YUCKYLICIOUS

Exploring the world's worst cookbooks

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Circumcised Apples

Well, the one in the foreground seems happy at least.

Microwave Miracles, Hyla O’Connor

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Breast Is Best

When, in the post-WW2 period, public health people questioned the alarming drop in the number of newborns who were being breastfed (while still in the hospital, where such things could be recorded — just less than 50% of new mothers did so), they found a correlation between “rooming in” and “not rooming in.” Rooming in meant that the infant remained in the room with its mother. Rooming out meant being shipped off to the nursery — you know the kind, where rows and rows of swaddled babies are looked at through glass by haggard-looking, smoking fathers, trying to figure out which one’s his.

The only possible response to this is: DUH.

Where is the incentive to nurse when your baby isn’t there? If you don’t start, you can’t continue. This is also the era in which SCIENCE was king, as evidenced by the concept and language of this chapter on sterilization. Note the large role the physician plays in determining what should be a no-brainer. Milk from the breast needs no sterilization. Yet this was the era in which women were venturing out into the workplace, and at the very least, were expected to wear extremely tailored clothing (like the lady in the picture), which doesn’t realistically allow for a figure thickened by baby weight or milk-heavy boobs.

This chapter is disingenuous. It begins with the rather accusatory question “What is more important than your baby?” but then treats the baby as an object. Even childbirth was seen as being unpleasantly physical an experience to share with your baby, something that had to be erased from your memory even while it was happening, with twilight sleep. You went into the hospital pregnant; you woke up in bed not pregnant. With your child nowhere to be seen.

Click to enlarge to read the whole thing

It is no accident that the milk substitute fed to infants is called formula. A formula is a solution, not a food.

Pressure Cookery For Every Meal, Ruth Berolzheimer, Culinary Arts Institute, 1949

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Mystery Meal

“It’s all very well filling your cupboards with cans,” Mabel complained, “but they all look exactly the same when the labels come off.”

Mabel and Dorothy were standing in the kitchen contemplating a table piled high with silver cans, all pulled from Mabel’s shelves after the flood. The colorful paper descriptions of what had been inside were reduced to mush and swept out with the last of the water, and Mabel, in her hurry to rescue everything she could save from her pantry, had pushed the cans hither and thither, so that now she was at a loss.

Dorothy picked one up and held it to her ear, shaking it slightly. “Sounds like it could be peaches,” she said. “Or maybe peas.” She put it down. “Or spaghetti.”

Mabel leaned against the counter and sighed. All the advertising she’d seen in the woman’s magazines had made much of the indestructibility of cans, and how they could bring endless variety to your diet. They were a boon for women like her. She’d never been much of a cook, and relished the chance to do away with the “bothersome preparation” that took up so much of her time. She liked to think she was being modern.

“It’ll have to be mystery meals from now on,” she said. “Bob won’t like it one bit.”

“How about we open a can and see?” suggested Dorothy. “I’m famished after all that cleaning.”

“You pick,” said Mabel. “Pick something good. Pick something tasty.”

Dorothy looked at the cans, stacked like a gleaming metal sandcastle, and reached out for one on the second layer. She withdrew it carefully, and replaced it with one from the top. “Here,” she said. “Please let it be fruit salad.”

Mabel opened the can and tipped its contents out onto a plate. It made a sucking sound. A cylindrical golden blob sat there, shapes buried within its mysterious jelly. She leaned forward to sniff it. It wobbled slightly. “Chicken,” she said.

The two women stood there and looked at it mournfully in the waning light. What was there to say? Mabel pulled the two handles of the can opener open and shut, open and shut, then placed it on the counter next to the jellified poultry.

Dorothy pursed her lips and lifted her eyebrows. Time passed. No words were necessary. They just knew.

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Getting Ahead

In 1919, the average housewife had to have at her disposal far more kitchen skills than the average lady today.

For example, she had to know how to remove the brains from a head, pluck out an animal’s eyeballs, and excavate its nose and hairy parts for small bones. She had to be able to peel a tongue and remove all the meat from the cooked head.

Yesterday's housewife did not have the convenience of  canned sheep's head.  This one proudly notes that it contains no preservative. Think about that.  

 She would have learned these techniques by watching her mother, and her mother would have done the same. The house would have smelled of simmering sheep’s head. There was no air conditioning.

That is all.

