I'm not quite sure what to call today's book, as the title page says this is the VIKO Many Feature Cook Book and the cover says this is New Many Feature Cook Book. In either case, it's by Aluminum Goods Mfg. Co. (the makers of VIKO utensils), and it's from 1939.
I love that the features of the spiral-wire-bound book are enumerated on the cover. It's not only an advertisement for VIKO cookware but also for the merits of the book itself. (Lies flat when open! Pages turn easily! Blank pages! Approved recipes!)
The recipes themselves suggest that VIKO's home economics department (Yes, the company had one, as Laura Wilson's introductory note explains.) was a bit eccentric. For instance, while I've seen enough recipes for a marshmallow surrounded by a ball of mashed sweet potatoes and then rolled in corn flakes or coconut before baking to consider recipes like that only a mild curiosity...
...the confections are usually classified as side dishes. This is the first time I've ever seen the recipe in the "Cookies and Small Cakes" chapter. It's kind of refreshing to see that the company recognizes sweet potato balls have a lot in common with dessert, but at the same time, I think you're going to get a really weird look if you offer somebody a cookie and then hand them a sweet potato wad, even if it does have a marshmallow center.
The book also kind of seems to want to start its own slang terms. Guess what the "California chicken" in California Chicken Pie is!
I'm sure Chicken of the Sea could have told you. VIKO's attempt to call tuna "California chicken" didn't catch on, though. My attempts to search the term just turned up a lot of chicken recipes that feature avocado.
I also wonder whether VIKO had a completely different definition of chowder than I have. I always thought that chowder was a milk- or cream-based soup that usually had seafood and/or veggies in it. While this Salmon Chowder does have both seafood and a veggie...
...I don't see how it's a soup. The only liquid is the liquid from the canned corn, and even that's evaporated to just three tablespoons! Hell, the Worcestershire sauce accounts for a full quarter of the moisture in this recipe. I keep reading this one over to see if I'm missing something-- if maybe the recipe mentions adding cream and the editors forgot to add it to the list of ingredients-- but there's nothing. This just seems like a recipe for a very chunky canned salmon and corn sauce at most.
The real puzzler, though, is the chili, or more specifically, the Chili Con Carne and Russian Apples.
In other circumstances, I might make fun of a chili that includes macaroni that's been boiled for an hour and a half, plus has only 1 tablespoon of chili powder at most to two quarts of water and 3-1/2 cups of tomatoes, but the title just has me too stumped to bother. What are "Russian apples"? I tried looking it up, but I just find results about Antonovka, apparently a very acidic apple that's popular in Russia. Searching "Chili Con Carne and Russian Apples" leads to some really weird chili recipes with actual apples in them. I even tried to find out if "Russian apples" was an alternate name for kidney beans, but kidney beans don't have any nicknames that are that wild. (Rajma was about as exciting as it got.) So I have no idea! Feel free to speculate on what the VIKO home economists might have been thinking, or just make up your own story!
I feel like the spiral binding of the cookbook should be aluminum based on how amazing it is, but that would be too soft to hold up to use. Too bad California chicken isn't as cheap as Midwestern chicken (also known as chicken). It sounds like they are confused about what everything is.
ReplyDeleteAny time you add avocadoes, the price goes up!
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