Vintage cookbook palooza!

The overriding theme? If it ain't frozen, don't fix it

In trying to make a short list of scary vintage recipes I could make and try for y’all, I ended up knee deep in my own vintage cookbook collection, and I can’t resist sharing some of what I love about these. I have probably 50 or so, and they’re a mix of community cookbooks, brand and industry adverts dressed up as cookbooks, and commercially-produced cookbooks for home use. There’s a lot of good stuff in them — if you need a “first cookbook” of basic techniques and homestyle recipes, you still can’t go wrong with Betty Crocker’s iconic red volume, now in its 13th edition.

But today, I’d like to give you a peek at a couple of the weird ones. (I’d love to share more, but I can only fit so many photos…if you love these, let me know, and I’ll share more in another post.) They’re the most wonderful window into history. With close reading, you can find tantalizing clues about what it was like to walk into a store, or go to a dinner party…or open the fridge!

So what kinds of things were people eating? First up, liniment!

Okay, okay, Watkins made more than liniment, but I still think it’s funny that they chose this photo to illustrate their product list in their 1936 cookbook. I don’t *think* any of the recipes contain liniment, but I can’t make any promises!

They do contain lots of spices and extracts, some of which are still available today, along with flavored whiskey and aromatic bitters. (They still make liniment, too!)

I love that they’ve kept the vintage styling on their labels. I love their recipe for Chocolate Prune Whip a little less.

It used a dessert mix that was essentially a pudding and pie filling, and then you added mashed prunes and whipped egg whites. Honestly, it probably wasn’t bad, but if you want to try it, you should…uh, probably stick to one serving.

As for the other recipes, what the heck is a “1/2 tablet of Junket”? It’s otherwise known as rennet, an enzyme that curdles milk to make cheese. It’s also the name of the custard-y kind of dessert you can get by mixing it with milk and flavorings. You can still buy it!

Another interesting tidbit on this page is that the pineapple it calls for is pre-tidbit. It did come in cans by that time, but it sounds as though it’s suggesting grating fresh? I’m not sure one could grate cooked pineapple out of a can. I wish I knew!

I’m kind of tempted to try making that lemon ice cream. If you try it yourself, know that “top milk” is a phrase from the days when milk was not homogenized, and the thicker, creamier stuff would rise to the top.

Let’s look at an industry cookbook, from Frigidaire! There’s no date on this one, but from the photo and the emphasis on both freezer recipes and preventing food waste, I’m guessing it’s not long after their first separate freezer model in 1939. It looks to be shortly post-WW II.

And here are some of those recipes, along with a tip: when you flip through an old cookbook, there will always be a page or two with crud all over them — spatters, drops, smudges. That is the jackpot. Something on this page was a favorite of the person who used it. That doesn’t mean you’ll like it — it could just as easily be the anchovy-stuffed tomatoes or cabbage Jell-O as the frozen pineapple salad — but I love these little indicators that you’ve stumbled upon something people really used, and not just a company’s wish that they would.

There are no smudges on another recipe from this book that I’m really curious about, the Strawberry Cheese Salad, pictured lower left in the header image.

What in the Pepto-Bismol is happening here? It looks like a ham lost a fight with a curly endive.

Fortunately, there’s a recipe to answer all our questions! Well…some of them.

I don’t think I’ll ever understand what would possess someone to serve what is essentially strawberry cheesecake ice cream on top of a green salad. I bet it would be delicious with chocolate syrup, though.

Okay, one more. This is a community cookbook subtype that you don’t see too much anymore — the company potluck compilation. This one is from a Galveston insurance company, 1977

For people who make a living on risk assessments, they submitted some real doozies. Raisin spice cookies inexplicably called Mantas, butter balls, and yes…potato fudge. You didn’t think it was real, did you?

And I really take issue with the “Texas” brittle. Cereal flakes? My grandmother would never.

In the entree section is something I wouldn’t have expected to see in the 70s — minus the breadcrumbs, it’s a dead ringer for the raging keto of the second millennium.

As awful as a meat crust sounds to me, the tomato paste sauce is what really gets me.

Okay, that’s all the room we have for images today, but trust me, there’s a lot more where this came from. Which one are you going to make? Do you remember any of these from your formative years?

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