The secret of domestic bliss...

After a bit of a hiatus, I finally have time to add some new items! I got a wonderful email today from one of my husband's relatives in California. They are absolutely amazing ads and they are real.

Enjoy!

Multitasking circa 1950

Sometimes cooking is boring. All of that stirring, cutting and chopping can be repetitive. This illustration (from the Boston Globe Cookbook) shows how to cook without paying attention. The magazine that this chef is reading is called "Stomps" or "Stumps". Either way, it's an intriguing niche market. It appears to be an enthralling periodical, as the chef can't tear herself away to look where she's pouring. We can't be sure what she's cooking, or if we'd ever want to eat it due to her distraction. Eggshell cake? Oh goody!

Food Behaving Badly-Part 1

This looks like a pretty standard recipe booklet from Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. They sprung for the full color covers, but the inside is full of these odd little 2-color illustrations.

You get a sense of the design aesthetic with the tiny portraits of cute food items. But don't be fooled by their innocent looks. Once you venture inside, you will be subjected to their naughty deeds.

Baked goods seem to be the instigators in a lot of these scenarios. Take the poor cake and the posse of rambunctious cupcakes in her care. She appears rather distressed while these young hellions are running amok. They have a strange game of leap frog going on, which, when you think about it would be pretty messy.


















I'm not sure what's going on in the next illustration. Three somewhat phallic-looking baked goods are pointing at a smiling muffin (I think). The tall ones seem to have a look of disgust, as if something smells bad. The little muffin blob looks pretty satisfied with himself.

Who cut the cheese?

Apron fools!

Another treasure is the 9th Annual Grand National Cook Book. This is a compendium of the top 100 recipes from Pillsbury in 1958. There is a cash prize of $25000 for the top winner-a king's ransom back then.

The photos in this booklet are priceless. Lots of shots of women with aprons, hair neatly coiffed bending over cakes, mixing bowls and stoves. In the left photo below, this woman is described as a "farm wife". The photo on the right shows a young contestant getting a "lovely corsage to wear on her apron". Check out the dirty look the woman behind her. Jealous!

The most unusual thing about this booklet is the heavy product placement. Every recipe has listed in bold text the brand of ingredient. Not only is Pillsbury's Best All Purpose Flour repeated constantly, but so is French's Mustard, "quilted" Kaiser Heavy Duty Foil, Morton Salt, French's Vanilla, Crisco (shortening), French's Cinnamon, Red Star Active Dry Yeast, and a dozen or so French's spices and flavorings. I was almost expecting to see French's EGGS or Pillsbury WATER listed. I feel pity for the poor copywriter who had to put all of those plugs in.

This event was a big deal. The back cover shows a young woman receiving a phone call from a celebrity. The weird thing is she's standing next to Art Linkletter, who was a TV talk show host and a celebrity. He was a retro version of Jerry Springer without the transvestites and fist fights. Actually, there was a rumor in 1968 that his hippie daughter had taken LSD, stared at the sun for six hours and went blind or jumped out of a window. It was a cautionary tale for the generation that grew up eating all that Crisco.

Wisconsin lunchladies in love

This book was authored by The Milwaukee Public School Kitchens Girls Trades and Technical High School, Authoritative Dietitians and Experienced Housewives-no inexperienced housewives were consulted.

This 28th edition (circa 1947) was originally published in 1901 and has an interesting history. Here's the Wisconsin Historical Society's website offering about the origin of the book: http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/turningpoints/search.asp?id=910 if you're interested in that sort of stuff.

I don't know how much of the text is original to the turn of the century book and what recipes were more 1940s-based. This book was a primer for young immigrant women and had recipes, cooking tips, explanations of cooking utensils and how to start a wood or coal fire; hopefully in the stove.

There is a section on special diets. The following recipes are intended for infants:

• beef juice
• scraped beef
• prune pulp
• barley water
• oat water
• catnip tea
• oatmeal gruel
  
• and cracker gruel.

Never having eaten scraped beef, or oat water, I can't say that a baby would enjoy it. Most of the recipes have tremendous amounts of salt or salt water. Those babies were probably wicked thirsty.

My very favorite infant recipe is for the delicious sounding Flour Ball. Here is the recipe:
2 pounds of wheat flour
2 quarts of water

Tie flour in cheese-cloth bag and boil for 5 hours in 2 quarts of water. Place the resulting ball in the oven and bake for several hours or until the outside is quite brown. Break and discard outer shell. Grate inner ball to a powder.

Doesn't grating the ball turn it back into...flour? Seems like an exercise in futility.

You can use it to make flour gruel, which is flour, salt and water.

Wait a minute-that's how we used to make homemade Play-doh. What baby wouldn't want to eat that?

My mouth is watering, probably from the salt.

Magic in a Minute

Before there was organic, locally grown, artisinal, free range food, there were chemicals.

Food companies were doing frightful things to our food to make products that probably shouldn't be eaten or even exist. Four decades ago, some chemist thought, "What if I take the creaminess of pudding and merge it with the jiggle of gelatin and freeze it?" Here is the result of the this strange concoction-"Whip 'n' Chill".

I actually ate this product as a child. In fact, I loved this strangely crunchy, gelatinous dessert, but I also liked to dunk M&Ms in orange juice back then.

I vaguely recall my mother pouring our Whip 'n' Chill batter into metal ice cube trays and putting them in the freezer. I wonder if the aluminum helped congeal this chemical laden biohazard, but we thought it was the height of sophistication. If only I had known that the magical cone shaped mold existed, I would've coveted that!

I may include some tasty recipes from this official "Whip 'n' Chill" booklet in upcoming posts. Who wouldn't want to know how to make Refrigerator Loaf or Pear Lime Dreamy Whip?

So kids, the lessons here is if food is advertised as magic, it probably doesn't contain any real ingredients that should go into your body.

Finger Fruit, Planetary Frankfurters and Clam Balls

Once again, we visit the Good Housekeeping Appetizer Book from 1961.

The illustrations in this book are pretty typical of the era's low budget two-color style. It's fun to pick out some of the characters and follow them through the book. Here's a few of my faves.

I really love the guy in the suit and shorts. What kind of party is he attending? This look is the mullet of fashion-business on top, party on the bottom. And really, was there any recipe in that decade that didn't involve pineapple chunks? Don't forget the toothpicks to dip them into the deviled ham'n'cheese. Eww.

Check out the recipe for "Planetary Frankfurters" below. There are only 4 ingredients: hard boiled eggs, hot pepper seasoning, frankfurters and something called "relish-cheese spread". Was there some kind of strange hybrid of pickle relish and cheese that has become extinct? I can only imagine what this conglomeration looked and tasted like. Hey, is that the same shorts guy raiding the refrigerator? Maybe he's looking for the relish-cheese spread?

Clam Balls. Turtlenecks. Accordians. Dandruff? Teenage madness-circa 1961!