Fish Fly

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a fish!

There’s a Chinese proverb that says “Man who waits for roast duck to fly into mouth must wait very, very long time.” The point of it is twofold: a) you can’t sit around waiting for people to do things for you, and b) roast ducks can’t fly, duh.

Here we have a cooked fish leaping through the air from a river of toasted almonds.

At first you might think this is a tad ridiculous, because well, duh. But think about it from the food stylist’s point of view: the trout doesn’t appear to be suspended in any way; it really does seem to have been photographed mid-leap — and those almonds don’t do that by themselves. Therefore, someone had to rig a fish-flinging mechanism of some kind under the bed of almonds in order to shoot it through. But even when cooked, trout are somewhat floppy. So it probably had to be made stiff by the insertion of a projectile or stiffening agent of some kind. Lacquer, maybe. Glue.

The result is a rather dynamic leap off the page, sure — but does it have to be so brown?

Great Dinners from LIFE, Eleanor Graves, 1969

 Also from this book: Great Dinners

Spot The Recipe

In the frontispiece of this book it firmly states that “No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper or broadcast.”

That’s awesome because it allows for this review to be offered on the internet — which is neither a magazine, newspaper or a broadcast — something that could not have been conceived in MCMLXIX, which was how they said 1969 back in 1969.

Even more inexplicable than the complete incompetency of the layout of the recipe on this page is the fact that those responsible for it are named proudly in the front. Did they ever look at a copy of the book when it arrived from the printer and think “good job?”

Congratulations, Mike, Alex, Herbert, John and Jack. What a fine Art Staff you are. Special credit also to John S., in charge of Layout, and Silvio L, Creative Director.

June Roth’s Fast and Fancy Cookbook, Fawcett Publications, 1969

Also from this book: Penguin Eggs