American Advertising Cookbooks: how corporations taught us to love Spam, bananas, and Jell-O

The Crisco cookbook above includes a bunch of sandwiches including a “teatime sandwich” that consists of white bread (crusts removed) spread lightly with Crisco and topped with a leaf of iceberg lettuce.

When I was in Lana’i, I picked up cans of Spam in chorizo, teriyaki, Portuguese sausage, and tocino flavors.

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I don’t know if it was all just for show. These foods were in a lot of cookbooks from that era. I don’t doubt one bit that people were making many of those dishes. It seems like my “great generation” grandparents were very fond of Jello, and would put almost anything they could in it, although I don’t recall anything savory that they made. Anyhow, the savory Jello dishes aren’t that alien relative to the other things people ate at the time, they seem to have a lot in common with the “loafs” (i.e. olive loaf, egg loaf, and so on) that were popular years ago.

I just sucked noodle soup through a straw.

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And head cheese! Don’t forget that yummy loaf!

:face_vomiting:

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I used to be horrified by the idea of head cheese when I saw it in stores. Then I had some authentic German-style head cheese from a German deli and it was fantastic! Chunks of meat in a vinegary aspic with lots of herbs and spices. Great with mustard.

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This definitely requires a link to the Gallery of Regrettable Foods which features many cookbooks from the 1930s onwards. A mixture of gelatine, indifferent reproduction and the ravages of time makes for queasy reading:

https://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/index.html

Some - well let’s call it - highlights:


image

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