Another Frigidaire collection

You might think I've already posted about Your Frigidaire Recipes (General Motors Sales Corporation, 1940), but maybe you're confusing that with Frigidaire Recipes or Frigidaire Recipe Book or that OTHER Your Frigidaire Recipes. (That one is from 1937.)

Okay, this one does have the same alarmingly basic "chili" recipe as the other booklet of the same name, but this version prints it at a jaunty angle that makes scanning the page a pain in the ass. (I know my efforts to get perfectly-level scans are minimal at best, but at least I have a better excuse for the wonky angle this time.)

The Strawberry Cheese Salad recipe is also at an annoyingly jaunty angle. I chose this in part because I always love poking fun at the idea that something that consists largely of cream cheese, whipping cream, and sugar counts as a salad as long as you chuck in some fruit.

But I also chose this because this booklet includes color photographs, and my first thought when I saw the photo was, "Do you really need a recipe to throw chunks of canned ham on lettuce?"

Surprise! The canned ham is actually strawberries and cream cheese. I'd much rather have the latter, but it would still be a shock to encounter one when you were expecting the other.

This booklet also explains the wonders of ice cubes. It's hard for me to imagine that anyone ever had to have the potential benefits of ice cubes spelled out for them, but just in case you're wondering, ice can cool beverages, keep cold foods cold, and be "wrapped in a fine cloth... [to] be used for massaging the face."

This information is so important that Frigidaire felt compelled to print it on the level rather than at that annoying angle. Also important enough to be printed on the level: a somewhat confusing recipe for Frigidaire Pie.

I love that the instructions go straight from filling a pre-baked pie shell with ice cream and fresh fruit to placing the concoction in a 500-degree oven "until meringue is golden brown." Of course, is no actual instruction to put the meringue on the pie! It would be really hard to get the meringue brown in the oven if it were still sitting on the counter. Recipe writers had so much trust in their readers (and so few recipe testers) back then.

I guess Frigidaire just wanted to make sure it had enough books on the market to sell home cooks on the idea of owning a refrigerator. They weren't as invested in writing eye-catching titles or creating fool-proof recipes or thinking too hard about how the illustrations might look...