Cookbooks, getcher cookbooks

Download 'em while they're hot from the Internet Archive. For starters, why not try

Lady Young's Cookery Book, produced in Hong Kong, year unknown (but prior to 1954), "in aid of St. John's Cathedral Michaelmas Fair." Featuring full-page rum ads and opening with five pages of cocktail recipes, it's as colonial as all get-out: Yorkshire pudding, a bunch of cod recipes (can you even get cod in Hong Kong?), the odd curry. Nothing vaguely Chinese, at least upon my first cursory inspection. Maybe Chinese food is forbidden during Michaelmas; I'll confess I don't know much about the Church of England's dietary restrictions.

I apologize in advance

. . . if the following puts anyone off their feed for the near future. It's a badly scanned picture of bad food. "Plan your lenten meals around eggs, canned fish, cheese," advises Julia Lee Wright. Curious whether Ms. Wright had suffered some sort of childhood accident that rendered her tastebuds useless, I have conducted a thorough search of the Internets only to find that no one, evidently, knows anything about her. She appears to have been more active in the 30s and 40s, writing for Homemakers' Bureaus and for Safeway. Some food historian should do a write-up on her, even if her life was less interesting and tragic than Poppy Cannon's. Who knows, maybe she didn't even exist, like Betty Crocker. Perhaps, by 1954, she was just phoning it in. Your guess is as good as mine.


What we have here, from top left to lower right, are: Pennywise Salmon Bake, Eggplant Parmigiana, Double-Decker Spanish Omelet (mercifully truncated by my scanner), Tuna Timbales with French Cream Sauce, and Tuna Souffle Sandwiches.

The omelette isn't as bad as it looks (how could it be?). It's basically six elaborately separated, scrambled and whipped eggs with cream, baked, with tomato sauce on top. If you ever had a slightly odd friend who liked ketchup on her scrambled eggs, she would have liked this. The timbales are more egregious--really, they are a smaller version of the 3-layer tuna-noodle-what-the-hell we saw earlier this week: Tuna and noodles, crammed into muffin tins. Instead of putting he processed American cheese into the noodles, you turn it into "French" cheese sauce and pour it on top.

The Tuna Souffle Sandwiches call for tuna salad, with the addition of horseradish (wow), to be spread on toast and covered with what seems to be a meringue topping that has had mayonnaise and pickle relish folded in. This is the kind of thing that gives me nightmares.

The Pennywise Salmon Bake and Eggplant Parmigiana actually don't have much wrong with them as recipes go, so why do they look so repellent? What was it about food photography in the 50s that makes everything look like a doughy, greasy Chicago politician? Why did it have to be that way?

All this, and Lima beans too

Continuing yesterday's theme of Lenten self-mortification through packaged foods, I offer you Chicken of the Sea's Tuna Macaroni Cheese Loaf:


The ingredients list would lead you to think this is just another tuna casserole: macaroni, cheese, onion, bread crumbs, parsley, tuna, eggs, lemon juice.

But.

Four eggs--two for the tuna, two for the pasta--mean that this isn't going to work like a casserole. Instead, this is more of a baked custard, so it's going to come out in discrete chunks. Slices, if you will, but I don't want my pasta to slice, usually. And segregating the tuna in the middle--it just doesn't seem like tuna and eggs is something you want to show off or call attention to. Maybe it's just me.

But surrounding the whole thing with Lima beans? I'm sorry, that's inexcusable.

Fasting and prayer, made simple

The Lenten season comprises forty days of prayer, penitence, almsgiving and self-denial, in preparation for Easter. In the 1950's, the packaged food industry jumped on board that bandwagon with both feet.

In the Catholic church, the rule was (and still technically is) no meat or poultry on Fridays during Lent. Not so many people practice this now, though during Lent is when you still see the fish specials at fast food places--Wendy's has a "new" fish sandwich out right now, for instance. And McDonald's introduced the Filet-O-Fish during Lent (it's still popular with observant Jews and Muslims who have to eat kosher or Halal meat).

But the world had to wait until the 60's for the Filet-O-Fish. In 1954, you got tuna, mostly, though you couldn't necessarily tell.

This is tuna with a can of Veg-All and some Bisquick, and I think there's some white sauce thrown in there for good measure. The result looks like one of those stepping-stones you put out to make path between the back door and the tool shed.

The wages of sin is diet pears

Well, what do you expect when your pound cakes are bigger than you are, your lemon chiffon pies float ominously in mid-air, compelling you to eat them, and you supercharge your kids' non-fat powdered milk with soda? You're gonna get fat.


The answer? Pistachio ice cream! And diet pears, of course.

















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An idea whose time never really came

Seven years before the Beach Boys released Pet Sounds, the makers of PET instant milk had a GREAT idea.

Reconstitute their product with soda pop instead of water!

After all, who can resist a cold glass full of viscous foam that appears to be trying to climb out of its containment unit and smother you? Wasn't this thing in a Star Trek episode?

To make it even more fun, they've given names to the different "fizzes." Use a different color soda, get a different animal for your "pet": a brown cow from Coke, and "orang-a-tang" from orange, a purple poodle from grape, etc. It's just too fun!

It certainly provides some grounds for the "new rage" of the soda pop set. I'd be pissed too, if my mom expected me to drink this.

As always, click on any picture to see it frighteningly enlarged.

Blowback

In 1959, packaged mixes were so popular that good old Knox Gelatine felt compelled to push back with their own ad campaign. Ironically, plain powdered gelatin was one of the earliest "convenience" foods--how often would you make gelatin if you had to boil your own pig's feet? Here, Knox calls into question the essential reality of chiffon pie mixes.

And I'm sure they have a point--flavored Jello is notoriously over-sweetened, and real lemons probably make a world of difference. I haven't tried this recipe though, because I can just imagine how long the rest of the box of Knox gelatin (Spell check doesn't like the "e" on the end, sorry Knox!) would sit on my shelf. Forever, basically.

The deeper irony is that no one ever even eats chiffon pie any more, so far as I can tell. Or chiffon cakes either, which is a mercy. I have made one of those.

Run for your lives!

The giant pound cake mix will destroy us all!

You have to admit, that is a really big pound cake; the ad copy says it's "almost twice" the size of the regular, so I assume it weighs around two pounds. It sure looks bigger though. The box alone dwarfs the poor housewife who somehow dragged it home from the supermarket. It's so big, it apparently takes a week to eat it, with a different high-calorie topping each day. Does anyone really want to eat pound cake six days a week?

Another fine product from Dromedary, no longer available, thanks be to God.