The National Dairy Council thinks you better butter up your man!

To Your Taste... Butter (National Dairy Council, 1954) is only barely a cook booklet.

It's more of a reminder that  pretty much anything tastes better if you cook it in butter and/or put butter in and/or on it. The booklet also encourages cooks to put butter in pasta water (to prevent sticking), invest in a butter warmer so everyone at the table has access to melted butter, and keep the cool butter in an immaculately clean butter dish.

I was most interested in the book's investment in gender dynamics. Clearly, the book saw marriage as women's most important goal in life, and insinuated that butter was the real secret to a happy marriage.

That's why it's "dedicated to BRIDES," "those who have been brides," and "those who hope to be brides." (It's nice that "all others who aspire always... to serve food of good taste" are added in fine print at the bottom of the page.)

The booklet is mostly for the wives, though, as their goal is to make home "the place to which a man wants to return at night... for the sustenance of love... and food."

And of course, "whatever meal you are preparing, your food tastes its best with butter." One might imagine the leading cause of what would then be called "broken homes" was failure to provide sufficient butter with every meal. 

The pressure to please one's man is relentless. If the cook (wife) is getting exasperated, the booklet comes to his defense.

"No, HE's not being fussy-- really he's an easy man to please." He just needs butter on absolutely everything. And if you fail to keep a sufficient supply of butter, well, he might just have dinner at a friend's house and notice that "Jim's bride" served lemon butter on the waffles. Of course, that can only mean that he will "steal" "Jim's bride" if you don't learn the lemon butter recipe right away.... 

Here it is, though I think someone with such a fickle partner would be better off without him.

That's easier to say now that women can get credit in their own name, though....

And just in case the man wants to have fun being the host at a barbecue, there's a barbecue sauce to prepare "that will make your husband proud."

If he's chasing a live pig with a meat cleaver once the barbecue sauce is made and the grill is set up, though, I have a feeling the cookout will end in embarrassment at best and horror at worst. The barbecue sauce will not be the memorable element (if it gets used at all).

Maybe it would be better to just give up on butter for now and hope he runs off with Jim's nameless bride.... Let him run through somebody else's backyard with a meat cleaver. Sit on the patio and drink your Manhattan in peace while he pursues his butter elsewhere.