Food Porn Almondine

You can tell these beans have just been sprung from the moist recesses of the microwave because that butter is melting all over them, its succulent fats dribbling down each toothsome length of still-crisp bean. The camera’s lens captures every little detail, and shot just fast enough to catch the slivered almonds in flight as they spill down into the soft nest below. Spotlights hit the slightly rough surface of each bean, bringing to mind the miniscule hairs that you can only feel with your tongue. Soon, they won’t be able to hold the pose and will start the inexorable slithery collapse upon the plate amid a pool of fat flecked with black pepper.

There is such thing as too much of a good thing. Food photography took a major turn in the early 1980s from haphazard snapshots of highly staged plates to highly staged photos of haphazard food. Instead of being held at arm's length, just-cooked, still-steaming items were shot in so much detail that you could practically see the molecular structure of each morsel. This is the photography of sports and porn. In order to demonstrate the oozing readiness of foods mostly cooked in the now-ubiquitious and affordable microwave, it was often photographed being prodded, skewered and otherwise pierced by metal serving instruments of some kind. The result is a kind of food styling with distinctly S & M overtones.

Carousel Microwave Cookbook, Sharp Electronics Corporation, 1983

Meaty Surprise!

Uncle Jethro generally sat in the easy chair with a red Dixie cup and a beer. He sipped from one and spat in the other, and every now and then he’d take another pinch of dip and press it into his lip. He’d chuckle whenever someone told a joke even if the joke wasn’t funny. He was big on tricks like getting the youngsters to pull his finger and making dimes come out of your ear. He was a living cliché down to his overalls.

As soon as you were old enough to climb he’d invite you to play a game of “hidden treasure” which involved trying to determine in which of his many pockets he’d put a candy — one of those red striped peppermints wrapped in cellophane you get for free on your way out of restaurants — the incentive being you’d get to eat it if you found it. It was a game he always seemed to come out of the winner. He’d always show you it so you know it actually existed. Perhaps it was the same one all those years.

Once Linda was married she always brought the dish above to family pot lucks and she called it “Uncle Jethro’s Hidden Treasure Loaf,” making sure he got a nice big slice. Folks generally avoided it like the plague. He seemed delighted by this personal honor until that one year when she loaded it with buckshot and he broke a tooth.

Everyone laughed except Linda. I turned to look and caught her whispering “Touché, Asshole” as she pumped her fist by her side, slowly — so slowly you could see the air swirl around it, I swear.  

Ground Meat Cook Book, Better Homes and Gardens, 1969

Also from this book: Top-Notch Turkey Loaf, Cooties Especial, Hamburger Helper?, Peppy-Sauced Meatloaf, Ham Strata, Tangiers Hash, King-Sized Balls

Imperial Strawberry Shortcake

To protect their community and ensure a successful growing season, the strawberries sacrificed the juiciest among them for a ritual offering made to the almighty Strawberry God.

For weeks, strawberry families contributed to the effort, some grinding flour for the cake, some milking cows for the cream, and some watching over their youngsters with an eye to which would look best all sliced up for the filling. Only virgin strawberries are chosen for the important upper layer, their pale insides slit open and cleaned of entrails, arranged in a circle facing the sun.

No living person has yet been able to witness the extraordinary ceremony whereby the vast Strawberry God himself appears before the assembled masses to survey the offering, UNTIL NOW.

You can sense the trembling fear felt by the fruit before judgment is passed. Will they have given their all in vain?

This Eyewitness To History moment brought to you by the Family Circle Dessert Cookbook of 1972.

Also from this book: Won't Get Foiled Again

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

A Bit On The Side

From an era when Women’s Lib meant utterly debasing oneself to the worst stereotypes imaginable comes the New Generation Cook Book, produced by the Coffee Production Council, whatever that was. You could burn your bra without a care in the world because you could wear kaftans and big paisley shirts to work to hide your swinging boobies and tie all that hair back with a headband.

Let’s break it down: young, naïve Samantha wants to make the leap from the typing pool to the glamorous world of television, but it’s 1969, so her only entre into it is by making herself useful by fetching coffee for the crew and looking pretty while doing it. Then she’s called upon to work long hours doing the catering. She develops a crush on the Director who exploits her by showing up at her flat demanding food which she dutifully prepares. Meanwhile her chubby flat mate decides she’d like a piece of this action but frets about not being able to attract any of them film crew’s men due to her size, so attempts to diet while helping to cook all the food. Sure enough, Samantha’s perseverance is rewarded by being given a catering job and getting fucked by the Director. Much coffee is drunk. It’s groovy, man. 

New Generation Cook Book, Tessa Bridger, Hamlyn, 1969

When Prophecy, and Book Design, Fails

Behold the Belief Disconfirmation Paradigm artfully presented as a page from Family Circle’s Illustrated Library of Cooking. How so? you say.

