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.