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by Robrt L. Pela

Okay. I know I said I’d bring you a recipe for Ring Around the Fruit Mold, but after flipping through The New Joys of Jell-O, I came across this one for Pink Lady Pie. I don’t care what this tastes like; the name is brilliant, and so I had to reproduce it here.

Remember when Dream Whip came in an envelope? Remember when Jell-O was a dessert, and not a punchline? If so, you’re old.

I love that this one includes grenadine. I guess it’s what makes this recipe “classy.” And a recipe that calls for “any red flavor” of Jell-O always gets my vote.

PINK LADY PIE

3 egg yolks, slightly beaten
1 cup water
¼ cup sugar
1 package 3 oz. Jell-O Gelatin, any red flavor
½ cup cold water
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon grenadine syrup (optional)
1 envelope Dream Whip Whipped Topping Mix
3 egg whites
Dash of salt
¼ cup sugar
1 baked 9-inch pie shell

Combine egg yolks and 1 cup water in top of double boiler. Add ¼ cup sugar; mix well. Cook and stir over boiling water until mixture coats spoon, stirring constantly. Remove ½ cup cold water, the lemon juice, and grenadine. Chill until thickened.

Prepare whipped topping mix as directed on package. Beat egg whites and salt until foamy throughout. Add sugar, beating thoroughly after each addition. Continue beating until mixture forms soft, rounded peaks. Fold into gelatin mixture. Fold in 1 cup of the prepared whipped topping. Chill again, if necessary, until mixture will mount. Spoon into pie shell. Chill until firm—about four hours. Garnish with remaining whipped topping and chocolate curls.

by Robrt L. Pela

I know. I promised a Jell-O recipe this week. But indulge me a little here, while I share with you another absolutely terrifying photograph from The New Joys of Jell-O. I’ll make it up to you next week, I promise.

Meantime, check it out: Someone, circa 1967, has planned her wedding reception menu around Jell-O. I wonder how long this marriage lasted?

Also: Are those glasses of champagne for toasting the bride filled with Jell-O shots? What’s that big, ribbed, white concoction in the foreground? And how come the only wedding guest appears to be the bride’s daughter?

Next week: A recipe for Ring Around the Fruit Mold. I swear.

by Robrt L. Pela

I know—it’s too easy, right? Pulling a recipe from an old Jell-O cookbook is like shooting fish in a barrel. I figured I’d open to any page and just start transcribing, but the page I opened to first was this double-truck of a Jell-O party, circa 1967, and I knew there’d be no recipe from me here this week. Because nothing, not Topaz Parfait or Ring Around the Fruit Mold or even Jellied Avocado Ring moved me more than this shocking illustration from The New Joys of Jell-O.

I suppose it’s possible that swinging Sixties folk got all dressed up in the middle of the day to eat stuff that had been suspended in artificially-flavored, rainbow-hued gelatin. Perhaps if one was too old to drop acid, this is what one did of a Sunday: donned evening wear and dropped in on friends who’d had the kicky inspiration to serve black-and-white-striped parfaits, a colossal bowl of Lemon Chiffon Surprise, and an enormous platter overflowing with Two-Layer Quick-Cranberry Apple Mold.

I love the bumblebee dress on the gal on the far left. And is that Fannie Flagg on the far right? Whoever she is, she doesn’t look happy.

by Robrt L. Pela

I’m not a fussy eater, but I draw the line at eating stuff that’s going to be tasting me while I’m tasting it. And if I were going to eat tongue, I certainly wouldn’t want it in a casserole. With corn. Trust me.

This little number, which appears on the page right next to a recipe for Liver Loaf, is from Money-Saving Main Dishes, a 48-page booklet that claims to be a “bulletin” from the United States Department of Agriculture. My copy, kiped from my mother’s pantry, is dated 1962 and was, according to a rubber stamp on the cover, a gift “From Your Congressman, Michael J. Kirwan.” I am guessing that, after reading some of the recipes printed in this one (among them Boiled Dinner and French Toast with Tomato-Meat Sauce), my mother didn’t send Mr. Kirwan a thank-you note.

