comicalcookbooks.com Blog

The Spry books are one of the earliest additions to my comical cookbooks collection, they’re pretty well known due to their somewhat bizarre-looking (by current standards) illustrations and photographs.  There is also a running theme about how digestible it is.  FYI, Spry was a now defunct vegetable shortening, similar to Crisco.

This particular vignette follows the cooking tips of “Aunt Jenny”, a rosy-cheeked older woman who reminds me of a long deceased great aunt of mine.  A few highlights:

An obsession with how digestible Spry is.  As compared to what?  Were previous ingredients used in shortening undigestible?  Were the older shortenings the Olestra of the day?  The cover photo caption mentions how digestible Spry is.  So does the inner cover.  So does page 1.  Page 3…the caption shows Aunt Jenny sharing with the other ladies how she makes tender, flaky, digestible pie crusts.  It’s not my underlining, Spry feels it’s so important that they underlined it.  Have you ever had a pie crust that you had difficulty digesting?

Page 18 has kind of a creepy caption.  I really don’t want to know about Uncle Calvin’s “licking the spoon” and how they aren’t much different than little boys.

One of the nastier pictures is on page 31.  Aunt Jenny recommends brushing your meat or potatoes or fish with Spry.  The picture shows some kind of meat that I can’t identify, half covered with Spry.  The meat has more Spry on it than I would spread butter cream frosting on a cake.  And I love butter cream frosting!   So basically, cover your steak with a 1/2″ layer on all sides with Crisco for better flavor.  Yuck.

Page 33 has a nice captioned picture showing Aunt Jenny feeding some poor “old bachelors” a good home-cooked meal.  “Poor men don’t get any good home cookin’ at the diner down by the depot”.  Down by the depot?  Old bachelors, or just not out of the closet?

Finally, the last page has to cover the main point of Spry yet again.  A cute retro-picture of an all-American kid eating a plate full of donuts.  “My grandson, Tommy, tuckin’ away Spry doughnuts.  They’re so light and digestible a child can eat ‘em”.  Well I sure hope so, since you’re stuffing donuts down your beloved grandson’s gullet, I hope he can actually digest it.

This one was a no-brainer to buy once I saw the cover.  The cover shows a fancy-schmancy appetizer plate with a hideous purple orb with olives, onions and pineapple jammed onto it with toothpicks.  This cookbook was a huge national security blunder.  Five years later, the Russians would launch the appetizer-inspired Sputnik into Earth orbit.  It would take years before the Americans would catch up in the space race.

Page 13, Jellied Melange: pretty much sums it up.  A bunch of leftovers in gelatin.  I would love to know what the per capita consumption of gelatin was in the 50s. 

Page 17, Herring on picks.  Nothing more than 1″ square chunks of pickled herring and a small pickled onion on a toothpick.  I know it’s hard to come up with 500 recipes, but come on..  Ditto on the per capita consumption of herring and some other odd items that I see with alarming regularity in these books.

Page 20 has another recipe that is clearly a stretch.  It doesn’t sound gross, but it is a bit unusual.  “Almost anything you like can be rolled in pacon, oven or pan-broiled and served on picks”.  Normally, I’d agree, I love bacon.  But this bacon roll receipe is nothing more than uncooked bacon covered with peanut butter.  Roll up and broil.

Two of the items I see a lot of include chicken livers and anchovies.  Do they dare combine them both?  Yes!  Chicken liver-Anchovy toast.

Another on the offal front on page 24: Liver patties.  “Baked liver patties can be a party especially served with the Spring’s fresh greens.”  Yeah, to me, nothing says party like liver patties.  It’s ground liver shaped into patties and baked.  Even the piece of canadian bacon or bacon wrapped around the patties can’t salvage the fact that it’s ground liver.

Aspic items are perhaps the largest amusing category in all of the old cookbooks.  There are SO many items in aspic (gelatin) that I really have to be selective on the aspic choices.  If I didn’t, I could have another site just for funny or gross gelatin recipes.  This one still rises to the top:

Jellied bouillon with frankfurters.  It’s just beef stock and gelatin in a mold.  In the gelatin are sliced eggs and hot dogs.  Nothing says party food like hot dogs in jello.  I’m sure it’s economical, but so what.

The other favorite jellied item in this book is the very creepy-looking hard cooked eggs in jellied bullion.  It’s just gelatin with a slice of egg on top, but the white and yellow of the egg look like an eye.  So you’re eating an eyeball.  Unnervingly, the eye appears to follow you wherever you are.

Again with the herring on page 34: Herring salad.  I think we brought the herring to the brink of extinction during the 1950s based on the number of recipes I see with herring.  Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

We finish our journey with two repugnant fish salad recipes.  If anything will scare children off of salads, I think these would do it.  Anchovy Beet Salad, and Smelt and Vegetable Salad.  In the latter, they still manage to get beets into that salad as well.

The fun of barbecuing at home!  Don’t forget the traditional roles of the male and female!

“Husbands become the experts and do the barbecuing.  Wives take it easy.  All they have to do is make the salad and dessert.  The kitchen stays clean.  The house remains neat.  There is almost no wash-up afterward.”  I like how taking it easy is only making everything except the grilled meat.