When confronted with data that does not match one’s understanding of the world, dissonance sets in, that jarring feeling of disquiet that attends a gap in expectations. In such cases, if you do not adjust your beliefs accordingly to match the odd information, you are likely to reject it — and then to support and justify your change of mind, you seek support from others who share your new beliefs in order to restore a sense of normalcy. What the fuck? you say.

Say you are looking at a page with a huge illustration of an ordinary-sized, rather pedestrian but floridly decorated cake, and underneath you read that it serves 100 people. You might think this impossible and try to convince yourself that the average serving of cake is the size of a sugar lump. In order to back this up, you start to hang out with models and drug addicts for whom such a serving constitutes the norm. Now, whenever you see this photo, you feel perfectly at ease because nothing strikes you as horribly wrong. Groovy, you say.

But then you realize that the recipe beneath the photo does not in fact belong to the photo, but to some other, un-illustrated cake, and then you wonder why on earth they would choose to show this monstrosity of brown frosting and jelly roll slices instead of the magnificent three-tier June Rose Wedding Cake, and suddenly all of your new wafer-thin model friends look like the freaks they are, and then you feel like a fool, and fat to boot and become a recluse living in a cupboard under the stairs. You say nothing to nobody. 

Family Circle Illustrated Library of Cooking Vol 4, Rockville House Publishers, 1972

Penis Salad

Ever been disappointed with a Google image search because all it brings up are pages and pages of generic shots, none of which you really want to illegally copy and paste into a document? Try turning off the Safe Search feature.

Ever looked up the word “penis” with the Safe Search off just out of curiosity? Here’s a hint: DON’T. Sure, this is a California Shrimp Salad, but if you make the gross mistake of doing the above, you’ll never be able to see jumbo shrimp again without being reminded of your unfortunate lack of judgment.

Soup, Salad, Sandwich Cookbook, Ideals Publishing, 1981

Also from this book: One Is Such A Lonely Number, Frosted Sandwich Loaf, Potty Mouth

The Gift That Keeps On Giving You The Heebie-Jeebies

Delight is an expression fraught with peril. Children are capable of displaying genuine delight (when told on a long car trip you are immediately stopping for ice creams, for example), but it takes many years of less thrilling treats for an adult to perfect the rictus smile of faux delight.

For those unfamiliar with what this looks like in the wild, try presenting “your friends on moving day with this palate-tickling Mushroom Spaghetti Sauce in a jar decorated with various shapes of pasta.” Your gift will elicit an exaggerated enthusiasm and wide smile. Your harried friend will tell you how amazingly useful it is and how much they will enjoy it later. She will spend precious time remarking on how long it must have taken you to glue all that pasta on so artfully and even ask what kind of glue you used. She will say “Wow.” She will thank you profusely and say she’s going to put it in a very special place so that none of the pasta gets broken.

What she really means is “Are you shitting me with this? An IKEA gift card didn’t occur to you? Can’t you see I’m up my neck in boxes? What an asshole; the least you could do is roll up your sleeves and get stuck in. Or bring me a six-pack of icy cold beers. Oh look! I just lost your number.”

Gifts From Your Kitchen, Better Homes & Gardens, 1976

Nights in White Frosting

The main difference between European cakes and American cakes is that the former wear their sweet creamy parts on the inside, while the latter smear it all over the outside. On the one hand it might seem preferable to be faced with the European gateau because you can see what it consists of, and can hazard a guess as to what flavor it is. On the other, it might seem preferable to hide this sort of revelation under a thick layer of white goo that gives no possible clue as to what you’ll find when you slice it open.

The cake on the far left is shrouded in anonymity — for all we know there is no cake inside, just frosting, a sleight-of-hand somewhat akin to donut holes, an item that makes no sense whatsoever except as an existential condundrum. One suspects, however, that people who eat donut holes do not suffer from such mentally taxing problems. Neither do the people who eat ready-made frosting right out of the tub, foregoing the cake altogether.

It’s a scientifically proven fact that generic birthday cake frosting is the sweetest substance yet invented by man. It was originally developed as a weapon designed to detonate an enemy’s pancreas. One bite and KABOOM. The Moody Blues employ the flute as a lead instrument, have sold over 70 million records featuring a Mellotron, and not one of them makes any sense at all. Wrap your mind around that. 

Microwave Cooking Guide, Tappan / O’Keefe &Merritt

Also from this book: Stick-Of-Sauce, Turkey a la Death

The Cookie Graveyard

 Is it possible to make cookies look more menacing? There they all sit in their jars staring at you staring at them while your colon winces before the roughage porn. What joyless treats they are. 

Perhaps they are cookies brought to a wake whom none of the mourners has had the heart to touch, for fear of appearing hungry or willing to taste sweetness at a time like this. 

For all we know, they might still be there, gathering dust since 1967 like orphans just waiting, waiting for someone — anyone — to reach out a hand and take them home.

Pillsbury’s Bake Off Cookie Book, Pillsbury Publications, 1967