I like how the cover illustration depicts the products of agriculture, which apparently include spatulas and straining spoons. I’m also intrigued by the brown splotches on the cover, which smell slightly of curry, although I can find no recipes containing that spice in this delightfully atrocious collection of main dishes.

Speaking of ingredients, where does one buy pimiento, exactly? Tongue is easier to come by, although not as much fun to pronounce. Still, I couldn’t resist. I asked the clerk at Safeway this morning, “Do you have tongue?” He seemed unfazed, and pointed me to the meat counter. When asked where the pimiento was, he said, “Oh, you’ll have to ask someone else about that.” This was the same clerk whom I’d asked, last December, if he had lady fingers. I was hoping for witty banter, but he just stared.

People are so disappointing.

Tongue and Corn Casserole

3 tablespoons butter or margarine
1 teaspoon finely chopped onion
2 tablespoons finely chopped pimiento
3 ½ tablespoons flour
1 ¼ cups milk, broth from tongue, or water with 2 beef bouillon cubes
¼ teaspoon salt
1 ½ cups chopped cooked tongue
1 1/3 cups whole-grain corn, drained
1/3 cup grated cheese
¼ cup fine, dry breadcrumbs mixed with butter or margarine

by Robrt L. Pela

My copy of Beth Bailey McLean’s Modern Homemaker’s Cookbook is signed by the author, whom the cover jacket proudly proclaims is the director of Martha Logan Service. Just what exactly that means is as mysterious as is this peculiar recipe, one among many in yet another oddball cookbook from my collection.

Mrs. McLean gives no indication what Ringtum Diddy is (a side dish? an entrée?) or why it has such a peculiar name. I like to imagine a scenario in which a 1940s housewife is seated at her kitchen table, flipping through cookbooks in search of the perfect dish to serve her visiting in-laws. She passes recipes for Veal Surprise Birds and Cheesaroni and arrives at page 129, sits up straighter, and announces to the appliances, “Of course! Ringtum Diddy!”

Ringtum Diddy (which I admit I have a hard time typing, and an even harder time saying aloud) appears to be some kind of sauce. Neither why you’d make it tableside nor what to serve it with once it’s cooked is explained. And as for what its name means? You decide, and let me know.

RINGTUM DIDDY

¼ cup butter
1 cup shredded sharp cheese
1/3 cup flour
1 cup hot milk
¼ teaspoon soda
1 cup tomatoes
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon paprika
½ teaspoon dry mustard
Dash of cayenne
Crackers or toast

Melt the butter in a heavy skillet (or chafing dish, and make Ringtum Diddy at the table in front of your guests, while someone else tosses the salad). Spread the cheese over the butter. Sprinkle flour over the cheese. Don’t stir. Cover and cook very slowly until cheese melts and bubbles up through the flour, about 10 minutes. Stir in hot milk. Now stir in soda mixed with tomatoes and seasonings. Stir and simmer until blended. Serve generously on crackers or hot toast.

There’s so much wrong about this recipe, I hardly know where to begin. It’s from The Mike Douglas Cookbook, which in itself is enough to give one pause. I have a lot of peculiar celebrity cookbooks in my collection (my favorite: Candy Hits by ZaSu Pitts, which includes cookie recipes involving breakfast cereals and instructions for how to conduct a taffy pull), and this one has got to be the weirdest. It collects recipes, each with a title more terrifying than the next, from many of the guests of The Mike Douglas Show, a popular daytime talk show of the Sixties and Seventies. My favorite might be “Mrs. Scott Carpenter’s Taco Pie,” which comes immediately after an entire page of recipes for stuffed cabbage, each submitted by a different celeb guest. Apparently, rather than piss off Kaye Ballard by publishing Zsa Zsa Gabor’s cabbage recipe instead of her own, Mike published all the stuffed cabbage recipes submitted.