The Thrift Cook Book, Marion Harris Neil, 1919

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Unhappy Meal

In 1979, to prove you were cool in school, you had to be able to recite the McSlogan: Twoallbeefpattiesspecialsaucelettucecheesepicklesonionsonasesameseedbun. It was pretty genius as slogans go, forcing the ingredients list into one’s memory in a super mnemonic jingle that required a deep breath and much practice to say. I have a hunch that a lot of folks over 40 can still recite it at a moment’s notice today.

Fast food nostalgia, like most rosy-spectacled memories, usually brings back fun times, packaged in a great deal of horror. It wasn’t the fact that the fries were fried in pure beef tallow or that the cattle slaughtered en mass to produce patties were being farmed on razed rainforest land — it was the packaging itself that speaks most vividly to an earlier age.

What happened to all those polystyrene clamshell boxes our burgers came in? They’re still with us. Mostly buried in anaerobic landfills where their decay isn’t scheduled to begin for 500 years (if it ever does), or floating on the world’s oceans because it is light enough to be shifted by the wind and won’t sink.

The things that make fast food fast as also the things that make our life short. From the styrenes in the packaging to the trans-fats that replaced the beef tallow, to the antibiotics and hormones in the patties, to the genetically modified fries (Mickey D’s was the largest consumer of Monsanto’s NewLeaf, the potato classified by the FDA as a pesticide rather than a food) — the convenience of a drive-thru meal only delays its real cost.

The humor behind the slogan is that you can’t even pause to break between words: the emphasis is on speed. Eating the same way — wolfing your meal down — is not how humans best eat.

Contemplate. Masticate. Enunciate. 

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Goldilocks and the Post Sugar Bear

— What’s on the agenda today? — Post Sugar Crisp cereal. — OK. So: it’s for kids. What do kids like? — Stuffed toys. My daughter has so many she can’t get in her own bed. — Aren’t Post pushing the honey content in this stuff? — Yes. It’s mostly just sugar though. Technically they can’t call it Honey Crisp. — Mark my words, one day they’ll change the names of all these things to “Golden” or “Honey” instead of “Sugar.” — No they won’t. Kids like sugar better than honey. So let’s go with a bear. Bears like honey. If the bear keeps wanting to grab the kid’s cereal, it’ll make folks think it’s full of honey. — Like Pooh Bear, cute. — No — let’s make it a giant bear. A bear as big as the kid. Then it’s an even match. We can call him “Sugar Bear.” — A girl and her teddy wrestling over the cereal — I like it. — Reminds me of sugar daddy. All little girls want a sugar daddy. — But if the bear belongs to the girl, she’ll gladly let him have it. She needs to be afraid of the bear so she won’t give it up. — Sounds crazy sexual to me. Can we really go with that? — It’s no different than Red Riding Hood. Or The Three Bears. — Good point. Fairy tale characters cut to the chase. So let’s have a wicked witch too. In the TV commercials they can live in the forest and the witch can always be hiding her Sugar Crisp from the bear, who always gets it. — Like when the little girl grows up? — Yeah. — She lives all alone in the forest and keeps getting her home invaded and her person assaulted and her property stolen by a scary intruder? — Yeah. — Jesus. — We’ll give the bear a laid-back vibe. Non-threatening. The witch will never seem upset about it. She wants the bear to break in. — So you’re talking about a rape fantasy, then? — Right! — Jesus. — How about we just go with the girl in her pajamas, sitting on the counter with her teddy bear looking on as she grabs handfuls of the cereal from the box? We’ll make it look like she’s misbehaving. — That’s better. — Make her a blonde. Goldilocks. But cut her bangs real short so she looks modern. — Done. Next? Ad for Post Sugar Crisp, 1959

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Matineé Idols and Nymphos

Rudolph Valentino

Appropriately, the term Matineé Idol can be traced back through the Romance Languages.

Matineé is from the French meaning “afternoon performance,” from matin (morning), and old French matines. A matineé is a daytime performance of a show that also comes on at night; the term originally carried with it the sense that the actors appearing in the earlier show were less good than those one could see in the evening. A Matineé Idol, then, had a cheapness about it, sort of like being a tabloid star.

Matines comes from the latin matutinas, referring to morning prayers, or merely “of the morning” which was derived from the old Roman Dawn goddess Matuta. She eventually morphed into Aurora, or the Greek goddess Eos.

Eos, that naughty girl, had an affair with Ares, the god of War, for which she was cursed with unsatisfiable sexual desire by Aphrodite, who was jealous. Them bitches were old school.

