had money and to separate themselves from the dirty hippies sharing a huge communal bowl of brown rice. I wasn't entirely wrong. The book has recipes like this Salmon Tartare, which seems too expensive and involved for most of the '60s families I imagine.

It starts with six pounds of fresh salmon (not canned!), requires an hour or more of simmering in a court bouillon (a task perhaps best left to the family cook?), rounds of chilling and then masking in a sauce tartare, and finally a garnish of Dungeness crab. (It's also funny that I'd think of this as being more of a Democrat's recipe today, as it's centered around seafood. Current Republican recipes seem like they'd be for big chunks of beef to demonstrate a disregard for concerns about the climate and connect to a meat-hungry base.)

Another recipe that might have leaned Republican in 1968 and could seem Democratic now comes from the wife of the then-future President Ronald Reagan.

The specification to use "fine oranges," the product placement aspect of specifying that one should use a Wonder Shredder, the leisure time (or hired cooks) required for endless fiddling with changing the water over the peels, removing all the white skin on the oranges, etc. all seem 1960s Republican-y to my mental stereotypes. And the insistence that a bit of cooked fruit can genuinely count as "a delicious dessert" seems much more fitting to current Democrats' concerns about health (though they'd probably cut down on the added sugar).

The '60s Republican recipes weren't that different from any other recipe collection overall, though. They loved weird gelatin combos just as much as anybody else.

They were even sensible enough to start the Tongue Mousse with plain gelatin rather than sugary lemon!

Republicans also put their own spin on a recipe that I often see presented as an easy breakfast casserole option. Usually, layers of bread soaked in a savory custard are topped with cheese and sausage. Jerry's Baked Shrimp replaces the sausage with-- you guessed it!-- shrimp.

It also gets fancy by adding some bread crumbs and paprika to the top. My favorite part may just be that there is no indication of who Jerry is! I can see this recipe setting off whispers about what Mrs. Hugh Scott was up to in her spare time.

I'm not sure what else to say except that I wouldn't vote for any of these, but to be fair, I wouldn't vote for the vast majority of the recipes I post! They're not usually picked for their appeal....