For starters, the name of this recipe is not only disgusting, it’s inaccurate. This isn’t a recipe for liver soup; Mr. Sales (a comedian and kids-show host of television’s early era) has merely named a standard-issue liver-and-onions recipe after himself. I suppose one can argue that Soupy’s inclusion of fried peppers makes his version different, but my mother has been doing that for a half-century.

Then there’s that first line in the cooking instructions: “Remove membrane from liver.” I actually like liver, but an instruction like that is enough to put me off it for a whole year. I don’t want to think about membranes when I’m eating, and that’s all I’d be thinking about while dining on this particular dish. Ugh.

Soupy Sales’s Liver Soupy

1 lb calves’ liver, ¼ inch thick
¼ cup olive oil
2 green peppers, cut into 1/4 inch strips
1 cup onion slices, separated into rings
¼ teaspoon thyme
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
¼ cup white wine

Remove membrane from liver. Cut into one-inch squares. Sauté in olive oil in frying pan three or four minutes on each side. Remove to a heated serving platter.

In same pan, sauté peppers until tender; add onions and seasonings and continue cooking until lightly browned, stirring frequently. Add wine. Stir to combine. Top liver with peppers and onions.

by Robrt L. Pela

Not only is there no rabbit in this Rabbit Omelet, but it tastes like shit, besides. There isn’t enough cheese, and there’s too much beer, which might not have mattered if I’d made it with something other than Old Milwaukee, which was the only beer I happened to have on hand (I prefer gin, but this is one of those annoying “no substitutions” recipes). I’m thinking that beer and eggs is never a good combination, in any case, although I once knew a girl who washed her hair in egg whites and rinsed it in beer. She always smelled funny; don’t try this at home.

The only thing more disturbing than the revolting recipes in “Conversation-Piece” Recipes by Ruth Vendley Neumann (for which I paid a whole two dollars at a used book sale) is the fact that its title is ironic. I hate when words or phrases are incorrectly placed between quotation marks, as has Neumann’s publisher with this book’s title. Are we meant to believe that these aren’t really conversation pieces? Because there’s certainly a lot to say about the disturbing cover photo of this book: the wilted flower arrangement; the bowl of cranberries and potatoes; the chafing dish filled with what looks like greasy turds. One can almost hear the chatter going on behind the camera.

More disturbing still is the author’s bossy tone in the recipe itself, in which she warns us against washing our pan (!) and tells us how to position our hands while making an omelet. It’s an omelet, lady. One with beer in it. Sheesh.

RABBIT OMELET

6 eggs
1/3 cup beer
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon Tabasco
½ cup grated Cheddar cheese
3 tablespoons butter

Combine all ingredients except butter; beat with rotary beater until well blended; do not beat until frothy. Melt butter in pan; pan is hot enough when drop of water spatters in pan.

Action is important, as is position of hands. Left hand is placed on pan handle with palm down, moving pan in back-and-forth motion. Right hand holds fork and moves in circular motion. This motion is continued for about seven times. Omelet should be ready to be turned out. Then, reverse position of left hand, placing it on handle with palm upward. Tip pan and roll omelet out onto hot dish.

IMPORTANT: Do not wash pan, but wipe clean with paper towel.

by Robrt L. Pela

I’m glad this one still has its (tattered) dust jacket, otherwise I’d have no idea why Ruth Ellen Church is the author of Mary Meade’s Magic Recipes for the Electric Blender. Turns out, according to this book’s flap copy, that Church is Meade, although there’s no explanation as to why Church used a pseudonym as author of a syndicated food column in the 1950s.

