VINTAGE RECIPE CARDS: BEIGNET FROM DEEP SPACE

Here is another Betty Crocker vintage recipe card from a 1971 collection I found at a yard sale (and please check out my other entries under Vintage Recipe Cards if you're interested in America's culinary skeletons in the closet). Today's recipe is titled "Adventure in Space" and belongs to the category of "Children's Parties". From its appearance I can only imagine this is aimed at elementary-school children whose parents understood they love science fiction and can't wait to humiliate them in front of their schoolmates.

Interplanetary communication: YOU'RE A DORK!

Let's talk about the image here. We see a handful of pâte-à-choux "aliens" (Betty calls them "Space Visitors" in the back of the card) with currants for eyes. Toothpicks are used for their little antennae, which I suspect are indispensable, otherwise who would recognize these round baked beings as extraterrestrials, as opposed to, I don't know, anthropomorphic profiteroles? The leader of the group is clearly recognizable by the two jelly beans on the antennae, which I bet endow him/her to communicate in all the languages of the galaxy. The star base (or starship, or throne) is made of Jell-o and requires the use of a star-shaped pudding mold.

It's hard to look at this photo and not realize how much kids food has evolved to suit modern mothers with a crushing sense of guilt and crafting time on their hands. We live in the century of cake pops, FFS. And have you seen these Star Trek Valentine cookies, these Star Wars macaroons, this Battlestar Galactica cake, or this cake with teeth?? This space-inspired fun kid food from the 1970s looks completely amateurish. But I can't be too sarcastic, since I suspect even these misshapen pastry turds may be beyond my very pathetic manual skills. So I'll laugh just a little bit, and stick to my usual simple cakes for my kids' parties. And I'm really, really strapped for ideas, I'll get inspiration from my usual guy: Dead Chef calling Orson. Come in, Orson.

VINTAGE RECIPE CARDS: BATTER FRANKS

Here is the second Betty Crocker vintage recipe card from a 1971 collection I found at a yard sale. Forgive me if I had to go with franks once again (see first card here), but I feel like I have to nip this franks craziness in the bud. First of all, the recommended franks here are AGAIN canned Vienna sausage or cocktail wieners*, which is really scraping the bottom of a barrel that should be launched into space ASAP.

What really surprises me about this recipe is that it is archived under "Fondues", even though our beloved franks are not dipped in melted cheese as the traditional recipe would ascribe. They are instead dipped into a batter made with eggs, milk, Bisquick, cornmeal, dry mustard, paprika, and cayenne pepper. But the absolute weirdness of this dish truly conflagrates in its cooking method, since the batter franks are finally dipped into a boiling hot pot containing "salad oil". When the franks are nicely fried, you dip them for the third and last time, into either ketchup or mustard, and eat them.

"This very night, before the rooster crows, you will dip us three times."

Processed mystery meat wrapped in a chrysalis of bionic batter and communally fried in an unspecified vegetable oil? Pretty disgusting, and yet not illegal, so I'm going to rate it just above the bottom line: A meal you can safely wish on your worst enemy.

*What's the difference between Vienna sausages and cocktail wieners? It seems like there isn't one. In any case, see a scary and almost NSFW pic here.

VINTAGE RECIPE CARDS: THE SALMONUMENT

Here is another Betty Crocker vintage recipe card from a 1971 collection I found at a yard sale (to see other posts in the series, see Vintage Recipe Cards). The first time I flipped through the cards in this series, I thought this was a recipe for strawberry shortcake. Something wrong registered in the back of my mind, though, and it kept itching in my brain all day until I went back to the recipe card and noticed the olive totem on the top and the raw broccoli floret laid on the plate like a carnation on a grave. I finally checked the title... "Crusty Salmon Shortcakes" and I literally gulped.

Let me tell you what Crusty Salmon Shortcake is. It's a split Bisquick roll smeared with a chunky slop made of olives, pimiento, milk, condensed cream-of-mushroom soup, Worcester sauce, and canned salmon. And as wrong as this ingredient mix already sounds, with its bastardized béchamel and the completely avoidable Worcester sauce, we all know it's really the canned salmon that takes this "Impromptu Party Fare" to the next level down.

I have very little to say to this. I can imagine its grittiness, its clash of cheap flavors, its useless saltiness, and I get depressed. I can only see this as a mini ziggurat of 70s culinary confusion, a monument to ill-advised shortcuts. Let's throw some more broccoli at this, huddle ourselves in our raincoats, and walk away.

VINTAGE RECIPE CARDS: FUN WITH FRANKS

Many years ago, I was perusing yard sales for hidden gems of design when I found a whole collection of Betty Crocker vintage recipe cards in a plastic yellow box. The cards were from 1971, which was not the happiest era for international food photography. If you're lucky to own a few vintage cookbooks from the 70s, you are certainly familiar with their disturbing, high-saturation portraits of truculent stews, purple cabbage "surprises" stuffed with Russian salad, carousels of boiled egg on pewter trays, and glowingly awful seafood aspics.

Candyboots published a treasure of appalling Weight Watchers recipe cards from 1974 that you just have to see to believe. Here are my modest picks from the Betty Crocker recipe collection. The images are not as outlandish as the Weight Watchers ones, but I have to show you anyway and add my commentary as Italian spectator. My plan is to publish a small series in which I'll be sarcastic, of course, but also intrigued (Italians have their skeletons in the closet, too). This series will be a compassionate farewell to the bad culinary habits that America has been trying to shed in the past decades. It will also be a heartfelt "nevermore!" to recipes that are mostly made of boxed ingredients such as canned Vienna sausages, liver loaves, and other can o'meats.



The first recipe card is titled Fun with Franks, and really what other sentiment other than fun could ever accompany a course like this? The recipe asks you to cut the franks lengthwise and stuff them with either apple and cheese, peanut butter, clementine wedges, melon balls, pickled onions, or boxed stuffing. Then you wrap them in bacon and grill them for 15 minutes. Franks with peanut butter, pickled onions, and bacon. If Betty C. can digest this, then I am sure we can, too, right?

Read this in Italian: Sbellicata di BBiustel Ripieni.