Bisquick Tricks

Oh, Betty. You must be the guest therapist over at “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” in this month Ladies’ Home Journal (the month in question being February 1936). And what incisive, brilliant connections you make between biscuit-baking and interpersonal relationships. You are the Dr. Phil of the Depression era, only with marcelled hair and indelible lipstick!

Let’s see what Betty Crocker, Marriage Counselor (and Noted Cooking Authority), has to say about the biggest problem facing married couples: the man thinks his mother is a better cook than his wife. Betty has been studying with the experts, you know. She titters “What will psychologists discover about us next? Really, it’s hardly safe to talk with one.”

(Well, maybe they’ll discover that some of us are obsessed with baked goods, Betty, you never know. Or that some of us aren’t even real people, but are advertising symbols. That’s got to stir up some issues right there!)

Anyway, Betty made friends with a psychologist (possibly another advertising symbol, or maybe she made him up) and now she too is an expert. Although she does let this male psychologist dribble on about how the average man only likes his mommy’s cooking. And therefore he is “disappointed” when he gets married because things just don’t taste the same. So the wife has to prove she can cook as well as his mother, you see. It is all up to her. And when she does pull off the perfect biscuits, that solves everything because  ”subconsciously, her husband’s attitude towards her cooking changes…”

And then Dr. Bakeoff ends up by saying that the wife needs to do this three times a week, because “repetition burns that idea into his mind.”

Oh, I’d burn something into that dopey guy in the picture, all right. But it wouldn’t be in his mind! Check him out, holding up the Bisquick biscuit and grinning. Getting to be a swell cook? Getting to be? How many goddamn batches of biscuits does a person have to make and shove down his throat before he coughs up an unadulterated compliment!

Naturally there is a booklet full of recipes that you can order FREE (well, as long as you include some Bisquick box tops, so not really free). I love the title: How To Take A Trick A Day With Bisquick. That would be a bridge reference in the title, but I’ll bet our Betty – she of the Cock-Kabobs – was going for a double entendre. Who’s taking those tricks, anyway? And how many biscuits is it going to take to save that relationship, I wonder?

Well, you do the math. And here’s the math in question: you can make 96 things 50% faster. Which things would these be? And how fast are they going to begin with? I think Betty is going to need a whole conventionful of psychologists (and mathematicians) to figure this one out.