Probably Church didn’t want to put her real name on recipes like Codfish Delight or Party Avocado Mold, which sounds more like a hostessing problem than a festive side dish. The gimmick here was that housewives could use their then-newly popular electric blenders to make every course of each meal they prepared. The best section is the desserts chapter, which is oddly placed at the front of the book and wherein Meade—I mean Church—goes batshit with soft, creamy confections, among them Nesselrode Pudding and something called Fluffy Prune Pie, one of the few recipes that includes a caveat (“…cut the pieces small!”) that’s possibly code for “This dessert causes diarrhea!”

FLUFFY PRUNE PIE
Rich stuff, so cut the pieces small!

Place in blender:
¼ cup orange juice
1 small piece lemon rind
1 teaspoon lemon juice

Blend until rind is grated. Without stopping blender, add gradually

1 pound of pitted prunes, cooked until very soft

Blend smooth. Add

1 cup walnuts or pecans

Blend a few seconds to chop. Pour into mixing bowl and mix in

¾ cup sugar
¼ teaspoon salt

Beat until stiff, then fold in

2 egg whites

Pour into baked 9-inch pie shell and bake at 325 degrees for 30 minutes. When cool, top with whipped cream to which you have added 2 drops almond extract. Pie is rich and sweet, so I prefer not to sweeten whipped cream for it.

by Robrt L. Pela

What is it about Fifties cookbooks and the word “Fluff,” anyway? You can open practically any cookbook published during the middle of the last century and find a half-dozen recipes with the words “Fluffy” or “Fluff” in their titles.

My favorite is Fried Cornmeal Fluff, which sounds like a culinary impossibility, but I swear I have that one somewhere. As soon as I figure out which of my cookbooks it’s in, I’ll share it with you here. Meantime, here’s a recipe from Better Homes and Gardens Lunches and Brunches that answers the age-old question, “What am I going to do with all this leftover hominy?”

Hominy Fluff with Hash

1 cup quick-cooking hominy
2 1/3 cups milk
2 ½ cups water
1 ¼ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons margarine
¼ cup snipped parsley
3 slightly beaten egg yolks
3 egg whites
1 1-pound can corned-beef hash, heated

Cook hominy, milk, water, salt, and margarine about five minutes or till thick, stirring frequently. Cool 10 minutes and stir in parsley and egg yolks.

Add dash salt to egg whites, beat till stiff; fold into grits mixture and pour into buttered ring mold. Place in shallow pan; pour in hot water to depth of 1 inch. Bake at 325 degrees or till knife inserted comes out clean. Unmold; fill center with hot corned-beef hash.

by Robrt L. Pela

I’m a sucker for peculiar old cookbooks. They call to me, from eBay, and Glendale antique shops, and from the shelves of used bookstores in Tempe. I always come running, desperate for a volume I’ll love as much as I love Dishes to Make Him Happy, in which author and Fifties housewife Elana Cooke (I swear, that’s her name) instructs us in how to please our husbands with entrees like Potato Chip-Dipped Baby Leg of Lamb and something called Mock Indian Pudding, which is not actually a pudding and contains no Indians, although there’s plenty to mock about it.

That’s why I love these books so: Because there’s so much between their covers about which to make fun. I thrill to reading recipes for things like Cottage Cheese-Pickle-Peanut Sandwich, which involves a “homemade” spread of pickle relish and peanut butter, and which I can’t help but share with you here in this, the first installment of this cautionary cook’s column.

COTTAGE CHEESE PICKLE-PEANUT SANDWICH

2/3 cup cottage cheese
1/3 cup peanut butter, coarse grind
1/3 cup diced dill or sweet pickles
8 slices white bread
2 tablespoons milk
¼ teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten
Cooking fat

Combine first three ingredients; spread generously on four slices bread and cover with other four slices. Beat egg with milk and dip both sides of sandwiches into this mixture. Brown on both sides in hot fat over moderate heat.

I love any recipe that includes “cooking fat” as one of its ingredients; that’s so 1952. And just the fact that this is a grilled sandwich spread with pickles, peanut butter, and cottage cheese screams “Not of this world!” Which is precisely how I like my recipes to read.