Fun With Food Flavors, 1945

Food Flavors – for when your food has no flavor! Or needs a surreal flavor makeover.

The ad man got a bit overemotional about the Burnett’s Flavors. Pure extract of poetry is what this is – you can tell because there’s a lot of ellipses. He kept getting overwhelmed – probably by all the whiffs of flavor. Or whatever he was getting a whiff of.

But no matter how overcome the writer got – it should be “its,” not “it’s.”  And I never heard of anyone putting flavor extract into a salad – or a soup for that matter. But you could probably have lots of fun messing with your guests, putting some mint in the casserole, almond in the soup…a whiff of celery, as this ad puts it, in – what? How ’bout in a gelatin mold? Maybe in the Pompadour Pudding or the Chocolate Fluff! There are 29 of these flavors, you know – that’s a lot of fun possibilities. You do the math.

The pie lady up there looks like she’s been up to no good. She spiced that pie up all right, with a whiff of something.

[Advertisement from the Ladies' Home Journal, 1945]

NOTE: The Culinary Arts Encyclopedic Cookbook (1971) gives a nearly-identical recipe for Pompadour Pudding, only with vanilla extract instead of orange, topped with a chocolate-meringue mixture. I’d be glad to post it later if anyone is interested. It doesn’t seem to be in most of my other mid-20th century cookbooks.