Something about Bake-Off Cook Book (Pillsbury, 1968) made me suspect that Pillsbury started selling potato flakes in the mid-to-late 1960s. Was it the puffy soufflé made with potato flakes?
Was it the "Super Supper" baked on a potato-flake-based crust?
...but also a packet of gravy mix?
Maybe it was the fact that two different desserts put the potato element right in their titles.
If you're not excited about the Scotch Spud Cookies, maybe the Chocolate Butter Tater Cake is more your style.
Maybe it was the weird mixture of canned salmon, eggs, Italian salad dressing, pimiento, and green beans capped off with a coating of potato flakes and gravy mix combined with mayo.
You know, the one that looks like cat barf garnished with green pepper rings and mandarin orange slices for some reason.
Maybe it was the fact that even a wad of mashed potato flakes bound with eggs and flour and then rolled around in crushed cereal before being baked could make it into the official Bake-Off.
Why this inundation of weird potato flake recipes? It seemed like a new product must be the explanation, but I was wrong. They'd been around since the 1950s.
Maybe this was the first year potato flakes were allowed as a Bake-Off ingredient? Nope. Wrong again, as they were apparently part of "Bachelor's Bake" the preceding year.
I guess the Pillsbury Bake-Off judges just really wanted potato flakes that year. Or maybe their brains were turning to mashed potatoes from looking at so many recipes? Not that I'd know anything about that....
Weren't potato flakes supposed to be convenient? Here they are being used in recipes that are way more elaborate than dump flakes, water or milk, and butter in a bowl and microwave. I guess that it's still more convenient than making mashed potatoes to use in the recipe. Funny how leftovers were removed from recipes designed to use them up.
ReplyDeleteMy theory is that home cooks felt like cooking work was supposed to "prove" their love of their families, so if convenience foods made cooking too easy, then that suggested they didn't love their families as much. They had to find elaborate ways to make convenience foods less convenient to prove themselves. (Or maybe they were just bored.)
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