On page 10 there’s a fantastic old school and really dangerous “Big Boy Electro-Rod” for starting the charcoal.  It’s like a scary electric branding iron.  It uses enough power that they warn you the extension cord, if used, should support 900 watts.  The Electro-Rod is right up there with lawn darts for backyard safety.

Page 25 has some brontosaurus steaks on the grill.  2″ thick giant slabs of meat covering the grill.

I like this book most for its retro charm, but we do have the obligatory nasty recipe on page 44: Liver, bacon and onions.

“Barbecue liver and bacon?  It’s really unusual, but why not?  The delicate flavor of liver is enhanced by charcoal grilling in a way that lends zest to appetite and eating enjoyment.”  Better yet, why?  I’m happy that I grew up in the 70’s/80’s, liver seemed quite prevalent.  Yuck.

I don’t know who this guy is on the cover, but he’s the same crazy guy from the Sealtest Food Advisor serving the holiday eggnog.  Now he’s a smiling chef holding a delicious margarine concoction.   Anyone know who this guy is?

Would you take a cup of holiday cheer from this guy?   He just looks a bit creepy to me, like there’s a roofie in the egg nog.

I love the intro page’s twisted prose.

“The sparkling lilt of cheery holiday songs – rustle and bustle of gay gift wrappings – culinary preparations to tempt the most sophisticated palate… Surely holiday time is the carefree, zestful time of the year!  Yes, but not carefree for the straining budget, unless one keeps a steady eye to its condition!”

New Recipes for Good Eating cover

First, all of them have slightly maniacal grins, especially Mom.   Mom has a vacant, Stepford wife look about her.  Then, look closer…

How many donuts do they plan on making?  There’s a HUGE platter of sugared donuts already finished.  6 more on the cooling rack.  Another batch currently being fried in Crisco, and who knows how much batter is still in the bowl.  There are at least a 24 donuts already made (and most of them are Chernobyl-sized donuts to boot).   I guess childhood obesity is timeless.

Continuing our survey of Crisco-fried delights, we have a few beautiful examples of deep-fried goodness.

“Fried Devil Dogs”

What’s better than a hot dog?  A breaded and deep fried hotdog!  It’s a egg washed, bread crumb dipped, spiced hot dog, then deep fried.  Well, maybe the next recipes will be a bit healthier.

“Mashed Potato Doughnuts”

Homer Simpson died and went to heaven.  Mashed potatoes aren’t typically the healthiest dish, the best ones have butter, cream and/or other fats.  So let’s deep fry balls of mashed potatoes in Crisco!  OK, so now we have our meat group, our vegetable group (kind of), so how about a fruit dish…

“Fried Peach Halves”

Roll peach halves in cereal flakes and pan fry in Crisco.  “Serve as an accompaniment to meat”.  I am not the best eater, and definitely love meat.  I also enjoy eating Southern food when I’m there.  Ditto for Germany and their extremely hearty breakfasts.  But when I’m home, I can eat lighter occasionally.   I don’t think I can handle my fruit being fried, it sounds like being stuck in a state fair with fried-everything.  Only you can’t leave.

Actually, instead of head lice, I think Miss Fluffy has a head full of maggots.   There’s no date in this Rice Council cookbooks, I’d guess by the style that it’s from the 1960s.

Another appetizing picture from the cookbook: Pineapple glazed chicken with orange rice.  What I see is a big pot of barnyard animal penuses.   Quite a Rorschach test.

This is a Wesson Oil cookbook from the 1930s with a “picaninny” stereotype on the cover.  There aren’t any unusual recipes in this one, just a offensive cover picture of the little girl eating watermelon.  Yikes!

How can you not buy a book titled “All about sausage”?  It’s not about the Benjamins, it’s all about the sausage.  There’s far more to this gem than the title, we hit the ground running with the inner cover and intro page:  “Without sausage, without bacon, purpose in life is forsaken” – An old German proverb.  I can already tell this will be a good book.  It’s from Oscar Meyer, so they cover every type of prepared meat you can think of for this cookbook.  Let’s get right to some of the numerous gems in this amusing cookbook.

“Holiday Meat Tree”.   Oscar Meyer says “Don’t wait for a holiday – this is beautiful buffet food, year around”.  Uhh, or it’s a pile of cold cuts with  a few olives and radishes for color, but I just love the recipe name. “Bacon Butter”In case your cholesterol count isn’t where you’d like it, try Bacon Butter.  Add 2 slices of crumbled bacon to a stick of butter.  Simple and heart-healthy!

“Hodgepodge Salad” The name just says it all.  It looks like just a big glass bowl of whatever is leftover in your fridge.   Just combined a ¾ pound variety pack of meats sliced into strips, 5 cups leftover cooked vegetables and an 8 ounce bottle of creamy onion dressing.  (Note: A whole bottle of salad dressing?)  Toss well.  Then put in the second-largest trifle dish I’ve ever seen.  The recommendation in the recipe is to save leftover vegetables over a period of a few days, then use them in this recipe: “Here is good eating with leftovers”.  Yuck. 

“Meat Pops” Again, the name just grabbed me.  The cookbook claims “It’s a sandwich on a stick!”.  Or, it’s sliced meat spread with some cream cheese then wrapped around pretzel rods.  Cheap and easy, but I expect more effort from a fraternity party.