Casseroles with Identity Crises

I am endlessly fascinated by the dump-it-all-together ethos of a lot of old casserole recipes, so a vintage cookbook that promises casserole recipes is extremely likely to get picked up if I see it. Well, as long as the price is reasonable, anyway, and the Family Circle Casserole Cookbook (Ed. Malcolm E. Robinson, 1978) was only 99 cents at the thrift store, so here it is.

Gotta love the harvest gold font! I have to admit the clear delineations between meat, green onions, wax beans, and asparagus on the platter gracing the cover are not exactly what I expect from old casserole recipes. (I just noted how they usually just call for dumping a lot of stuff together, after all, not neatly arranging the ingredients into stripes.) Not to worry, though, as the book includes a lot of odd jumbles of ingredients.

The descriptions don't always seem to match up with the recipe, either. The Veal Risotto doesn't necessarily sound bad. 

It's just that cooks now know that a risotto is not just "regular rice" (as the recipe specifies), but usually Arborio or another short-grain rice. It's cooked briefly in fat and then stirred as liquid is gradually added-- not just dumped in a casserole dish with meat, veggies, and a broth it can absorb in the oven. In short, I think this is called "risotto" because Family Circle wanted to make it seem fancy, the same way my students throw pronouns like "whom" or "myself" into a paper because they think the words are more formal than "who" or "I." There's no real recognition that the terms have actual, independent meanings and don't just signify fanciness.... 

Then there is a reminder that "peppery-hot" did not have the same meaning in 1978 as it does now. Oriental Pepper Pot promises that "Ground beef, fish, and vegetables steam in a peppery-hot sauce for this unusual meal."

But there are no peppers at all in this dish, unless you count the plain old ground pepper that gets thrown into pretty much every savory dish. Maybe the quarter teaspoon of ground ginger is supposed to set this afire?

Some dishes at least suggest that they're supposed to be variations of a familiar dish, like the Shepherdess Pie.

This contains no lamb, but instead sausage patties (painstakingly cut into 10 small pieces each) in a soup mix gravy, topped with the expected mashed potatoes plus "crumbled whole wheat wafers," whatever those might be. I imagined maybe this meant Triscuits. Then I tried Googling "whole wheat wafers" to see if I was just being dense, and I got all kinds of results, from Wheat Thins to whole wheat soda crackers to whole wheat Ritz to whole wheat communion wafers (though no Triscuits in the top results!), so I guess anything crunchy and whole wheat-y would work. (I assume religious types would argue against using communion wafers as a casserole topping. I imagine snacking crackers would taste better for this purpose anyway.)

My favorite casserole, though, just might be a variation on the divisive sweet-potato-n-marshmallow.

If you've ever thought ham and pineapple or ham with a brown sugar glaze is just not quite sweet enough, this recipe goes all-in on the sweet with pineapple, brown sugar, sweet potatoes, and marshmallows! So if you've ever wondered what a ham-and-marshmallow combo would be like, this is the answer. And just look at all the glorious shades of brown!

Serve with a salad of whole Romaine leaves and green onion sprigs with a squeeze of lemon, plus a bowl of dishwater in which you've floated three Corn Chex. Mmmm-mmmm!

And I will laugh at '70s families who actually tried this stuff while I secretly eat tater tot casserole and Spanish rice when nobody else is looking. Casseroles can make people do crazy things....