Ham Cabbage Mold

Before the 1890s, the world was entirely black and white and shades of grey. If you wanted to know what something looked like, you had to use your imagination. People had very vivid imaginations, so that was OK. Well, sometimes it wasn’t. Sometimes people got it all wrong and lots of folks got killed as a result.

People had no idea what an orange was. They’d ask their grocer for a dimpled fruit yay-big and were handed a melon instead. Or a lemon. That depended on the literacy of one’s grocer, which in the 1890s was iffy at best. The banana was widely thought to be an urban legend until Carmen Miranda rendered all urban legends obsolete. But I digress.

The first color photograph was of a tartan ribbon. The ribbon thought it was posing for a normal black and white portrait and refused to pay. In 1855 a Scottish person named James Clerk Maxwell invented the eyeball by reducing the known universe to red, green and blue. When he mixed them together, he could make every hue there is, but when regular people mix them together all they get is brown. It is not known whether his genius was prompted into being by being hit on the head with an apple or an orange.

People think there are no words that rhyme with orange, but try rhyming anything with apple. People named Hugh are colorblind, a twist of fate they can’t even appreciate. I made that up. There are no people named Hugh.

One hundred years after Maxwell figured the eyeball out, Americans learned to mix anything with lemon Jell-O and set it in a mold to enchant their guests. This lead to the extinction of guests. Hundreds of cookbooks with whole chapters devoted to what to serve unexpected guests had to be torn up and thrown on the fire.

Today it is as unfathomable for us to consider a world without color photography as it is to imagine eating a ham cabbage mold. Never have so many been so thankful for black and white photography as we are now, right this minute, when we look at the top of this page.

Salad Book, Better Homes and Gardens, 1969

Also from this book: Salmon Avocado Mold, Banana-Cheese Dressing, Wash Your Mouth Out With Soap

Sliceable Soup

Some things are liquids and some things are solids and some things are gasses. This is basic science. Some things can go from being one to another under certain circumstances, usually a change in temperature.

Tomato soup, is by its very nature, liquid. If you, on the other hand. prefer yours to be a solid, then this recipe is right up your alley.

Standby Tomato Soup Mold

This recipe calls for mixing canned soup with gelatin, then adding cottage cheese, mayonnaise, chopped celery, green pepper, radishes, walnuts, and green onion. Put this mixture into a mold and let set.

Homemade is Better, Better Homes and Gardens, 1981

Banana-Cheese Dressing

There are some flavors that have become part of the culinary canon because they are so complementary it seems as if the Lord in His wisdom made them for one another. Tomatoes and oregano. Lamb and rosemary. Chocolate and salt. Brie and figs. Fish and lemon.

Bananas and cheese is not one of them.

The person who snuck a spoonful appears to agree since they unfortunately regurgitated it onto the apples entombed in orange Jello rather than the green glass plate put there for the express purpose of catching unwanted bits.

Salad Book, Better Homes and Gardens, 1969

Also from this book: Salmon Avocado Mold, Ham Cabbage Mold, Wash Your Mouth Out With Soap

If Henry Kissinger was Petite, Pretty and Black

Why is it that in the 1970s photo re-touching was only applied by secret agents to either erase or add shady political characters to grainy Soviet balcony gatherings? Sure, it wasn’t always great; the non-person often left behind an inexplicable gap in a tight line-up and their shadow. But could this technology have also been put to use for occasions such as this? What is that gentleman on top of the author’s umbrella doing sticking a knife into his head? Could that be the author’s husband, Lee Elder? Is he trying to tell us something?

Sadly, the bizarre photo cropping is not the only odd thing about this book. To wit: the blurbs on the flyleaf:

“For many years, I have wondered why someone did not publish a ‘Favorite Recipes from the Tour’ book. Now, we have one. In its own way, it is very revealing as it lets us know what really soothes the appetites of our favorite people.

These man who play this game we all love so much, seem to enjoy everything from fish sticks to Coquille Ste. Jaques; Kentucky Fried to Poulet en Cocotte Bonne Femme; tacos to Carne Asada a la Tampiqueña. At each stop along the way, they have their favorite spots and learn to enjoy what is the specialty of the locale.

