Alkalize This!

Here’s the blogging equivalent of - oh, I don’t know - a sorbet, a palate cleanser if you will. All these recipes and the staggering amount of jellied salad have inspired me to post this early 1950s ad for Tums.

The copy is as follows:

Relax and enjoy your food! If acid upset follows, simply take TUMS. These delicious antacids neutralize the excess acid that causes your stomach distress. That is why you feel fine - so fast. TUMS are carminative, comforting, soothing. Never over-alkalize [sic]

On the roll of Tums it reads “Eat Like Candy” - they’re so much better than all those non-delicious antacids out there. But can this be a good thing? After all, some people eat candy pretty fast. I don’t know how comforting and soothing it would be to bolt them down like Rolos or M&Ms, do you?

Mind you that guy does look pretty well medicated. I wonder how many he had, and what was in them? Do you think it ever occurs to him that the pipe-smoking might be contributing to his acid upset? I mean, it isn’t good for you, is it. But clearly he cares not, he is floating on a virtual sea of antacid contentment.

Furthermore the man seems to consist only of a disembodied head and a hand - where’s his stomach got to? Does Tums take away the “acid upset” by - taking the entire stomach away?

But let’s not over-analyze - er, over-alkalize! - the situation.

One final thing - I very much enjoyed seeing that the ad writer used the word “carminative,” which I haven’t seen since reading Aldous Huxley’s novel Crome Yellow, which satirizes various wealthy and/or literary types of the 1920s. The main character is a bad poet named Denis who, not knowing that this word means gassy, decides that it is the most beautiful and poetic word he has ever heard, and wants to use it in a poem thus: “And passion carminative as wine…”

And then he decides to look it up in the dictionary. He is crushed, of course (satire of disillusionment of 1920s youth, etc).

Perhaps a Tums would have cheered him up.

Kitchen Sweetheart

This is from 1951, from Good Housekeeping’s Home Encyclopedia, published in Britain. It’s a huge, heavy book, full of information. Lots to see here. But today, here is the bigamous appliance, a Trianco boiler. These boilers are so good that women want to marry them! How about that. It’s not very tall, and kind of - square-looking - but it really has a certain something. Just ask the checkered-fabric-addicted gal who looks like she just had a couple of gin and tonics (and probably did).

This lady is very excited about the boiler, but insists that her marriage is just fine:

…is hubby worried? Not a bit of it - saves him tons of money on fuel. Am I happy? Yes, I should say so - both my sweethearts are wonderful; and this one keeps the whole house snug and warm at any temperature I choose; is always ready with hot water for my every need, and requires almost no attention whatsoever. In green? Yes, you can get them in a lovely range of colours and sizes…

In fact she prefers the Trianco to the ‘hubby,’ because at least the Trianco keeps things warm and “is always ready with hot water for my every need,” we won’t even go there. And you don’t have to pay attention to it, that can get really aggravating. They aren’t - high maintenance. You know.

Hubby doesn’t really mind, though, he just wants to save that proverbial ton of money. And also to get this maniacally smiling woman off his back. She’s gone all funny since they got the boiler.

Plus hubbies do not come in green, unless they have been eating this lady’s cooking.

Health Food Pudding

Elizabeth Craig (1883-1980) was an early “celebrity chef” in Britain, who wrote dozens of books and articles, mainly about traditional British food. She was born in Dundee, Scotland and spent more than 50 years as a food writer, chef and home economist whose first cookery article was published in 1920.

She endorsed a lot of different products, including Borwick’s Baking Powder, for whom she wrote a rather nice recipe booklet, published in 1930. There are a lot of good recipes in here. She tends to stick to well-known English and Scottish dishes, with the odd “Canadian” dish thrown in (she married an American war correspondent, Arthur Mann, but I don;t know where the Canadian connection comes from).

