Talk About Good Sunday Vintage Recipe Roulette: 1975 Tamale Pie
Can this literal old-school recipe...ketchup...with modern tastes?
In case you missed the first installment, this is the latest in a series of Vintage Recipe Roulette reviews using only recipes from Talk About Good, my grandmother’s 1975 community church cookbook. In just 164 pages, this collection of homestyle recipes encapsulates the unlikely intersections of 1800s frontier cuisine, post-war convenience foods, and the mid-century American fetishization of canned chow mein noodles. It is untested, unstandardized, and unmatched in its vintage glory in my opinion. Some of the recipes are amazingly good! And some are amazingly…not. Any way you slice it, this Tamale Pie is entertaining…but is it FOR entertaining? Let’s find out!
Now that we’ve covered salads, salads, salads, and pickles, it’s time for an entree! I’m not ashamed to admit I love a good Tex-Mex pie, whether it’s Frito or Tamale, so I’m excited to try this one out. Most of the time, tamale pie is made sort of like a twist on shepherd’s pie, with meat and vegetables under a cornbread topping instead of mashed potatoes. Most sources say the earliest versions were from late 19th century Texas, but it caught on nationwide, and in the 1970s, the one I saw the most at school, church potlucks, and friends’ houses was this one from Jiffy Mix cornbread. The one from Talk About Good may seem like it has a twist on the twist, then, but it’s actually in line with some of the earliest recipes like the earliest known print version in 1931’s Joy of Cooking or this one from 1943 — it uses cornmeal mush, which is similar to polenta but with a finer ground corn meal. This should make it more like the texture of an actual tamal, which sounds like a win…
until you keep reading.
Adding ketchup to a Tex-Mex dish is a sin akin to murdering a unicorn if you’re from south of Dallas, but apparently Ms. June Stanley was not. I’d like to note I’m absolutely not calling out Ms. Stanley’s culinary proclivities as inherently worthy of ridicule, though. They are merely indicative of their time, and it could be argued that she was especially astute in the expression of the recipes de rigueur in ladies’ mags at the time. I also don’t think we should assume this will be bad if we can overlook the very not Mexican-ness. Remember, the Heinz Rosy Apple Crumble Pie attained the coveted Mom of No Rank Seal of Approval, as did Japanese ketchup Napolitan.
Here are the ingredients. I’ve pictured just 1/4 of the amounts called for in the recipe, because I’m going to eat it for lunch, and despite my protestations of optimism, I’m pretty worried about this.
One thing to note is how much milk this recipe actually calls for. It says a “tall can” of evaporated milk. What’s that?!? There used to be a #1 tall (16 oz.) and a #2 tall (24 oz.) for many canned items, but it was different for milk — a tall can was 14.5 oz or about 1 2/3 c. Today, the larger, tall cans are 12 oz. or about 1 1/2 cups. I just used 12 oz. and didn’t bother adding extra. For this recipe, it didn’t matter, but it might matter to other baking recipes, so research carefully before proceeding.
It may sound a little fussy to make mush and then coax it into a baking dish, but actually it isn’t much trouble. It doesn’t burn easily as long as you stir. I tasted it after just 5 minutes, and it was essentially done, so I knew it would be fine with the later baking time — you don’t have to cook it for the whole 10 minutes.
It is sticky and difficult to spread, but letting it cool slightly while making the filing makes it really easy to work with. I was totally perplexed about how one could think to put the remaining mush in “squares” on the top, but you absolutely could press it out on a cutting board and cut it into squares. I just pressed it into a circle for my one serving. I found the bottom layer to be a bit thin and wondered about making perhaps 1 1/2 times the volume the recipe calls for. I also only blind baked it (that’s cooking the crust without the pie filling) for 5 minutes, because with that small serving amount, it was getting dry pretty fast. I’m unconvinced that it needs that long even if you make the whole recipe.
The filling comes together in a flash, and although I had some concerns about the decidedly non-Tex-Mex practice of adding equal amounts of chile powder and oregano, that turns out to be a minor issue compared to the red stuff. It suuuuuure does smell like ketchup, y’all, but it looks pretty cute in the little souffle dish. Let’s bake it up!
I adjusted the bake time and temp down for this small, single serving, and that sugar in the ketchup still burned a bit. It does have lovely browning around the cornmeal hat, and it’s invitingly bubbly. It has real vegetables in it. The bottom and sides have browned and slightly crispy bits, although it doesn’t come out of the dish cleanly. It might if it were in a square dish and you oiled it very well. So far, so good!
But, the predominant aroma? Ketchup. I can practically smell the horcrux.
Sometimes things have a strong scent but a pleasantly subtle flavor, like the Heinz apple pie, but this tamale pie has undeniable corndog overtones. It’s heavily reminiscent of elementary school cafeterias circa 1979. If you call a full, 8x8 pan four servings, that’s 2 tablespoons of ketchup per serving. You would never put that much on a burger.
Well, maybe YOU would, but I wouldn’t.
And yet…this dish has potential. The textures are far superior to the cornbread version, and with some adjustments, you might find it makes a fine weeknight staple. Ultimately I decided the amount of mush is about right in the final dish’s ratios, but you can shorten the cornmeal boiling to 5 minutes, skip the blind baking step entirely, and once assembled, pop the whole dish in the microwave for 5 minutes to get a jump-start on baking time. Transfer to the oven for 20 minutes or until browned around the cornmeal edges. If you use leftover shredded chicken or “roto-chick”, it would cut prep time even more. It would work just fine made vegan, too, with almond milk and all beans, or The Rapping Chef’s must-hear, must-try walnut taco meat. The key would be to sub red or green salsa for ketchup, and if you increased the chile powder just a bit, perhaps added a little cumin, and maybe switched out half of the meat for borracho beans?
Delicious, nutritious, and 100% ketchup-free.