Tag: cookbooks

famous brands meat cookbook cover

Meat for Dinner (Again!)

You Ate What? 20 comments

Famous Brands
Meat Cookbook
Brand Name Publishing
1985

I don’t know how many more of these tasty recipes I can manage. They are everywhere on our site. The problem with hanging on to old cookbooks in a regular collection is that the photography or illustrations aren’t really helping the recipes.

Cookbooks and recipes go in and out of fashion. Vintage cookbooks are definitely an interesting collectable, but modern library collections really need to see if these items meet the library mission. If you have space and budget, you can hang onto a few of your oldies but goodies or maybe make a display. Pass your retro collections off to good homes.

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Favorite Mormon Meat Recipes cover

Mormon Meat

You Ate What? 16 comments

Favorite Mormon Recipes
Meats Edition Including Seafoods and Poultry
2000 Favorite Recipes
Montgomery Second Branch of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
1966

Submitter: While weeding the cookbook section, I spied this sad spiral bound book being held together with a prayer. There is one thing I hate about cookbooks and that is a lack of pictures. In the case of this book- there were about 4 black and white photos in total for all 380+ pages. Incidentally there were no secret Jello recipes from Joseph Smith.

Holly: The Frankfurter-Kraut Noodle Ring, pictured below, reminds me of a dish my Polish family makes called haluski. We don’t Jello mold it, though. Missed opportunity.

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Dairy dishes cover

Brace yourselves for Dairy

You Ate What? 16 comments

300 Tasty, Healthful Dairy Dishes
Culinary Arts Institute
1940

Submitter: Hold onto your stomachs for this one. Just when you think you have found everyone of these items for the series, another mystery stained volume appears like a zombie crawling out of a hefty bag. I hope this won’t spoil anyone’s lunch!

Holly: Instant recognition after the an egg cookbook. Dairy is so 1940.

Mary: Thank God this is in black and white. I think if we saw the Green Pea Ring recipe all decked out in a pea color, it could cause some kind of trauma.

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Microwave Miracles cover

Microwave Miracles

You Ate What? 14 comments

Microwave Miracles from Sears
Sears, Roebuck and Company
1974

Submitter: The smell of this book makes me think someone tried some of those fish soup recipes back in 1974. Unless that is what the 70’s smelled like?

Holly: Oh good, fish in the microwave. Your coworkers will love you when you heat up your leftovers for lunch.

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Microwave Cooking cover

Saucy Wieners

You Ate What? 6 comments

Microwave Cooking from Sears
Sears, Roebuck and Company
1971

Submitter: Come see the scary side of Sears… Not sure if that’s regular wear and tear on the cover, or food stains. Either Way – this one has now been liquidated from our collection.

Holly: I can tell you what I’m NOT having for dinner tonight: “Saucy Wieners.” Recipe is below if you’re into that sort of thing.

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jello cover

Jell-o Rides Again

You Ate What? 23 comments

Joys of Jell-o Gelatin
General Foods Corporation
1981

We haven’t posted a Jell-o book in ages. As a Midwesterner, I can appreciate the sophistication of Jell-o cuisine. My mom would put marshmallows and fruit cocktail in ours. (Our family lived on the edge.) This book kicks Jell-o to the next level with the multi-colored layers on the front cover. Pretty darn sexy, right?

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microwave cookbook

Futuristic Cooking with a Microwave

You Ate What? 23 comments

The New Revised
General Electric
Microwave Guide & Cookbook
1977

My family jumped into the crazy cutting edge world of microwaves around the time this book was published. The pitch was always about how you could defrost or prepare food in just seconds, sometimes minutes. I personally remember microwaving hot dogs to watch them completely curl up.

Nothing my mother or myself were able to make anything that resembled the pictures in microwave cookbooks. I am convinced these were all faked. The meat in particular always had a lovely grey color. The texture was also just awful. It should have been nicknamed Soylent Green.

Mary

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