Here is an amusing recipe from the Borwick’s book entitled “Health Food Pudding,” which is a rare attempt on Craig’s part to marry the old-fashioned steamed pudding to the concept of “health food” -

Health Food Pudding

4 oz. breadcrumbs

4 oz. flour

2 eggs

Little nutmeg

2 oz currants

2 Tbs treacle

1 tsp Borwick’s Baking Powder

2 oz brown sugar

3 oz shredded suet

Rind and juice one lemon

Mix all well together and steam two hours in a basin covered with a buttered paper. Turn out on a hot dish. Spike if liked with blanched, peeled and browned almonds. Serve with custard sauce.

All that suet and treacle are not healthy, never mind the almonds and the custard sauce. I don’t know what the figure of the girl next to the Health Food Pudding is up to. It looks like she has a big bunch of celery sticks under her arm and has turned away from the stodgy dessert which has reached a size - relative to her - of a compact car. In her basket she has got, apparently, hard boiled eggs. She is about to go on the diet that a lot of my friends did in high school in the late 1970s. A figurine ahead of her time!

Ivory Laundry Starch and Its Relation to the Unconscious

You know you want to cook with corn oil. Do not deny yourself the pleasure of putting corn oil and corn syrup and corn starch into as many recipes as you possibly can. All three at once would be ideal.

May I present the St. Lawrence Starch Company of Port Credit, Ontario, and their promotional cookbook, circa 1955-60 (there is no date but it is a whopping 34th edition - which in itself is a tribute to corn products).

Doesn’t the very name reek of dense white carbohydrates - the St. Lawrence Starch Company! This is the hard stuff, gentlemen - bready, pasty, potato-laden. Sauces thick as all three Stooges. Pie that takes a week to digest. Christmas puddings that double, in the New Year, as door stops.

As you can see from the picture (which is on the back cover) the St. Lawrence people (unwearied by corn) make laundry starch which “also works in the wash.” I thought laundry was wash. Maybe you can wash dishes with it, is what they mean. Dishes sticky with corn oil and corn syrup, no doubt.

In one triumphant recipe entitled “Tangy Spanish Sauce” they have manage to press all three products into service. This is the sauce that has it all: tomatoes, green peppers, onion, celery…and corn oil, corn syrup and corn starch. That’s tangy all right. Depending on your definition of tangy.

And we move through the oil-drenched salads and really heavy doughnuts until ending up on the last page with “Corn Starch Pudding” (blancmange, in other words: classic invalid fare for the fans of Mrs. Beeton and of Louisa May Alcott, who had Jo bring some to Laurie in Little Women when Laurie was not exactly sick, but cranky because of his cranky grandpa).

There’s something Freudian about it all. Trying to sneak in the little references to corn-based products, which build and build through the book to culminate in the catharsis of: oh what the hell, let’s just make it the main ingredient.

At least they never tried to put Ivory laundry starch in any of the recipes. Unless it was somewhere on a subconscious level, signified on the back cover where the bottles and boxes float on a white background, the stuff of dreams.

Or perhaps just the stuff of indigestion. Like when Scrooge thinks that Jacob Marley’s ghost is “an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.” Actually, he was more like a heaping cup of Tangy Spanish Sauce, that’s what.

The Clock’s Strange Desire For Campbell’s Soup ("It’s That Good!")

Here is a surreal play in photos from a Campbell’s Soup booklet, circa 1958.

In the top photo four cups of foamy mint green stuff have gone to the opera. There is only one pair of opera glasses and only three ticket stubs. Invariably some of the cups have been left out, and even the ones who attended couldn’t see. Except for the Alpha Cup, despite the fact that they have no eyes.

But they do not realize this. The Alpha Cup has deceived them in some way.

The Alpha Cup is clearly the one whose powers are sucking a bunch of red plastic grapes into its sphere of influence. A small brass alarm clock hovers nearby with a couple of candlesticks. It tries to rectify the situation, but can only look on, helplessly. It ticks on but can do nothing. Very significant! So symbolic of modern angst. And modern soup.

In the middle photo the alarm clock has made friends with an egg cup and a reclining banana. They are staring at someone’s bowl of soup, trying to comprehend it. It isn’t working. They can’t even tell what it is made of. Nor can I. Puzzlingly, the mug of milk has a telephone cord for a handle. It must mean something, but it is too deep for the clock and his egg and banana friends.

The banana in fact has given up and gone to sleep.

