Vintage Cooking

I ran across some vintage cookbook illustrations after doing a search that has nothing to do with cookbooks. Charm & Poise and Wardomatic has a great collection of vintage cookbook pictures on their flickr photo streams like this one, from Wardomatic:

because we all know that the happenin’ parties have accordions and sweaters. What’s particularly interesting about the 1950’s to 1970’s of the culinary arts, is our dependency on packaged foods and saving time. The world as we know it, would probably collapse if we didn’t have neato inventions like velveeta. By golly, you can make tons of almost-edibles from that:

Midwest chowder with tons of Velveeta? Yeah…

I’m not old enough to reminisce about these recipes (Sorry Mom & Dad! — I’m also sorry about the occasional swearing in my writing) since I grew up in the era of Cocoa Pebbles, Count Chocula, Pop Rocks, Lunchables and Crystal Pepsi. I used to be able to sing the California Raisins song but it’s so embarrassing that I made myself forget it. Going through these recipes, there’s a few foreign terms and words to me. These vintage cookbooks have words like:

• Nibblers
• Batch (in the form of a sentence, “Here’s a page to show your husband when he has to batch…”)
• Wet Rag
• Cracked ice
• overuse of the word “thrifty”
• favoring the use of phrases related to or like “carefree homemaking”

They also make things with a lot of:

• Vinegar
• Velveeta. Not only can you use it in pies and casseroles, they make a great playtime snack: Velveeta on Graham crackers.
• Jello (this jello and meat mix dish is particularly disheartening, but not as bad as a green jello salad.)

Some additional cultural notes that I’ve concluded after going through many vintage cookbook scans on flickr:

• Racism: Chinese people like jello so you should like jello in ordered to be cultured and worldly or something like that. Oh, and do you know what hobos are supposed to look like?
• Relationships: You might lose your husband if you don’t have Chef Boyardee to help you with dinner. If you’re not on the verge of losing your husband because of the fattening meals you make, your husband is probably fat then. Evidence: Preparing low calorie meals to serve to your husband.
• Fashion: lots of a-line dresses and two words, matching aprons. Drinking nutrient “rich” beverages (I mean, evaporated milk) makes you ultra chic and modern.
• Motherhood: You need processed cheese to help you be a mother. If you’re a good cook, your children will stare creepily at your culinary masterpiece.

I’m glad we’ve switched our dependency to Velveeta and Jello to McDonald’s, Popeye, and Taco Bell. Stay classy America.