Thus we have a celestial nymphomaniac, a woman with uncontrollable sexual desire. Perhaps, when unable to sate herself during the day when all the men were at work in the city, she passed her time lusting after Matineé Idols down the flicks, sucking on ginger candy.

 Candies and Bonbons and How to Make Them, Marion Harris Neil, 1913

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Pizza Burger

25 minutes. Please write your answers in the lined test booklet provided.

“Giant burger boasts real pizza flavor! Broil the savory meat mixture atop a big slice of bread or toasted bun halves. Add mozzarella cheese and cherry tomatoes for a return trip to the broiler. Pizza Burger for Two makes a delicious and attractive lunch treat.”

Q: The Pizza Burger is neither Pizza nor Burger. Discuss.

1968 was a confusing time in world history. Mostly people went ape-shit crazy and killed everyone. There were people in space looking at the dark side of the moon and Led Zeppelin started tearing it up. No-one had any civility or rights. People wanted burgers like they always had but now they also wanted pizza. This is how the pizza burger came about. No-one lived with their family anymore so there was no-one around to put a halt to the madness. People were so afraid of being marched off to war that they only used one bun or a big slice of bread, and they’d never seen a real pizza. The cheese used in the photograph is clearly not mozzarella. One of the slices of bread is round and the other one is square, so two loaves of bread were used. The news on TV was so strange that it seemed 2 + 2 didn’t make 4 anymore, so people tried combining things that shouldn’t be combined just to make things make sense again, like mixing pizzas with burgers. It still didn’t make 4. The Age of Reason had come to a screeching halt. The Age of Arithmetic was a bust. A publication called Better Homes and Gardens bettered neither homes nor gardens. The 1970s were still two years off. The management of body hair fell by the wayside among all the confusion. People ate Pizza Burgers and wished they could go back in time and un-eat them. The Pizza Burger is a perfect example of the times. This is my discussion of the Pizza Burger. 

Cooking for Two, Better Homes and Gardens, 1968

Also from this book: Goodnight Asparagus, Have A Coronary

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Have A Coronary

You’re probably thinking I mean a heart attack, but I’m not. A coronary comes from the Latin coronarius, of a crown (from corona, crown). It wasn’t until the 1670s that coronary became associated with the heart due to the crown of blood vessels surrounding it.

Perhaps you’d like a cardiac arrest instead. That comes from the Greek kardiakos for pertaining to the heart), though the arrest part didn’t become the word we most affix it to until 1950, when people living on Western diets started dropping like flies.

The ancient peoples were somewhat confused about the internal organs. The Greek kardia also means stomach, which is close to the old French cauldun (“bowels”), a word that sounds a lot like cauldron, a cooking pot. This makes sense in a metaphysical way, the stomach and its acids roiling away. The term “heartburn” is a result of this verbal proximity if not its anatomical one.

Whomever invented this exceptional sandwich ought to be crowned “Big Boy King.” If they’re still around. Which is doubtful.

Cooking for Two, Better Homes and Gardens, 1968

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Goodnight Asparagus

Goodnight board, goodnight knife

Goodnight cheese cut into a slice

Goodnight bread, and the cake of rice

Goodnight mayo, goodnight butter

Goodnight radish and goodnight lettuce

Goodnight cuke and goodnight pickle

Goodnight ham and goodnight Spam

Goodnight chips and goodnight lunch

Goodnight parsley; goodnight mush

And goodnight to the old lady whispering “hush”

Goodnight table, goodnight chair

Goodnight sandwiches everywhere

Cooking For Two, Better Homes and Gardens, 1968

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Rococo Cocoa

If you had arrived in Vienna in 1730, weary from your travels upon a donkey, and stopped at an inn for a crust of bread and some hot chocolate to refresh yourself, this is what you would have been served. Blimey, you would have thought, that’s a tad excessive.

People back then were stucco crazy. Everywhere you looked, great dollops of the lime, sand and water mixture had been applied to every surface. White was all the rage. Even people made themselves whiter than they already were by powdering their faces and hair, the men sporting white wigs while the women crafted elaborate hairdos supplemented by hairpieces, which were then powdered white-ish (not to be confused with the men).

Food was not immune: fantastically crafted pastries and sugar follies graced tables, mimicking the architectural detailing all around. It was the age of the spatula, the trowel, and the star-shaped icing tip.

The only thing that wasn’t white were teeth.