In the last photo the ubiquitous clock has made friends with a wooden bird, who is attempting to drink three cups of orange soup with strange white bits in it. As with the opera-loving soup cups, the bird’s attempt is futile. You’re made of wood, maybe you didn’t notice. The apple and the bits of greenery lend an air of the outdoors. As does the thermos. But they are indoors on some vast avocado melamine savanna. Trapped in a world of pastel melamine.

The clock is obsessed with soup and does not know why. Friends come and go, bringing with them bits of plastic greenery and ticket stubs, opera glasses and telephone cords. All useless! They are all standing around waiting, waiting for the Godot of the canned soup to come.

But Godot does not come. He has gone out for Chinese. Because that soup does not look good.

Curse of the Silhouette Salad

I was inspired by the very nice lemon jello salad over at Retro Food in a sort of inverted way - much as a jello mold is inverted on a plate. I was reminded of the scariest jello salad I have yet seen (and certainly I hope to see more hideous ones as I keep collecting cookbooks of the mid-20th century, the Renaissance period if you will of the jellied salad).

May I introduce ‘Silhouette Salad’ from a lovely instruction book and cookery book called To The Bride which was distributed by Peck’s Department Store (in Lewiston, Maine - apparently the largest department store in New England outside of Boston, at the time). It was also published under the considerable aegis of Chase and Sanborn coffee, which product is heralded on nearly every page where coffee is relevant. And some where it is not.

In this book are all sorts of things the modern bride of 1956 had to know. Like how to feed your in-laws when they come to dinner for the first time, and what to put in your spouse’s lunch box (hint: not peanut butter and jelly and a stale cookie) and the epic “Story of the three chickens,” which is a depressing saga involving endless leftovers and various social events. (This deserves another post, so consider yourself warned!)

You will not be serving Silhouette Salad to your in-laws or putting it in your husband’s lunch pail. This is what you’re eating, missy. So you’ll want to know what’s in it.

Silhouette Salad

1 envelope Knox unflavored gelatin

1 can condensed cream of chicken soup

1/2 cup cold water

1 Tb lemon juice

dash black pepper

1 can boned chicken, diced

1/2 cup chopped celery

1/4 cup chopped green pepper

2 Tbs chopped pimiento

2 Tb grated onion

1. Soften gelatin in 1/2 cup cold water.

2. Stir over boiling water until thoroughly dissolved.

3. Blend soup, 1/2 cup cold water, lemon juice and pepper.

4. Add dissolved gelatin; mix thoroughly.

5. Chill to unbeaten egg white consistency.

6. Fold in chicken and remaining ingredients.

7. Turn into three-cup mold; chill until firm.

8. Unmold on crisp salad greens; serve with salad dressing.

At least it doesn’t have Chase and Sanborn coffee in it. It’s got everything else but the kitchen sink in it though.

They did forget one thing however. Step #9: throw the damn thing out, it’s completely horrible!

Little Watkins Vanilla Meets Surprise Dessert

The Watkins Company has been around since 1868 in Winona, Minnesota - and it still is, their website is here. I was lucky enough to come across several of their early cookbooks from the 1930s. The one I got this picture/ad from was put out in 1938.

The books are filled with recipes of all kinds, each of them including Watkins products - a few grains of Watkins pepper, Watkins Baking Soda, anything really.

Here is something called a “Surprise Dessert.” The generic quality of this name would usually make me pretty wary, but it sounds good to me actually. The exception to the rule that a recipe with the word “Surprise” in it probably is not going to end well.

Surprise Dessert

1 Tb gelatin

1/4 cup orange juice

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup crushed pineapple

1/2 cup Watkins Shredded Coconut

1/4 tsp Watkins nutmeg

1 cup fresh strawberries

1 cup heavy cream

1/4 cup orange cubes

1/4 cup sliced bananas

1/4 cup blanched almonds

1 tsp Watkins Vanilla

Dissolve gelatin in orange juice over hot water [think they mean, in a double boiler]. Mix with sugar, cool, add well-drained crushed pineapple, strawberries, orange cubes, sliced bananas cut fine, chopped almonds and flavoring.

