Our Parents Survived This How?

As I think I've mentioned in a few posts, Gentle Reader, I take a perverse delight in browsing old recipe books. I suppose it's an extension of my reading on how cooking and our understanding of nutrition and good food and the "womanly arts" have evolved over the years (aka, the 20th century), but at the same time, it's a bit of nostalgia and, well, shock and awe for me when I read because some of the recipes are somewhat familiar and somewhat shocking in their nutritional content.

In short, I sit and read sometimes and marvel that I wasn't heavier than I was as a kid. And I totally understand why Mum made so many food items with Crisco--that's just the way things were done in the day.

Can the Culinary Arts Institutes Retract a Publication?
Yesterday, the boys and I made a trip to our favorite haunt: the Half-Price Books on North Lamar. We hadn't been (or at least the boy and I hadn't been) for a few weeks, and it just seemed like a fun thing to do on a lazy, blessedly rainy Saturday afternoon. After surviving an incredibly obnoxious know-it-all in the comics section who'd had the audacity to kick off his cheap-ass rubber flip-flops while browsing along side us (and offering unsolicited reviews of books, authors, artists, much to our ever-growing annoyance), as well as surviving a short nose blood that the boy experienced, we three made our way over the cookbooks so I could browse while the husband sorted out our comics finds and the boy...well, I'm not sure what he did aside from whine and bitch and moan (as if he hadn't had a two-hour nap before the trip!) and make our time miserable.

My eyes fell upon the battered spine of a real gem--Culinary Arts Institute Encyclopedic Cookbook edited by Ruth Berolzheimer (do follow the link to a fascinating piece about Madamoiselle Editeuse, Gentle Reader) from 1973. At least I think it's from '73: That's the year on the title page, whereas the most recent copyright date is 1971. This sucker's a good 3 inches thick, with handy tabs (the old-fashioned cut-out-to-fit-your-fingertip tabs, not adhesive ones you buy at Office Despot) for the various sections, and the division of the content into sections is just...beyond bizarre. For example, there's a section tab for eggs, fish and meat but then another section tab for fowl--and fowl is paired with vegetables. Okay.... Salads and desserts are paired on a finger tab, and candy and dairy team up on another tab.

Yeah, those pairings are totally logical.

Then I dove into the actual recipes themselves. Now I own a 1984 edition of Escoffier's Ma Cuisine, which is one of those grands livres of haute cuisine, and I also have the antithesis of it, a 1950 (I think--it's the seventh printing of the first edition) copy of Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book, which millions of household cooks (including my own mum) have owned, used or learned to cook from over the many years its been in print. These two books, sort of the alpha and the omega of culinary guidance, have prepared me for all kinds of weird shit, to be quite frank.

Or so I thought.

As I did while perusing Ma Cuisine and the infamous and ubiquitous Betty Crocker book, I found myself thumbing through the CAI Encyclopedic Cookbook and muttering, "Good grief, people actually ate this? People wanted recipes for this? People actually tried to cook some of these abominations?" Here's an example:

Spiced Tongue Mold1 1/2 T unflavored gelatin [Unflavored gelatin was huge in its day.]
1/3 C cold water
2 C stock from cooking tongue
1/2 t salt
1/8 t pepper
1/2 t dry mustard
1 T lemon juice
1 t Worcestershire sauce
2 C chopped cooked tongue
2 hard-cooked eggs, sliced
4 T chopped sweet pickles
1/4 C mayonnaise

Soften gelatin in cold water and dissolve in boiling stock. Add seasonings, lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce. Chill until mixture begins to thicken, then fold in remaining ingredients. Chill until firm. Serves 6.

Yummy!

Now I realize that modern folks are incredibly spoiled and incredibly wasteful in their food consumption, thus beef tongue--or any other animal's tongue--would be incredibly unwelcome on our table. I realize that once upon a time in the not too distant past, making use of the tongue was essential because, dammit, ya paid good money to have that cow butchered and prepared or, dammit, ya don't have money for t-bone steaks, so the tongue'll have to do ya. But.... Well, consider the case of cow brains. They were and in some places still are considered a delicacy. Me, I consider them a major health hazard. Granted, I don't think there's been a confirmed case of a human ingesting prepared cow brains and subsequently developing Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (that's what bovine spongiform encephalopathy--aka, mad cow disease--is called in humans), but would you want to be the first case, Gentle Reader? The FSM knows we have enough reason to worry about contracting CJD just from consuming parts of the cow (and other livestock) that are normally prepared and consumed by humans, so why put yourself at risk?

The Many Blessings of Modern Photography
Of course, using the book to prepare a dish would require one to get past the garish photography. Now, if you lived through the 1970s or have family who've shown you color photos from the 70s or even the 60s, you might be familiar with the type of color that seems to be the result of a composition that was shot through cheesecloth and somehow got glazed over with an orange haze that seemed, at least to me, somewhat pervasive during that time. But looking at the color photos in this book, I figure a person has to have a very strong stomach or absolutely no sense of taste--as in dead taste buds and dead cells in that part of the brain that registers food appeal--to be able to look at those photos and decide the food made from the recipes in the book are worthwhile.

And Don't even get me started on the black and white photos, which are far more numerous than the color ones (by some small, gorge-saving blessing from the publisher).

Is that the Loch Ness monster? Nay, 'tis not Nessy.
That's mock duck.

The book highlighted this fine feast as a suitable main dish for children in the section of the same name. Why feed a child real duck when you can feed her or him mock duck. (If you can't identify what it's made from, Gentle Reader, let me spoil you: That's a lamb shoulder, and the "head" is wrapped in four slices of salt pork or bacon.)

Over the coming weeks and months, I'll try to bring you more treasures from this tome. The husband, who found the mock duck, has set a goal to find one recipe worthy of being made here at Chez Boeckman-Walker, and I've asked him to mark any...real finds that he passes on that just cry out to be brought to the light of day here in the 21st century.

Bon appetit, Gentle Reader--if you dare!