There was nothing else for the wealthy to do. There was no TV, sports or scrapbooking to keep them occupied.

All this excess had its downside, however, because the peasants thought it a bit frivolous. They revolted, and chopped off all the be-wigged heads. Marie Antoinette is (erroneously) credited with suggesting the starving masses eat cake if they had no bread. Not, perhaps, the best bit of advice. The revolutionaries replied with the traditional response to such things: “suck on this!” 

The Cooking of Vienna’s Empire, Time-Life Books, 1968

Also from this book: The Butcher of Dubrovnik

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Salmon In A Sauna

At Hotel Sven we welcome you to our facilities which cater to all of your needs all the time. You should want a sauna to taste the true flavor of Scandinavian hospitality and we have one for you. Please remove all clothes and bring a friend for you should not sauna alone it is very dangerous. If you have no friends one will be provided for you to enjoy. You will find wood in the sauna at Hotel Sven it is the finest wood available people come from miles around to appreciate it.

Here is a brochure for Hotel Sven revealing the magnificent food and the sauna. We provide all the traditional items encased in aspic in addition to banana. Work up your appetite in our sauna and then eat until you drop.

Every room at Hotel Sven is fully outfitted with the recommended comforts of home including bed and chair. Luxuries for the intrepid traveler can be purchased at shops only a few miles away the walking isn’t bad, mostly pavement all the way there and back. If a guest has a difficulty we try to accommodate it just call for Sven to help! Everyone at Hotel Sven is named Sven for your convenience and not ours.

Hotel Sven, where our motto remains: we treat you like your family does all sven days of the week!

Salad Cookbook, Family Circle, 1972

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Spotted Richard

The classic British steamed pudding which gets its name from the raisins speckled within it — Spotted Dick — is perhaps the most famous of all desserts which bring a blush to the cheek. Such has been the embarrassment caused by the name of this dish that certain restaurants have taken to calling it “Spotted Richard” on their menus, which only seems to draw attention to the issue, rather than diffuse it. “What’s a Richard,” a hapless (or troublesome) customer might ask. “Why, it is a dick,” the waitress might say. “Why don’t you call it a dick, then?” the customer might pursue. “Because we feel ‘Richard’ is less controversial,” the waitress might respond. “How so?” the puzzled customer might ask. “Well,” offers the waitress, hesitatingly, “dick means penis.” A mighty silence might befall the ensemble while this riveting piece of news sinks in. “So why is the pudding called a spotted penis?” the customer now bravely asks. This is the critical juncture where the waitress throws up her hands, shrugs, and says “damned if I know. You want it or not?”

In fact, Spotted Dick probably gets its name from a corruption of the word pudding, which if you’re from Souf London you’re pronounce “puddink.” Don’t ask why. Dink becomes Dick, most likely because the English have always been prone to a bit of light and bawdy humor given the rain and general misery, and the chance to have a perfectly innocent conversation in which you can confess to enjoying eating spotted dick without recrimination is too good to pass up.

But it isn’t the dick part that’s most interesting here.

It’s the spots.

A spot, meaning a moral stain, dates all the way back to 1200. A spot of land dates from a hundred years later. But spot, from the Old English splott, also means blot, as in a blighted bit, as when one blots a pristine piece of paper, or a blot on the landscape. To spot, as in to locate something, dates from 1300. To spot, as a verb, meaning to sully, or stain, dates from the early 15th century. A blemish spot comes to us from the 16th century.

One could be spotted having a spot of Spotted Dick in a lovely spot and not get spots from it.

Freezer Feast, Caroline Rennie, 1973

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How to Make the Most of your Pig Before Killing It

Ensure that you pig has a good, fulfilling life, with plenty of exercise, shelter, acorns to nibble and scraps to eat. Give it the company of other pigs. Sing to your pig in the evening as you distribute the night-time straw. Pat your pig. When reading to your pig, avoid tales involving pigs whose houses are destroyed by angry wolves. Do not name your pig “Babe.” Name it “Bacon.”

A Plain Cookery Book For The Working Classes, Charles Elme´ Francatelli, 1852

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Little Drummer Girl

Karen Carpenter and John Bonham Hash It Out: Heaven, 1983

KC:  Hey! Fancy running into you up here!

JB:  Oh, it’s you.

KC:  Why, are you surprised to see me? This is the drum club, right?

JB:  I’m not surprised to see you in the least. Actually I’m shocked it took this long.

KC:  Why is that?

JB:  You looked half-dead in ’75. How much did you weigh back then?