When mixture begins to thicken, fold in 1 cup heavy cream, beaten stiff. Place mixture in hollowed-out sponge cake [Wait a minute, no one said anything about sponge cake! Maybe I don't have a sponge cake!] and set in refrigerator to form.

Before serving, cover cake with sweetened whipped cream, and little Watkins Vanilla.

That’s what they say, not “a little Watkins Vanilla.” It sounds like Little Orphan Annie’s cousin, doesn’t it? Maybe she knows how to cut oranges into cubes, because I sure don’t.

A Complete Electric Kitchen

I had to share this latest find which cost me 99 cents in a secondhand shop - I present to you the Mr. & Mrs. Roto-Broil Cookbook (4th printing, 1956) by Sarah Alexander, starring the Roto-Broil rotisserie oven which was made by the Klinghoffer family of Queens. The purple paperback, with 225 recipes in it, was published “by Roto-Broil Corp. of America, Long Island City, N.Y.” I remember Long Island City as the place where my scary driving teacher took me to practice 3-point turns back in the early 1980s, but little did I know then that I was in Roto-Broil territory.

Here is a link to the Greater Astoria Historical Society which talks about the Roto-Broil operation there.

Now your Roto-Broil comes in three sizes and status levels, rather like the three bears. You got your Riviera, your Capri, or your doesn’t-have-a-resort-name. I wish they had called the baby bear model something like the Long Branch (this was a resort in New Jersey - my grandmother’s family worked there in the World War I era, doing what I do not know, but something to do with boardwalk concessions I believe). Or the Coney Island. Or even the Brighton-in-the-middle-of-August (now we’re in England, which is closer to the Meditarranean, I suppose.

The Roto-Broil does the following things: it barbecues, broils, grill, boils, roasts, toasts, fried and bakes. Not all at once, I trust. But it appears to be trying to.

Take, for example, the “Capri” model on the front cover. It is tackling a whole turkey, some hot dogs and burgers and bacon on the top tray, and a large waffle on the “Bak-A-Tray” that is hovering warily near the Capri.

(Before we turn to the other models, I want to know what sort of meal this is supposed to be. Come on. Is this breakfast, Thanksgiving dinner or a summer cookout? Is this the result of some dysfunctional family conflict over meals? Has the Roto-Broil restored harmony to some troubled household, mercifully out of camera range, that cannot agree on which meal it is time for?)

Let’s move on, shall we?

The Riviera is on the back cover. It boasts a coffee pot up on the top bit, as well as a pan and five bagel-like objects clustering around the pan and the coffee pot. The Riviera in the high season, it mst be. Just like a crowded beach, with everybody toasted and broiling and frying.

If you were a cheapskate you could go for the Roto-Broil Custom “400″ (the “Long Branch”, if you will) which looks quite similar to the others to me. And with it is our old friend the Bak-A-Tray, which has abandoned its waffle and now holds a large chocolate layer cake. How did the Bak-A-Tray manage to produce that?

Inside, they talk about a fourth, really new model called the “Sun Valley” that is the “‘Cadillac’ of rotisseries” and can cook a 25 lb turkey or “up to 8 chickens.” (But, I say, weak from looking at all the activity going on with the Riviera et al, I don’t want to cook 8 chickens!)

Now this Roto-Broil could be used “all day - any place” and was an “Automatic Infra-Red Complete Electric Kitchen.” I don’t know that I like the sound of the infra-red rays that are shooting around all day and any place (really? ANY place? you can cook with this, what, in the forest? in the bathroom?)

My initial question, when I first looked at this wonderful little book, was why the “Mr. & Mrs.” Presumably this refers to the target market, not the appliances being, um, married to each other. Are single people not supposed to use this? Will the infra-red rays attack them if they do?

Questions we may never know the answers to.

On the inside back cover is a small photo of a man in a chef’s hat who looks extremely happy and excited. He is identified as the “Roto-Magician” who has been talking up the Roto-Broiler on television “from coast to coast.” From coast to coast! They still said things like that when I was a kid 15 years later, it was still exciting to think that we could all be slumped in front of TVs all across the continent.

