Better Homes and Gardens Salad Book

Old cookbooks are hilarious to me.  I have a small collection and I intend to add to it every chance I get.  Yesterday I stopped at an antique store in Portland (between Lansing and Grand Rapids) and I bought a Better Homes and Gardens Salad Book.  It turns out that this particular cookbook was a bestseller in 1958 and was in the top ten for non-fiction that year.  Well, people didn't have taste buds in 1958 apparently.  For the most part, these recipes are shocking and disgusting.  Why were people so obsessed with gelatin back then?  Almost every recipe is a mold of some sort.  What is funny about this book is that I think the recipes are supposed to be kind of fancy but they are so weird.  Here are a few of my favorites: 

Melon Polka-dot Mold   

2 packages cherry flavored gelatin

2 c. boiling water

13/4 c. cold water

3 Tablespoons lemon juice

1- 8 oz package cream cheese rolled into balls

11/2 c cantaloupe balls

2/3 c. pecan  halves

and then.....

1/2 c. sliced STUFFED GREEN OLIVES! WHAT!?

The gist of the recipe is that you are supposed to trap the above ingredients in a blood red dome of jello. This was apparently totally acceptable to serve your guests on an summer afternoon.  The heading at the top of the page is: "Capture the beauty of fruit in shimmery molded salads!"    

Banana Ham Rolls

6 thin slices of boiled ham

Prepared mustard

3 medium green tipped bananas

Melted butter 

Perfectly innocent sliced bananas are smothered with mustard-drenched ham slices.  Together, they die a slow buttery death in a 350 degree oven for 25 minutes.  

Here is a recipe that the book labels: "Easy for the junior chef":

Drain chilled canned pear halves and sandwich together with mayonnaise

Top with shredded American cheese and trim with green olives

This isn't a recipe, this is a dare.  No one should eat this unless someone is willing to give them $10 just to take a tiny bite.  

My favorite recipe of all the demented recipes in the book is this one:

Hot Potato Salad in Frankfurter Ring

The long and the short of this recipe is that you combine cooked diced potatoes, mayonnaise, vinegar, sugar, and 8 slices of crumbled bacon in a round baking dish that has been lined with a fortress of 10 erect wieners.  You then bake this offensive mess in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes.  Right before serving, you top the thing with sliced hard cooked eggs--just to add insult to injury.  By the time you digest your first bite, you are pregnant and you have had a heart attack.  Delicious!  

Lemony Salmon Tower of Doom

There is a whole section in the book on molded meat salads.  Tangy Tuna Mousse Squares, Lemony Salmon Tower, and the Shrimp Lime Double Decker are all about trapping canned seafood in gelatin.  Most of these salads have more meat than vegetables.  As you can see, the pictures in the book actually do more harm than good.

All in all, this cookbook was well worth $3, especially since now I know how to make a "hearty ham salad men go for".  They recommend serving the manly ham salad with bacon wrapped franks and hard rolls.  No joke.