When they have a chance to go into their own kitchens, though, and say ‘Now, here is what I’d really like to have for dinner,’ it is interesting to see what they do choose.

Whatever, the Rose Elder Golfer’s Cookbook is a welcome addition to the bookshelf.”

— Tom Place (PGA Tour)

Really, Tom? There exists a man on this planet who actually asks for “Rose’s Own Clean the Refrigerator Stew”? (page 149) According to this book, what these well-paid PGA Tour professionals crave are not the fancy foreign foods they eat while away, but "Congealed Salad." Whatever. 

 There’s this from Jim Murray (Los Angeles Times): 

“You can go to your pro if you like to get a recipe for that loop in your backswing. I want his wife’s recipe for Tripe A La Mode De Caen, garnee sous cloche. Who wants Chicken Kiev when they can get Chicken Doral? I mean, why should I settle for chili dogs when Lee Elder can get Pompano-in-a-bag?”

Why, indeed. Curiously, none of these recipes is in the book, so he’s going to have to find another way to get them out of his pro’s wife. Likewise, the fabled “Pompano-in-a-bag” is also not listed, so we’ll all have to just settle for chili dogs.

There are 4 recipes for meatloaf, however, including the charmingly named “Dale’s Mother’s Meat Loaf” which comes with this note: “After several meat loaf recipes after Dale and I were first married, he finally asked me to get his mother’s recipe…and here it is!” That’s one recipe for a happy marriage, folks.

Finally, a glimpse at Phil Musick’s author bio on the back flyleaf gives us a clue as to the general “spirit of ‘75” air that guides the crazy in this book. It begins:

“If Henry Kissinger was petite, pretty, black and somewhat less busy, he would be Rose Elder.”

The people of Cambodia, Chile and Argentina probably agree.

The Golfer’s Cookbook, Rose Elder, 1977

Also from this book: What A Load Of Bull, Booze Cake, Clean The Refrigerator Stew

Beet-Pineapple Mold and Other Perfect Salads

 In his foundational text on the subject, The Elements of Typographic Style, Robert Bringhurst notes that “typography exists to honor content.” He goes on to say: “when type is poorly chosen, what the words say linguistically and what the letters imply visually are disharmonious, dishonest, out of tune.”

As far as page layouts go, this one isn’t bad. There is proportion, balance, an easy line for the eye to follow. The recipe titles are clear; there is enough white space to lend a certain grace and clarity to the page. The typographer has utilized italics, all-caps, tab spaces and hyphens with a practiced and subtle eye. The page as a whole exhibits classic depths of margin and gutter. Clearly, a professional is at work and we should rightly take a moment to applaud what usually goes — by design — unnoticed. It is typographic poetry.

It’s a damn shame the actual words constitute such shit.

Salad Book, Better Homes and Gardens, 1969

Salmon Avocado Mold

In 1969 some prescient folks at Better Homes and Gardens saw that the generation soon to be known as the Baby Boomers comprised the bulk of the demographic their cook books were aimed at. Thinking ahead, they decided to include as many recipes as possible for the toothless, the gummy, the denture-set. By blending, whizzing, creaming and smashing normally solid ingredients and then reconstituting them as semi-solids in non-threatening shapes (helped along by plenty of gelatin), they managed to put the fear of God into their customers, who all flocked to their dentists and invested in really expensive preventive orthodontia to forestall the possibility they would ever have to face such foodstuffs before death relieved them of the chance they’d be force-fed them in a nursing home.

Exhibit A: “A spectacular salad for a foursome is the Salmon Avocado Mold. Frosted with an avocado dressing, cut wedges are pretty on the plates. It’s a do-ahead beauty to make the hostess’ job easier.”

Salad Book, Better Homes and Gardens, 1969

Also from this book: Banana-Cheese Dressing, Ham Cabbage Mold, Wash Your Mouth Out With Soap

Chicken Indienne

 Only an Anglophone culture could take a curry, entomb it in gelatin, call it a “salad,” and then Frenchify the name to make it sound fancy. Both the Indian people and the French probably have a word for this sort of nonsense, and chances are it’s “Merde.”

Salad Cookbook, The Family Circle, Inc., 1972

Also from this book: What We Talk About When We Talk About Gelatin, Chicken Mousse In Aspic (A Cult Classic), Salmon In A Sauna