KC:  More than I do now! I was a whopping 91 lbs!

JB:  And you’re what — 5’5”?

KC:  So?

JB:  I never understood how a girl like you could manage to hit a drum and stay on your stool.

KC:  Typical. I can play the drums as well as any man. Are you still mad at me for the Playboy Poll?

JB:  Hell yes. “The Best Rock Drummer of 1975.” You ranked number one? Really? Over me? I just don’t get it.

KC:  I'm a darn good drummer. Don’t be mean.

JB:  Lady, I’m just sayin’. I was such a badass rhythm man I got a nickname. They don’t hand those out at reader’s polls.

KC:  You’re proud of being called “Bonzo”?

JB:  Of course. I’m a beast.

KC:  How come you’re here then?

JB:  God loves drummers, Karen.

KC:  I was taught that suicides don’t get to Heaven.

JB:  I didn’t kill myself.

KC:  40 shots of vodka in one day? Sounds suicidal to me.

JB:  It wasn’t the drinking that killed me; it was the throwing up. Something I heard you did quite a bit of, you hypocrite.

KC:  That’s a nasty rumor. I wasn’t bulimic. I just didn’t eat, is all.

JB:  You mean to tell me you didn’t have a drug of choice?

KC:  Well, if you consider laxatives a drug… besides, I didn’t kill myself either.

JB:  What brought you here then?

KC:  Heart failure.

JB:  Young people don’t get heart failure. What caused it?

KC:  Anorexia.

JB:  There you go.

KC:  Well, that’s what all the doctors said. I didn’t buy it. I was just on a diet.

JB:  Jeez, what kind of diet?

KC:  The Stillman Diet. It’s a rapid weight loss zero-carb regime.

JB:  That’s crazy! How long were you doing that?

KC:  I started it in 1967. It really works, too: you can lose up to 15 lbs a week!

JB:  No shit! And you picked the instrument that burns the most calories!

KC:  Say, you play Ludwigs, right?

JB:  Yep.

KC:  Me too! Let’s put all this aside and be friends. We can jam together.

JB:  I thought this was supposed to be Heaven.

KC:  Oh, go to Hell.

(The Stillman Diet that Karen Carpenter followed contains no carbohydrate and no fiber. It is only meant for short-term use.)

The Doctor’s Quick Weight Loss Diet, Irwin Maxwell Stillman, MD and Samm Sinclair Baker, 1967

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Suburbanites

If you think living in the suburbs is akin to something like hell on earth, you are right. Well, etymologically, at least. The suburbs are places beneath the city (from the Latin sub = under, and urb = city), not literally underground, but beneath, as in “not as good.”

The suburbium was an outlying part of the city, which in old French became suburbe, or a residential area outside a city. Now, whole municipalities are suburbs, without the city. We call then “bedroom communities,” because it is presumed that people only sleep there, and drive off on a highway to work somewhere else. But what of the families left behind? They are suburbanites, anonymous as their name. 

In 17th century London, suburbs became associated with inferiority and bad behavior. By the 18th century, the word “suburban” took on the more complex connotation with narrow-mindedness.

Old Suburban

The Chevy Suburban has been around about as long as actual suburbs: it’s been in continuous production since 1935 (the longest-lived nameplate still in production). Just like its brick-and-mortar counterparts, the Suburban has undergone considerable changes in design over the years, though mostly downhill, aesthetically speaking. Where once it was an ergonomic expression of style, all business and curves, it is now mostly just business and square.

The suburbs are an artificial kind of living environment because they have no history and have not been rooted in the landscape by geology — merely by an excess population which gathers like plaque around vehicular arteries. A lack of neighborhoods means that suburbanites buy food from supermarkets. In 1970, perhaps they ate Suburbia Stew. It was the Golden Age of the Suburb, where Moms still had time to cook stew, bought vegetables, and had a bay leaf on hand to flavor the pot.

The Exurbs had yet to arrive.

Kraft’s Main Dish Cook Book, 1970

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Steakmanship

Ladies: because Memorial Day is a national holiday that occurs during warm weather, you have to cede control of the meat to the most senior male in your household. This is because on national holidays, the menfolk work the grill. You will be in charge of the shopping, the salads, the drinks, the entertainment and all the cleaning.  

Enjoy.

The New Wolf in Chef’s Clothing, Robert H. Leob, Jr., 1950

Also from this book: My, Chef, What Big Teeth You Have!