The Roto-Magician looks a little like Ralph Kramden when he was trying to unload the 2000 “Handy Housewife Helpers” on TV, assisted by Ed Norton, wearing those big white chef’s hats. Ralph got very nervous and fell into the set kitchen wall at the end. The Handy Housewife Helper did almost as much as the Roto-Broil: among other things, it could (in Ralph’s words) “core a apple,” scale fish, remove corns and clip nails, sharpen scissors, open bottles and cans and peel potatoes.

And now let me present a genuine Roto-Broil recipe. All the temperature setting are in capital letters, because at this point the reader will be too excited to be thinking clearly.

Barbecued Bologna Kebabs

2 lbs bologna sausage
Barbecue Sauce for Ham or Pork
Red wine, if desired

Remove casing from sausage, and cut into 1 1/2 inch cubes. Marinate sausage in barbecue sauce for at least an hour (note: it may be necessary to prepare double quantity of sauce recipe). Place sausage cubes on skewer spit. Brush again with barbecue sauce. Barbecue at MEDIUM heat for 10 minutes; brush with barbecue sauce. Turn heat to HIGH and barbecue 10 minutes. If desired, brush with wine, and barbecue for another five minutes.

NOTE: Serve with huge salad bowl and French bread.

My NOTE: Could they possibly use any more barbecue sauce? The bologna cubes will have drowned by the time you stick them in the Roto-Broil, never mind coming at them again and again with the sauce! Leave them alone already! And then wine! The only wine I am brushing anything with is the wine that I’ll be brushing up against the inside of my wine glass. I’ll be needing a drink at about that point.

The other thing I love is that you serve it “with a huge salad bowl” - not with any salad, mind you. Just the bowl.

Sally In My Galley

The first kitchen I ever knew about was in our apartment and it was a galley kitchen, named of course after the little narrow kitchen on a ship. They were typical of apartments back then, still are. The building was new in 1960-61 and except for the refrigerator (which has been replaced a couple of times), it has remained exactly the same.

It was about halfway between Alice Kramden’s kitchen and Lucy Ricardo’s. Alice as you will recall had a corner of the main room in the Bensonhurst apartment on “The Honeymooners.” She had an icebox with a drip pan, a little sink and a stove.

Lucy on the other hand had a sort of suburban, spacious place with lots of room and even a back door. She didn’t have a dishwasher or a freezer (unless you count the huge one she and Ethel set up in the basement once that she got locked in) but it was pretty nice.

Ours was in the middle of the Alice-Lucy spectrum, I suppose. Functional but not much more than that.

It was essentially a hallway between the back of the apartment and the L-shaped living-dining room, with fridge, tiny counter and sink on one side facing gas burner-over-cabinets and tiny wall-oven on the other. There was a white metal dispenser for wax paper, plastic wrap and paper towels located over the gas burners, which was inconvenient. The oven was tiny and dark and shaped like a railway tunnel about as wide as a coffee table book and only a little taller than that.. It really was small. There was a broiler underneath with a separate door.

The gas burners were temperamental and sometimes you had to hold a match to them. There were two drawers and two cabinets directly underneath the burners. The oven was powered by gas too, and that was really scary to try and relight.

There was a tiny dishwasher under the countertop but my mother used it exactly one time. There is photographic evidence otherwise I would have said quite confidently that she had never opened the thing. I think she felt that the dishes did not get really clean unless you had at them with a sponge and dish soap.

The tiny countertop between the fridge and the single-bowl, white porcelain sink, was gold-speckled white melamine, and when the finish wore off sometimes during the 1970s, it became a handy notepad for my mother. You could erase pencil from it quite easily so she always jotted things down right on the countertop. It wasn’t really big enough for much else. You could put the plastic dishrack out on it at dish-washing time (that lived under the sink usually) or a bowl, but that was it. You were not going to be making a five-course dinner in this kitchen, unless it came from the local Chinese takeout.

Even then you would have to unpack on the dining room table. Not enough room back there in the galley.

