December 04, 2005
Dinner, c. 1943
When I'm in line at the grocery store, I don't read tabloids, I indulge in those little cookbooks that are essentially ads for packaged food. I come by this inclination genetically; when we cleaned out my grandmother's house after she passed away, I found boxes of cookbooks like that dating back to the '50's. (If you are familar with Lileks' Gallery of Regrettable Food...and I hope you are...I have a bunch of those cookbooks. I own Depression Chicken.)
I recently stumbled on a little 5 x 8 cookbook on eBay that wasn't in my grandma's collection, but easily could have been. It was published by General Mills in 1943:
As you might guess from the patriotic cover, this was meant to help the homemakers help the war effort.
I expected more "mock" recipes in here than there actually are (although I'm intrigued by "Nutburgers"). I didn't get it for the recipes, though. I'm becoming interested in old cookbooks as documents of social history (something I'll really pursue if I ever hit a lottery and ditch that pesky day job). Flipping through this little book, I realized that I'm overlooking something better than documents: my grandmother and great aunt were adults right here in D.C. during the war, but it's not something I've ever sat down and asked them about.
I'm thinking of inviting them to dinner and showing them this cookbook. I'll leave it up to them whether they'd like me to make "Victory Pancakes."
Posted by Nic at December 4, 2005 08:38 PM | TrackBack