A lady named Carolyn Coggins wrote a book about Successful Entertaining At Home in 1952 and apparently she had even less room than we did. She writes of her kitchen set-up that:

A pullman kitchen measuring exactly six by two and a half feet is tucked away in one wall; it can also be tucked out of sight by lowering Venetian blinds. When these are down, the kitchen looks exactly like one of the windows. For those of you who may not know what a pullman kitchen is, it is a metal unit containing a small stove, a tiny refrigerator, with a sink and shelves above them for storage.

She goes on to describe how she manages to throw cocktail parties, which sound rather nice. Only my mother was not the cocktail-party-throwing type. We had relatives over once in a while, and we had takeout from the local deli when we did. One time we had takeout oyster stew, which I thought was the most delicious thing I had ever had. And she always made icebox cake, which is the perfect dessert for those with limited kitchen space and/or limited kitchen patience. Here it is:

Chocolate Icebox Cake

1-2 boxes of Christie’s plain chocolate wafer cookies

some whipping cream or Cool Whip if you are really short on space/patience

some vanilla and icing sugar, if using the whipping cream

Whip cream and add a little icing sugar and vanilla to taste. A pint and a half is about right for 2 boxes but I usually have Cool Whip on hand to extend the cream if necessary - even people who hate Cool Whip will never know (trust me, I know - and it stabilizes the cream too).

Start making stacks of 5-6 wafers sandwiched with cream. When you have a bunch of them put them on a rectangular plate (a relish tray sort of thing is good, but anything with shallow sides will do) in two adjacent rows that are touching each other. Ice with remaining cream/Cool Whip. If you feel like you can stick raspberries in or on top but I like it plain. Stick it in the fridge for at least a few hours, 6-8 is best. Overnight is OK as long as you don’t have lots of oniony things in there too.

Slice it on the diagonal. The wafers are cakey and it is so delicious, everyone will be very happy. And so will you, because you didn’t spend too much time on it!

Image is from the NYPL Digital Gallery of a tenement kitchen circa 1910. No cocktail parties emanating from there, I reckon.

Housekeeping Made Uneasy

Today’s household hints come from a cookbook written by Mrs. Frances Youngren, Director of Women’s Programs at the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago (which is still around and has a website and everything). It is called More Food For the Body For the Soul and is a sequel to this.

There is a photo of her at the front of the book, looking very much like she is about to put a portion of delicious holly leaves on a lucky someone’s plate. The tie-back curtains behind her have been tied back with fruits. Shouldn’t this be the other way around, Mrs. Youngren?

But I don’t really like to complain. She looks quite formidable. Determined. She knows you would rather eat some delicious holly.

There are not only recipes in here but household hints and some of them absolutely have floored me. For example:

No desk? A special wastebasket will hold all writing paper, ink, pencils. Even a box of stamps. I don’t think this will work, because when I see a wastebasket I tend to throw stuff like old Kleenex in there. Not writing paper and stamps.

Don’t miss a trip because of your houseplants. Leave them in the bathtub in about two inches of water. This maybe could work, if we didn’t have cats who like to play in the bathtub and chew on things. But don’t you also get the feeling that the plant owner in question is - sort of anthropomorphizing a little? It’s just the feel of the sentence - like they won’t LET you go away. You are in their power. The plants have hypnotized you. Maybe they are actually from another planet and trying to take over the world. They cannot allow you to leave. Their tendrils reach out as you try to sneak out with your suitcase and - but perhaps if you put them in the bathtub and lock the door -?

I have saved the best hint for last. I promise you this is an actual quotation from the book (as are all they all!) -

For an original wrapping: save the wishbones from chickens. Enamel in bright colors, tie on top of package.

OK, whoa there Mrs. Y. Let’s back up the train. Number one, if it isn’t for the occasional soup stock, I’m not saving chicken or any other bones. And aren’t they kind of greasy to - enamel? And, um - what are you putting in the package, do tell? If it was me, and I saw that under the Christmas tree, or on my birthday, I wouldn’t be opening that package, I’d be heading for the door.

No matter what the houseplants try to do to me.

[Image from Wikimedia Commons of some lovely Japanese gifts. Not a chicken bone in sight.]